The swift boat debate
I won't pretend to know the truth about the circumstances surrounding the events for which John Kerry earned his medals in Vietnam. I will say that everyone who was actually on the boat with Kerry who is still alive to put forth an opinion supports his version of the events (which is the official military version by the way) and also supports his bid for the presidency. I also know that Kerry made a lot of enemies because of what he did and said after returning from Vietnam. It's no surprise that many Vietnam veterans would hold such a grudge even after all these years. The seeds he sowed during those times are coming back to haunt him now, in the form of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
All this sniping over the seriousness of Kerry's wounds and whether or not Kerry was under fire when he pulled John Rassman out of the water strikes me as odd. Even if every allegation made against him is true, the fact is that during this time George Bush was enjoying the spoils of the politically priviledged, sitting at home and partying it up. Everytime someone accuses Kerry of falsifying or exagerrating his record, they should preface their comments with the phrase, "While George Bush was in Texas..." For example, the following is an appropriate question: "While George Bush was in Texas, is it true that you REALLY weren't being shot at the very moment that you saved John Rassman's life by pulling him from the water?"
Remember, no matter what Kerry was doing during his time in Vietnam, another 15 years would pass before Bush would get his nose clean and start to take his life seriously.
Selig to be commish until '09
AAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!
Get Wells soon
Last night, word came from Steve Blass that Kip Wells felt additional elbow discomfort during his throwing session and has been scratched from his start on Friday. Uh oh.
In probably not unrelated news, Ian Snell was pulled from his start after 2 innings. My guess is that he'll be making his debut on Friday. Once again, I've got to voice my disagreement with Littlefield's strategy of bringing up top prospects for a cameo appearance before they are ready for a full time job. All it accomplishes is to accelerate the time frame for free agency/arbitration. I understand the convenience of sticking to the current 40 man roster. But don't we have a relief pitcher who can give us 4-5 innings?
First Impression: JVB
Hopefully you were able to watch Jon Van Benschoten make his major league debut last night. I did. Here are my first impressions of VB:
The first thing I noticed, and it was immediately evident, was that VB gets virtually no push from his legs. He pitches with relatively little leg drive. It reminds me of Rick Rhoden or Jason Schmidt. The announcers never commented on this, but it seems to me that VB is leaving a few extra MPH on the table by not fully utilizing his legs. I've never heard anyone who has scouted VB mention this, but I assume minor league instructors are aware. They should show him some video of Tom Seaver or Roger Clemens.
VB's curve is more of a downer than a sweeper. He used it effectively as a change of pace to his fastball until the 5th inning.
VB's has excellent movement on his fastball. It looked like he was throwing a 2 seemer that was tailing in on the hands of right-handers and back over the plate against lefties. This should be an excellent pitch for him against lefties.
VB was consistently hitting 91 mph with his fastball, but it was clocked anywhere from 89 - 93 at various points in the game. I'm a little disappointed in this, especially considering his physical build. VB seems to have long arms and legs, and is fairly tall, but as I mentioned previously,
I don't think he is taking full advantage of his build. It seems to me that in the modern game, you need to touch 95 on the gun to be a truly dominant RHP. This doesn't mean that he can't be successful at his current velocity, I just think it's a lot more difficult. Before someone posts a "what about Greg Maddux" comment, I want to say 2 more things. First, Maddux could throw
harder when he was young. Second, guys like Maddux come along once per generation. Maybe VB is a once in a generation guy, but those guys typically establish themselves at a younger age.
VB was tipping his pitches. By the third inning I was able to guess what pitch he was going to throw. I think the Diamondbacks figured it out in the 5th inning as they started sitting on his curveball. Whenever he was going to throw a curve, he seemed to take a little bit of extra time on the mound before starting his windup. Also, it seemed as though he did a little extra
fiddling around with the grip. I was guessing right about 4 out of 5 times without watching the signs.
Despite my criticisms, I was fairly impressed with him. I like his makeup. He seemed to be 'in control' of the game on the mound. He worked fast and was effectively wild. His fastball had nice movement and he used his curveball as an effective change of pace. On the downside, I think he was tipping his pitches and he wasn't maximizing his velocity with his mechanics. Overall, I rate his first outing a success.
Van Benschoten. Tonight.
