As our Bradley Woodrum noted this morning, the first two games of the ALCS at Yankee Stadium — despite announced figures to the contrary — appear to have been poorly attended. Where are all the Yankees fans?
These places and doing these things, turns out (data courtesy Investigative Reporting Investigation Team):
Many baseball fans know about the controversy over the weekend regarding the flagging Yankee Stadium attendance, despite the playoffs being quite in town. The stadium did not fill up by first pitch; it did not fill up by the sixth inning; it did not fill up.
The NotGraphs Investigative Team is about to blow this whole mystery a new news hole. We recently received SPECIAL CLANDESTINE AERIAL IMAGERY of Yankee Stadium, and the truth may be too much for the average fan to wrap their mind grapes around:
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Just when I think the Internet can’t get any dumber, it goes and does something like this — JWerth Riding Things — and totally redeems itself.
An empty bar.
Two fans.
Midnight.
VLADIMIR: Nothing you can do about it.
ESTRAGON: No use struggling.
VLADIMIR: It is what it is.
ESTRAGON: No use wriggling.
VLADIMIR: The essential doesn’t change.
ESTRAGON: (Drinking the remnants of his glass.) We should quit.
VLADIMIR: Drinking?
ESTRAGON: Watching games.
VLADIMIR: We can’t.
ESTRAGON: Why not?
VLADIMIR: We’re waiting for Godot.
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If you are one who is knowledgeable of classical music, you have most likely heard of Charles Ives. If your knowledge of the genre is more cursory, however, his name may be foreign to you. Charles Ives was an American composer who lived during the early 20th Century. Unlike Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart – all of whom had fame and therefore benefactors that allowed them to compose full-time – Ives was not well-known during his life. He did not have benefactors. He made his living as an insurance salesman. But Charles Ives was a master and a pioneer of modernist music in America. Yet, for a myriad of reasons, his work lived in obscurity until well after his death. He was never around to receive his just recognition. Had the Internet existed in the time of Ives, all of this may be different. Had he a channel to distribute his music, other than a spattering of little-attended concerts put on by brave souls, he may have had a chance to reach people who were able to appreciate him for who he was.
Luckily – for all of us, really – infielder Omar Vizquel did create his music during the Internet Age. His work can be digitized, catalogued, and distributed to his adoring fans to this day still. The following video comes from the CD/DVD combo released in 2005 titled Oh Say Can You Sing?, a title I’m going to assume is rhetorical. If one were able to track down this work, one would be able to listen to the likes of Coco Crisp, Aubrey Huff, Ozzie Smith, and the venerable Scott Linebrink sing or otherwise perform music from the popular vernacular. Not to be forgotten in this cavalcade of stars is one Omar Vizquel, performing both vocals and drums on Broadway by the Goo Goo Dolls. Never has a pairing of artist and song been so incongruous, yet entirely magical. Vizquel displays his mastery of not only the voice, but drums as well. His performance injected with all the life and fervor of a wounded deer, Vizquel is able to somehow make this song less enjoyable than in its previous form. Such skill should not, and cannot, be denied. The overlay of highlights of him hitting, fielding, and just generally looking around, sadly serves as but a distraction to the aural bliss that can be found underneath. This is both wonderfully terrible and terribly wonderful.
Charles Ives may not have gotten his due, but technology now allows us to appreciate Omar Vizquel in the moment. Not only for his contributions on the baseballing field, but for his addition to the modern musical cannon.
(h/t to Eric Freeman for bringing this to my attention)
On account of I was a pretty terrible catechumen, I don’t remember the Book of Revelation word-for-word — or even chapter-for-chapter, really. That said, I’m almost positive that one of main visions included therein — and heralding the end of earthly existence, etc. — is the one depicted in the image above.
Terrifying image captured from TBS by Erik Malinowski.
Billy, holy wow.
Holy crap, Billy, did you see that?
The elfin sprite that
stole my hat,
I see now how he floated
away from me
so fast:
he was possessed of an afro puff,
Billy,
and was he Crispy!
I’m feeling nostalgic, maybe prematurely, about 2012. This could have something to do with the fact that the world is ending in December, but regardless, these days I find myself paging desultorily through the year-end stats, looking for rhyme or reason, mostly. And also for therapy following another soul-flattening Braves playoff collapse, but that’s another story.
So here is something I noticed. It’s about Mike Trout, who was good this year, as you may have heard. How good? Well, offensively, about 75% better than league average, if you’re down with wRC+. That’s good, and in fact, it made him the best offensive player in baseball (not to be confused with the most offensive player in baseball, which is Delmon Young). But last year, Jose Bautista was 81% better than league average. Also, Ryan Braun was 78% better, and Miguel Cabrera was 77% better. The year before that, Josh Hamilton was 76% better, and the year before that, Albert Pujols was 82% better. In fact, you have to go back to 1999, the year that Barry Bonds blew an elbow and missed two months, to find a league leader who stood out less from his league than Trout did from his. Before that, you have to go all the way back to 1988.
