Jim Caple has been hearing a lot of loose talk about a certain young pitching phenom possibly being put in the MLB All-Star game. The Cape-ster, however, is having none of it. He would rather turn it into an old-timers' game.
Should Stephen Strasburg be on the All-Star team? Of course, he should. After all, he's 2-2, which I believe is unprecedented for a rookie pitcher.
Ohhh snap!! J-Cap with the serious burn on Strasburg and his .500 record. Stupid rookie. Can't even get his team to win. Once Strasburg has a few years under his belt maybe he'll learn that winning the game is what counts. It's not about "stats" or "numbers" or "giving up very few runs" or "allowing very few baserunners". It's about motherfuckin' W's. Strasburg's earned runs by start - 2, 1, 1, 1, 3. WHIP of 1.01 (yes, very small sample size). Nationals' runs scored in his 2 losses and 1 no decision - 1, 0, 0. I think it is pretty obvious what is going on here, Stephen Strasburg can't hit for shit.
And while he just missed setting the "record" for most strikeouts in a pitcher's first five starts, he still has a chance to set the "record" for most strikeouts in a pitcher's first six, seven, eight, 12, 15, 47, 84, 165, 312 and 459 starts. So stay tuned!
Why is "record" in quotes? Are those things not records? They may not be very popular records, but having the most of something over some period of time still counts as a record. And most K's over a pitcher's first 47 starts? I think that one belongs to Milo Rambaldi.
More importantly, columnists and talkshow hosts say he should be on the team.
But not me! I'm different, I'm contrarian, I say what my fellow columnists don't have the balls to say!
And they say that not because they're just endlessly hyping a young pitcher to fill space and time. They're saying it because they know all fans want to see Strasburg. And maybe they're right. A lot of fans do want to see Strasburg.
And that's the point. Fans want to see it. The All-Star game is a goofy exhibition that is supposed to be fun. What baseball fan wouldn't want to see the flame-throwing rookie go head-to-head with the AL's best for a few innings?
Not Jim Caple though. He takes the All-Star game seriously. He only wants deserving players in there. He has pored over reams of data, met with the most advanced Sabermetric analysts of the day, and determined which players truly deserve to be in this year's All-Star game. The first of Caple's "guys I want to see in the All-Star game more than Strasburg":
Ken Griffey Jr.
Wait, that Ken Griffey Jr.? The one who retired? I don't care enough to check, but I believe "being an active Major League Baseball player" is one of the requirements for making the All-Star team.
He hit .184 with no home runs, two extra-base hits and seven RBIs before retiring a couple days B.S. (Before Strasburg). So he definitely did not earn a spot on an All-Star team this season. But he did earn a spot over the course of his Hall of Fame career when he was sometimes considered the best player in the game as well as its most popular.
Hey while we're at it, let's bring back Cal Ripken and groove him another fastball.
Don't honor the 2009 No. 1 pick before giving the 1987 No. 1 pick the farewell he deserves: A final plate appearance with a standing ovation from a sellout crowd at the All-Star Game in the same park where he and his father once hit back-to-back home runs. And if he grounds out weakly, big deal. We'll cheer as he jogs to first base and into the sunset.
That's what the fans want to see, old guys grounding out weakly!
Jamie Moyer: With nine wins, he might make the squad anyway, though his 4.30 ERA probably doesn't warrant it. Still, this is a guy who has pitched more than 4,000 innings in his career (and won 267 games), yet has thrown just one inning in the All-Star Game (at the age of 40).
He should be in the All-Star game because he is really old.
He made his major league debut two years before Strasburg was born
I mean really, really old.
Yes, Strasburg has an explosive fastball but a lot of guys win in the majors by throwing in the upper 90s.
Yes, everyday we see pitchers like Strasburg with 98+ MPH heat and nasty breaking stuff. That's why nobody really made much of a big deal about him. Just another pitcher.
But winning when throwing in the 70s? Now, that's worth seeing.
Judging by the attendance figures and TV ratings, I would say your fellow humans have deemed Strasburg much more "worth seeing" than Jamie Moyer.
Chipper Jones: He's hitting .252 with five home runs and 32 RBIs, which is considerably better than his numbers a month ago. It's hardly All-Star material but what's more important is that our man Larry has indicated this could be his last season.
So to make Jim Caple's All-Star team, all you have to do is retire and/or be super old? My dad is approaching retirement age, can he start at short for the NL?
I'm glad Caple brought up Chipper though. It gives me an excuse to mention the traveshamockery that is taking place with the NL 3B spot. If Placido Polanco and his 107 OPS+ start over David Wright (or Ryan Zimmerman or Scott Rolen, really), then all hope is officially lost for the All-Star game. Fuck Placido Polanco.
So if we're going to make room for last year's No. 1 pick before he's accomplished much in the majors, let's make room for 1990's top pick before he, like Griffey, is gone as well.
And if we're going to make room for the 2009 #1 pick, let's make room for the original #1 pick, Rick Monday of the Kansas City Athletics. He can't be that much older than Jamie Moyer.
Caple also lists R.A. Dickey and Franklin Gutierrez who are actually decent picks, I guess. Then, to wrap up:
Bobby Cox: He's managed Atlanta for 26 seasons, including the past 21, winning 15 division titles, five National League pennants and one World Series in his career. And he's also retiring this year.
Caple really is a sucker for retirees.
So let's give Cox a worthy sendoff by adding him to the coaching staff so he can run onto the field after the inevitable horrendous umpire's call (I think baseball is contractually obligated to have one in every big game) and get ejected yet again. Could there be any more fitting way for the all-time leader in ejections to leave the game than by stomping off the field, kicking and cursing?
He would be so enraged by the bad call in the All-Star game that he would stomp off, kicking and cursing, and then "leave the game" and not manage the Braves for the rest of the year? That doesn't sound like a good way for him to leave the game at all.
In fact, that's the way I want to see Strasburg end his big league career. Wildly successful with a World Series ring, older than almost all his peers but still winning and still loving the game so much that someone will have to make him leave.
This is what follows the paragraph about Cox. I haven't edited anything out. Caple apparently wishes for both Stephen Strasburg and Bobby Cox to end their careers by being thrown out of an All-Star game for arguing with the ump. That is a very odd and a very specific vision for the end of a baseball career.
Until then, though, I want to see guys in the All-Star Game who have already accomplished something in their careers, not guys who might.