The Pirates have recalled their top hitting prospect, and it is expected that he will be in the lineup tonight. That's right, John Van Benschoten is scheduled to get the start on the mound tonight for the Bucs. Previously I had mentioned that Van Benschoten would probably make his Pirates debut this Friday. Unfortunately, Kip Wells has discomfort in his elbow ('Mr. Littlefield, I've got Dr. Jobe holding on line 1.') so the Pirates have moved him back to Friday and called up Van Benschoten to pitch tonight. I have a couple of thoughts on the matter...
Ever since the Pirates drafted him, I felt it was a mistake not to give Van Benschoten a chance to develop as a hitter. For starters, the Pirates are fairly stacked with pitching prospects throughtout the system and have virtually no hitting prospects of note. Second, young pitchers are infamously unpredictable due to the chance of catastrophic injury, therefore I felt it was foolish to invest so much in him and then shut him off from hitting completely. Anyway, what's done is done, and he's turned into a fine pitching prospect nonetheless. His Nashville numbers are pretty poor, and I wish that they had given someone else this start, but I'll be watching and
hoping that I get to see another glimpse of the Pirates future tonight.
The other bit of news is that Kip Wells has a bum elbow. He says he'll be ok for his start on Friday, but you really can't trust anything a player says about his own health. I haven't heard anything about the Pirates scheduling an MRI, but it would not surprise me to hear the Pirates announce on Thursday that Wells won't make the start and will have an MRI over the
weekend. Any combination of the words elbow, shoulder, stiffness, and tightness is very bad news when discussing a pitcher.
Tuesday Pirate quick hits
Daryle Ward had a Randall Simon month last night – 3 extra base hits and 6 rbi. If he wasn’t so damned slow, he would have had an inside the park grand slam.
The league is figuring out Sean Burnett. His numbers look decent from last night (5 ip, 2 er) but in reality, he was pretty shaky against a horrible offensive team. Burnett doesn’t have overpowering stuff, so his success is going to depend entirely on his ability to adjust/counter-adjust.
Everything Brandon Webb throws dives straight down. The Rockies should offer Arizona whatever it takes to acquire him because he was made for Coors field. If he can find a more consistent release point and cut down on his wildness, he’ll be Kevin Brown all over again. If not, he’s still a damn good pitcher as-is.
The Pirates will need a spot starter for their doubleheader on Friday. One rumor says they’ll call up Van Benschoten to get it. I hope not. The Pirates can’t afford to call up top players before they are ready to stay. It just starts their service time clock that much earlier, meaning they have that much less time with the Pirates before they leave for a big market.
The implosion of Jose Mesa continues. I’d love to see Mike Gonzalez get some save opportunities. Mesa hopefully won’t be here next year. It’s time to start working some of the young guys in during the 9th inning.
Those 7 minutes
Anyone who pays attention to the political discourse in this country probably has that 1 talking head personality in whom they most identify. For me that person is Bill Maher. Not that I identify with being a rich, middle-age, famous Jewish television personality, rather I find myself agreeing with about 90% of the opinions he spews forth.
That said, I have to take issue with his op-ed
column from August 12 that was printed in the New York Daily News. In it, he repeats the mantra about how Bush froze and wasted precious minutes after he learned that we were under attack on 9/11. Am I the only non-neoconservative who doesn’t think a big deal should be made about the 7 minutes (plus 20 more tooling around in the school lobby) that Bush wasted? Granted, it doesn’t make him look good, and the excuses made by the right-wing-nuts are feeble at best. But on the list of reasons to dump Bush and his cronies, this ranks about #42 or so.
Why don’t I think this is a big deal? First, I don’t think Bush was in charge anyway. Sure, his handlers tossed him the occasional bone by allowing him to put forward his pet projects such as the ‘no child left behind act,’ his ‘faith-based initiatives,’ and the now long forgotten ‘amnesty for illegal immigrants’ proposal. But Bush was never in charge of the ‘important’ stuff such as foreign policy, economic policy, or national security. Those were the domain of Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al. By all accounts, Bush wasn’t even interested in those aspects of government prior to 9/11, so it’s not surprising to me that he had no reaction to the attacks. He was probably sitting there thinking, “I hope Dick (Cheney) knows what to do.”
Second, what could he have done at that point anyway? Once an attack is underway, and from all accounts it was pretty much over with at that point, it's too late to do anything about it. The real crime happened in the months leading up to the attack. Clearly we had some intelligence that this type of attack was underfoot. The problem is that they didn’t act on the information in July and August. Contingency plans should have been in place long before those planes took off. If you have to come up with a plan in the moment, then it’s too late.
