devilonthetownhallroof wats ur deal? ur like peter gammons and we are jus hear to listen.. we all have opinions.. not everyones is right.. b ut that doesnt mean u are right all the time either.. i said whut i thought, and ur not julian tavarez, im sure u pitched with him this weekend, but ur not him.. u dont kno whut he said.. let it be..
You aren't arguing that ARod has been more clutch than ortiz, are you? Anyway, obviously last night was big for us. boston still doesn't have any pressure and even if we swept Boston is in good shape but in order to put some pressure on the Sox we have to sweep this series. It was nice to seee a qucik inning from mariano and Joba get out of a mini-jam.
I think you have him mistaken with the NY Post, which has said BOTH things more times in seasons-past than devil EVER has. On a side note, an interesting email came through late last night. Tomorrow morning, I'll be hopping on the Acela, and a few hours later, I'll be sitting somewhere deep in the bowels of that hellhole of a park, watching Schill duel Wang.
Actually, I DO know what he said thanks to the magic of INTERVIEWS. Both Tavarez AND Matsuzaka were asked about the conversation, and BOTH of them said that Tavarez was telling him the best way to get Arod out was to pitch inside. It's not that hard. With regard to your opinion, that's fine, you can have it. However I will never take anyone's opinion seriously when they tYpe lyk thEre 12 yeArs old.
No, but I'd argue that clutch isn't an inherent quality, and is more of a label that gets applied after the fact. That's why this year is being rationalized away in all kinds of different ways... A-Rod was just lucky earlier... A-Rod wasn't REALLY clutch this year, because it was May. Papi's lack of clutchy-ness this year is because he's hurt (never mind that his "clutch" stats are far below what he's been doing the rest of the time). Clutch ability might actually exist... but most of the stuff that gets tossed around has a hell of a lot more to do with perception than reality.
if ur going to pitch someone inside make sure u have CONTROL of ur pitches. I think it's wrong to say, okay ill pitch him really inside and if i miss ill just hit him. Big whoop. That deserves some retaliation. And with regards to ortiz, with how much he crowds the plate it is easy to make a HBP to him look unintentional.
How on earth would you measure it if not after the fact?! Since he first put on pinstripes, the only measure of that for ARod is production in the playoffs, which has ranged from dismal to mediocre. I don't care if he hit 75 home runs during the regular season, all of that will be forgotten if he goes 2-15 in a four-game series. Then, when he tells us all (again) how much he's done in his career and how none of that post season choking talk matters to him, he will rightfully be lambasted on the front page of every New York tab. Ortiz's reputation started the day he put on a Red Sox uniform, and surprised everyone. Even him. We tend to forget that Papi was supposed to play behind Jeremy Giambi and Kevin Millar. When nearly half of his home runs during his first two years in Boston either tied or put the Red Sox in the lead, AND he he for average, he rightfully earned his reputation. Sadly, he's done little to substantiate it since the first half of last season.
The only time there is reason for retaliation is either a cheap play in the field or an intentional HBP. And since when does Ortiz crowd the plate? I tried to find a pic of his stance, but all that comes up on Google are pics of him celebrating walkoffs. And a text search of "Ortiz crowding the plate" only has one thing referring to it, and that's a post on SoSH saying that he doesn't.