You'd rather see over-the-hill players who can't hack it anymore than up-and-coming dominant stars? You'd rather see guys who, by your own admission, haven't played well enough to be All-Stars this year, over a guy who has played extremely well in his short career?
Fuck it, reanimate the corpse of Ted Williams, unfreeze his head, and get him a god damn uniform. That's what I want to see in my All-Star game!
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Soccer Post? Soccer Post.
U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A! America finally cares about soccer after Landon Donovan's dramatic 91st minute goal against Algeria. The strike took the US team from the brink of elimination to winners of Group C and a Round-of-16 match-up with the Ghanians (Ghaners?). It touched off the biggest celebration of the "beautiful game" the US has seen since Bill Simmons referenced Victory four times in the same column. Soccer-mania is certainly being felt at ESPN, and Jeff Carlisle is not immune. The title:
U.S. Puts Up Brave Fight to Advance
Yes! A rigorous chronicle of how those hardscrabble American underdogs gritted and gutted and Ecksteined and Erstaded their way to a victory? An accompanying photo of Clint Dempsey's bloodied face? No, on further review it looks like Carlisle is not quite as excited as the rest of the nation. In fact, on a scale of 1-10, I would put his excitement level at a 7. He gives a brief introduction before moving on to his grades for each player. He helpfully provides the scale for us:
Player ratings:
(1-10; 10 = best)
Then he proceeds to give every single player a grade between 6 and 8. Why even have a scale? Or why not at least make it a 1-5 scale if all the scores fall within a range of 2?
Now I'm certainly no expert when it comes to soccer, so I can't argue with most of the grades themselves. This one, however, seems way off to me:
Tim Howard, goalkeeper, 6.5
Again, not a soccer expert, but if you asked me to rank the best possible things a goalkeeper could do during a soccer match, my list would look like this:
1. Not allow a single goal
2. Charge up the field and score a goal himself
3. Throw a sweet outlet pass all the way past the midfield line that leads to the most important goal in US soccer history
4. Murder everyone in the stadium carrying a vuvuzela
Tim Howard achieved both #'s 1 and 3 on this list, but he only rates a 6.5 on Jeff Carlisle's 6 to 8 scale? Carlisle even mentions that his long throw led to the game-winning goal. What the hell else does a keeper gotta do?
If I were writing this article instead, I would scrap all the ratings and just give everybody a 10. These guys played with heart, hustle, and 3 different kinds of moxie. I haven't been this inspired by a Team USA since The Mighty Ducks 2. Landon Donovan is team leader Charlie Conway. Jozy Altidore is Jesse, that black kid that was also the pitcher in The Sandlot. Edson Buddle is that "knuckle-puck" kid who sucks on SNL now. Clint Dempsey is the rough-and-tumble cowboy, Dwayne Robertson. Maurice Edu is Asian-American figure-skater-turned-hockey-player Kenny Wu. The coach's son Michael Bradley is preppy all-star Adam "Cake Eater" Banks. Defenders Jay DeMerit and Carlos Bocanegra are "The Bash Brothers" Fulton Reed and Dean Portman. And above all, keeper Tim Howard is a combination of the brash leadership of Goldberg The Goalie and the pinpoint skills of Julie "The Cat" Gaffney. If these guys come out in Mighty Ducks uniforms on Saturday, Ghana better watch the fuck out.
Go USA.
U.S. Puts Up Brave Fight to Advance
Yes! A rigorous chronicle of how those hardscrabble American underdogs gritted and gutted and Ecksteined and Erstaded their way to a victory? An accompanying photo of Clint Dempsey's bloodied face? No, on further review it looks like Carlisle is not quite as excited as the rest of the nation. In fact, on a scale of 1-10, I would put his excitement level at a 7. He gives a brief introduction before moving on to his grades for each player. He helpfully provides the scale for us:
Player ratings:
(1-10; 10 = best)
Then he proceeds to give every single player a grade between 6 and 8. Why even have a scale? Or why not at least make it a 1-5 scale if all the scores fall within a range of 2?
Now I'm certainly no expert when it comes to soccer, so I can't argue with most of the grades themselves. This one, however, seems way off to me:
Tim Howard, goalkeeper, 6.5
Again, not a soccer expert, but if you asked me to rank the best possible things a goalkeeper could do during a soccer match, my list would look like this:
1. Not allow a single goal
2. Charge up the field and score a goal himself
3. Throw a sweet outlet pass all the way past the midfield line that leads to the most important goal in US soccer history
4. Murder everyone in the stadium carrying a vuvuzela
Tim Howard achieved both #'s 1 and 3 on this list, but he only rates a 6.5 on Jeff Carlisle's 6 to 8 scale? Carlisle even mentions that his long throw led to the game-winning goal. What the hell else does a keeper gotta do?
If I were writing this article instead, I would scrap all the ratings and just give everybody a 10. These guys played with heart, hustle, and 3 different kinds of moxie. I haven't been this inspired by a Team USA since The Mighty Ducks 2. Landon Donovan is team leader Charlie Conway. Jozy Altidore is Jesse, that black kid that was also the pitcher in The Sandlot. Edson Buddle is that "knuckle-puck" kid who sucks on SNL now. Clint Dempsey is the rough-and-tumble cowboy, Dwayne Robertson. Maurice Edu is Asian-American figure-skater-turned-hockey-player Kenny Wu. The coach's son Michael Bradley is preppy all-star Adam "Cake Eater" Banks. Defenders Jay DeMerit and Carlos Bocanegra are "The Bash Brothers" Fulton Reed and Dean Portman. And above all, keeper Tim Howard is a combination of the brash leadership of Goldberg The Goalie and the pinpoint skills of Julie "The Cat" Gaffney. If these guys come out in Mighty Ducks uniforms on Saturday, Ghana better watch the fuck out.
Go USA.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Wally Backman Rules
Deadspin has video of Wally Backman losing his shit on a minor league umpire. The video (and the tantrum itself, obviously) are about three years old, but luckily for us, Wally was wearing a microphone at the time as part of a documentary being made about his team. This is the first time the audio has been released to the general public. And the audio is, as the kids on the internet might say, EPIC.
At first it seems like a pretty standard manager rant, albeit with more cursing than I expected, and it looks like everything is fine as Wally walks calmly back to the dugout, giving his bench coach instructions on substitutions. That's when the real fireworks begin. I don't want to ruin the video for you, but I will just say that my favorite parts are Wally politely asking the opposing catcher to "get out of the way", and towards the end when he emphatically states "no player is picking that shit up".