Anyway, there are so many more fruitful trees that the leftists could be barking up. This one just doesn’t bear fruit. I realize that this issue plays on emotions and is being used simply as a tactic to counter the Bush argument that he is a stronger leader than Kerry. But maybe we should talk about the 1.4 million jobs that have been lost. Maybe we should talk about the thousands of lives lost fighting a mythical enemy. Maybe we should talk about the failure to kill or capture major Al Qaida leaders 3 years after the fact.
Smart hitting
Ed Eagle has a not very interesting article
here about the Pirates' struggles against left handed starters. Don't waste your time reading the article. I did read it though, and was astounded by some figures he reported on the Pirates swinging at first pitches. The following is a list of some players and the percentage of times they swing at the first pitch:
Bobby Hill: 34.2%
Randall Simon: 36.4%
Daryle Ward: 36.6%
Rob Mackowiak: 36.9%
Jose Castillo: 41.0%
Craig Wilson: 41.3%
Ty Wigginton: 44.3%
Abraham Nunez: 53.1%
...
Jason Kendall: 2.8%
The first thing that hit me was "WOW...THAT'S A LOT OF FIRST PITCH SWINGING!" That's just an impression though. In order to form an informed opinion, we should compare these numbers to the rest of the league. So I did a little research and came up empty. No data at all. (If anyone can find the league average for first pitch swinging, please let me know what it is!) All I could find was a quote from the A's hitting coach that said their team goal was to swing at the first pitch "23-25%" of the time. Obviously, at least half the Pirates are well above that number. Frankly, it's unforgivable that Abraham Nunez should swing 53% of the time! Where is the
Pirates coaching? Do they even look at numbers like this? I doubt it.
Anyway, take a look at the last name on that list. Jason Kendall actually leads the league in this category. It's not surprising to find out that he is also among the league leaders in OBP (though maybe someone should remind him that too much of a good thing is sometimes a bad thing). With such a fine example to look up to, why are so many Pirates giving up easy outs by hacking at the first pitch? In my experience playing the game, these are the only reasons I had to swing at the first pitch:
1. There was a man in scoring position, 2 outs, and I guessed right on the pitch selection and location.
2. I felt like I was overmatched by the pitcher and would only get 1 chance to find something to hit in the at bat, and I guessed correctly on the first pitch.
3. The manager called for a 'hit and run.'
Other than that, I never swung at a first pitch. Swinging at the first pitch is basically giving up on drawing a walk. People will spout statistics that so and so hits .300 when they swing at the first pitch. So that sounds like a pretty good idea, especially when the same so and so only hits .280 overall, right? Not really, unless the player hits for a higher average on the first pitch than his overall OBP. Remember that swinging at the first pitch is basically giving up on drawing a walk. Sure, you may swing and miss and end up drawing a walk later on, but you are committing yourself to either putting the ball in play on the first pitch, or putting yourself down in the count 0-1. Not too many people walk down 0-1 in the count. So, unless your OBP is around .300 or below, it's self defeating to swing at the first pitch in most situations.
Personally, I find it hard to believe that a group of professional players has a less sophisticated approach to hitting than I did as a high school player. I suppose maybe these players are uncomfortable hitting with 2 strikes and therefore get impatient. But striking out bears little embarrassing stigma in today's game, so I don't know of what they are afraid. Being comfortable with 2 strikes is a learned skill, and it's the responsibility of the Pirates hitting instructors to help get these guys over the hump.
So long Simon
So the Pirates finally cut Randall Simon in order to make room for Daryle Ward. Simon currently sports a .194/.262/.280 line for the season in 175 at bats. That line stand as one of the worst offensive seasons of all time, for anyone with 175 or more at bats. Even worse, Simon brings nothing else to the table. He can only play 1b, is terrible defensively and possibly the slowest runner in the game. If anyone can find a worse offensive season of 175 or more at bats, please post it in the comments section. If you do, I almost guarantee that it belongs to a very young player or someone who plays a premium defensive position, like ss or c. I don't mean to pile on the guy, because for all his baseball faults, he seems like a decent enough fellow even if he is a bit clownish. I hope he catches on with another team and does well there, but I also hope that this closes the book on his Pirates career.
