|
|
|
 |
Jeff Fletcher | August 31, 2010
The voting starts Wednesday at 7 am PT for the Ford C. Frick award for baseball broadcasting. You can vote at the Hall of Fame’s Facebook page. The top three vote-getters from the fan balloting go onto the final 10-name ballot, which will be considered by a special committee in December.
By the way, what does it say that Facebook now has a part in the Hall of Fame selection process?
Jeff Fletcher | August 30, 2010
Much as I hate linking to CBSSports.com, which is a direct competitor of FanHouse, I’ve got to bring this quote to you, from my pal Scott Miller’s column. Miller asked a scout about Tim Lincecum, and here’s what he heard.
“Lincecum is done. I think he’s finished. He used to sit at 92, 93 [mph with his fastball] and then hop it up to 96, 97. Now, he sits at 89, 90 and when he reaches back, it’s 96, 97. And the problem is, his offspeed stuff isn’t effective enough to compensate.”
That’s pretty harsh. The people I talk to seem to have some concerns about Lincecum, but no one has gone that far. Anyway, there ya go.
Jeff Fletcher | August 30, 2010
I do a regular little deal on SNY.tv whenever the Giants or A’s play the Yankees or Mets. It’s a little breakdown of the local teams for those New Yorkers. Anyway, here’s my little bit on the A’s today.
Also, I’ll be on Chronicle Live tonight. I am scheduled to do a little hit from AT&T Park between 5 and 5:15.
Jeff Fletcher | August 28, 2010
Here is my FanHouse story on Tim Lincecum’s outing last night. Got into a few of the theories about what has happened to him.
I am still skeptical about all the fuss made over his velocity, because I think his velocity started dipping a few years ago, and that was by design. Look at his final game of 2009. His average fastball was 89 mph. He gave up two runs in seven innings.
I think, as Adam LaRoche said in my story, the problem is his command. He’s leaving balls all over the place. Why? I have no idea. If I did, I wouldn’t be working for FanHouse. I’d be working for the Giants.
Jeff Fletcher | August 27, 2010
You may have already seen this on the MLB Hour. If not, here is the little video package I did on Pat Burrell. It’s not very revealing, but it’s on video!
Jeff Fletcher | August 26, 2010
My earlier discussion of Trevor Cahill’s Cy Young candidacy, and a related tweet, sparked a debate with one of my followers, which led me to this well-timed, excellent piece by Dave Cameron of FanGraphs.
(Ironic, if you recall a little spat between me and Cameron, or more specifically, between me and Cameron’s followers, from last year. Anyway, now I work at FanHouse and FanGraphs is one of our partners, so we’re all friends.)
Back to the point, I have often argued that FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching) got too much play when it came to Cy Young discussion. It was my reasoning for suggesting that Chris Carpenter deserved the Cy Young over Tim Lincecum last year, and I got into it a little more this year. Well, Trevor Cahill is shaping up to be this year’s Carpenter, a guy who gets a lot of outs, but gets no respect from the sabermetric community because he’s not racking up enough strikeouts. They say he’s just lucky.
Jeff Fletcher | August 26, 2010
This is going to be the sixth year, if memory serves, that I have a Cy Young vote. I admit that I didn’t always do the best job of voting. In fact, I voted for Barry Zito in 2002 when I should have voted for Pedro Martinez. Zito had more wins, but Pedro was better in every other way.
Anyway, now I feel like I’ve come to a good place where I have a handle on what I’m doing. I believe, as I’ve written several times before, that the Cy Young is not the Best Pitcher, and it’s not the Most Valuable Pitcher. It’s the Pitcher Who Pitched the Best. The two best ways to measure how effective a pitcher was, in my opinion, are his ERA and his opponents on-base percentage. After all, the job of a pitcher, when you boil it down to its essence, is to get outs and prevent runs.
