Hey, cool, the Mariners won a game. That’s all right by me. What happened in this game? Lots of things! Lots of things happened. There were hits, and there were runs, and there were walks, and there were homers and errors and all sorts of wacky hi-jinks. It was great fun, indeed.
I had all sorts of stuff ready to write about defeat and the process of dealing with failure, but the Mariners had to go and ruin it by winning a game. Now I have no idea what to do. It turns out that effectively writing about baseball requires one of two things:
1. Some level of interest in the going-ons and outcomes of individual games. That’s right out the window, for obvious reasons. I’ll explain them anyway, though, because I need to fill up some space. The Mariners are not making the playoffs. After last nights game, their odds of that are zero percent, up from zero percent before the game. Neither are the Mariners bad enough to care about jockeying for draft picks. They will have a reasonably high pick, and they will take some kind of player that could maybe be useful someday. When that happens, I will defer to their judgment and maybe in a couple years I’ll be able to get a vague idea of whether the process behind that decision was reasonable. Or maybe I won’t. It’s not worth worrying about. So, caring about game outcomes is not an option. Maybe I could try caring about the game-to-game performance of individual players. I could also try caring about whether this coin in my pocket is facing heads-up or heads-down. These seem to be roughly equivalent options.
2. Baseball writing can also be a way to express emotions. This was easy to do when the Mariners were in the midst of a historically epic losing streak. Waxing poetic about defeat and failure is my specialty. Trust me, I know a whole lot about defeat. I have more experience with losing than just about anyone I know. But I can’t really do that when the Mariners win. If I did, that would reveal that I was just writing about whatever the hell I felt like and only using the framework of a Mariners game as a flimsy excuse to broadcast my thoughts over the internet. I’m not going to do that. Believe you me, I care deeply and passionately about making sure that each individual Mariners game gets the full respect and attention it deserves. This blog is going to stay on track, no matter what happens.
So that was a lot of writing about how and why I don’t really have anything to write about. And now I’m writing about how I’ve been writing about how I have nothing to write about. That’s weird. Consider that last sentence a bit of writing on how I’m writing about how I’ve been writing about how I have nothing to write about. This is getting pretty brutal. I’m sorry. I’m going to stop now.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
August 9, 2011: Mariners 6, Rangers 7 (49-66)
If this game was a flower, it would be a forget-me-yes.
Monday, August 8, 2011
Sunday, August 7, 2011
August 7, 2011: Mariners 1, Angels 2 (49-64)
Felix Hernandez must feel pretty bad right now. He threw a complete game today, striking out twelve, walking none, and allowing four hits and two runs. It was a dominating performance. And it wasn’t good enough. The Mariners left him out there all night long, they put the game on his shoulders and trusted him to carry them to victory, and he failed. He singlehandedly let the team down, and, for the tenth time this season, earned sole credit for the loss. And he totally deserved it.
Really, it must be hard to deal with failing so abjectly when there’s so many people counting on you. Imagine what it must be like in the clubhouse — Felix off in the corner with his head down, everyone else pointing and whispering. Some are considering extreme solutions. Can they tolerate Felix failing them again? He needs to be made an example of, so that nobody thinks this kind of behavior is acceptable. It’s a team game, Felix. You aren’t just playing for yourself. Maybe actually try next time, instead of coasting to a lazy defeat? But I don’t need to go on. Felix knows all this, and no one is more critical of his pitching than himself. I’m sure the tears and wrenching inner torment are punishment enough.
Honestly, this whole situation is probably good for the Mariners. Felix will try to snuff the burning pain of failure with hard work and improvement. It’ll make him a better pitcher, and if it doesn’t, good riddance. There’s no place for lazy malcontents on a team like the Mariners. It’ll also come in handy once contract-negotiating time rolls around. Felix might be a great pitcher, but losses like these absolutely justify a lower salary. That’s good, because the Mariners will need that extra money to sign some decent players to pick up Felix’s slack. They aren’t going to let him run this team into the ground forever.
As for the rest of the team, they had an ok game. They scored a whole one run over nine innings. It’s not their fault it wasn’t enough. They even had a dinger! Is it too much to ask for the pitching to do their job? When it comes to the Mariners… yeah, apparently it is too much to ask. Oh well. The truth is, the team has built up this culture of failure for a long time. Felix Hernandez may have cost them this game, but that’s only because the team gave him the opportunity to. They made their bed; now they get to sleep in it. With any luck, they won’t wake up again until after the season is over. That would be nice — if they decided to give up and not play any more games this year. That would be very nice indeed. I don’t know how much more of this I can take*.
*I'm not talking about the losing. I don't care one whit about the losing. What I can't take is the relentless, pointless grind, day after day, neverending. These games just keep coming, and I have to keep writing about them, even if I don't actually want to. I HAVE to. I don't have any choice in the matter. What am I going to do, not write about these games? Don't be ridiculous. If it was that easy, I would have done it already. Yes, it sure does suck to be stuck in this situation through absolutely no fault of my own. The universe is a cruel, dark place, and this is how it has chosen to punish me, with this ceaseless Sisyphean task. It's totally unfair that my life has to be like this, but I think I've finally found a solution, found something that I CAN do: I can whine about it. So that's what I'll do. I'll whine, and I'll complain, and I'll gripe, and at the end of the day maybe that will be enough.
Really, it must be hard to deal with failing so abjectly when there’s so many people counting on you. Imagine what it must be like in the clubhouse — Felix off in the corner with his head down, everyone else pointing and whispering. Some are considering extreme solutions. Can they tolerate Felix failing them again? He needs to be made an example of, so that nobody thinks this kind of behavior is acceptable. It’s a team game, Felix. You aren’t just playing for yourself. Maybe actually try next time, instead of coasting to a lazy defeat? But I don’t need to go on. Felix knows all this, and no one is more critical of his pitching than himself. I’m sure the tears and wrenching inner torment are punishment enough.
Honestly, this whole situation is probably good for the Mariners. Felix will try to snuff the burning pain of failure with hard work and improvement. It’ll make him a better pitcher, and if it doesn’t, good riddance. There’s no place for lazy malcontents on a team like the Mariners. It’ll also come in handy once contract-negotiating time rolls around. Felix might be a great pitcher, but losses like these absolutely justify a lower salary. That’s good, because the Mariners will need that extra money to sign some decent players to pick up Felix’s slack. They aren’t going to let him run this team into the ground forever.
As for the rest of the team, they had an ok game. They scored a whole one run over nine innings. It’s not their fault it wasn’t enough. They even had a dinger! Is it too much to ask for the pitching to do their job? When it comes to the Mariners… yeah, apparently it is too much to ask. Oh well. The truth is, the team has built up this culture of failure for a long time. Felix Hernandez may have cost them this game, but that’s only because the team gave him the opportunity to. They made their bed; now they get to sleep in it. With any luck, they won’t wake up again until after the season is over. That would be nice — if they decided to give up and not play any more games this year. That would be very nice indeed. I don’t know how much more of this I can take*.
*I'm not talking about the losing. I don't care one whit about the losing. What I can't take is the relentless, pointless grind, day after day, neverending. These games just keep coming, and I have to keep writing about them, even if I don't actually want to. I HAVE to. I don't have any choice in the matter. What am I going to do, not write about these games? Don't be ridiculous. If it was that easy, I would have done it already. Yes, it sure does suck to be stuck in this situation through absolutely no fault of my own. The universe is a cruel, dark place, and this is how it has chosen to punish me, with this ceaseless Sisyphean task. It's totally unfair that my life has to be like this, but I think I've finally found a solution, found something that I CAN do: I can whine about it. So that's what I'll do. I'll whine, and I'll complain, and I'll gripe, and at the end of the day maybe that will be enough.
August 6, 2011: Mariners 5, Angels 1 (49-63)
The Mariners won another game today. That brings their record to 6-4 in their last ten games. Finally, it seems like all the long streaks and bizarre occurrences are over. The Mariners are back to being a normal baseball team, and normal baseball teams are stable and predictable. Now is the time to crunch some numbers and figure out where this team is going.
Here is my basic methodology:
A few things jump out here:
I know this probably isn’t what you want to hear. Most people are actually feeling pretty optimistic about the Mariners — they’ve got a whole bunch of interesting young players who haven’t yet proven themselves to be bad at baseball, and they’ve managed as of late to avoid losing literally every single game. Unfortunately, if this data can be trusted (and it can — look at that r-squared!) that optimism is nothing but a mirage. Very soon, things are going to get a whole lot worse. The Mariners are going to plumb some heretofore-unseen depths of failure. If you’re a fan of the Mariners, I sure hope you like to limbo, because we’re about to find out just how low you can go.
Here is my basic methodology:
- Create a table tracking number of games played against number of games won.
- Plot that data in a graph.
- Use least squares regression to find the model that best fits the data.
- Use that model to generate a forecast of future performance.
- Make the graph all pretty and colorful.
- Save the graph as a jpeg.
- Explain my methodology.
- Paste the graph into the body of the text.
- Ramble incoherently.
A few things jump out here:
- The r-squared is 0.99472, about as close to 1 as you could practically hope for. This indicates that over 99% of the Mariners’ win/loss record is explained by this model. It’s very, very accurate, and can be trusted unreservedly.
- The future is bleak. The Mariners are actually forecast to win a negative amount of games from now until the end of the season.
- The Mariners are forecast to end the year with a record of approximately 7-155. This would be, by far, the worst record ever in baseball history.
I know this probably isn’t what you want to hear. Most people are actually feeling pretty optimistic about the Mariners — they’ve got a whole bunch of interesting young players who haven’t yet proven themselves to be bad at baseball, and they’ve managed as of late to avoid losing literally every single game. Unfortunately, if this data can be trusted (and it can — look at that r-squared!) that optimism is nothing but a mirage. Very soon, things are going to get a whole lot worse. The Mariners are going to plumb some heretofore-unseen depths of failure. If you’re a fan of the Mariners, I sure hope you like to limbo, because we’re about to find out just how low you can go.
Saturday, August 6, 2011
August 5, 2011: Mariners 0, Angels 1 (48-63)
The winning spree came to its inevitable end today, as the Mariners hitters were casually defanged by the splendorously mulleted Jered “Jared” Weaver*. It was a fairly unsurprising outcome. The Mariners hitters are bad. Jered Weaver is good. Jered Weaver pitched well, and the Mariners hit poorly. The Mariners are bad. The Angels are good. The Angerls played well, and the Mariners played poorly. The Mariners lost to the Angels. So goes the circle of life.
What can be said about this game that hasn’t been said a million times already? Nothing. Absolutely nothing new and interesting can be said. Fortunately, “new” and “interesting” are goals I gave up on long ago. So I’m sure I’ll find something to say. For example, did you know that this was the 111th game the Mariners played this year? That’s a special number, because it has three digits and all the digits are the same. I think when you see a number like that you’re supposed to make a wish and the wish will come true. My guess is that the Mariners, in a stubborn, masochistic attempt to prove that ACTUALLY they’re doing just fine and are totally happy with their circumstances and don’t need any of your pity THANK you very much, wished for things to be just as they already were. It’s actually kind of noble. It’s also why the Mariners are losers, and why they forever will be losers.
This Mariners game does remind me of something very important: sometimes (most times, actually) it’s easier to just give up. I could try to keep writing about this game, but what’s the point? This game sucked. What, do you actually want to spend a lot of time thinking about this game? No? That’s what I thought. So I’m just gonna go ahead and give up. It’s the mature thing to do.
*Jered Weaver’s name is spelled incorrectly because he has an older brother named Jeffrey and his parents thought it would be cute if their names both had the same two initial letters.