At first it seems like a pretty standard manager rant, albeit with more cursing than I expected, and it looks like everything is fine as Wally walks calmly back to the dugout, giving his bench coach instructions on substitutions. That's when the real fireworks begin. I don't want to ruin the video for you, but I will just say that my favorite parts are Wally politely asking the opposing catcher to "get out of the way", and towards the end when he emphatically states "no player is picking that shit up".
Monday, June 7, 2010
Grillz Can Be Deflationary
Brett Arends is writing a 3-piece series on gold in the WSJ. Part 1 was bullish on Au. In Part 2, Arends denounces the silly idea that gold could have value, and so he may still get invited to respectable financial journalist parties on the Upper West Side.
In their quest to provide better tools to hostile bloggers, my colleagues at Shotgun Spread Labs have created an analytic for this article called the Mendacious Anti-Gold Investing Cliche (MAGIC) checklist to track timeworn wisdom (1971-present) against buying the barbarous relic.
At some levels, gold, as an investment, is absolutely ridiculous.
Gold is volatile. It's hard to value. It generates no income.
(MAGIC)checklist: "No income stream!" Check. Off to a strong start. B-b-b-but no income makes it so hard to value! Gold is currency, not a bond or stock. Gold has zero counterparty risk, minimal inflation risk, and does not represent a claim on any asset.
Yes, it's a "hard asset," but so are lots of other things—like land, bags of rice, even bottled water.
The greatest under-reported tragedy of WW2 was the death of countless Jews who tried to smuggle their wealth out of Poland but died of constipation with entire farms, rice sacks, and water bottles crammed secretly up their asses.
It's a currency "substitute," but it's useless. In prison, at least, they use cigarettes: If all else fails, they can smoke them. Imagine a bunch of health nuts in a nonsmoking "facility" still trying to settle their debts with cigarettes. That's gold. It doesn't make sense.
(MAGIC): "It's useless!" Check. How did we ever invent such useful paper currency? That's right, as a "currency 'substitute'" for gold because paper's easier to carry. In non-smoking prisons, inmates use tuna or mackerel MRE's ("macks") as currency. Is Arends suggesting that contraband 1oz gold ingots in prison economies would trade below parity with the mack/cigarette? Why isn't paper useful in prison? Imagine a newly imprisoned finance guy writing "100" on pieces of paper and trying to corner the market of smokes/macks where his trading counterparties are the Black Guerrilla Family, the Aryan Brotherhood, and Mexican Mafia. First, imagine calling Guinness to inform them of the World Record attempt for fastest shanking and most brutal rape of a butt.
As for being a "store of value," anyone who bought gold in the late 1970s and held on lost nearly all their purchasing power over the next 20 years. I get worried when I see people plunging heavily into gold at $1,200 an ounce. What if the price goes back to where it was just a few years ago, at $500 or $600 an ounce? Will you buy more? Sell?
(MAGIC): "It's down from the all-time top tick." Check. Just replace "gold in the late 70's" with "anything at its all-time high" and surprise! You'll see this is nonsense. Sorry about the prison rape joke right before this guy started talking about "plunging heavily" into stuff; that was unplanned.
Let's step inside the gold market for a moment.
Smells like hashish and camels in here.
Everyone knows the price has risen about fivefold in the past decade. But this is not due to some mystical truth or magical act of levitation. It is simply because there have been more buyers than sellers.
(MAGIC): "It's not magical." Check. First off, I think Arends and I agree that anything going up due to levitation or mystical truth is a screaming fuckin BUY. But it turns out the asset is just outperforming the shit out of everything because demand is high. This is part of an argument against gold, mind you.
If the price rises you'd think there must be a shortage.
Uh yea, either lower supply or higher demand. Draw yourself an X, buddy.
Over that period the world has produced—or, more accurately, recovered—far more gold than anyone actually wanted to use. Since 2002, for example, total demand for gold from goldsmiths and jewelers, and dentists, and general industry, has come to about 22,500 tonnes. But during the same period, more than 29,000 tonnes has come on to the market.
(MAGIC): "Few industrial uses!" Check. This is a feature, not a bug. Just as nonsmoking prisoners will gladly use cigarettes as currency, non-dentists have used gold for thousands of years because they recognize its value. Gold is both valuable and not especially useful. This is a good characteristic for hard currency. It means people will generally spend it instead of causing deflation by fabricating mad grillz, knowmsayin?
Most of the new supply has come from mine production. Some, though a dwindling amount, has come from central banks. And a growing amount has come from recycling—old jewelry and the like being melted down for scrap. (This is a perennial issue with gold. I never understand why the fans think gold's incredible durability—it doesn't waste or corrode—is bullish for the market. It's bearish.) So if supply has consistently exceeded user demand, how come the price of gold has still been rising?
I'm guessing it's because the pool of "users" is expanding from dentists and jewelers to people who use fiat currency, a 6 billion-person cohort. Note the dwindling central bank sales. Gold's ever-increasingly supply is bearish ONLY IF MONEY SUPPLY INCREASES AT A LOWER RATE. Don't re-read the first paragraph where you call gold a "currency 'substitute'" or you'll vanish in a puff of logic. And what better characteristic could a store of wealth have than "it never corrodes"? Oh well, why do you think gold's rising, guy?
In a word, hoarding.
Gold investors, or hoarders, have made up all the difference. They are the only reason total "demand" has exceeded supply.
Hoarding drives value? I'm gonna make some fucking bank on my old newspapers, cats, and expired yogurt.
Lots of people have been buying gold in the hope it would rise. But the only way it can rise is if still more people buy it, hoping it will rise still further. And so on.
What do we call an investment scheme where current members' returns depend entirely on new money brought in by new members?
A Ponzi scheme.
(MAGIC): "It's a Ponzi Scheme." Check. How would the author describe non-dividend-paying stocks? When someone buys gold, they get something tangible-- a shiny yellow rock. Ponzi schemes sell promises only. We can debate why anyone would want a shiny rock, but since no one spoke up at the meeting 6,000 years ago when everyone decided it looks cool, we should just wrap this up instead.
Final (MAGIC)Score: 6/8... so close! To complete the Grand Slam, we were looking for:
"If you invest in bullets you can take gold from others."
and
"You can't eat gold. Hurp a durp derp!"
