Thursday, July 31, 2008

Not to go all FJM on you or anything...

...but tonight I heard Andy Gresh say that the best thing that the White Sox can do at the trade deadline is play well.

Brilliant.

I'll bet they never thought of that.

Throw in Doug Gottlieb digging up the old "A-Rod never hits in the post-season" road chestnut to explain why he doesn't like the Mark Teixeira deal, and it was an absolutely stellar day for ESPN non-baseball wonks trying to talk about that weird game with the funny white ball.

*For the record, Gottlieb said that since A-Rod became a Yankee, he put too much pressure on himself in the postseason, and thus performed poorly. Here's Rodriguez's post-season line in New York:

2004 - .320 BA/.414 OBP/.600 SLG/1.014 OPS
2005 - .133 BA/.435 OBP/.200 SLG/ .635 OPS
2006 - .071 BA/ .133 OBP/ .071 SLG/ .204 OPS
2007 - .267 BA/ .353 OPB/ .467 SLG/ .820 OPS

Just eyeballing it, that looks like one great year, two bad ones, and one good one. In other words, statistical noise.

Just for fun, here's Derek Jeter's track record over the same time

2004 - .245 BA/ .339 OBP/ .347 SLG/ .686 OPS
2005 - .333 BA/ .348 OBP/ .619 SLG/.967 OPS
2006 - .500 BA/ .529 OBP/ .938 SLG/ 1.467 OPS
2007 - .176 BA/ .176 OBP/ .176 SLG/ .352 OPS

Hmm. Looks like one great year, one really good one, and two bad ones. In other words...statisical noise that looks pretty similar to what A-Rod put up.

And in 2004 - the year both A-Rod and Cap'n Jetes put up the most post-season ABs, Rodriguez kicked Jeter's butt.

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