What can be said about this game that hasn’t been said a million times already? Nothing. Absolutely nothing new and interesting can be said. Fortunately, “new” and “interesting” are goals I gave up on long ago. So I’m sure I’ll find something to say. For example, did you know that this was the 111th game the Mariners played this year? That’s a special number, because it has three digits and all the digits are the same. I think when you see a number like that you’re supposed to make a wish and the wish will come true. My guess is that the Mariners, in a stubborn, masochistic attempt to prove that ACTUALLY they’re doing just fine and are totally happy with their circumstances and don’t need any of your pity THANK you very much, wished for things to be just as they already were. It’s actually kind of noble. It’s also why the Mariners are losers, and why they forever will be losers.
This Mariners game does remind me of something very important: sometimes (most times, actually) it’s easier to just give up. I could try to keep writing about this game, but what’s the point? This game sucked. What, do you actually want to spend a lot of time thinking about this game? No? That’s what I thought. So I’m just gonna go ahead and give up. It’s the mature thing to do.
*Jered Weaver’s name is spelled incorrectly because he has an older brother named Jeffrey and his parents thought it would be cute if their names both had the same two initial letters.
Thursday, August 4, 2011
August 2-3, 2011: Mariners 11, A's 6 (48-62)
Something strange is going on. The Mariners have played three games in the last three days, and they’ve won all of them. That’s three wins without a single loss. Three wins consecutively, or “in a row”, if you will. It’s wholly unprecedented. I don’t think there’s even a word for this situation. I'm trying to figure out what you would call it. A “win run”? A “victory parade”? A “binge o’ wins”? The best thing I can come up with is a “winning spree”. At first I thought that the similarity to the phrase “killing spree” might be a problem, but I think that it’s actually kind of appropriate. Like your typical killing spree, a Mariners winning spree would generally involve confusion and a mounting sense of dread. Inevitably, it would come to a quick and brutal end, and everyone would lament that it ever had to happen. The metaphor actually works pretty well. At least, I think it's a pretty clever little turn of phrase, so I'm going to stick with it: The Mariners are on a “winning spree”. I’m sure all the effort I put into thinking that phrase up will be useful quite often in the future when the Mariners do nothing but win games for a long time and everyone is really happy about it.
Heh.
Anyway, so these games they won. Probably the most exciting thing is that Charlie Furbush pitched. Charlie Furbush is a recently acquired pitcher who maybe could possibly be decent at some point now or in the future. To quantify things: on a scale of 1 to 100, we can confidently say that his level of skill is somewhere between 1 and 100. The margin of error for this guess is approximately +/- 100. Furbush is still young, so it’s possible he could get better. Or he could get worse. We should realize that this present quantification of his talent does not really reflect his potential value over time, and thus should not be taken quite as seriously as I'm sure you were about to. To sum up everything we know for sure: Charlie Furbush throws baseballs for a living. This is confirmed by the fact that he did exactly that activity in a baseball game on Wednesday, August 3, 2011.
Another thing that happened was that the Mariners got a whopping 14 hits in one game, but every single one of those hits was a single. That’s pretty incredible, and speaks to the lack of power of the Mariners lineup. Actually, no it doesn’t, but we already know that the Mariners lineup lacks power, so it’s ok to declare that anything and everything is proof of the lack of power of the Mariners lineup. They certainly aren’t going to prove me wrong. What are they going to do, start hitting for power? Well, maybe. I can’t predict the future. But, anyway, I'll say whatever I please. Let me give you some free advice: making wildly unsubstantiated claims can only make your life better. If you’re right, whoa, that’s awesome! You’ll get all kinds of attention and maybe even fame and money and women. If you’re wrong, what’s the worst that could happen? You’re credibility will be destroyed? Oh nooooooooo. More likely, nobody will remember, and probably nobody is even paying attention anyway. Nobody cares. I certainly don't. Just remember: cares are for squares.
Heh.
Anyway, so these games they won. Probably the most exciting thing is that Charlie Furbush pitched. Charlie Furbush is a recently acquired pitcher who maybe could possibly be decent at some point now or in the future. To quantify things: on a scale of 1 to 100, we can confidently say that his level of skill is somewhere between 1 and 100. The margin of error for this guess is approximately +/- 100. Furbush is still young, so it’s possible he could get better. Or he could get worse. We should realize that this present quantification of his talent does not really reflect his potential value over time, and thus should not be taken quite as seriously as I'm sure you were about to. To sum up everything we know for sure: Charlie Furbush throws baseballs for a living. This is confirmed by the fact that he did exactly that activity in a baseball game on Wednesday, August 3, 2011.
Another thing that happened was that the Mariners got a whopping 14 hits in one game, but every single one of those hits was a single. That’s pretty incredible, and speaks to the lack of power of the Mariners lineup. Actually, no it doesn’t, but we already know that the Mariners lineup lacks power, so it’s ok to declare that anything and everything is proof of the lack of power of the Mariners lineup. They certainly aren’t going to prove me wrong. What are they going to do, start hitting for power? Well, maybe. I can’t predict the future. But, anyway, I'll say whatever I please. Let me give you some free advice: making wildly unsubstantiated claims can only make your life better. If you’re right, whoa, that’s awesome! You’ll get all kinds of attention and maybe even fame and money and women. If you’re wrong, what’s the worst that could happen? You’re credibility will be destroyed? Oh nooooooooo. More likely, nobody will remember, and probably nobody is even paying attention anyway. Nobody cares. I certainly don't. Just remember: cares are for squares.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
August 1, 2011: Mariners 8, A's 4 (46-62)
The Mariners played YET ANOTHER baseball game. Man, they just don’t stop with these things. Anyway, it was a pretty good game I guess. I mean, like, the Mariners won, so yippee or whatever, at least they didn’t lose, but really it feels about the same. I guess nobody died, nobody got seriously injured (Chone Figgins got hurt, but, like, whatever), nobody came down with any serious illnesses (Ok, Cliff Pennington got Bell’s Palsy, but apparently that’s one of the friendlier palsies, and Cliff Pennington is a boring player on a boring team that is not the Mariners, so, like, whatever). So it was a pretty good game in the sense that nothing horrible happened to anyone. Also, a bunch of people went to see the game, so the players didn’t have to go through the humiliation of throwing a party where no one shows up, and all those people mostly paid to go to the game, so the players probably get to keep their paychecks and their jobs and avoid having their families starve. Also, it was sunny and warm out, so most of the people probably felt pretty good while they were there, unless they got sunburned, but being sunburned really isn’t all that bad in the grand scheme of things (unless it gives you cancer, but everything gives you cancer, so, like, whatever). So, all in all, it was probably a decent night to be taken out to the ballgame.
The only problem with the game was that the outcome was basically decided in the second inning, but the teams kept on playing for over three hours. That’s a long time to be at a baseball game without any sense of uncertainty or interest in the game’s outcome. Nothing truly exciting could have happened after that second inning, but what were the fans going to do? Leave? That would be the rational utility-maximizing decision, but making that decision would expose the initial choice to attend the game as irrational and foolish. So they had to stay, if only to justify a previous decision to themselves. Kind of silly. It’s like falling into a mineshaft and deciding that while you’re there, hey, might as well keep digging deeper. Anyways. If there’s one concrete, verbally expressible conclusion to be taken out of this, it’s that baseball attendance is deeply irrational.
This analysis of the baseball attendance decision-making process has some unsettling implications for the Mariners. What are the people who attended this game going to do afterwards? They’re going to go home and think to themselves, “That was reasonably pleasant. I’ll be sure to go to another one next year.” That’s not good. Repeat attendance is the key to long-term financial success. So, how do you get people to come back more often? The answer is a little bit counterintuitive: you have to lose, preferably in a painful, dramatic fashion. That way, everyone at the game will go home hungry. They’ll feel that all-consuming hunger to witness a Mariners win, to just once feel the pleasure of success, to feel like it was all worth it, to somehow validate their fandom. They’ll think, “Just one more game. I’m sure they’ll win this game. It’ll feel great. GOD I CAN’T WAIT I CAN’T WAIT.” And the Mariners will lose again and the fans will keep on jonesing, keep trying to satisfy that insatiable urge, keep going to games. The fans will say they won’t like it, but they’ll keep going. The joke will be on them. The Mariners will never win again. But that won’t matter. They’ll be filthy rich. When you boil it down to what really matters, the Mariners will be the most successful team of all time.
But noooooo, they insist on winning games sixty-plus times a year. God, what a bunch of chumps. But, like, whatever. It’s not my problem.
The only problem with the game was that the outcome was basically decided in the second inning, but the teams kept on playing for over three hours. That’s a long time to be at a baseball game without any sense of uncertainty or interest in the game’s outcome. Nothing truly exciting could have happened after that second inning, but what were the fans going to do? Leave? That would be the rational utility-maximizing decision, but making that decision would expose the initial choice to attend the game as irrational and foolish. So they had to stay, if only to justify a previous decision to themselves. Kind of silly. It’s like falling into a mineshaft and deciding that while you’re there, hey, might as well keep digging deeper. Anyways. If there’s one concrete, verbally expressible conclusion to be taken out of this, it’s that baseball attendance is deeply irrational.
This analysis of the baseball attendance decision-making process has some unsettling implications for the Mariners. What are the people who attended this game going to do afterwards? They’re going to go home and think to themselves, “That was reasonably pleasant. I’ll be sure to go to another one next year.” That’s not good. Repeat attendance is the key to long-term financial success. So, how do you get people to come back more often? The answer is a little bit counterintuitive: you have to lose, preferably in a painful, dramatic fashion. That way, everyone at the game will go home hungry. They’ll feel that all-consuming hunger to witness a Mariners win, to just once feel the pleasure of success, to feel like it was all worth it, to somehow validate their fandom. They’ll think, “Just one more game. I’m sure they’ll win this game. It’ll feel great. GOD I CAN’T WAIT I CAN’T WAIT.” And the Mariners will lose again and the fans will keep on jonesing, keep trying to satisfy that insatiable urge, keep going to games. The fans will say they won’t like it, but they’ll keep going. The joke will be on them. The Mariners will never win again. But that won’t matter. They’ll be filthy rich. When you boil it down to what really matters, the Mariners will be the most successful team of all time.
But noooooo, they insist on winning games sixty-plus times a year. God, what a bunch of chumps. But, like, whatever. It’s not my problem.
Monday, August 1, 2011
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Friday, July 29, 2011
July 29, 2011: Mariners 0, Rays 8 (44-61)
So, it looks like the Mariners aren’t actually going to win all of their games for the rest of the year. They lost their game today. It’s a huge bummer, since it all but certainly indicates that the Mariners are a normal baseball team, and as such will not perform at inhuman levels and miraculously make the playoffs. It's over. Sometimes dreams have to die, and today is one of those times.
The 8-0 defeat that occurred today isn’t really worth talking about. The Mariners got soundly defeated, and not one single good thing happened to make the experience worthwhile. Not even Marylin vos Savant could rationalize any positivity out of this one. I guess the Mariners were nice enough to kill off all hope immediately, instead of lingering like an unopened Christmas present that turns out to contain asbestos. But that’s fairly small comfort.
However, if you are one of those people who really does feel awful about this for some ridiculous masochistic reason, I have good news: it’s not as bad as it seems. I know it seems like the last thirty plus years of Mariners baseball have been nothing but misery and failure, but that opinion is really only based on water-cooler misinformation, vague impressions, and half-remembered dreams. Human memory is imperfect. It builds narratives when nothing’s there, it overreacts to extreme events, sometimes it even just makes stuff up. But statistics… statistics are pure and solid. They are a simple record of the facts, and as such are wholly trustworthy. And the facts don’t actually bear out the whole “Mariners as pathetic losers” storyline.
Ok, so you’re sitting there thinking “Oh no, the Mariners are awful, they’ve never accomplished anything, wah wah wah.” Why do you think that they’re “awful”? What does it mean to be “awful”? The first thing you should know about “awful” is that it’s a relative term. If the Mariners are "awful", it means that the Mariners are bad in comparison to something else. In this case, “badness” entails failing to win baseball games. Who do the Mariners fail to win baseball games in comparison to? Other baseball teams, duh. Especially the New York Yankees. The New York Yankees win many more baseball games than the Mariners do. That’s the evidence for why the Mariners are awful: they lose much more than the New York Yankees.