Maybe you’d prefer to break it down a little further, since Trout got his offensive value in a few different ways. By stealing bases, for example. As it happens, his 49 SB’s was the second-lowest league-leading total since 1963. Purely as a hitter, according to Baseball-Reference’s park-adjusted OPS+, Trout was 71% better than league average; Buster Posey edged him out at 72%. Posey’s mark is the lowest league-leading OPS+ in 24 years. Care for more traditional stats? Posey’s league-leading average of .336 was the second-lowest since 1990; Joe Mauer’s OBP of .416 was the lowest since 1984; Cabrera’s SLG of .606 was the lowest since 1991. And Trout’s WPA of 5.32 (again, tops among qualifying hitters) was the lowest in 60 years! The last guy to lead the league in WPA with a number smaller than 5.32 was Jackie Robinson!
OK, so it wasn’t a great year for batsmen. We know we’re in a pitcher’s era. Plus, 2012 was just fluky. Look at the Hall of Fame-caliber hitters around the league: most of them — Pujols, Rodriguez, Bautista, Ortiz, Ichiro, Votto, Kemp, Gonzalez, Berkman (and to a lesser extent Fielder and Hamilton) — endured disappointment thanks to injury, slump, and/or adjustment to a new league. That left plenty of room for upstarts like Trout, Posey, and Andrew McCutchen to crowd the leaderboards. You say coincidence; I smell a rat. I wasn’t born yesterday. Anyway, that first page of the Fangraphs 2012 batting board has the least celebrity wattage of any I can remember. The pitching board, on the other hand —
Well, never mind. 2012 was kind of fluky for pitchers too. Several stars — Halladay, Lincecum, Santana — had really disappointing seasons. A bunch of others — Greinke, Hernandez, Lee, Sabathia, Weaver, Johnson — had good seasons, but certainly not their best. Justin Verlander had a very good season: according to FIP-, he was the best pitcher in baseball, 30% better than average. But that doesn’t sound that impressive, really. How far back do you have to go to find a less impressive league leader? Holy crap, 1976.
Pick just about any skill in baseball, and in 2012 there just wasn’t anyone who was all that outstanding at it. Anytime anything good happened, odds are that someone unlikely was responsible. Look at some of the guys we’ve been talking about this year. Kris Medlen. Melky Cabrera. Jim Johnson. Philip Humber. Homer Bailey. Aaron Hill. Chris Davis. R.A. Dickey. Ben Sheets. Josh Reddick. Lance Lynn. Chase Headley. If someone had told you in March that that set of dudes would be getting this kind of ink, you’d have laughed in their face and then located the nearest exit.
If I were (God forbid) inclined to the Grand Narrative, I might say that 2012 was the Year of the Everyman. Or the Year of Thwarted Expectations. I’m not going to say that. But here’s another factoid, because I’m not tired yet. Of the top 20 hitters (by WAR) in baseball this year, only five of them were in the top 20 last year. That’s tied for the highest year-to-year turnover rate ever. I checked. (And only one of those five, Miguel Cabrera, was also on the list in 2010.)
So what’s going on? Is 2012 just a blip, or is our current star-starved state the beginning of a new world order? Are the days of Bonds and Pedro behind us? Along with the days of wine and roses?
I don’t know, but in the spirit of a Mayan codex, I offer these graphs, which I’m quite sure offer a clue of some sort. They represent, respectively, the standard deviation of all qualifying hitters’ wOBAs for each year, and the standard deviation of all qualifying pitchers’ FIPs for each year. But what do they mean? Discuss. Discuss!
This is real, from Mets.com:
Each [All-Star ticket] strip includes one ticket to each All-Star Week event at the ballpark, two MLB All-Star FanFest tickets and one Official All-Star Game program. All-Star Week begins with the FanFest at Javits Center from July 12-16. Taco Bell All-Star Sunday is July 14 and features the SiriusXM All-Star Futures Game and the Taco Bell All-Star Legends & Celebrity Softball Game. All-Star batting practice and the Home Run Derby highlight Gatorade All-Star Workout Day on July 15, and then the granddaddy of all megastar gatherings returns with the 84th All-Star Game on July 16.
The granddaddy of all megastar gatherings, eh? And can they fit any more sponsor names into this paragraph? I hate the All-Star Game.
Billy.
Someone photoshopped that helmet in
someone scribbled your name
someone who once liked your good face
now gags
when they see it.
That’s how it goes.
How did it go last night?
I thought to myself, of my last poem
to you,
that there could have been more magic
that I could have insisted
more: my A’s hat was magically
given to me by a man named Billy
on the street with a wink
and a ruddy cheek
and glasses
and a still okay head
of hair — but I didn’t —
I am so unaware of the process of poems
of magic, of bees, leaves.
Thought to myself that this time, I’ve gotta
do the magic right, so here:
Tonight, there’ll be an elfin sprite
(the same Joe West has seen)
trying to steal the Tigers’ tails
whipping them all around.
He’ll be wearing my hat, the sprite,
which he stole from me
on the same street that you gave it,
Billy.
But I did not chase him, Billy,
I let him walk away. If the A’s win
tonight, he can keep it; if they lose
he can keep it, too.
