A bit of baseball as the fall begins...

I'll go in for a bit of baseball today, since it gets something up on the blog and maybe it'll kickstart things...

Got to watch Zack Greinke pitch against the Sox on Tuesday night, and man was it ever impressive, I'll get to him in a moment. But the pregame show did not exactly fill me with confidence for the state of baseball commentary. Tom Caron was leading the panel through a discussion of Greinke's chances at the Cy Young Award this year, and both Dave Roberts and Jim Rice were skeptical as to his worthiness. In response to Caron's rather obvious point of "yeah, he's only got 14 wins, but look at the team he's got behind him, it's amazing he has that many," Boston's newest Hall of Famer responded with something along the lines of "well, that's just something you have to overcome."

And that's fair. Because any pitcher (especially an American League pitcher) should have the will, the spirit, the pure balls to provide his own run support every time out. Sure, in Greinke's 8 losses this year, his team has scored a combined 13(!) runs, but that's not because the Royals are staggeringly awful, it's because Greinke hasn't shown enough leadership. Little known fact: of Curt Schilling's 7+ runs of support per game in 2004, 5.2 of them were put on the board merely by his steely gaze.

Then, as the game started, it got sillier. Sean Casey, filling in for Jerry Remy while the Sox are in KC, said that the key to Zack Greinke's success this year has been "consistency." Now, I'd agree that his ability to "consistently" mix two different fastballs with a slider, a power change, and a 66-mph curveball has been useful. But I'm not sure "consistency" is the first term I'd use in praise of the lad. "Consistency" has the connotation in baseball of "grinding," "hard-nosed play," "being not very good but showing up to work early and leaving with dirt on your pants."

It's also famously Joe Morgan's favorite word about baseball, which gives me an excuse to mention this:

Mike (CT)
Do you think a speedy player should lead off the batting order or a player that gets on base a lot but isn’t that fast? Thanks.

Joe Morgan (11:23 AM)
I would rather have a speedy player. I’ll give you a great example. Wade Boggs hit lead off most of his career, had 200 hits a lot, high batting average, high OBP, but couldn’t run. His OBP was higher than Rickey Henderson’s but who would you rather have leading off? That should answer your question. A guy that can run sets the table, sets the tone, puts pressure on the other team right away. A guy who gets on base and can’t run isn’t as valuable as one who can.

So fine, standard FJM-approved Joe-Baiting question. The examples completely blew me away, though. Citing Boggs as your high-OBP, low-speed guy? Excellent call, Wade had a career .415 and was a less-than Ellsburyesque 24-for-59 in stolen bases. Rickey Henderson, of course, is the all-time leader in stolen bases, hailed by everyone as the greatest baserunner the game's ever seen. Except, as far as using him as the model for the more speed/less OBP leadoff hitter? Well, here's two numbers:

.401
2,190

The first number is Rickey's career OBP, the second is his career walk total, which is second only to Barry Bonds on the all-time list. Rickey Henderson was the Platonic ideal of a leadoff hitter, a man who got on base a ton and wreaked havoc once he was there. Of course you'd rather have him leading off than Wade Boggs. The question might as well have gone like this:

SAWXR00L!(Brighton, MA):
Hey Joe, if you were building a team from scratch, would you rather have a hitter like Ichiro, who bats .350 but doesn't hit many dingers, or Adam Dunn, who hits .240 but smacks 40 HR every single year?

Joe Morgan:
I'd rather have Albert Pujols.

Not actually going to get to Greinke in this one, but tomorrow definitely need to discuss the best pitching performance since the heyday of Pedro Martinez.