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
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