By the predictive ability of said "statistic." What I meant by the labeling after the fact, though, is that you have two players who have "reputations," and while the reputations may or may not be deserved, what happens is that people look at any number of select performances, and then apply the labels to the ones that fit the reputation. It's a positive feedback loop for the label of clutch or choker that is (almost) independent of how the players ACTUALLY perform. 1. Ortiz is clutch. All he does, whether he succeeds or not, will be viewed with this label. If he fails "in the clutch" (like he has this year... he's been horrific), it's not because he isn't clutch. It's because something's wrong. How do we know this? Because he's clutch! Circular reasoning. 2. A-Rod is a choker. He's had a lot of success this year. It's not because he's suddenly clutch, though. It's because he got lucky... or because May isn't a clutch month. Or because of any number of things. How do we know he's not clutch? Because he's not clutch. Again, circular. You don't care about the regular season... okay, that's fine. But the playoffs doesn't seem like the best way to truly measure a player's value. I don't suppose you'd rather have the Scott Brosiuses on the team, guys who hit .250, but know how to put up a dramatic shot (even if it's more randomness than some inner quality of clutchiness)? And actually, the Yankees wouldn't have won the ALDS vs. the Twins without A-Rod, and they wouldn't have been up 3-0 on the Sox without him, either. People forget that the entire team stopped hitting for those last four games. The past two years, he's been awful, but you don't judge the worth of a player by 40 at-bats. Not if you want it to be statistically significant. Get him to the playoffs enough, and he'll perform to his career levels. That's what ALL players do in the playoffs, given a large enough sample size. Look at Jeter's regular season vs. his postseason stats. They are almost identical. Why? Because he's had enough at-bats in the postseason to iron out the variance that comes in clusters of small sample sizes. Jeter has had some dismal postseason series. They're not remembered, though. (Mostly because the Yanks either won, or had A-Rod to take the brunt of it.) The part in bold is a PERFECT example of perception trumping reality. Ortiz is clutch because of how/when he hits his homers? 44.7% of Ortiz's home runs are to go ahead or tie the game. 42.8% of A-Rod's home runs are to go ahead or tie the game. If that's the difference between clutch vs. choker in your mind, I don't know what to say. Ortiz's HR log, based on relative score: +4.. 24 +3 19 +2 26 +1 21 Tied 79 -1 29 -2 20 -3 11 -4.. 26 A-Rod's HR log, based on relative score: +4.. 66 +3 41 +2 29 +1 55 Tied 143 -1 61 -2 33 -3 26 -4.. 53 Ortiz and A-Rod hit home runs in given situations at nearly identical rates.
You've spent a good deal of time researching this, and I think that's real nice. You've missed the point, though, of where each player has acquired his respective reputation. THAT was the point I was making. So, everything you typed, while a wonderful addition to the board, doesn't play into the equation because I didn't create the reputation for either player. The point was: ARod was a heroic signing for the Yankees and started out nicely in post-season. But then, when his team needed something - ANYTHING - out of him, his biggest accomplishment was whacking the ball out of Bronson Arroyo's glove, and whining about it. He followed that by failing to crack the Mendoza line the following two years. Like it or not, that's his reputation, and anything he does in the regular season won't ever remedy that. By contrast, Ortiz emerged out of nowhere, and seemed to hit big in the biggest situations. Statistics aside, that's where his reputation derives. And, let's not play this off as unsupportable myth. I can't tell you how many times during game threads someone has groaned about plunking Ortiz. Perception is reality. Thanks for all that info, though. Nice work.
I know you didn't create their reputations. But you DID play into the fallacy that the reputations are continuously deserved, and provided misleading information to confirm the beliefs you were already "told" to have. You responded to a single point of mine asking where the labels would come from if not from past performance. I was saying that the labels - if they were to be accurate - should NOT be static reputations. They should be dynamic ones. If you want an accurate assessment of a player's performance, you should continuously evaluate that performance independent of the labels. Papi's clutch hits shouldn't be remembered more because he's known as a clutch player (although human perception dictates that that is precisely what happens naturally) and vice versa. And - if you re-read what I posted - my point was that this reputation is likely undeserved and being needlessly reinforced just by the very existence of the reputation in the first place. You say his biggest accomplishment is The Slap. But that's a misperception. If Tony Clark's ground-rule double is hit slightly LESS hard (and so stays in the park), the Yanks have an extra run, go to the world series, and A-Rod is likely a hero of the series because of everything he did. But people don't see that from A-Rod. The results (Yankees losing), the blame for which should not even come CLOSE to being placed entirely on A-Rod's shoulders... created a (possibly undeserved) label (choker/stat-padder/etc.), which is then ONLY reinforced... it's never questioned... by future performance. Take that which fits into the A-Rod is a Choker Theory. Throw out the rest. Perception is reality as far as most people are concerned in terms of making up their minds. And it's a shame, because I can't tell you how many times one's perception is flat-out WRONG. Yes, Ortiz SEEMED to hit big in the biggest situations. Except he hasn't done so for almost a year now. And - to get back to my original point - what has that done to his reputation as a clutch performer? Nothing. People still think he's clutch... they're just looking for other answers, despite this suckiness in close and late situations - in "big" situations - lasting for a full season... despite the fact that it's not like he hasn't been performing at all... just been awful "in the clutch." And A-Rod's been tearing the cover off the ball for the better part of the season, hit a game tying, two-out, two-strike home run off of Papelbon in Fenway, hit how many walk-off HRs this year? And how many big hits in the late innings? And what has that done to his reputation? Nothing. People still label him as a choker first. Why? Because it wasn't in the post-season. Because it was April or May (or July), or because the other team made a mistake, or because he was lucky... etc.