Gold isn't a substitute for income-producing assets. It's a store of value that fluctuates but will never be zero. If a Roman prostitute buried a gold coin 2000 years ago, one of her motley descendants could dig it up today and the coin will have retained the value created by her sexy work product. That's what wealth is, the stored value of production. Gold as an investment should be compared to fiat currency. At times, gold will outperform even those asset classes that generate income denominated in fiat. And it's been beating the ass of many of them lately.
In their quest to provide better tools to hostile bloggers, my colleagues at Shotgun Spread Labs have created an analytic for this article called the Mendacious Anti-Gold Investing Cliche (MAGIC) checklist to track timeworn wisdom (1971-present) against buying the barbarous relic.
At some levels, gold, as an investment, is absolutely ridiculous.
Gold is volatile. It's hard to value. It generates no income.
(MAGIC)checklist: "No income stream!" Check. Off to a strong start. B-b-b-but no income makes it so hard to value! Gold is currency, not a bond or stock. Gold has zero counterparty risk, minimal inflation risk, and does not represent a claim on any asset.
Yes, it's a "hard asset," but so are lots of other things—like land, bags of rice, even bottled water.
The greatest under-reported tragedy of WW2 was the death of countless Jews who tried to smuggle their wealth out of Poland but died of constipation with entire farms, rice sacks, and water bottles crammed secretly up their asses.
It's a currency "substitute," but it's useless. In prison, at least, they use cigarettes: If all else fails, they can smoke them. Imagine a bunch of health nuts in a nonsmoking "facility" still trying to settle their debts with cigarettes. That's gold. It doesn't make sense.
(MAGIC): "It's useless!" Check. How did we ever invent such useful paper currency? That's right, as a "currency 'substitute'" for gold because paper's easier to carry. In non-smoking prisons, inmates use tuna or mackerel MRE's ("macks") as currency. Is Arends suggesting that contraband 1oz gold ingots in prison economies would trade below parity with the mack/cigarette? Why isn't paper useful in prison? Imagine a newly imprisoned finance guy writing "100" on pieces of paper and trying to corner the market of smokes/macks where his trading counterparties are the Black Guerrilla Family, the Aryan Brotherhood, and Mexican Mafia. First, imagine calling Guinness to inform them of the World Record attempt for fastest shanking and most brutal rape of a butt.
As for being a "store of value," anyone who bought gold in the late 1970s and held on lost nearly all their purchasing power over the next 20 years. I get worried when I see people plunging heavily into gold at $1,200 an ounce. What if the price goes back to where it was just a few years ago, at $500 or $600 an ounce? Will you buy more? Sell?
(MAGIC): "It's down from the all-time top tick." Check. Just replace "gold in the late 70's" with "anything at its all-time high" and surprise! You'll see this is nonsense. Sorry about the prison rape joke right before this guy started talking about "plunging heavily" into stuff; that was unplanned.
Let's step inside the gold market for a moment.
Smells like hashish and camels in here.
Everyone knows the price has risen about fivefold in the past decade. But this is not due to some mystical truth or magical act of levitation. It is simply because there have been more buyers than sellers.
(MAGIC): "It's not magical." Check. First off, I think Arends and I agree that anything going up due to levitation or mystical truth is a screaming fuckin BUY. But it turns out the asset is just outperforming the shit out of everything because demand is high. This is part of an argument against gold, mind you.
If the price rises you'd think there must be a shortage.
Uh yea, either lower supply or higher demand. Draw yourself an X, buddy.
Over that period the world has produced—or, more accurately, recovered—far more gold than anyone actually wanted to use. Since 2002, for example, total demand for gold from goldsmiths and jewelers, and dentists, and general industry, has come to about 22,500 tonnes. But during the same period, more than 29,000 tonnes has come on to the market.
(MAGIC): "Few industrial uses!" Check. This is a feature, not a bug. Just as nonsmoking prisoners will gladly use cigarettes as currency, non-dentists have used gold for thousands of years because they recognize its value. Gold is both valuable and not especially useful. This is a good characteristic for hard currency. It means people will generally spend it instead of causing deflation by fabricating mad grillz, knowmsayin?
Most of the new supply has come from mine production. Some, though a dwindling amount, has come from central banks. And a growing amount has come from recycling—old jewelry and the like being melted down for scrap. (This is a perennial issue with gold. I never understand why the fans think gold's incredible durability—it doesn't waste or corrode—is bullish for the market. It's bearish.) So if supply has consistently exceeded user demand, how come the price of gold has still been rising?
I'm guessing it's because the pool of "users" is expanding from dentists and jewelers to people who use fiat currency, a 6 billion-person cohort. Note the dwindling central bank sales. Gold's ever-increasingly supply is bearish ONLY IF MONEY SUPPLY INCREASES AT A LOWER RATE. Don't re-read the first paragraph where you call gold a "currency 'substitute'" or you'll vanish in a puff of logic. And what better characteristic could a store of wealth have than "it never corrodes"? Oh well, why do you think gold's rising, guy?
In a word, hoarding.
Gold investors, or hoarders, have made up all the difference. They are the only reason total "demand" has exceeded supply.
Hoarding drives value? I'm gonna make some fucking bank on my old newspapers, cats, and expired yogurt.
Lots of people have been buying gold in the hope it would rise. But the only way it can rise is if still more people buy it, hoping it will rise still further. And so on.
What do we call an investment scheme where current members' returns depend entirely on new money brought in by new members?
A Ponzi scheme.
(MAGIC): "It's a Ponzi Scheme." Check. How would the author describe non-dividend-paying stocks? When someone buys gold, they get something tangible-- a shiny yellow rock. Ponzi schemes sell promises only. We can debate why anyone would want a shiny rock, but since no one spoke up at the meeting 6,000 years ago when everyone decided it looks cool, we should just wrap this up instead.
Final (MAGIC)Score: 6/8... so close! To complete the Grand Slam, we were looking for:
"If you invest in bullets you can take gold from others."
and
"You can't eat gold. Hurp a durp derp!"
Gold isn't a substitute for income-producing assets. It's a store of value that fluctuates but will never be zero. If a Roman prostitute buried a gold coin 2000 years ago, one of her motley descendants could dig it up today and the coin will have retained the value created by her sexy work product. That's what wealth is, the stored value of production. Gold as an investment should be compared to fiat currency. At times, gold will outperform even those asset classes that generate income denominated in fiat. And it's been beating the ass of many of them lately.
Derek Jeter Hates New York
I think that's the only reasonable conclusion.
