Billy Paultz Reconsidered

to bear in mind next time you hear whining about the liberal media, courtesy of Slate’s Timothy Noah.

First, a note about the weather: As this is written, there’s about 5 inches of snow on the ground in State College. It’s already the biggest snowfall ever in SC in October, and they’re expecting twice that much by game time.

All grass parking areas will be closed, and if you’ve been up there, you know how much grass parking there is. They’re planning to have people park at Wal-Mart, Home Depot, etc. and be shuttled in. We media folk have been told our parking spots will be unavailable after 11 a.m. For a 3:30 p.m. game. And it’s homecoming. The term logistical nightmare comes to mind.

As always, the message is- stay home.

As for the football… 

Lay these team’s seasons next to each other, given the respective strengths of schedule, and it’s hard to say Penn State’s had the better year. The Nits have played one game they could possibly have lost, and lost it. Minnesota’s had 4-5 games tougher than any of Penn State’s wins, and the Gophers have won 2-3 of them.

Last weekend I’d have guessed Penn State would be favored by 7-8, and half that would be marquee-name inflation.

The opening line was 16 1/2. Now it’s 17 1/2.

More than double what I would’ve predicted. Never, ever remember that happening before, in any football game.

A line that seems insane usually means Vegas is trying to tell you something. In this case, the message can only be: We’re begging you, American Betting Public, to take Minnesota.

So I won’t.

Penn State 23, Minnesota 10.

The truest sentence in yesterday’s NLCS preview was this one:

The problem, as always, is that everything we know about these teams could completely fail to manifest itself over a 4-7-game stretch.

It’s not a problem, really. It’s fun.

Consider:

Ryan Howard, who hits lefties like Mario Mendoza, hit a two-run double off a lefty.

Andre Ethier, who if anything hits lefties worse than Howard, had three hits. Two of them, including a double, came off lefties.

James Loney, who hit one HR this year in Dodger Stadium and four all year anywhere against lefties, hit one in Dodger Stadium, off a lefty.

Pedro Feliz, the least likely Phillie regular to draw a walk, drew a critical one.

Chase Utley, the least like Phillie to do something dumb like throw a ball into a dugout, well…

Dodger lefty George Sherill is of the game’s best, and best control, relievers. He entered the game and went walk, walk, three-run homer. By a lefthander, Raul Ibanez, who had two hits, both off lefthanders.

Brad Lidge, statistically the worst pitcher in major-league baseball this year, pitched a scoreless ninth. It helped that a Casey Blake scalded a ball directly at Utley, leading to a double play, but still.

You have to favor the Phils now. They just make pitchers work harder than anybody. How often this year have they been blown away by a hard-thrower with good stuff for a couple innings and then, second time through the order… boom. Goofy Vicente Padilla, today’s starter, would seem as ideal a candidate for such treatment as you could imagine. And if they’re coming back to the Bank up 2-0…

I was all set to pick the Phillies over the Dodgers until I read the following:

“Actually, about the last three times he’s been out there, I think he’s been good. Also, sometime when you have a decent outing and then you take a break, I think that can be good for you and it has been for him. It gave him time to sit there and think. He is his best coach. I used to tell my hitters that all the time, ‘You’re your best hitting instructor. You’ve got to learn yourself and know thyself.’ It’s the same for a pitcher. You have to study everything about yourself, what you’ve got and how you get people out. Lidge has been more relaxed and it’s just a matter of time until he gets his confidence back. His stuff is still there. He’s been a tremendous pitcher. Believe me, he’ll still be as good as he ever was.”

That was Charlie Manuel talking about Brad Lidge, whose stuff is not there, and who hasn’t been and has given no indication he will soon be as good as he ever was. My favorite wry-smile moment of the Colorado series was in the clincher, when Lidge threw Troy Tulowitski a weak little slider that broke right into the middle of the plate. Tulowitski took it.

TBS color guy: “The slider is back.”