Except, look at what the statistics say:
Just look at that. The Mariners and Yankees actually have pretty much even winning percentages, relatively speaking. The only real difference is that the Mariners’ win percentage is blue while the Yankees’ is red. Blue is a way better color than red, so score one for the Mariners. The statistical record is clear: quantitatively speaking, the Mariners are really no worse than the Yankees.
“But wait!” you say. “That’s not right! You’re just warping the statistics to prove your conclusion that you already decided on beforehand. The only person who said winning percentage matters was you. Quit building all these strawmen, and be a little bit intellectually honest. You know where I’m going with this: what matters is championships. At the end of the day, that’s all anyone cares about. It's the only true measure of success. The simple fact is, the Yankees have won way more World Serie than the Mariners have. That’s all there is to it. If you can disprove that, I’ll concede your point. You can’t, because it’s impossible, but I’d like to see you try.” And then a mockingbird pecks out the sparkly thread that used to be your mouth and you don’t say anything more. And then I refute your argument with the greatest of ease:
Basically the same. So buck up. Quit with the moping, ya saddo. The Mariners are fine, I’m fine, you’re fine, baseball’s fine, everything is just fine and maybe even also dandy. Just enjoy it. It’s baseball, bro. It’s all good.
The 8-0 defeat that occurred today isn’t really worth talking about. The Mariners got soundly defeated, and not one single good thing happened to make the experience worthwhile. Not even Marylin vos Savant could rationalize any positivity out of this one. I guess the Mariners were nice enough to kill off all hope immediately, instead of lingering like an unopened Christmas present that turns out to contain asbestos. But that’s fairly small comfort.
However, if you are one of those people who really does feel awful about this for some ridiculous masochistic reason, I have good news: it’s not as bad as it seems. I know it seems like the last thirty plus years of Mariners baseball have been nothing but misery and failure, but that opinion is really only based on water-cooler misinformation, vague impressions, and half-remembered dreams. Human memory is imperfect. It builds narratives when nothing’s there, it overreacts to extreme events, sometimes it even just makes stuff up. But statistics… statistics are pure and solid. They are a simple record of the facts, and as such are wholly trustworthy. And the facts don’t actually bear out the whole “Mariners as pathetic losers” storyline.
Ok, so you’re sitting there thinking “Oh no, the Mariners are awful, they’ve never accomplished anything, wah wah wah.” Why do you think that they’re “awful”? What does it mean to be “awful”? The first thing you should know about “awful” is that it’s a relative term. If the Mariners are "awful", it means that the Mariners are bad in comparison to something else. In this case, “badness” entails failing to win baseball games. Who do the Mariners fail to win baseball games in comparison to? Other baseball teams, duh. Especially the New York Yankees. The New York Yankees win many more baseball games than the Mariners do. That’s the evidence for why the Mariners are awful: they lose much more than the New York Yankees.
Except, look at what the statistics say:
Just look at that. The Mariners and Yankees actually have pretty much even winning percentages, relatively speaking. The only real difference is that the Mariners’ win percentage is blue while the Yankees’ is red. Blue is a way better color than red, so score one for the Mariners. The statistical record is clear: quantitatively speaking, the Mariners are really no worse than the Yankees.
“But wait!” you say. “That’s not right! You’re just warping the statistics to prove your conclusion that you already decided on beforehand. The only person who said winning percentage matters was you. Quit building all these strawmen, and be a little bit intellectually honest. You know where I’m going with this: what matters is championships. At the end of the day, that’s all anyone cares about. It's the only true measure of success. The simple fact is, the Yankees have won way more World Serie than the Mariners have. That’s all there is to it. If you can disprove that, I’ll concede your point. You can’t, because it’s impossible, but I’d like to see you try.” And then a mockingbird pecks out the sparkly thread that used to be your mouth and you don’t say anything more. And then I refute your argument with the greatest of ease:
Basically the same. So buck up. Quit with the moping, ya saddo. The Mariners are fine, I’m fine, you’re fine, baseball’s fine, everything is just fine and maybe even also dandy. Just enjoy it. It’s baseball, bro. It’s all good.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
July 27, 2011: Mariners 9, Yankees 2 (44-60)
On July 27, 2011, the Seattle Mariners played the New York Yankees. The Mariners won the game by a score of 9 to 2, a feat that was quite remarkable, considering it was only the 44th time all season that the Mariners had won a game. Nobody expected the Mariners to win this game. I mean, seriously, they had only won 43 games before this! What were the odds that they would win another one? Well... pretty good, apparently.
The actual most surprising thing about the game is that the Mariners won so easily. Nine to two? That’s a blowout! The Mariners amassed a whopping 17 hits, while only allowing six to the supposedly intimidating Yankees lineup. Sheer dominance, that's what that is. Could this be a sign of things to come? After all, the Yankees are a very good team. Possibly the best in the league. For the Mariners to beat them, and beat them so convincingly, in Yankee stadium... that’s a hell of a performance. There’s no way to spin it other than the Mariners played great. Flat-out great. And I’ll tell you what... I think it could continue.
Consider this: in the past 24 hours, the Mariners have won one game and lost zero. That’s a one hundred percent winning percentage, if you haven't figured that out already. That’s incredible. No team in baseball has ever come anywhere close to putting up a one hundred percent winning percentage. It’s unprecedented. But here the Mariners are, doing it. Can they keep it up? That’s less clear. We’ll have to wait for Friday’s game to figure that out. But if the Mariners win on Friday, watch out! They’ll have then won one hundred percent of their games over a stretch of multiple games. That’s a one hundred percent correlation between games played and games won. Here is a graph of what that would look like:
Included is a forecast of future performance, generated via least-squares regression. Note that the r2 is equal to one, the highest it could possibly be. The evidence is all there. Statistics don’t lie: if the Mariners win tomorrow, they can be expected to win every game for the rest of the season. If that happens, they might even make the playoffs!
I know, I know, that's great news. It really is awesome. Don't get too excited, though. I hate to rain on the parade, but, unfortunately, the scientific method and proper statistical analysis requires that I explore alternate hypotheses. And there's one possible scenario that the above chart doesn't account for: Friday’s game still needs to be played, and there’s a chance, just a chance, that the Mariners might lose. And if they do… they just might never win again.
The actual most surprising thing about the game is that the Mariners won so easily. Nine to two? That’s a blowout! The Mariners amassed a whopping 17 hits, while only allowing six to the supposedly intimidating Yankees lineup. Sheer dominance, that's what that is. Could this be a sign of things to come? After all, the Yankees are a very good team. Possibly the best in the league. For the Mariners to beat them, and beat them so convincingly, in Yankee stadium... that’s a hell of a performance. There’s no way to spin it other than the Mariners played great. Flat-out great. And I’ll tell you what... I think it could continue.
Consider this: in the past 24 hours, the Mariners have won one game and lost zero. That’s a one hundred percent winning percentage, if you haven't figured that out already. That’s incredible. No team in baseball has ever come anywhere close to putting up a one hundred percent winning percentage. It’s unprecedented. But here the Mariners are, doing it. Can they keep it up? That’s less clear. We’ll have to wait for Friday’s game to figure that out. But if the Mariners win on Friday, watch out! They’ll have then won one hundred percent of their games over a stretch of multiple games. That’s a one hundred percent correlation between games played and games won. Here is a graph of what that would look like:
Included is a forecast of future performance, generated via least-squares regression. Note that the r2 is equal to one, the highest it could possibly be. The evidence is all there. Statistics don’t lie: if the Mariners win tomorrow, they can be expected to win every game for the rest of the season. If that happens, they might even make the playoffs!
I know, I know, that's great news. It really is awesome. Don't get too excited, though. I hate to rain on the parade, but, unfortunately, the scientific method and proper statistical analysis requires that I explore alternate hypotheses. And there's one possible scenario that the above chart doesn't account for: Friday’s game still needs to be played, and there’s a chance, just a chance, that the Mariners might lose. And if they do… they just might never win again.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
July 25, 2011: Mariners 3, Yankees 10 (43-59)
Mariners baseball game today win no. New York Yankees runs score more Mariners not enough. Good team play baseball good bad team not so good. Jason Vargas runs runs runs. Pitching disaster nightmare total collapse. Yankees dingers because good hitting and lots of runs. Ten runs so many Mariners never do that. Mariners do baseball bad lose.
Sixteen lots of losses in a row. Bright future? No no no. Eric Wedge mustache lose job burn the tree? Team meeting fired up grit hustle effort try hard. No help Mariners hopeless. Talent not enough not enough talent. Lose lose lose. Baseball exciting fun family dreams baseball! Baseball! Mariners Mariners Mariners!
:(
Sixteen lots of losses in a row. Bright future? No no no. Eric Wedge mustache lose job burn the tree? Team meeting fired up grit hustle effort try hard. No help Mariners hopeless. Talent not enough not enough talent. Lose lose lose. Baseball exciting fun family dreams baseball! Baseball! Mariners Mariners Mariners!
:(
Sunday, July 24, 2011
July 22-24, 2011: Mariners something, Red Sox something more (43-58)
So, the Mariners losing streak just hit fifteen. What happened? Why did this team that for most of the year didn’t lose every single game suddenly start losing every single game? The short answer is it’s inexplicable, but that’s not going to stop me from trying to explain it.
Here’s an interesting statistic: over the past fifteen games, the Mariners have averaged 2.67 runs scored per game. Over the same stretch, they’ve averaged 5.8 runs allowed per game. That right there is probably the most direct reason they've been losing. You aren’t going to win many games in which you allow twice as many runs as you score. But you want more. The pain of this losing streak is eating at you, and you’re hungry for answers. Let’s dig deeper.
Why have the Mariners allowed so many more runs than they’ve scored recently? Well, over the same fifteen game stretch, they’ve recorded 7.93 hits per game while allowing 10.27 hits per game. In general, when you get less hits, you get less runs. So that explains everything! Yes!
Except, not really. Why have the Mariners allowed more hits than they’ve recorded recently? One explanation could be that they’ve wilted in the summer heat like so many unwatered petunias. Or, it could be that they’ve always been this bad, and their early-season success was just a luck-fueled house of cards that is finally collapsing. Or maybe they couldn’t handle the pressure of a playoff race and they’re choking like a man trying to swallow a starfish. Or they’re trying too hard. Or they aren’t trying hard enough. The possibilities are endless, and unless you’re a mind reader (I am not) there’s no way to know. However, there is another, stronger possibility: it’s just wild, random chance.
How could that be? A team losing fifteen games in a row is colossally unlikely! Don’t tell me it’s just random chance! Well, that’s actually what I’m going to tell you. Here’s some math: let’s say that, given the relative talent levels of the Mariners and their opponents, the chances of the Mariners winning each individual game was around forty percent (I’m being generous so that nobody can accuse me of warping the stats to fit a narrative). That means that the probability of fifteen consecutive losses is around .047%, or around one in two thousand. That’s pretty low. However, consider this: for each individual team, there are approximately 148 stretches of fifteen games within a season. There are 30 teams in baseball. By my calculations, 148 times 30 is 4,440. Way more than 2,000. So a stretch this unlikely should actually happen to someone about twice a season. Unfortunately, this time the Mariners drew the short straw. C’est la vie.
So, this losing streak can basically be said to be happening because it is a thing that is happening. When looked at that way, who cares? Ride the wave! Go down with the ship! See how low you can go! Or not. Whatever.
Here’s an interesting statistic: over the past fifteen games, the Mariners have averaged 2.67 runs scored per game. Over the same stretch, they’ve averaged 5.8 runs allowed per game. That right there is probably the most direct reason they've been losing. You aren’t going to win many games in which you allow twice as many runs as you score. But you want more. The pain of this losing streak is eating at you, and you’re hungry for answers. Let’s dig deeper.
