It's a miserable day here. Cold, wet, windy, dreary, dismal...and that's just the weather. A lot of varying degrees of bad and awful news has been coming our way in the past 24 hours or so and everyone around my neck of the woods is pretty morose today. So to try to give myself a bit of a lift, I've decided to write about two of my favourite intertwined spring things: baseball and baseball statistics.
This is not by any means a light read, like my ode to the sport of baseball from a couple of weeks back. If you're not really into the game, this may not be the post for you. If you
are, however, then I would love to hear your views on what I will be writing here.
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Blue Jays opening day lineup 2012 |
I consider myself to be a student of baseball. I used to play Fantasy Baseball to the point where I could name you the number of strikeouts the long-relief pitcher on the Kansas Royals had at any given moment in the season. One of my favourite baseball gurus was
Bill James; I bought his annual
Baseball Abstracts every year and pored over them like they held the Caramilk secret. I followed the Expos from their very first pitch to their very last one; I've been a Blue Jays fan since that snowy day in April of '77. I've seen virtually every conceivable batting order possible in my many years. And, in my opinion, there is something very wrong with the Blue Jays' batting order (the Opening Day version is pictured at the left) this season.
Last year John Farrell was a rookie manager. After many years as the Red Sox pitching coach, Farrell was hired on to take over from the fan favourite, Cito Gaston. Not an easy gig, I would think, so I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt for much of last season while he got his feet wet. But he is showing no signs of progressing and learning from his experiences of 2011 and I am starting to find it troubling.