Derek Jeter, the Truest of True Yankees, the Captain, the Heart and Soul of the Bronx, the Core of the Big Apple, the Lullaby of Broadway, the guy who does whatever it takes, and does all the little things, can't be bothered to make a small gesture to help out the city that loves him so. The title from Andrew Marchand of ESPNNewYork:
Jeter, Jay-Z not recruiting James to NY
As part owner of the Nets, you would think Jay-Z would be recruiting the shit out of LeBron, but who am I to question the CEO of the R-O-C.
My problem here isn't really with Jeter's unwillingness to reach out to LBJ, but his rationale. To wit:
"It wouldn't make sense," the Yankees captain told ESPNNewYork.com
Jeter hypothetically compared it to if he were going to be recruited by one of the Los Angeles teams and Magic Johnson called him.
"If I were going to another baseball team, how would a basketball player help?" Jeter said. "I don't play basketball. I have nothing to do with that."
I'm jumping around a bit in the article, but it seems like these two quotes are linked. Jeter recruiting LeBron "wouldn't make sense" because "[Jeter doesn't] play basketball". Does Jeter honestly think the Knicks want him to call LeBron to pitch him on the intricacies of Mike D'Antoni's offense? Or on what a sweet high pick'n'roll combo he and David Lee would make? No, here's what we are looking for:
"Hey Lebron, it's Jeter. Just calling to tell you how awesome it is to live and play in New York. I know you love the Yankees anyway, so we could totally be bros! We'll get you an extra-long sleeping bag so you can have slumber parties with me and A-Rod. You can come to all the Yankee games and sit with Minka in the players' section. You know my fiancee, Minka Kelly, right? Let's put it this way, if I had played my whole career in Cleveland, I'd be lucky to be fucking Minka Kelly's fat cousin from Toledo. I was a good-hitting and below average-fielding SS on a few championship teams, and I have been able to parlay that into $20 mil a year, my own future plaque in Monument Park, tons of endorsements and Lyla-mother-fucking-Garrity on my arm. That fat coffee-stain Peter King once said I was the greatest ballplayer he had ever seen! And he's seen Willie fucking Mays! Only in New York, bro, only in New York."
Get on it Jeter.
Derek Jeter, the Truest of True Yankees, the Captain, the Heart and Soul of the Bronx, the Core of the Big Apple, the Lullaby of Broadway, the guy who does whatever it takes, and does all the little things, can't be bothered to make a small gesture to help out the city that loves him so. The title from Andrew Marchand of ESPNNewYork:
Jeter, Jay-Z not recruiting James to NY
As part owner of the Nets, you would think Jay-Z would be recruiting the shit out of LeBron, but who am I to question the CEO of the R-O-C.
My problem here isn't really with Jeter's unwillingness to reach out to LBJ, but his rationale. To wit:
"It wouldn't make sense," the Yankees captain told ESPNNewYork.com
Jeter hypothetically compared it to if he were going to be recruited by one of the Los Angeles teams and Magic Johnson called him.
"If I were going to another baseball team, how would a basketball player help?" Jeter said. "I don't play basketball. I have nothing to do with that."
I'm jumping around a bit in the article, but it seems like these two quotes are linked. Jeter recruiting LeBron "wouldn't make sense" because "[Jeter doesn't] play basketball". Does Jeter honestly think the Knicks want him to call LeBron to pitch him on the intricacies of Mike D'Antoni's offense? Or on what a sweet high pick'n'roll combo he and David Lee would make? No, here's what we are looking for:
"Hey Lebron, it's Jeter. Just calling to tell you how awesome it is to live and play in New York. I know you love the Yankees anyway, so we could totally be bros! We'll get you an extra-long sleeping bag so you can have slumber parties with me and A-Rod. You can come to all the Yankee games and sit with Minka in the players' section. You know my fiancee, Minka Kelly, right? Let's put it this way, if I had played my whole career in Cleveland, I'd be lucky to be fucking Minka Kelly's fat cousin from Toledo. I was a good-hitting and below average-fielding SS on a few championship teams, and I have been able to parlay that into $20 mil a year, my own future plaque in Monument Park, tons of endorsements and Lyla-mother-fucking-Garrity on my arm. That fat coffee-stain Peter King once said I was the greatest ballplayer he had ever seen! And he's seen Willie fucking Mays! Only in New York, bro, only in New York."
Get on it Jeter.
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Thank you, Ralph, Gary and Ron
Instead of watching the Mets' game this afternoon, I wrote the post below on a Jayson Stark column. Now that I'm watching the game on DVR, I see that Ralph Kiner, Gary Cohen and Ron Darling were proving my point about All-Star appearances being a terrible way to measure one's "greatness". Before the top of the third inning, Cohen reads a promo asking fans to go to mets.com and vote for their favorite Mets to be All-Stars. The talk turns to the All-Star game, and we get the following:
Gary: I always thought that voting for the All-Star game was supposed to be about voting for who you thought were the best players.
Ron: That's what I thought also.
Ralph: It turns out to be a popularity contest.
Ron: No, even worse than that-
Gary: That's why the fans lost the ballot in the first place, the '50s when the Cincinnati fans stuffed the ballot box.
Ralph: They stuffed the ballot box, they had 8 players on their team in the All-Star game.
Gary: And after that, they took it away from the fans, until 1970 when they instituted the punch-out ballots.
(after next pitch)
Ron: Well in the '85 All-Star game, I did not play in that game, but I was on that team, Graig Nettles, Templeton, Tony Gwynn, Steve Garvey (OPS+ 109 at 1B), Terry Kennedy (.301 OBP, 89 OPS+) and LaMarr Hoyt (103 ERA+), all started, all Padres.
Gary: I guess their campaign worked.
The stats in parentheses were obviously added by me, just to show that maybe some of these guys didn't deserve to start an All-Star game. Back-up 1B Jack Clark had a 149OPS+ in '85. Back-up catcher Gary Carter had a 138. LaMarr Hoyt was barely the third best pitcher on his own team. He did have a crazy low WHIP though (1.094).
Turns out Ronnie was wrong about Templeton starting, but he was on the team. Either way, using All-Star starts as a measure of anything other than popularity is kinda dumb.
Gary: I always thought that voting for the All-Star game was supposed to be about voting for who you thought were the best players.
Ron: That's what I thought also.
Ralph: It turns out to be a popularity contest.
Ron: No, even worse than that-
Gary: That's why the fans lost the ballot in the first place, the '50s when the Cincinnati fans stuffed the ballot box.
Ralph: They stuffed the ballot box, they had 8 players on their team in the All-Star game.