Why have the Mariners allowed so many more runs than they’ve scored recently? Well, over the same fifteen game stretch, they’ve recorded 7.93 hits per game while allowing 10.27 hits per game. In general, when you get less hits, you get less runs. So that explains everything! Yes!
Except, not really. Why have the Mariners allowed more hits than they’ve recorded recently? One explanation could be that they’ve wilted in the summer heat like so many unwatered petunias. Or, it could be that they’ve always been this bad, and their early-season success was just a luck-fueled house of cards that is finally collapsing. Or maybe they couldn’t handle the pressure of a playoff race and they’re choking like a man trying to swallow a starfish. Or they’re trying too hard. Or they aren’t trying hard enough. The possibilities are endless, and unless you’re a mind reader (I am not) there’s no way to know. However, there is another, stronger possibility: it’s just wild, random chance.
How could that be? A team losing fifteen games in a row is colossally unlikely! Don’t tell me it’s just random chance! Well, that’s actually what I’m going to tell you. Here’s some math: let’s say that, given the relative talent levels of the Mariners and their opponents, the chances of the Mariners winning each individual game was around forty percent (I’m being generous so that nobody can accuse me of warping the stats to fit a narrative). That means that the probability of fifteen consecutive losses is around .047%, or around one in two thousand. That’s pretty low. However, consider this: for each individual team, there are approximately 148 stretches of fifteen games within a season. There are 30 teams in baseball. By my calculations, 148 times 30 is 4,440. Way more than 2,000. So a stretch this unlikely should actually happen to someone about twice a season. Unfortunately, this time the Mariners drew the short straw. C’est la vie.
So, this losing streak can basically be said to be happening because it is a thing that is happening. When looked at that way, who cares? Ride the wave! Go down with the ship! See how low you can go! Or not. Whatever.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
July 20, 2011: Mariners 6, Blue Jays 11 (43-54)
Here is a complete list of facts about this game:
1. The Mariners scored 6 runs.
2. The Blue Jays scored 11 runs.
3. 11 is more than 6.
4. The Mariners lost.
5. The Blue Jays won.
Here is some rigorous analysis of these facts:
If there is a situation in which things are guaranteed to happen, then some combination of things will in fact happen. The facts compiled above are one such combination of things.
1. The Mariners scored 6 runs.
2. The Blue Jays scored 11 runs.
3. 11 is more than 6.
4. The Mariners lost.
5. The Blue Jays won.
Here is some rigorous analysis of these facts:
If there is a situation in which things are guaranteed to happen, then some combination of things will in fact happen. The facts compiled above are one such combination of things.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
July 19, 2011: Mariners 5, Blue Jays 6 (43-53)
My recap of today’s Mariners game isn’t very good. The problems start with the first sentence – it doesn’t say anything about the game, for one thing, but that’s beside the point. Leading with game info is a sure-fire recipe for failure when you’re reporting on the Mariners. The problem really lies in the ideas it sets up – a shamelessly corny gimmick that’s too clever by half. To make it worse, the recap even acknowledges the almost embarrassing nature of the premise, but does nothing to stop the unfolding car wreck. It promises an article that is immediately unsalvageable, no matter where it goes from there.
The second paragraph isn’t much better. There’s still no real baseball related content. Instead, the article does nothing but reveal an author wholly caught up in his own desire to be clever. It looks pretty clearly like a masturbatory ploy to seem creative and self-aware and intelligent, and, while that phrasing is probably a little harsh, it’s hard to argue that that’s not what it is, given the total disregard for the ostensible “purpose” of the article. Obviously, there’s not a lot of respect for the material there. The article is quite hard to read. Not like literally difficult-to-extract-linguistic-meaning-from “hard to read”, but emotionally why-am-I-reading-this-I-feel-embarrassed-for-the-author “hard to read”. I know that I cringe when I look at it.
Finally, after an eternity of self-serving rambling, it gets into some baseball stuff. But it doesn’t actually say anything but the score (6-5, advantage Toronto), and it’s obviously just a token mention with no effort to be interesting. The baseball content is nothing but self-justification, an attempt to seem like there was some kind of point there. It’s an excuse to publish some thoughts that really shouldn’t be shared. And, right there in the article, I point all this out, acknowledge all the problems and the pointlessness and the idiocy, and I keep going anyway.
Eventually I reach a point where it would be natural to go into a conclusion, to end the suffering, but I don’t stop. I ramble away, lost in my own head. It starts to get pretty obvious that there isn’t any kind of mental filter there. All my thoughts are right there on the page, pouring out in all sorts of bore-izontal directions. It’s just tangent after tangent, all of them sort of containing information, but none of them adding up to a purposeful whole. It’s all so self-serving. Certainly not a shining example of the baseball-postgame-recap genre.
By the last paragraph, it’s apparent that I’ve mostly given up, which is actually a reasonable thing to do, since I’d have to be way more egotistical than I am to believe that anyone would have waded through all that preceding drivel and still kept reading. It ends pretty abruptly, without a real conclusion. I couldn’t even be bothered to type a period onto the final sentence
The second paragraph isn’t much better. There’s still no real baseball related content. Instead, the article does nothing but reveal an author wholly caught up in his own desire to be clever. It looks pretty clearly like a masturbatory ploy to seem creative and self-aware and intelligent, and, while that phrasing is probably a little harsh, it’s hard to argue that that’s not what it is, given the total disregard for the ostensible “purpose” of the article. Obviously, there’s not a lot of respect for the material there. The article is quite hard to read. Not like literally difficult-to-extract-linguistic-meaning-from “hard to read”, but emotionally why-am-I-reading-this-I-feel-embarrassed-for-the-author “hard to read”. I know that I cringe when I look at it.
Finally, after an eternity of self-serving rambling, it gets into some baseball stuff. But it doesn’t actually say anything but the score (6-5, advantage Toronto), and it’s obviously just a token mention with no effort to be interesting. The baseball content is nothing but self-justification, an attempt to seem like there was some kind of point there. It’s an excuse to publish some thoughts that really shouldn’t be shared. And, right there in the article, I point all this out, acknowledge all the problems and the pointlessness and the idiocy, and I keep going anyway.
Eventually I reach a point where it would be natural to go into a conclusion, to end the suffering, but I don’t stop. I ramble away, lost in my own head. It starts to get pretty obvious that there isn’t any kind of mental filter there. All my thoughts are right there on the page, pouring out in all sorts of bore-izontal directions. It’s just tangent after tangent, all of them sort of containing information, but none of them adding up to a purposeful whole. It’s all so self-serving. Certainly not a shining example of the baseball-postgame-recap genre.
By the last paragraph, it’s apparent that I’ve mostly given up, which is actually a reasonable thing to do, since I’d have to be way more egotistical than I am to believe that anyone would have waded through all that preceding drivel and still kept reading. It ends pretty abruptly, without a real conclusion. I couldn’t even be bothered to type a period onto the final sentence
Sunday, July 17, 2011
July 17, 2011: Mariners 1, Rangers 3 (43-52)
The darkness is starting to creep in.
The Mariners just lost again. That makes nine in a row. Nine straight defeats, nine straight missed opportunities, nine straight chances that the Mariners will never get back. From now until eternity, the Mariners will have lost every single game they played from July 6th 2011 to July 17th 2011. That’s an immutable fact. There’s nothing, literally nothing, that they will ever be able to do to change that. All these games, all these losses… Sure, there will be more chances in the future, but these ones are gone, gone forever. No matter where they go, no matter what success or happiness these players might someday attain, they’ll have to live with these crushing failures for the rest of their lives. It hurts. It hurts bad.
The worst thing about this recent string of defeats is how hopeless, how thoroughly, well, defeating they’ve been. Over the past nine games, the Mariners have been outscored 41 to 11. It’s been brutal. Bambi Meets Godzilla on a baseball field. Not once in the past two weeks have I gone into a game thinking that the Mariners have had any chance to win. And the team has done nothing but validate that hopelessness. At this point, it feels like the Mariners won’t ever win again. How could they? Seriously, how could this collection of assclowns ever hope to outscore another baseball team? What would that even look like? I can’t imagine it.
Except, no, that’s not right. I mean, come on. Of course the Mariners will win again. Quit with the drama, Pessimismo. This is nothing. Absolutely nothing. Why are you getting so worked up over nine bad games? Trust me, the Mariners have played a whole lot more than just nine bad games in their time. This is a drop in the bucket, and the only reason anyone cares is that these nine bad games happened to align temporally. The Mariners have won about 45 percent of their games this season. They’ll probably win about 45 percent of their games the rest of the season, too. That leaves room for them to win about thirty more games, and most likely about thirty more games they will win.
At least, that’s what the math says. After living through these last two weeks of baseball, though, it’s hard to trust the math. It’s hard to shake off two weeks worth of constant hopelessness and despair. It’s hard to really believe that the Mariners aren’t a miserable excuse for a baseball team, that they aren’t doomed, doomed, forever doomed. But you have to believe. What other choice is there? How could you possibly force yourself to keep following this team every. single. day. if there wasn’t at least some glimmer of hope? Stop paying attention? Stop being a fan? Let’s be real, those are not options. In my case, even if I wanted to go down that path (And I don’t. Winners never quit.), I don’t think I could. I can’t stop being a fan. I can’t. The Mariners got a grip on my heart sometime when I was so little I can’t even remember, and they aren’t letting go.
And so I soldier on. One day at a time. It’s dark now, pitch dark, but hope springs eternal. Any dreams for this season are dead and buried, but next year? Who knows? Maybe they’ll win it all. If not next year, then maybe the year after that. It’s got to happen sometime, right? And I know, or at least I tell myself, that if and when that ever happens it will all have been worth it. All the pain and the yearning and the endless suppressed suspicion that this is all just totally stupid will make the euphoria of victory that much sweeter. They say that anything worth doing is worth suffering for. I don’t know if I believe that, but, when it comes to baseball, I’m willing to say I do. If and when the Mariners ever win a World Series, I’m not going to do the “normal” fan thing. I’m not going to take the party to the streets and celebrate with my fellow Mariners fans. What I’m going to do is experience it the way that’s meaningful to me, the way I’ve really always experienced baseball. I’m going to sit alone in my room, and I’m going to smile until my eyes bleed.
The Mariners just lost again. That makes nine in a row. Nine straight defeats, nine straight missed opportunities, nine straight chances that the Mariners will never get back. From now until eternity, the Mariners will have lost every single game they played from July 6th 2011 to July 17th 2011. That’s an immutable fact. There’s nothing, literally nothing, that they will ever be able to do to change that. All these games, all these losses… Sure, there will be more chances in the future, but these ones are gone, gone forever. No matter where they go, no matter what success or happiness these players might someday attain, they’ll have to live with these crushing failures for the rest of their lives. It hurts. It hurts bad.
The worst thing about this recent string of defeats is how hopeless, how thoroughly, well, defeating they’ve been. Over the past nine games, the Mariners have been outscored 41 to 11. It’s been brutal. Bambi Meets Godzilla on a baseball field. Not once in the past two weeks have I gone into a game thinking that the Mariners have had any chance to win. And the team has done nothing but validate that hopelessness. At this point, it feels like the Mariners won’t ever win again. How could they? Seriously, how could this collection of assclowns ever hope to outscore another baseball team? What would that even look like? I can’t imagine it.
Except, no, that’s not right. I mean, come on. Of course the Mariners will win again. Quit with the drama, Pessimismo. This is nothing. Absolutely nothing. Why are you getting so worked up over nine bad games? Trust me, the Mariners have played a whole lot more than just nine bad games in their time. This is a drop in the bucket, and the only reason anyone cares is that these nine bad games happened to align temporally. The Mariners have won about 45 percent of their games this season. They’ll probably win about 45 percent of their games the rest of the season, too. That leaves room for them to win about thirty more games, and most likely about thirty more games they will win.