Then they showed the slow-mo replay, with a graphic locating the pitch when  it crossed the plate.

Same color guy: “Uh… he’s not gonna get a better pitch to hit than that.”

Manuel used his bullpen thoughtfully and even creatively in the NLDS (when he started the ninth inning of game 4 with Scott Eyre on the hill, I actually stood and applauded, right there in my living room). He actually should have more weapons against the Dodgers, with Chan Ho Park crucially now available and Pedro penciled in.

It appears that the Phils have a slightly better offense (although that’s hair-splitting, and if Manny goes off….) and perhaps better starting pitching (although, again, the Dodgers’ lefties make that about a wash). The Dodgers have the better bullpen, although that might not be a clear edge, if Park and Pedro and J Happ are all healthy and sound, and are a little better defensively.

The problem, as always, is that everything we know about these teams could completely fail to manifest itself over a 4-7-game stretch. That’s why in post-season, short-series baseball, there’s almost no such thing as an upset. And in this series in particular, if you pick the Dodgers, you’re really saying the Phillies have a 48 or 49 percent chance. It’s that close based on what’s knowable.

The Phils beat the Rockies because of 1. The split-advantage their lefthandedness gave them, 2. Charlie out-managing Jim Tracy, which I’ll grant you does not require mastery of game theory and Mensa-level reasoning ability, and 3. The Phils’ bottomless well of professionalism and belief in themselves- that kind of stuff is overrated and often imagined, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

No. 1 is, as a matter of objective fact, gone against the Dodgers and there may even be a split-disadvantage. No. 2 is probably gone, since Joe Torre isn’t Jim Tracy and Charlie apparently believes (see italics above) he has his closer back and can go all Jim Fregosi on us.

So the question is, can you pick the Phils based mostly on No. 3? It feels to me like the Phils are going to find a way, but this is the only sports team to which I retain an emotional connection, so I can’t trust that feeling. And I know Brad Lidge can lose this series if Charlie lets him. You can believe based on No. 3, but can you pick them?

Nnnn. Nnnnnn… Nnnnnnnnno. There. I said it.

Dodgers in seven.

I’m excited about the Phillies. Philly’s excited about the Phillies. We’re all excited about the Philies. That doesn’t excuse some of the dumb, breathlessly overreaching stuff I’ve heard/read lately. Exhibit A: On “Daily News Live,” the other day, somebody said that somebody who should know said Ryan Howard is “on a path to be the best player in Phillies history.”

Howard is a very, very good player. He’s been an everyday big leaguer for four years, and he’s averaged over 140 RBI/year. RBI is generally overrated, but what’s true generally is not always true for the outliers. I mean, stolen bases are more overrated than RBI, but if a guy stole 150 bases a year and got caught like three times, that would be a hell of an offensive weapon.

But I digress. The point is hard-core stat geeks tend to underrate Howard, and the media/public tends to overrate him. That’s all within the range of “understandable.” But anyone who thinks Ryan Howard is, or has a reasonable chance to be, as good a baseball player as Mike Schmidt, just doesn’t understand the sport.

In comparing Schmidt to Howard, the first thing you must understand is the difference in the eras they played in. To stick with RBI, a player who drove in 140 runs a year in Schmidt’s time (essentially 1974-87) would have led the league by 20 a year every year, and 25-30 many years. Howard didn’t even lead the league by himself this year (Prince Fielder tied him).

Adjusting for eras is simply standard procedure, and not that difficult in baseball, given the data available. In Schmidt’s era, roughly eight runs were scored per major league game. In Howard’s, roughly nine. Howard has averaged 49 home runs per 162 games. Schmidt hit over 40 in a season only twice, but led the league in homers eight times. See what I’m saying?

It’s not complicated. Runs (which are the product of a baseball player’s work) have an on-base function and a move-the-runners-home (essentially power) function. The on-base part is at least as important as the power part. I would argue that it’s slightly more important, since the most fundamental thing a hitter should do is not make out. In very brief, that’s the problem with the idea that Howard is one of the best offensive players in the game- he makes out too much.