Gary: And after that, they took it away from the fans, until 1970 when they instituted the punch-out ballots.
(after next pitch)
Ron: Well in the '85 All-Star game, I did not play in that game, but I was on that team, Graig Nettles, Templeton, Tony Gwynn, Steve Garvey (OPS+ 109 at 1B), Terry Kennedy (.301 OBP, 89 OPS+) and LaMarr Hoyt (103 ERA+), all started, all Padres.
Gary: I guess their campaign worked.
The stats in parentheses were obviously added by me, just to show that maybe some of these guys didn't deserve to start an All-Star game. Back-up 1B Jack Clark had a 149OPS+ in '85. Back-up catcher Gary Carter had a 138. LaMarr Hoyt was barely the third best pitcher on his own team. He did have a crazy low WHIP though (1.094).
Turns out Ronnie was wrong about Templeton starting, but he was on the team. Either way, using All-Star starts as a measure of anything other than popularity is kinda dumb.
What if Jayson Stark hadn't written this column?
Then I wouldn’t have spent half a Sunday afternoon ridiculing it.
In the wake of the recent retirement announcement by Ken Griffey Jr., baseball writers all over the country have come out to sing his praises. Most of this praise is well-deserved. Junior Griffey was a phenomenal all-around player, one of the best “5-tool” guys I have ever seen, and seems to have resisted the steroid temptation that overwhelmed many of his contemporaries. He had speed, power, agility, and a charisma that made of him one of the most popular players the game has ever seen. When he came out for that HR Derby (‘94? ‘95?) with the backwards cap on and started hitting moon shots with that perfect lefty swing, he looked like the coolest dude that ever stepped onto a baseball field. He even had a strong cameo in the 1994 Timothy Busfield vehicle Little Big League (despite falling victim to a gimmicky pick-off play orchestrated by a goofball relief pitcher played by Jonathan Silverman, he later robbed Busfield of what would have been a game winning HR). Griffey is a no-doubt Hall of Famer to be sure, but the one thing I cannot say about Junior is that he was ever better than Barry Bonds. I’m not even talking about chemically-enhanced freakshow Bonds. I’m talking about clean, natural (as far as we know) pre-1999 Bonds.
Now, to the title of this post. Jayson Stark has decided to fire up the “What if” machine and tell us how many home runs Ken Griffey Jr. would have hit if he “had stayed reasonably healthy”. Let’s remember that word “reasonably” for later.
There is no tougher question to answer in life than this:
What if?
So why do we find ourselves asking it today -- asking it about one of the greatest players we've ever laid eyes on, George Kenneth Griffey Jr.?
Because you needed a column idea? Sweet use of the full name too. It makes him sound even greater.
We should be looking back at this man and celebrating what was, right? Because what was, by any measure, was beautiful and magical and historic.
And transcendent. And magnificent. And scrumtrulescent. I love the phrase “by any measure” thrown in there. I would love to know which measure it is that tells us Junior was “magical” and “beautiful”.
Those 630 home runs -- that's what was. Only four other players in history hit more than that, and let's just say you wouldn't have any trouble recognizing those four players if they sat down next to you at lunch.
If Babe Ruth’s corpse sat down next to me at lunch, I think I would be too terrified to recognize him.
Those 10 Gold Gloves -- that's what was, too. The only outfielders who ever lived who won more were Willie Mays and Roberto Clemente.
I think most rational individuals realize by now that Gold Gloves are generally won by name recognition, so I will skip that rant here and just say that in three of those Gold Glove seasons, Griffey posted negative Fielding Runs Above Average (1992 – minus-4, 1998 - minus-3, 1999 – minus-13).
That 600-homer, 10-Gold Glove package -- that's what was. Only Mays and Griffey belong to that esteemed club.
The old 600/10 club. Very esteemed.
As stupid as Gold Gloves are though, Griffey was a very good CF. The 10 Gold Glove package doesn’t bother me nearly as much as …
Those 13 All-Star Games Ken Griffey Jr. was elected to start -- put that in the old "what was" column, too. How many outfielders in history ever won that many All-Star elections? Not a one. Amazing.
In 1995, Junior played only 72 games at an OPS+ of 122, but still won the “All-Star election”. Amazing.
In 2004, Junior played only 83 games, again at an OPS+ of 122, but still won the “All-Star election”. Amazing.
In 2007, Junior played most of the games, but only posted an OPS+ of 119, and still won the “All-Star election”. Amazing. Matt Holliday and his 150 OPS+ sat on the bench while Griffey started in RF because All-Star games are stupid popularity contests that are only tangentially related to being good at baseball.
Here’s where Stark starts to play the hypothetical game …
What if all That Stuff hadn't kept happening to him? The fractured wrist. The torn labrum. The dislocated patella. The torn hamstring. The hand he broke at home one winter.
What if instead of majoring in journalism, Jayson Stark had chosen particle physics?
What if he'd stayed as healthy as, say, Alex Rodriguez? Or Hank Aaron? Or Willie Mays?
What if he'd been ripping off 150-game seasons every year instead of all those 111-game seasons and 53-game seasons and 70-game seasons?
What if Stark had been as smart as Albert Einstein or Niehls Bohr or Stephen Hawking?
What if he had been ripping off 36-hour sessions using the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, instead of penning insight-free columns about how “magical” baseball players are? He probably would have solved cold fusion by now.
What kind of legacy would we be talking about then?
We'll never know, of course. We can't know. It's impossible to know.
You are correct, Jayson Stark. It’s impossible to know. Thank you for ending your column with this reasonable conclusion and allowing me to get on with my Sunday afternoon.
So let's accept that reality before we go forward here, OK? We'll never know. We can't know. It's impossible to know what Ken Griffey Jr.'s final numbers might have looked like.
Oh, I see you weren’t finished.
But just for fun, we can do a little math. Why not?
We'll keep this as simple as possible. We're just going to look at home runs and home runs alone. No point in calculating projected OPS or theoretical VORP here. We think we're safe in assuming you wouldn't care even if we could.
I like how he goes from doing a little math “for fun” to slamming “projected OPS” and “theoretical VORP” in the next paragraph. “My math is fun! Your math is for dorks!”
But how many home runs would Ken Griffey Jr. have hit if he had only stayed reasonably healthy?
Again with the “reasonably healthy”. Keep this in mind when we get to the calculations.
Now THAT'S a fun exercise. And a meaningful one. So on with the calculation show.