At least, that’s what the math says. After living through these last two weeks of baseball, though, it’s hard to trust the math. It’s hard to shake off two weeks worth of constant hopelessness and despair. It’s hard to really believe that the Mariners aren’t a miserable excuse for a baseball team, that they aren’t doomed, doomed, forever doomed. But you have to believe. What other choice is there? How could you possibly force yourself to keep following this team every. single. day. if there wasn’t at least some glimmer of hope? Stop paying attention? Stop being a fan? Let’s be real, those are not options. In my case, even if I wanted to go down that path (And I don’t. Winners never quit.), I don’t think I could. I can’t stop being a fan. I can’t. The Mariners got a grip on my heart sometime when I was so little I can’t even remember, and they aren’t letting go.
And so I soldier on. One day at a time. It’s dark now, pitch dark, but hope springs eternal. Any dreams for this season are dead and buried, but next year? Who knows? Maybe they’ll win it all. If not next year, then maybe the year after that. It’s got to happen sometime, right? And I know, or at least I tell myself, that if and when that ever happens it will all have been worth it. All the pain and the yearning and the endless suppressed suspicion that this is all just totally stupid will make the euphoria of victory that much sweeter. They say that anything worth doing is worth suffering for. I don’t know if I believe that, but, when it comes to baseball, I’m willing to say I do. If and when the Mariners ever win a World Series, I’m not going to do the “normal” fan thing. I’m not going to take the party to the streets and celebrate with my fellow Mariners fans. What I’m going to do is experience it the way that’s meaningful to me, the way I’ve really always experienced baseball. I’m going to sit alone in my room, and I’m going to smile until my eyes bleed.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
July 15, 2011: Mariners 0, Rangers 4 (43-50)
I believe the phrase I’m looking for here is “gruesome encore”. Hilarious joke, guys. Yeah, I did notice that this was the exact same game as yesterday. What do you expect me to do? Laugh? Newsflash: it wasn’t funny the first time, either. Why must I be subjected to this horrible repetition? Why? I guess this wasn’t a game for the fans. Fundamentally, there are two types of jokes: jokes meant to amuse the audience, and jokes meant to amuse the teller. This game was the latter. Thanks, Mariners. Nothing makes me happier about being a fan than when you use me as a tool for your amusement. It’s been an honor.
Today’s game featured a number of events. How many? I dunno, man. A few. Three of the events were run-scoring sacrifice flies, which doesn’t indicate anything beyond the fact that even when things happened they happened in the most boring way possible. What else? I guess Doug Fister wasn’t very good. He only had one strikeout in 7.2 innings, which might be worrisome if not for the fact that he’s Doug Fister, and he doesn’t get very many strikeouts even in the best of circumstances. These things happen some of the times. Based on the available evidence, I predict that Doug Fister will continue to deliver Doug Fister-esque performances in the future.
I would go on, but it’s obvious the Mariners aren’t even trying, so why should I? It’s not like there’s really anything else to say about this game. Maybe the next game will be better. Maybe the next game will give me something new and interesting to write about. I doubt it, though. Unfortunately, the Mariners are still the ones playing all of the Mariners' games, and that’s not going to change any time soon. Only 93 more games to go. Weeeeeeeeeeee.
Today’s game featured a number of events. How many? I dunno, man. A few. Three of the events were run-scoring sacrifice flies, which doesn’t indicate anything beyond the fact that even when things happened they happened in the most boring way possible. What else? I guess Doug Fister wasn’t very good. He only had one strikeout in 7.2 innings, which might be worrisome if not for the fact that he’s Doug Fister, and he doesn’t get very many strikeouts even in the best of circumstances. These things happen some of the times. Based on the available evidence, I predict that Doug Fister will continue to deliver Doug Fister-esque performances in the future.
I would go on, but it’s obvious the Mariners aren’t even trying, so why should I? It’s not like there’s really anything else to say about this game. Maybe the next game will be better. Maybe the next game will give me something new and interesting to write about. I doubt it, though. Unfortunately, the Mariners are still the ones playing all of the Mariners' games, and that’s not going to change any time soon. Only 93 more games to go. Weeeeeeeeeeee.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
July 14, 2011: Mariners 0, Rangers 5 (43-49)
Jeez, they’re STILL playing these games? Why? Nobody cares anymore. Nobody is getting emotionally invested in these games. Not one person in Seattle harbors any illusion that the Mariners are heading towards anything but failure. The team is finished. Kaput. Dead men walking. And yet, still, they walk. They left the plank a while ago, but somehow their legs keep propelling them forward, gracefully cutting through the air as they descend to the lapping waves and Davy Jones’ Locker below.
People are still watching, too. I would continue beating the high seas metaphor to death, maybe with a line comparing the Mariners’ fans to captured ship’s passengers, standing on the deck watching the original crew march to their deaths and thinking “Wow, I am so lucky that that isn’t happening to me. This is an incredible life-changing experience, and I am going to infuse it with meaning in order to shape my life for the better”, even though they’re just gonna die eventually too anyways, and so on and so forth, but I actually have too much respect for baseball to go down that route.
Today is the start of the best part of the baseball season. There’s no longer any obligation to watch the games, pay close attention to the team, care whether they get humiliated on national television for the infinitieth time. No obligations at all. Now, you can take a step away and just view baseball as background noise. It’s going on. It’s there for you if you want to passively listen to it while trimming the hedges or whatever. Whether you care or not, it’s something that really is always there, no matter where “there” is. And then you take another step away, and you realize that it’s not always there. For starters, there’s the offseason. Six months a year, baseball does not get played. And what about all those cities that don't get to have a Major League Baseball team playing in their backyard, representing the pride of their hometown night in and night out? What about all those countries that don’t even have baseball at all? And hey, let’s not forget, baseball has only been played for about 150 years. The number of years in which baseball has not been played is, um, bigger. We’re incredibly lucky to be living in this infinitesimal sliver of space and time in which baseball is an immediately accessible cultural thing. When you realize that, hearing a baseball game becomes something a bit different. Something a bit more special. It’s the sound of summer. It’s the sound of childhood. It’s the sound of dreams and memories and the greater culture that unites us all. It’s the sound of humanity. It’s beautiful.
Er, today’s game: from a Mariners perspective, this game came as close as possible to having literally nothing happen. It was so good at this that you couldn’t even say that it was noteworthy for having nothing happen. Maybe you could extract some interesting information from this game if you care about what the Rangers did, but the Rangers are just a bunch of people I’ll never meet who happened to play a sports game against some other people I’ll never meet. That isn’t quite enough to make me care. If you reeaaaally want some analysis and statistics, here’s a statistic for you: “0”. That’s quite a round number, isn’t it? Yeah. Think about that one for a while.
People are still watching, too. I would continue beating the high seas metaphor to death, maybe with a line comparing the Mariners’ fans to captured ship’s passengers, standing on the deck watching the original crew march to their deaths and thinking “Wow, I am so lucky that that isn’t happening to me. This is an incredible life-changing experience, and I am going to infuse it with meaning in order to shape my life for the better”, even though they’re just gonna die eventually too anyways, and so on and so forth, but I actually have too much respect for baseball to go down that route.
Today is the start of the best part of the baseball season. There’s no longer any obligation to watch the games, pay close attention to the team, care whether they get humiliated on national television for the infinitieth time. No obligations at all. Now, you can take a step away and just view baseball as background noise. It’s going on. It’s there for you if you want to passively listen to it while trimming the hedges or whatever. Whether you care or not, it’s something that really is always there, no matter where “there” is. And then you take another step away, and you realize that it’s not always there. For starters, there’s the offseason. Six months a year, baseball does not get played. And what about all those cities that don't get to have a Major League Baseball team playing in their backyard, representing the pride of their hometown night in and night out? What about all those countries that don’t even have baseball at all? And hey, let’s not forget, baseball has only been played for about 150 years. The number of years in which baseball has not been played is, um, bigger. We’re incredibly lucky to be living in this infinitesimal sliver of space and time in which baseball is an immediately accessible cultural thing. When you realize that, hearing a baseball game becomes something a bit different. Something a bit more special. It’s the sound of summer. It’s the sound of childhood. It’s the sound of dreams and memories and the greater culture that unites us all. It’s the sound of humanity. It’s beautiful.
Er, today’s game: from a Mariners perspective, this game came as close as possible to having literally nothing happen. It was so good at this that you couldn’t even say that it was noteworthy for having nothing happen. Maybe you could extract some interesting information from this game if you care about what the Rangers did, but the Rangers are just a bunch of people I’ll never meet who happened to play a sports game against some other people I’ll never meet. That isn’t quite enough to make me care. If you reeaaaally want some analysis and statistics, here’s a statistic for you: “0”. That’s quite a round number, isn’t it? Yeah. Think about that one for a while.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
July 10, 2011: Mariners 2, Angels 4 (43-48)
So, here we are at the All-Star break, and the Mariners have just lost their last five games, all of them against division rivals. The team now has a record of 43-48, and sits 6.5 back of the Angels and 7.5 back of the Rangers. At this point, it’s safe to say that the Mariners aren’t going to make the playoffs. Oh, sure, it’s technically possible, but let’s be real: It’s not going to happen. Even if the Rangers and Angels both only play .500 baseball from here on out, the Mariners would need to go 43-28 the rest of the way just to finish in a tie. You’ll note that that’s the same number of wins that the team has right now. You’ll also note that that’s a whopping twenty losses less than the team has right now. It’s not going to happen.
The upshot of this is that Mariners fans are going to have to come to terms with the fact that the outcomes of every single remaining game are virtually meaningless. All of a sudden, it doesn’t really matter who wins the ballgame. That’s a hard pill to swallow. How can you really be a fan of a team if you don’t care what happens? If the games, instead of being invigorating battles of life and death, are instead chilling reminders of the rote pointlessness of so much of human existence? It must be hard. I’m certainly not ready for that. But I guess I’ll just have to get used to it. What other choice do I have?
Quick breakdown of today’s game: the Mariners scored two runs, the Angels scored four runs. The Mariners had five hits, the Angels had eight hits. Mariners batters walked twice and struck out nine times, Angels batters walked thrice and struck out seven times. The Mariners threw 137 pitches, the Angels threw 122 pitches. Why do I tell you all this? Because. These are all things that happened in a baseball game, and things that happen in a baseball game are interesting and worth reporting, no matter how banal. You want me to try to prove my argument? Ok. You just read all those facts. Boom. There’s your proof.
The upshot of this is that Mariners fans are going to have to come to terms with the fact that the outcomes of every single remaining game are virtually meaningless. All of a sudden, it doesn’t really matter who wins the ballgame. That’s a hard pill to swallow. How can you really be a fan of a team if you don’t care what happens? If the games, instead of being invigorating battles of life and death, are instead chilling reminders of the rote pointlessness of so much of human existence? It must be hard. I’m certainly not ready for that. But I guess I’ll just have to get used to it. What other choice do I have?
Quick breakdown of today’s game: the Mariners scored two runs, the Angels scored four runs. The Mariners had five hits, the Angels had eight hits. Mariners batters walked twice and struck out nine times, Angels batters walked thrice and struck out seven times. The Mariners threw 137 pitches, the Angels threw 122 pitches. Why do I tell you all this? Because. These are all things that happened in a baseball game, and things that happen in a baseball game are interesting and worth reporting, no matter how banal. You want me to try to prove my argument? Ok. You just read all those facts. Boom. There’s your proof.
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Friday, July 8, 2011
July 7, 2011: Mariners 1, Angels 5 (43-45)
Today’s Mariners game wasn’t exactly pleasant. It was an awful day for baseball, with temperatures climbing as high as 98 degrees, and the game itself wasn’t exactly an oasis of comfort. The lone bright spot was the debut of new kid on the block Kyle Seager.