Schmidt played 14 full seasons. In 13 of them, he finished in the top 10 in the NL in on-base percentage, slugging percentage and the two added together (OPS, which is the best shorthand number to measure offense), home runs and runs scored. In 12 of them, he finished in the top 10 in RBI. He led the NL in the above categories 26 times, and finished in the top five a combined 61 times. Sixty-one.

Howard finished 32nd in the league in OBP this year. In 2008, he finished 49th. He’s a wonderful player, but that’s too big a negative when we’re talking about the very best players in the sport.

And Schmidt won, and largely deserved, 10 Gold Gloves at a harder defensive position than the one Howard is average at. And Howard’s numbers against lefthanded pitching are so bad (.207/.298/.356 this year; .226/.310/.444 career) that he really ought to be a platoon player.

Also, Schmidt played until he was 39, so his numbers include a fairly full late-career decline phase. Howard turns 30 in a few weeks, and he is emphatically not the kind of player who ages well. His case vs. Schmidt is very, very unlikely to look better 10 years from now.

I know what somebody’s going to say: “OK Mr. Stat, let’s say there’s runners on base and a big game’s on the line. Who’d you rather have at the plate, Schmidt or Howard?”

OK, if there’s a righty on the mound, I take Howard, no question. If there’s a lefty on the mound I’d rather have Eric Bruntlett. And people act like these specific moments- late innings, high stakes, close game, ducks on pond - are not only the most important thing, but the only thing that matter. That’s ridiculous. They’re a relatively small part of the game.

Anytime you do a comparison like this you get blamed for player-hating, saying the guy stinks, etc. Howard doesn’t stink. He’s terrific. If he ages well he’ll be a hall of famer. But Schmidt was the clear-cut best player of his era, and one of the best 20 who ever lived. Amazing, how quickly people have forgotten that. Howard isn’t the best player on his own team. It’s not even close.

I wrote this a couple weeks ago and, for some reason, didn’t post it…

If you scroll down a bit and look to your right, you’ll find a link to “The best newspaper columnist in America.” He’s Jon Carroll of the San Francisco Examiner, and I’m not sure he quite deserves that billing any longer (he seems to have gotten more and more esoteric and… cutesy seems to harsh a word, but something like that) although if he doesn’t, I’m not sure who does.

Anyway, Carroll remains entertaining and unpredictable. Today he wrote about Mars, and, well, did you know….

• Mars has a mountain that is the highest geographic thing ever discovered in the Solar System, nearly three times as high as Everest, so high its peak is outside Mars’ atmosphere in a total vacuum.

• Mars has a crater that’s 27,000 feet deep - nearly as deep as Everest is high - and as big as New England that was formed by a meteor hit so powerful that is deformed the planet.

• Mars has an canyon three times as deep as the Grand Canyon and as big in diameter as the continental U.S. Going from one end of it to the other would entail a five-hour flight in a commercial jet.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/14/DDG719LB93.DTL#ixzz0RBYXxnKv

This one is sort of, um, obvious, so let’s talk a bit about the fact that your humble correspondent has gotten the last two Penn State games wrong- I had them beating Iowa and, yes, after witnessing the Iowa game, had them losing to Illinois.

I’ve spent the last half-hour or so researching this, and I believe the last one I got wrong before these two was the Outback Bowl after the 2006 season (actually Jan. 1, 2007), in which the Lions beat Tennessee.

I’m pretty sure I’ve never before gotten two in a row wrong.

Oh yeah: Eastern Illinois. The Iowa game is still fresh enough, and personnel situation still fluid enough, that I just don’t see the Nits falling asleep.

45-10.