He is really working hard to convince us that this will be fun. “And a meaningful one”? Didn’t you already say that “we can’t know,” “we’ll never know,” and “it’s impossible to know” what would have happened? How exactly is this meaningful?
He goes on to list Junior’s number of games missed over his career, broken into three eras, “the first five years”, the “Seattle years, Part 2” (shouldn’t the “first five” be the “Seattle years, Part 1”?), and the 21st Century. Already you can see this is a highly scientific analysis.
So how did we calculate games missed? We looked at every season, and any time Griffey missed a game here or a game there, we chalked it up to a regular old day of rest. But any time he missed two games in a row or more, we threw those into the "games missed" column.
So any time Junior missed two games in a row or more, Stark is going to credit him with the HR’s he would have totally hit in those games. This is where I want to come back to the “reasonably healthy” caveat that Stark gave us at the beginning. He is not assuming “reasonable” health. He is assuming perfect health. Very few baseball players outside of Cal Ripken have perfect health over a 20-year career.
He also includes games missed in strike shortened seasons. More on that in a minute.
Stark then uses HR by percentage of plate appearances during his previously defined eras to calculate how many more homers Griffey would have had.
So get your calculators out now. If we've calculated this correctly, a fully healthy Ken Griffey Jr. would have hit another 147 home runs in his career. Add those 147 homers to 630 and what do you get? You get 777 -- or 15 more than Barry Bonds.
Except that if you give Bonds credit for the home runs he totally would have hit in the strike shortened seasons also, Bonds would probably come out ahead again.
Now, just about nobody stays healthy for 22 straight seasons, obviously. So our friend, home run historian David Vincent (aka the Sultan of Swat Stats), thinks Griffey's realistic total of home runs lost would fall somewhere between 100 and 125.
Thank you for at least addressing that.
But even if we use his total, we'd be talking about a man with 730 and 755 career home runs. And we're willing to bet that if Griffey were just a handful of homers away from breaking Bonds' all-time record, he'd still be in uniform -- somebody's uniform.
You can argue that theory if you'd like. But first, you'd better factor in how hard America would be rooting for One of the Clean Players to expunge Bonds from the record book.
I’m not sure what America has to do with it. If we were all rooting really hard for Griffey to break Bonds’ record, it would somehow compel a GM to take on his .454 OPS? He has zero HR in 108 plate appearances this season. America would have to be rooting pretty damn hard.
Then near the end, we get …
He was still one of the two or three greatest players any of us ever saw play, from beginning to end.
I don’t know, maybe that is true depending on who you have seen play, but he is still not even the best player of his own era. Barry Bonds holds that title whether people like it or not. There are plenty of stats we can go through, particularly Bonds outrageous OBP compared to Griffey’s, but to sum it up:
Bonds’ best pre-steroid years (WARP)
1988 – 7.3
1989 – 6.6
1990 – 10.8
1991 – 9.7
1992 – 12.3
1993 – 12.4
1994 – 8.6
1995 – 9.4
1996 – 8.9
1997 – 8.2
1998 – 11.1
Griffey’s best years in his career (WARP)
1990 – 3.5
1991 – 7.1
1992 – 4.7
1993 – 7.7
1994 – 5.6
1995 – 2.0 (injured, but probably would have been like 18.6 according to Stark’s projections)
1996 – 7.4
1997 – 8.7
1998 – 8.1
1999 – 3.6
2000 – 6.2
After 2000, Griffey never cracked a 2.8 WARP, even in the few seasons he played 100+ games.
So goodbye, Sir George Kenneth Griffinshire Junior II Esq. We will remember your charisma, your magic, and (turning off sarcasm for a second) your perfect swing and incredible ability at all facets of baseball. But I, for one, will not remember you as the greatest player of this generation. That honor will continue to reside with Lord Barrence Lamar Bonds III, DDS.
In the wake of the recent retirement announcement by Ken Griffey Jr., baseball writers all over the country have come out to sing his praises. Most of this praise is well-deserved. Junior Griffey was a phenomenal all-around player, one of the best “5-tool” guys I have ever seen, and seems to have resisted the steroid temptation that overwhelmed many of his contemporaries. He had speed, power, agility, and a charisma that made of him one of the most popular players the game has ever seen. When he came out for that HR Derby (‘94? ‘95?) with the backwards cap on and started hitting moon shots with that perfect lefty swing, he looked like the coolest dude that ever stepped onto a baseball field. He even had a strong cameo in the 1994 Timothy Busfield vehicle Little Big League (despite falling victim to a gimmicky pick-off play orchestrated by a goofball relief pitcher played by Jonathan Silverman, he later robbed Busfield of what would have been a game winning HR). Griffey is a no-doubt Hall of Famer to be sure, but the one thing I cannot say about Junior is that he was ever better than Barry Bonds. I’m not even talking about chemically-enhanced freakshow Bonds. I’m talking about clean, natural (as far as we know) pre-1999 Bonds.
Now, to the title of this post. Jayson Stark has decided to fire up the “What if” machine and tell us how many home runs Ken Griffey Jr. would have hit if he “had stayed reasonably healthy”. Let’s remember that word “reasonably” for later.
There is no tougher question to answer in life than this:
What if?
So why do we find ourselves asking it today -- asking it about one of the greatest players we've ever laid eyes on, George Kenneth Griffey Jr.?
Because you needed a column idea? Sweet use of the full name too. It makes him sound even greater.
We should be looking back at this man and celebrating what was, right? Because what was, by any measure, was beautiful and magical and historic.
And transcendent. And magnificent. And scrumtrulescent. I love the phrase “by any measure” thrown in there. I would love to know which measure it is that tells us Junior was “magical” and “beautiful”.
Those 630 home runs -- that's what was. Only four other players in history hit more than that, and let's just say you wouldn't have any trouble recognizing those four players if they sat down next to you at lunch.
If Babe Ruth’s corpse sat down next to me at lunch, I think I would be too terrified to recognize him.
Those 10 Gold Gloves -- that's what was, too. The only outfielders who ever lived who won more were Willie Mays and Roberto Clemente.
I think most rational individuals realize by now that Gold Gloves are generally won by name recognition, so I will skip that rant here and just say that in three of those Gold Glove seasons, Griffey posted negative Fielding Runs Above Average (1992 – minus-4, 1998 - minus-3, 1999 – minus-13).
That 600-homer, 10-Gold Glove package -- that's what was. Only Mays and Griffey belong to that esteemed club.
The old 600/10 club. Very esteemed.