Despite the excitement, it wouldn’t be entirely appropriate to describe Seager’s debut as “much anticipated”. Seager had only even been in AAA for two weeks. His callup was less a much-deserved reward for sustained excellence and more due to his hot streak being in sync with the Mariners’ desperate need for a competent third baseman. The truth is, I don’t expect much from Seager right now. He definitely has potential to be a useful player, but it’s unlikely that he’s ready yet. Most likely, Seager will get a couple weeks of action, not be quite up to the challenge, and quickly get shipped back down the street to T-Town with the rest of the minor league boys.
And, like I expected, Seager’s first game wasn’t exactly a revelation. He looked lost, struck out multiple times, and was left black and blue by the pitching of Jered Weaver. It was rough, and served only to encourage my negativity. I’m willing to be proved wrong, though. I’ll hold off a bit before I really judge him. I do see talent there, and he has managed to get this far. It's not like he'll get beat up so bad he'll be knocked out of baseball for good. I’m sure Seager will hang tough and keep fighting. Even if he fails, he’ll learn something. The Mariners are giving him a chance, so I’ll give him a chance, too. No strings attached.
Since there’s not much to say about this game, I guess I should go over some blog issues. I know the schtick might get tiresome. I know that it might be time for me to be real and quit playing games. But it’s not really schtick if it comes from a core of honesty, and right now this is all I have to give. I’m writing the way I’m writing because I want it that way, and I don't particularly care what anyone else thinks. Ultimately, only one person will get to decide what get’s posted here. Who? Well, duh. It’s gonna be me. So this is it. The music of my heart. Where will it go? What will I play next? I don’t know, but this I promise you: I’ll never stop.
Until next time,
bye bye bye
Despite the excitement, it wouldn’t be entirely appropriate to describe Seager’s debut as “much anticipated”. Seager had only even been in AAA for two weeks. His callup was less a much-deserved reward for sustained excellence and more due to his hot streak being in sync with the Mariners’ desperate need for a competent third baseman. The truth is, I don’t expect much from Seager right now. He definitely has potential to be a useful player, but it’s unlikely that he’s ready yet. Most likely, Seager will get a couple weeks of action, not be quite up to the challenge, and quickly get shipped back down the street to T-Town with the rest of the minor league boys.
And, like I expected, Seager’s first game wasn’t exactly a revelation. He looked lost, struck out multiple times, and was left black and blue by the pitching of Jered Weaver. It was rough, and served only to encourage my negativity. I’m willing to be proved wrong, though. I’ll hold off a bit before I really judge him. I do see talent there, and he has managed to get this far. It's not like he'll get beat up so bad he'll be knocked out of baseball for good. I’m sure Seager will hang tough and keep fighting. Even if he fails, he’ll learn something. The Mariners are giving him a chance, so I’ll give him a chance, too. No strings attached.
Since there’s not much to say about this game, I guess I should go over some blog issues. I know the schtick might get tiresome. I know that it might be time for me to be real and quit playing games. But it’s not really schtick if it comes from a core of honesty, and right now this is all I have to give. I’m writing the way I’m writing because I want it that way, and I don't particularly care what anyone else thinks. Ultimately, only one person will get to decide what get’s posted here. Who? Well, duh. It’s gonna be me. So this is it. The music of my heart. Where will it go? What will I play next? I don’t know, but this I promise you: I’ll never stop.
Until next time,
bye bye bye
Thursday, July 7, 2011
July 6, 2011: Mariners 0, Athletics 2 (43-44)
Going into today’s Mariners game, I had guardedly high expectations. The early buzz surrounding the game was positive, and all the ingredients were there for an entertaining time. The protagonist (Jason Vargas) was in the midst of an unprecedented hot streak, and whispers were that today’s game would represent a career breakthrough. Although the antagonist (Guillermo Moscoso) was a relative unknown, his limited track record – bad, but entertainingly so – suggested strongly that he would be an ideal villain. The matchup pointed towards an entertaining, lighthearted romp – the Mariners would win, and, though they might struggle at times, we would never doubt them.
However, I know the Mariners. I’ve seen a lot of their work over the years. Their recent output suggested to me that the story might go another, much darker direction – the Mariners would lose, and they would lose in an excessively hopeless fashion. I was a little apprehensive about this possibility. It’s not that I have a problem with darkness or sadness in baseball. It’s just that that stuff works a lot better when it’s a rare exception. When it’s a common occurrence, it cheapens the emotion, and ends up feeling at best eye-rollingly immature, and at worst dry-heavesingly immature. I was afraid that the Mariners would make me embarrassed to watch them.
Still, though, I’ve had a lot of good experiences with Mariners, and I knew that there was a decent chance they would surprise me. I’m not going to downplay the anxiety, but I was more happy than not to see what the Mariners were doing these days. You never know when they might spit out a masterpiece.
What I got was a refreshingly experimental approach to the baseball experience. The Mariners interspersed two independent and contrasting narratives, rhythmically switching the focus every few minutes to prevent anyone from getting too comfortable. The first narrative was a fun, positive one, of a type we’ve seen a lot in recent weeks. The Mariners pitching cleaned up against the Athletics offense. Batter after batter came up, took a few feeble hacks, and sat back down. Some of them got their licks in, but on the whole the Athletics hitters were resoundingly defeated. In this half of the story, it was never in doubt that the Mariners pitching would triumph, but we still got to see a few token failures and challenges along the way to keep it interesting. Basically a standard, reasonably well-executed feel-good story.
The second narrative was a bit more unconventional. In this, the antagonist took center stage, while the forces of good battled to bring him to justice. Unfortunately for the forces of good, I use the term “battled” very liberally. Not only did the Mariners batters fail, but they didn’t even put up a fight. It was like they didn’t care. They kept voluntarily lining up by the batter’s box, knowing all the while that they were stepping into an execution. It was oddly one-note, and so relentlessly downbeat that it was hard to feel bad about what was happening. It felt extremely detached, and even might have been funny, if you could believe that anyone could create humor so black.
Basically, what we’re talking about is The Stupids mashed up with The Match Factory Girl, switching between narratives every seven minutes or so. It was a blinding contrast, the proximate effects of which were to make the victorious story seem naïve and existentially pointless, and to make the depressive story seem like a comically overwrought satire of adolescent mopiness. Ultimately, both stories were left seeming like essentially false perspectives on humanity. This concept, as I’m describing it now, sounds awesome, and let me tell you, it sure does feel awesome to think about. However, it wasn’t actually awesome to watch. At the time, there was no drama, no suspense, no purpose or direction or semblance of narrative arc. It wasn’t an easy game to engage with. I was interested enough to keep watching, but also fairly detached and more than occasionally bored. That’s always a hard situation to evaluate – I liked the game, I valued it, I’m glad I watched it, but it’s likely not something I would ever bother to watch again.
I think that’s ok though. Even if once is enough, I got something valuable out of that one viewing. The game made me think. It gave me ideas. It expanded my experience of the world. It made me a richer person, became a part of my life. Already it is weaving itself into a tapestry of moments, thoughts, and feelings, all of which I will look back on in my golden years with unreserved happiness. I guess what I’m saying is, I liked it.
Grade: B+
However, I know the Mariners. I’ve seen a lot of their work over the years. Their recent output suggested to me that the story might go another, much darker direction – the Mariners would lose, and they would lose in an excessively hopeless fashion. I was a little apprehensive about this possibility. It’s not that I have a problem with darkness or sadness in baseball. It’s just that that stuff works a lot better when it’s a rare exception. When it’s a common occurrence, it cheapens the emotion, and ends up feeling at best eye-rollingly immature, and at worst dry-heavesingly immature. I was afraid that the Mariners would make me embarrassed to watch them.
Still, though, I’ve had a lot of good experiences with Mariners, and I knew that there was a decent chance they would surprise me. I’m not going to downplay the anxiety, but I was more happy than not to see what the Mariners were doing these days. You never know when they might spit out a masterpiece.
What I got was a refreshingly experimental approach to the baseball experience. The Mariners interspersed two independent and contrasting narratives, rhythmically switching the focus every few minutes to prevent anyone from getting too comfortable. The first narrative was a fun, positive one, of a type we’ve seen a lot in recent weeks. The Mariners pitching cleaned up against the Athletics offense. Batter after batter came up, took a few feeble hacks, and sat back down. Some of them got their licks in, but on the whole the Athletics hitters were resoundingly defeated. In this half of the story, it was never in doubt that the Mariners pitching would triumph, but we still got to see a few token failures and challenges along the way to keep it interesting. Basically a standard, reasonably well-executed feel-good story.
The second narrative was a bit more unconventional. In this, the antagonist took center stage, while the forces of good battled to bring him to justice. Unfortunately for the forces of good, I use the term “battled” very liberally. Not only did the Mariners batters fail, but they didn’t even put up a fight. It was like they didn’t care. They kept voluntarily lining up by the batter’s box, knowing all the while that they were stepping into an execution. It was oddly one-note, and so relentlessly downbeat that it was hard to feel bad about what was happening. It felt extremely detached, and even might have been funny, if you could believe that anyone could create humor so black.
Basically, what we’re talking about is The Stupids mashed up with The Match Factory Girl, switching between narratives every seven minutes or so. It was a blinding contrast, the proximate effects of which were to make the victorious story seem naïve and existentially pointless, and to make the depressive story seem like a comically overwrought satire of adolescent mopiness. Ultimately, both stories were left seeming like essentially false perspectives on humanity. This concept, as I’m describing it now, sounds awesome, and let me tell you, it sure does feel awesome to think about. However, it wasn’t actually awesome to watch. At the time, there was no drama, no suspense, no purpose or direction or semblance of narrative arc. It wasn’t an easy game to engage with. I was interested enough to keep watching, but also fairly detached and more than occasionally bored. That’s always a hard situation to evaluate – I liked the game, I valued it, I’m glad I watched it, but it’s likely not something I would ever bother to watch again.
I think that’s ok though. Even if once is enough, I got something valuable out of that one viewing. The game made me think. It gave me ideas. It expanded my experience of the world. It made me a richer person, became a part of my life. Already it is weaving itself into a tapestry of moments, thoughts, and feelings, all of which I will look back on in my golden years with unreserved happiness. I guess what I’m saying is, I liked it.
Grade: B+
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
July 5, 2011: Mariners 4, Athletics 2 (43-43)
Have you noticed that this season’s Mariners games kind of all seem the same? Don’t answer that. I don’t care what you think. I care what I think, and my opinion is better than yours, for I have data.
Behold, the data: The Mariners have scored between -2 and 17 runs in every game this season. The Mariners have allowed between -1 and 20 runs in every game this season. Every Mariners game has lasted between 12 and 600 minutes. Every game, the Mariners have had between 3 and 40 players take the field. Most crucially, the Mariners have either won or lost every single game. That's right. Every. Single. Game. Yes, the proof is in the pudding. The Mariners have played basically the same game, over and over again, night in and night out, 86 times in a row. And they’re barely even halfway done.
Today, in a game notable mostly for being the most recent one to have been played, the Mariners beat the Athletics 4-2. The most exciting thing that happened in the game was a throwing error.
Closer Brandon League blew a save, embarrassing himself and proving that his All-Star selection was a grievous error, since the blown outing so soon after the All-Star announcement is a clear signal that League is incapable of handling the spotlight. People started to pay attention to him, the pressure built up, and he completely self-destructed. It's a familiar story. I have a feeling that we won’t be hearing much from him in the future. A baseball closer is like a marriage: if even one thing goes wrong, you should immediately chuck it and find someone new.
Also, Felix Hernandez pitched well. Felix Hernandez is good at pitching, as everyone knows. Was today’s game a sign that he might pitch well in the future? I have to say yes, and the data bears it out. Every time Felix has pitched a good game, he has gone on to pitch good games in the future. There’s no reason for the trend to stop now.
Afternoon game against the A’s “tomorrow”. I have a sneaking suspicion that it will be a meek defeat in which the A’s only score a couple runs, but the Mariners never come close to even getting one. I hope I’m wrong, but I’m tellin’ ya, I just got a feeling about this one.