But they ARE. Thanks for playing, anyway. . . . which matters very little, because a person's reputation is what it is. Reputation is not fluid. You don't get to change it from year to year. Jerry Lewis will raise millions this weekend for muscular dystrophy, but we'll STILL remember him most as Dean Martin's unfunny, goofball partner. I applaud you on your crusade to change the world one messageboard at a time. And yet he still carries that reputation. Funny, that. Through his heart murmur issues and physical ailments, he's still leading the league in OBP, and carrying an OPS over 1.000. He's going to have to start stinkin' up the joint a whole lot more for him to droop as low as you'd like to see him. Hell, wasn't it you who was advocating plunking him tonight? You clearly have issues with how the world works with this thing called reputation. You'll come kicking and screaming eventually, and realize that it will take a monster playoff series to alter ARod's reputation; and, likewise, Ortiz is going to have to morph into a .230 hitter, with mediocre power to make people forget his genuine examples of timely power hitting. At worst, if Ortiz never produces ever again, people will recall that he struck fear in Yankee fans and Yankee management (who signed Myers as a response) for three seasons. All the while, those same people wondered how to dispense with ARod when his option year rears its head. Funny, this reputation-thingy.
What's with the attitude, dude? I don't disagree with that. And the question I'm asking is this: When considering a player's performance or comparing the performance of two players, which is the better way to judge them... by taking their reputations into account? Or trying to judge them solely by the numbers they put up (as in-depth as possible)? I wasn't advocating plunking Ortiz. I mentioned how one-sided the hit batsmen stat is between the Sox and Yanks, but that's all. And I wouldn't "like to see" Ortiz droop low. Or, rather, that's not the point of the comparison. (Obviously, as a Yankee fan, I wouldn't mind seeing him fail.) But my point was not to disparage Ortiz or his accomplishments. It was just to show the difference that different reputations make on how people perceive what are - in reality - very similar performances. Ortiz IS having a great year. I've mentioned as much when noting that the poor performance this year is relegated ONLY to his "clutchiness" in close and late. He's having a hell of a year otherwise. (And in case you missed it when I said it before, this is part of what makes me think that clutch performance isn't an inherent quality.) What exactly are you seeing in my posts that is generating this ill-informed smartassery? I'm not dissing Ortiz here. I'm sorry, but you seem to think that I'm saying something aside from what I'm actually saying. Where did I say that his reputation should change? I didn't. I know what their respective reputations are. I know "how the world works." I also know that people tend to be biased, subjective, and easily misled with regard to their perceptions. What I said was, and forgive me for quoting myself: If the labels are to be ACCURATE, they should not be static reputations. I KNOW they can't get away from their reputations. What I'm saying is that the reputations BIAS the analysis of ACTUAL performance. I'm not even sure what this means. You seem like you're just defensive about anything bad being said about Ortiz (which nothing was) and are overreacting a wee bit. Whatever.
As for Ortiz and his clutchness... Plate appearances where a walk off is possible: 2003: 2/5, HR, 2 RBI, BB 2004: 2/8, HR, 3 RBI 2004 PS: 3/5, 2 HR, 5 RBI, BB 2005: 3/3, 2 HR, 5 RBI, 2 BB 2006: 5/6 HR, 10 RBI, 2 BB I don't know the stats for this year, but with the Red Sox coming into the year, Ortiz was 15/27 (.555) with 6 BB (.636 OBP), 9 HR, and 25 RBI. So even if he was 0/6 in those situations this year (when he's been playing with injuries), he's still hitting .455 where a walk off is possible. That's clutch, no matter how you slice it, and it's not even counting games he's tied late.