Forget who’s starting game three. Should Cole Hamels have started game two? I recall too well my mental and emotional state the day my first kid was born, and let’s just say anything I would have tried to write that day would have read like Sylvia Plath on an ether binge. Plus there’s this issue Hamels has with day games…

Charlie Manuel is of course getting killed today for his handling of the pitching staff, and not entirely without justification. I kinda like Charlie acknowledging that all the rigid roles on his staff have broken down, so almost every pitcher the Phils have can expect to be used at almost any time - that’s how it oughta be, and how it will be, necessarily, for most big-league teams 10-15 years from now. If they have to go with a Pedro/Blanton/Happ troika in game three, that’s not at all a bad thing.

What I’d like to know is, why have 12 pitchers on your postseason roster if you only have confidence in 7-8 of them? Manuel relieved Hamels with Joe Blanton in the sixth, down 4-0, with a one-game lead in the series, thereby perhaps jeopardizing Blanton’s availability for game three.

If you weren’t going to use Chad Durbin or Kyle Kendrick in that spot, when are you going to use them? Having three bullpen righties active in this series, Durbin and Kendrick and Brett Myers, none of whom you quite believe in or have a specific job for, is ridiculous. The only position player Manuel didn’t use yesterday was Paul Bako, the backup catcher. That’s why Cliff Lee had to pinch-run.

Of course, the sixth inning would have been Chan Ho Park’s spot if healthy. His absence looms large over this series. But so, in fairness, does the unavailability to the Rockies of Jorge de la Rosa, a lefty who won 16 games.

Ruppie is hysterical today even by his standards, but I still like the Phils in the series, and I still think their lefthandedness is the key. You’ve got to like that lineup against Jason Hammel and Jason “Mercury” Marquis with Lee coming back, if necessary, in game five.

Penn State is sick, hurt, beat up. After last week’s loss to Iowa, in which the Lions suffered the indignity of simply being pushed around on the line of scrimmage, they’re mentally and emotionally damaged, too.

They’re still better than Illinois. But the Illini have talent, and if they lose badly Saturday, at home, their season is over in one sense while just beginning in another. You can pack it in, but you still have to show up for meetings and practice etc. for the next two months. I can’t believe they won’t make a stand here. Even if they hate their coach.

I don’t believe a loss here means Penn State’s toast. They can still go 9-3, maybe even 10-2. They should be able to handle teams with bad defenses, and there are a number of those in the Big Ten.

Big picture: Despite all the veteran stars, this could be a transitional year for Penn State’s program. When have they ever, at least in the Big Ten era, won without a decent offensive line? When have they taken less than years to develop an o-line? There are no automatics when you can’t block people.

Illinois 24, Penn State 21.

The injuries are of course an issue, but Iowa is if anything more banged-up than Penn State (there’s a rumor, denied by Kirk Ferentz, that all-Big Ten tackle Bryan Bulaga has been sidelined by an infected tattoo).

Ferentz has been weird this week. He keeps categorizing his team as a work-in-progress, almost as if it can’t really be expected to be up to something like this yet.  He denied the Penn State media routine interviews with his players. His explanation: “It’s just a mood I’m in right now.” The Hawkeyes and their coach, if you believe in reading between quote lines, seem a bit… what’s the word… Disheveled? Ferhoonseled? Wound too tight?…

Penn State has more really good, experienced players- Daryll Clark, Jared Odrick, Sean Lee, Navorro Bowman…. But Lee’s hurt. Bowman’s coming off being hurt. Odrick, good as he is, doesn’t have a role from which he can easily headline.

So this is Clark’s night. As good as he’s been, as a player and leader, he’s never had that quarterback moment, in a close, tough game, where he has to do something to push his team over the top.

Penn State just isn’t good enough right now, especially up front offensively, to beat a good team decisively. It should be a physical, defensive tug of war. It’ll be close, and it’ll come down to the end, and Clark will have to make something happen. I’m guessing he will.

Penn State 17, Iowa 16.

Just FYI: Last year’s prediction in this game was Iowa 17, Penn State 16.