Behold, the data: The Mariners have scored between -2 and 17 runs in every game this season. The Mariners have allowed between -1 and 20 runs in every game this season. Every Mariners game has lasted between 12 and 600 minutes. Every game, the Mariners have had between 3 and 40 players take the field. Most crucially, the Mariners have either won or lost every single game. That's right. Every. Single. Game. Yes, the proof is in the pudding. The Mariners have played basically the same game, over and over again, night in and night out, 86 times in a row. And they’re barely even halfway done.
Today, in a game notable mostly for being the most recent one to have been played, the Mariners beat the Athletics 4-2. The most exciting thing that happened in the game was a throwing error.
Closer Brandon League blew a save, embarrassing himself and proving that his All-Star selection was a grievous error, since the blown outing so soon after the All-Star announcement is a clear signal that League is incapable of handling the spotlight. People started to pay attention to him, the pressure built up, and he completely self-destructed. It's a familiar story. I have a feeling that we won’t be hearing much from him in the future. A baseball closer is like a marriage: if even one thing goes wrong, you should immediately chuck it and find someone new.
Also, Felix Hernandez pitched well. Felix Hernandez is good at pitching, as everyone knows. Was today’s game a sign that he might pitch well in the future? I have to say yes, and the data bears it out. Every time Felix has pitched a good game, he has gone on to pitch good games in the future. There’s no reason for the trend to stop now.
Afternoon game against the A’s “tomorrow”. I have a sneaking suspicion that it will be a meek defeat in which the A’s only score a couple runs, but the Mariners never come close to even getting one. I hope I’m wrong, but I’m tellin’ ya, I just got a feeling about this one.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
July 4, 2011: Mariners 2, Athletics 1 (42-43)
Big things are happening in Seattle. As we speak, the teeming masses of Mariners fandom are all atwitter over the All-Star selection of closer Brandon League, who collected his American League leading 23rd save today. Although such a feat is impressive, (by definition, only one person can have the league lead at any given time*), it is not as meaningful as one might like to think. Now, I don’t mean to argue that League isn’t a legitimately good player. He’s a valuable player, and the Mariners should be happy to have him. I’m just saying that Brandon League is not in any way “so good he ought to be illegal”.
The problem is that saves aren’t a very individually-descriptive statistic. They’re heavily driven by team context, managerial decisions, and our old friend Dumb Luck. When you get right down to it, League’s league lead is due as much to the awfulness of the Mariners offense as it is to his own talents. It's like this: A save requires that the winning team be up by three or less runs when the closer enters the game**. On the year, the Mariners have averaged 3.39 runs scored and 3.45 runs allowed per game. Seriously, is it really that surprising that most of the Mariners' wins have come by three runs or less? Of course League is going to get plenty of opportunities to pad his league lead, purely by virtue of showing up to work. Should we really be praising a guy for managing to make it to work when he’s making millions of dollars to play a children’s game and usually clocking in after nine p.m.?
Yes. Yes, we should. Brandon League works very hard and is very good at his job. He’s literally one of the best in the world. Praise him all you want. All I’m saying is, don’t go overboard just because he happens to lead the league in the world’s most arbitrary statistic***. It’s perfectly ok to like League. Just be careful before you let yourself love him.
Oh yeah, the Mariners also won a game today. It was actually a rerun of the game from April 21, though, so I’m not going to dignify it with a response.
*unless there’s a tie
**unless it’s one of a bunch of other arbitrary scenarios that don’t require that
***this is hyperbole. Wins, batting average, and ERA are all at least as arbitrary as saves. And don’t even get me started about holds...
The problem is that saves aren’t a very individually-descriptive statistic. They’re heavily driven by team context, managerial decisions, and our old friend Dumb Luck. When you get right down to it, League’s league lead is due as much to the awfulness of the Mariners offense as it is to his own talents. It's like this: A save requires that the winning team be up by three or less runs when the closer enters the game**. On the year, the Mariners have averaged 3.39 runs scored and 3.45 runs allowed per game. Seriously, is it really that surprising that most of the Mariners' wins have come by three runs or less? Of course League is going to get plenty of opportunities to pad his league lead, purely by virtue of showing up to work. Should we really be praising a guy for managing to make it to work when he’s making millions of dollars to play a children’s game and usually clocking in after nine p.m.?
Yes. Yes, we should. Brandon League works very hard and is very good at his job. He’s literally one of the best in the world. Praise him all you want. All I’m saying is, don’t go overboard just because he happens to lead the league in the world’s most arbitrary statistic***. It’s perfectly ok to like League. Just be careful before you let yourself love him.
Oh yeah, the Mariners also won a game today. It was actually a rerun of the game from April 21, though, so I’m not going to dignify it with a response.
*unless there’s a tie
**unless it’s one of a bunch of other arbitrary scenarios that don’t require that
***this is hyperbole. Wins, batting average, and ERA are all at least as arbitrary as saves. And don’t even get me started about holds...
Monday, July 4, 2011
July 1-3, 2011: Mariners 9, Padres 2 (41-43)
They say that baseball is a game of percentages. That it’s a game of pure talent and productivity, individuals doing as they do night in, night out. They say that heart doesn’t matter, that chemistry doesn’t matter, that willpower doesn’t matter, that grit and hustle and believing big are all totally irrelevant. Watching this weekend’s series, I realized that they’re wrong. There is one thing, one emotion that can make all the difference in the world: hatred. Pure, unadulterated hatred.
The Mariners and the Padres don’t like each other. Never have. There’s always been a sense of mutual loathing, but in recent years it’s spiraled into full-blown vitriol. These days, when these two teams play, it’s not just about winning a baseball game. It’s about humiliating the enemy, destroying their personhood and reminding them that you are the bird, and they are the worm. Baseball? This isn't baseball. It’s war. The normal rules do not apply.
That was on full display Saturday night, when the game was decided by the Padres’ Cameron Maybin’s choice to disregard usual protocol and take matters into his own hands. Maybin declared that he had earned a walk and then took first base, despite having received only three balls. Maybin’s confidence, chutzpah, and sheer force of personality paralyzed the stadium. The umpires said nothing. The Mariners said nothing. The fans said nothing. Not one person contested his executive action. Having demonstrated that he could do whatever he wanted, Maybin then chose to score the winning run from first base. It was an incredible heads-up play, a true brilliancy that will likely never be repeated. For that I say, "Cameron Maybin, you are a real man of genius."
Fortunately for the Mariners, Jason Vargas, Doug Fister, and Blake Beavan all channeled their rage into excellent pitching performances. For a few nights, each was able to transcend their usual selves and become something better. They pitched their asses off and beat the Padres into a fine powder, allowing the Mariners to take the series in spite of Maybin’s heroics. Unfortunately for the Mariners, they don’t get to keep playing the Padres. Next time, Jason Vargas will go back to being Jason Vargas, Doug Fister will go back to being Doug Fister, and Blake Beaven will go back to being whatever the hell he is. The Mariners won the war, but all victories are fleeting. Tomorrow, it’s back to the usual grind. Sic transit gloria mundi.
The Mariners and the Padres don’t like each other. Never have. There’s always been a sense of mutual loathing, but in recent years it’s spiraled into full-blown vitriol. These days, when these two teams play, it’s not just about winning a baseball game. It’s about humiliating the enemy, destroying their personhood and reminding them that you are the bird, and they are the worm. Baseball? This isn't baseball. It’s war. The normal rules do not apply.
That was on full display Saturday night, when the game was decided by the Padres’ Cameron Maybin’s choice to disregard usual protocol and take matters into his own hands. Maybin declared that he had earned a walk and then took first base, despite having received only three balls. Maybin’s confidence, chutzpah, and sheer force of personality paralyzed the stadium. The umpires said nothing. The Mariners said nothing. The fans said nothing. Not one person contested his executive action. Having demonstrated that he could do whatever he wanted, Maybin then chose to score the winning run from first base. It was an incredible heads-up play, a true brilliancy that will likely never be repeated. For that I say, "Cameron Maybin, you are a real man of genius."
Fortunately for the Mariners, Jason Vargas, Doug Fister, and Blake Beavan all channeled their rage into excellent pitching performances. For a few nights, each was able to transcend their usual selves and become something better. They pitched their asses off and beat the Padres into a fine powder, allowing the Mariners to take the series in spite of Maybin’s heroics. Unfortunately for the Mariners, they don’t get to keep playing the Padres. Next time, Jason Vargas will go back to being Jason Vargas, Doug Fister will go back to being Doug Fister, and Blake Beaven will go back to being whatever the hell he is. The Mariners won the war, but all victories are fleeting. Tomorrow, it’s back to the usual grind. Sic transit gloria mundi.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
June 29, 2011: Mariners 3, Braves 5 (39-42)
Mariners 3, Braves 5: A Thorough Analysis
Abstract:
The Seattle Mariners lost to the Atlanta Braves by a score of 5-3.
Introduction:
On June 29, 2011, the Seattle Mariners and Atlanta Braves played a baseball game. Atlanta scored five runs. Seattle scored three runs. For scoring more runs, Atlanta was credited with one win. Seattle was credited with one loss.
Analysis:
Seattle scored five runs, while Atlanta scored three. Five is ordinally superior to three, so the decision to award Atlanta with the win was made correctly.
Frame-by-frame tape study confirmed that no unrecorded runs were scored, leaving no doubt as to the validity of the game's outcome.
The Mariners scored three runs. Their season average (today’s game excluded) is 3.43 runs per game, marking today’s offensive performance as 87.6% of average. That’s worse than usual, but not by enough to say anything meaningful.
The Mariners allowed five runs. Their season average (today’s game excluded) is 3.56 runs per game, so today’s run prevention performance was 40.4% worse than average. That may or may not prove to be statistically significantly different from a normal game, but either way it’s still unlikely to be truly meaningful.
The Mariners scored 37.5% of the total runs in the game. Regression analysis reveals that this number being below 50% has a perfect one-to-one correlation with the Mariners losing baseball games. However, the data used was only 2011 Seattle Mariners games, so the study would need to be re-run with different teams and seasons in order to be generalizable. It’s entirely possible that the 2011 Mariners are a special case.
Exactly 18 half-innings were played. This, too, has a perfect correlation with the Mariners losing, but only when the sample is limited to home games* (*the recent Florida Marlins series was designated as “away” for the purposes of this study). The same caveats about generalizability mentioned in the last paragraph apply here as well.
Going forward, the data suggests that, if the Mariners wish to win baseball games, they should try to score more runs than their opponents.
Conclusion:
The Seattle Mariners lost to the Atlanta Braves by a score of 5-3. The Mariners most emphatically did not win. If the same score occurs in the future, it is almost certain that the Mariners will not win.
June 28, 2011: Mariners 4, Braves 5 (39-41)
In a surprise that could only be described as “Shyamalanesque”, the Seattle Mariners lost a baseball game on Tuesday. The team may have thought that it was being “clever”, ending the game in an unexpected way, but the fans saw right through it. The game’s climax turned out to be boring, clichéd, and predictable, the kind of thing that everyone had already seen a million times before. It was one hundred percent unoriginal. The oldest trick in the book. Puerile. Banal. Jejune. It was only surprising in that nobody thought that the Mariners would be lame enough to end it that way again, after it had already been done so, so many times before. But end it that way they did. That’s just how it is with the Mariners. It’s always been like this. The real surprise is that 100,000 people let themselves think that this time it might be different.
Time for some serious analysis. The optimist might say that today the Mariners offense played well, and just got unlucky. That the Mariners offense is showing signs of life, and today was a hint of better times ahead. The person who is interested in being correct might say that today’s Mariners game was just one of eighty that have been played this year, and thus is at best 1/80th of meaningful. That the Mariners offense has been awful, is awful, and will continue to be awful. Try to guess which side I think is right.