As stupid as Gold Gloves are though, Griffey was a very good CF. The 10 Gold Glove package doesn’t bother me nearly as much as …
Those 13 All-Star Games Ken Griffey Jr. was elected to start -- put that in the old "what was" column, too. How many outfielders in history ever won that many All-Star elections? Not a one. Amazing.
In 1995, Junior played only 72 games at an OPS+ of 122, but still won the “All-Star election”. Amazing.
In 2004, Junior played only 83 games, again at an OPS+ of 122, but still won the “All-Star election”. Amazing.
In 2007, Junior played most of the games, but only posted an OPS+ of 119, and still won the “All-Star election”. Amazing. Matt Holliday and his 150 OPS+ sat on the bench while Griffey started in RF because All-Star games are stupid popularity contests that are only tangentially related to being good at baseball.
Here’s where Stark starts to play the hypothetical game …
What if all That Stuff hadn't kept happening to him? The fractured wrist. The torn labrum. The dislocated patella. The torn hamstring. The hand he broke at home one winter.
What if instead of majoring in journalism, Jayson Stark had chosen particle physics?
What if he'd stayed as healthy as, say, Alex Rodriguez? Or Hank Aaron? Or Willie Mays?
What if he'd been ripping off 150-game seasons every year instead of all those 111-game seasons and 53-game seasons and 70-game seasons?
What if Stark had been as smart as Albert Einstein or Niehls Bohr or Stephen Hawking?
What if he had been ripping off 36-hour sessions using the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, instead of penning insight-free columns about how “magical” baseball players are? He probably would have solved cold fusion by now.
What kind of legacy would we be talking about then?
We'll never know, of course. We can't know. It's impossible to know.
You are correct, Jayson Stark. It’s impossible to know. Thank you for ending your column with this reasonable conclusion and allowing me to get on with my Sunday afternoon.
So let's accept that reality before we go forward here, OK? We'll never know. We can't know. It's impossible to know what Ken Griffey Jr.'s final numbers might have looked like.
Oh, I see you weren’t finished.
But just for fun, we can do a little math. Why not?
We'll keep this as simple as possible. We're just going to look at home runs and home runs alone. No point in calculating projected OPS or theoretical VORP here. We think we're safe in assuming you wouldn't care even if we could.
I like how he goes from doing a little math “for fun” to slamming “projected OPS” and “theoretical VORP” in the next paragraph. “My math is fun! Your math is for dorks!”
But how many home runs would Ken Griffey Jr. have hit if he had only stayed reasonably healthy?
Again with the “reasonably healthy”. Keep this in mind when we get to the calculations.
Now THAT'S a fun exercise. And a meaningful one. So on with the calculation show.
He is really working hard to convince us that this will be fun. “And a meaningful one”? Didn’t you already say that “we can’t know,” “we’ll never know,” and “it’s impossible to know” what would have happened? How exactly is this meaningful?
He goes on to list Junior’s number of games missed over his career, broken into three eras, “the first five years”, the “Seattle years, Part 2” (shouldn’t the “first five” be the “Seattle years, Part 1”?), and the 21st Century. Already you can see this is a highly scientific analysis.
So how did we calculate games missed? We looked at every season, and any time Griffey missed a game here or a game there, we chalked it up to a regular old day of rest. But any time he missed two games in a row or more, we threw those into the "games missed" column.
So any time Junior missed two games in a row or more, Stark is going to credit him with the HR’s he would have totally hit in those games. This is where I want to come back to the “reasonably healthy” caveat that Stark gave us at the beginning. He is not assuming “reasonable” health. He is assuming perfect health. Very few baseball players outside of Cal Ripken have perfect health over a 20-year career.
He also includes games missed in strike shortened seasons. More on that in a minute.
Stark then uses HR by percentage of plate appearances during his previously defined eras to calculate how many more homers Griffey would have had.
So get your calculators out now. If we've calculated this correctly, a fully healthy Ken Griffey Jr. would have hit another 147 home runs in his career. Add those 147 homers to 630 and what do you get? You get 777 -- or 15 more than Barry Bonds.
Except that if you give Bonds credit for the home runs he totally would have hit in the strike shortened seasons also, Bonds would probably come out ahead again.
Now, just about nobody stays healthy for 22 straight seasons, obviously. So our friend, home run historian David Vincent (aka the Sultan of Swat Stats), thinks Griffey's realistic total of home runs lost would fall somewhere between 100 and 125.
Thank you for at least addressing that.
But even if we use his total, we'd be talking about a man with 730 and 755 career home runs. And we're willing to bet that if Griffey were just a handful of homers away from breaking Bonds' all-time record, he'd still be in uniform -- somebody's uniform.
You can argue that theory if you'd like. But first, you'd better factor in how hard America would be rooting for One of the Clean Players to expunge Bonds from the record book.
I’m not sure what America has to do with it. If we were all rooting really hard for Griffey to break Bonds’ record, it would somehow compel a GM to take on his .454 OPS? He has zero HR in 108 plate appearances this season. America would have to be rooting pretty damn hard.
Then near the end, we get …
He was still one of the two or three greatest players any of us ever saw play, from beginning to end.
I don’t know, maybe that is true depending on who you have seen play, but he is still not even the best player of his own era. Barry Bonds holds that title whether people like it or not. There are plenty of stats we can go through, particularly Bonds outrageous OBP compared to Griffey’s, but to sum it up:
Bonds’ best pre-steroid years (WARP)
1988 – 7.3
1989 – 6.6
1990 – 10.8
1991 – 9.7
1992 – 12.3
1993 – 12.4
1994 – 8.6
1995 – 9.4
1996 – 8.9
1997 – 8.2
1998 – 11.1
Griffey’s best years in his career (WARP)
1990 – 3.5
1991 – 7.1
1992 – 4.7
1993 – 7.7
1994 – 5.6
1995 – 2.0 (injured, but probably would have been like 18.6 according to Stark’s projections)
1996 – 7.4
1997 – 8.7
1998 – 8.1
1999 – 3.6
2000 – 6.2
After 2000, Griffey never cracked a 2.8 WARP, even in the few seasons he played 100+ games.
So goodbye, Sir George Kenneth Griffinshire Junior II Esq. We will remember your charisma, your magic, and (turning off sarcasm for a second) your perfect swing and incredible ability at all facets of baseball. But I, for one, will not remember you as the greatest player of this generation. That honor will continue to reside with Lord Barrence Lamar Bonds III, DDS.
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