The Mariners continue to play the baseball. Wednesday afternoon, they again face off against the Braves, because travel is expensive and they might as well play a few while they’re here. The game will be just about as meaningful as the rest of them, so the way I see it there are two options: 1. Do something more useful with your time, such as determining which brand of cereal has the highest calories to dollars ratio, or 2. Pour your heart into the game, root root root for the home team, and try your damndest to let the outcome have a real effect on your emotional health. Either way is fine. I don’t judge.
Time for some serious analysis. The optimist might say that today the Mariners offense played well, and just got unlucky. That the Mariners offense is showing signs of life, and today was a hint of better times ahead. The person who is interested in being correct might say that today’s Mariners game was just one of eighty that have been played this year, and thus is at best 1/80th of meaningful. That the Mariners offense has been awful, is awful, and will continue to be awful. Try to guess which side I think is right.
The Mariners continue to play the baseball. Wednesday afternoon, they again face off against the Braves, because travel is expensive and they might as well play a few while they’re here. The game will be just about as meaningful as the rest of them, so the way I see it there are two options: 1. Do something more useful with your time, such as determining which brand of cereal has the highest calories to dollars ratio, or 2. Pour your heart into the game, root root root for the home team, and try your damndest to let the outcome have a real effect on your emotional health. Either way is fine. I don’t judge.
Monday, June 27, 2011
June 27, 2011: Mariners 1, Braves 3 (39-40)
On June 27, 2011, the 25 human beings who comprise the Seattle Mariners celebrated another day of their long, ceaseless slog towards oblivion by playing in a baseball game. The game proved an apt metaphor for their lives, as profound feelings of hopelessness and powerlessness quickly led the ballplayers towards a calm resignation to their fate, à la Bruce Willis in Armageddon or Tim Robbins in Mission to Mars. Sadly, the game turned out to be slightly less spectacularly exciting than either of those cinematic touchstones. Tonight's Mariners game didn’t explode into big honkin’ fireballs, and it didn’t compleat into psychedelic transcendence. No, it just kind of sputtered to its obvious, banal conclusion.
Tonight's game serves as a reminder that sometimes the most likely outcome does indeed happen. Sometimes, luck just sort of balances out. Sometimes, miniscule differences in talent really are all that matters. The Mariners offense is bad, and tonight it performed badly against quality pitching. The Mariners pitching is good, and tonight it performed well against low-quality hitting. Unfortunately, the Mariners hitting was slightly more bad than the Mariners pitching was good, and Atlanta's pitching was slightly more good than Atlanta's hitting was bad. Nothing new here. Same ol’, same ol’.
The defeat stands as one among many, indistinguishable from the many thousands of losses that all involved have already suffered through in their long, colossally successful careers as professional athletes. Today, they may have succumbed meekly to defeat, but that doesn’t matter. Tomorrow, the Mariners will get up and try again. And maybe, just maybe, they’ll decide to make a change. Maybe they’ll decide to seize control, carpe diem, take full responsibility for their lives. They’ll refuse to lose. They’ll play to win. They’ll believe in themselves and give it their all, and at the end of the day they WILL win that ballgame. Unless, of course, they don’t.
Tonight's game serves as a reminder that sometimes the most likely outcome does indeed happen. Sometimes, luck just sort of balances out. Sometimes, miniscule differences in talent really are all that matters. The Mariners offense is bad, and tonight it performed badly against quality pitching. The Mariners pitching is good, and tonight it performed well against low-quality hitting. Unfortunately, the Mariners hitting was slightly more bad than the Mariners pitching was good, and Atlanta's pitching was slightly more good than Atlanta's hitting was bad. Nothing new here. Same ol’, same ol’.
The defeat stands as one among many, indistinguishable from the many thousands of losses that all involved have already suffered through in their long, colossally successful careers as professional athletes. Today, they may have succumbed meekly to defeat, but that doesn’t matter. Tomorrow, the Mariners will get up and try again. And maybe, just maybe, they’ll decide to make a change. Maybe they’ll decide to seize control, carpe diem, take full responsibility for their lives. They’ll refuse to lose. They’ll play to win. They’ll believe in themselves and give it their all, and at the end of the day they WILL win that ballgame. Unless, of course, they don’t.
June 26, 2011: Mariners 2, Marlins 1 (39-39)
An unusual thing happened today: the Mariners game went into extra innings. After nine, the teams were tied, and so had to keep playing until a lone victor could be determined. Now, I, personally, find it unusual that this sort of event is unusual. Could it really be so rare that two major league baseball teams are evenly matched? After all, ninety percent of teams have win percentages between .400 and .600. It seems that teams should battle to a standstill all the time.
It’s really weird that reality doesn’t agree with the intuition, so let’s take a step back and examine the logic. It goes like this: Teams, in general, are very similar in talent level. Therefore, it should be common for evenly-matched teams to play, and thus it should be common for teams to battle to a tie. This sounds good, so why isn’t it true? Well, there’s another implied assumption that should go between those two sentences, and it’s this: The outcome of baseball games is largely determined by talent. The data forces us to conclude that this assumption is wrong – a conclusion that actually jibes with conventional baseball wisdom. Any grizzled old timey baseball man could tell you that there's lots of stuff other than pure athletic talent that goes into a baseball game. There’s luck, and chance, and variance, and flukes, and bad breaks, and freak accidents, and acts of God. There’s all those things and more. It’s a beautiful game, with so many compelling factors to consider. That’s baseball, the exciting game of meaningless random events. It’s kind of like life.
In more specific news, today’s win increases the Mariners’ odds of making the playoffs from 21.1% all the way up to 22.9%. My bones are literally vibrating from excitement. An extra 1.8% chance at getting a roughly 10% chance at actually winning a championship? Hoo baby. A World Series win would mean so, so much to the city of Seattle, and that extra 9/5000 could make all the difference in the world. Will it happen? Will the Seattle Mariners flip heads five-and-a-half times in a row, or will they choke like a bunch of big choking losers? In only 95 to 103 games, we’ll find out. I can’t wait.
It’s really weird that reality doesn’t agree with the intuition, so let’s take a step back and examine the logic. It goes like this: Teams, in general, are very similar in talent level. Therefore, it should be common for evenly-matched teams to play, and thus it should be common for teams to battle to a tie. This sounds good, so why isn’t it true? Well, there’s another implied assumption that should go between those two sentences, and it’s this: The outcome of baseball games is largely determined by talent. The data forces us to conclude that this assumption is wrong – a conclusion that actually jibes with conventional baseball wisdom. Any grizzled old timey baseball man could tell you that there's lots of stuff other than pure athletic talent that goes into a baseball game. There’s luck, and chance, and variance, and flukes, and bad breaks, and freak accidents, and acts of God. There’s all those things and more. It’s a beautiful game, with so many compelling factors to consider. That’s baseball, the exciting game of meaningless random events. It’s kind of like life.
In more specific news, today’s win increases the Mariners’ odds of making the playoffs from 21.1% all the way up to 22.9%. My bones are literally vibrating from excitement. An extra 1.8% chance at getting a roughly 10% chance at actually winning a championship? Hoo baby. A World Series win would mean so, so much to the city of Seattle, and that extra 9/5000 could make all the difference in the world. Will it happen? Will the Seattle Mariners flip heads five-and-a-half times in a row, or will they choke like a bunch of big choking losers? In only 95 to 103 games, we’ll find out. I can’t wait.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
June 25, 2011: Mariners 2, Marlins 4 (38-39)
Through 76 games, the 2011 Seattle Mariners did not have a good offense. Today, nothing changed. Surprising nobody, the Mariners hit poorly and scored two runs in an unexceptional performance. The offense was bad, and it was bad in a way that most everyone was already fully aware that it was capable of. Still, though, there’s reason to hope. Progress is being made. Prior to the game, the Mariners had scored 265 runs on the year. Afterwards, that total went up to 267. It’s a refreshingly positive trend, and I expect that number to keep increasing as the season continues.
Through 80 career starts, Jason Vargas was a mediocre pitcher. Today, in his 81st career start, nothing changed. Vargas was mediocre, pitching in such a way that no one could possibly hope to glean any new information from his performance. Unfortunately, mediocrity wasn’t good enough. The four runs that the opposing team scored while Vargas pitched turned out to be more than the two runs that Vargas’ eight teammates scored, leaving Vargas solely responsible for the loss. He’s gonna have a long, hard night ahead to think about what he did, and also what some other people who aren’t him did.
The loss puts the team’s record below .500, but they’ll get a chance to fix that, as another game will be played on Sunday night. If they win, they could advance their season total to 39 wins, but if they lose they’ll be stuck at only 38. It’s all or nothing, at least until Monday, and you can be sure that this time the Mariners will try just about as hard as they usually do.
Through 80 career starts, Jason Vargas was a mediocre pitcher. Today, in his 81st career start, nothing changed. Vargas was mediocre, pitching in such a way that no one could possibly hope to glean any new information from his performance. Unfortunately, mediocrity wasn’t good enough. The four runs that the opposing team scored while Vargas pitched turned out to be more than the two runs that Vargas’ eight teammates scored, leaving Vargas solely responsible for the loss. He’s gonna have a long, hard night ahead to think about what he did, and also what some other people who aren’t him did.
The loss puts the team’s record below .500, but they’ll get a chance to fix that, as another game will be played on Sunday night. If they win, they could advance their season total to 39 wins, but if they lose they’ll be stuck at only 38. It’s all or nothing, at least until Monday, and you can be sure that this time the Mariners will try just about as hard as they usually do.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
June 24, 2011: Mariners 5, Marlins 1 (38-38)
Yesterday, reigning Cy Young Award winner and universally-acknowledged excellent pitcher Felix Hernandez had a characteristically excellent start, reminding everyone that he still is excellent pitcher Felix Hernandez, and will be for the foreseeable future. Against a subpar National League lineup, Felix pitched well and experienced neither particularly good luck nor particularly bad luck, and as such gave up a small but non-zero number of runs in his eight quality innings.
The Mariners offense was as anemic as ever, achieving only one hit (collected, appropriately enough, by non-hitter Felix Hernandez) through the first six innings. Fortunately, the small number of baserunners that the Mariners did manage happened through sheer chance to bunch together in a single inning, allowing them to collect multiple runs. A typical dinger from one-dimensional power hitter Miguel Olivo gave the Mariners enough room to comfortably score more runs than they allowed, causing them to win the game.
With the game in the books, the Mariners become one of many teams to defeat the Florida Marlins this season, and the Florida Marlins become one of slightly fewer but still many teams to be defeated by the Mariners. The win brings Seattle's record to .500 for the sixth time in the last month. The team's performance to date bears all the hallmarks of an average team, so expect them to remain near .500 for a while, unless something unlikely happens, which it probably will. Any individual sequence of events is unlikely, but it is extremely likely that one of them will happen. Will the Mariners win more than they lose in the next week, or will they lose more than they win? Either way, they’ll keep playing the games. Tune in tonight to see Jason Vargas pitch, in a game that will almost assuredly involve something happening.
The Mariners offense was as anemic as ever, achieving only one hit (collected, appropriately enough, by non-hitter Felix Hernandez) through the first six innings. Fortunately, the small number of baserunners that the Mariners did manage happened through sheer chance to bunch together in a single inning, allowing them to collect multiple runs. A typical dinger from one-dimensional power hitter Miguel Olivo gave the Mariners enough room to comfortably score more runs than they allowed, causing them to win the game.
With the game in the books, the Mariners become one of many teams to defeat the Florida Marlins this season, and the Florida Marlins become one of slightly fewer but still many teams to be defeated by the Mariners. The win brings Seattle's record to .500 for the sixth time in the last month. The team's performance to date bears all the hallmarks of an average team, so expect them to remain near .500 for a while, unless something unlikely happens, which it probably will. Any individual sequence of events is unlikely, but it is extremely likely that one of them will happen. Will the Mariners win more than they lose in the next week, or will they lose more than they win? Either way, they’ll keep playing the games. Tune in tonight to see Jason Vargas pitch, in a game that will almost assuredly involve something happening.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)