In a post reacting to Jayson Werth’s appointment to the NL all-star team, ESPN.com’s Rob Neyer says, “based on performance, Matt Kemp would have been a significantly better choice.”

And of course, Rob, you’re entitled to your opinion. But I’d like a little bit more explanation, because I just don’t see it. I mean, I see that Kemp is deserving (he’s far more deserving than Ryan Howard, in my opinion). But I don’t think he’s significantly better than Werth.

Sure, Kemp hits for better average, but Werth has twice as many homers. Kemp’s OPS+ is 131. Werth’s is 132. Both guys have lopsided platoon splits. Both steal the occasinoal base.

I get that Kemp plays center field, and that’s no small detail. But it’s not like Werth is a defensive slouch. In fact, he played a lot of CF last season while Victorino was on the DL, and his 2008 ultimate zone rating was 21.5. Kemp’s UZR in 2008? -0.1 (though he’s at 10.1 so far this season).

So, I just don’t see the big difference.

Maybe you were just a little grumpy when you heard about this (and really who could blame you?). Or maybe I’m missing something. Wouldn’t be the first time.

I’m popping open the virtual champagne this afternoon, as word has come forth from on high that four more Internet writers have been added to the ranks of the BBWAA. (Maybe now that they’re starting to embrace the Interwebs, they can fix their hideous website.) The newbs are ESPN’s Keith Law and Rob Neyer, who were unaccountably snubbed last year, and Will Carroll and Christina Kahrl of Baseball Prospectus. This last has been in an especially bright spirits because she’s one of my faves and, hey, she’s a chick! I think that makes…what, six or seven? You go, extreme minority of girls! I think, if I squint, I can see a tiny speck on the horizon that might just be a future where I don’t feel morally obligated to rip everything the BBWAA does.

Somewhere, Murray Chass is gnashing his teeth and no doubt making an angry phone call.

There are some concepts in which I believe strongly and try to express here on this blog (It’s not a blog! Yes it is!). But I fail miserably in doing so because I couldn’t do it concisely and poignantly.

Hello, ladies.

Thankfully, there are others who are far better at this than I am:

When a team adds a player like (Mark) Teixeira, the general assumption is that the team has to play better, because he’ll play better than whoever he’s replaced and everyone else will play exactly as they’ve been playing. But of course the real world doesn’t work that way. Some guys will play about the same, some will play better, some will play worse. In this particular case, it’s pretty clear that the guys playing worse have outnumbered the guys playing better. Or perhaps that the guys playing worse have been worse than the guys playing better have been better.

This is what Rob Neyer wrote in his blog this morning (ESPN Insider only) concerning the Angels and their record since adding Mark Teixeira. And it’s a paragraph that’s both difficult to follow yet easy at the same time. But it makes total sense.

As Neyer points out in the entry, prior to trading for Tex, the Angels were 66-40. But despite adding the big bat who has produced very well since coming to Anaheim, they’ve had a worse winning percentage (22-17).

And our inability to recognize the fact that human performances, especially in baseball, don’t follow linear progressions is something that drives me nuts at times. We can’t simply “add five more wins” to a previous year’s team total because they’ve acquired an ace pitcher and call it a projection. Doing so assumes that everyone else on the team will perform exactly the same, which is something that NEVER happens.

So what does this rant have to do with anything that’s going on in baseball right now? Well, not much, really. It’s just a point that was made by Neyer that I wholeheartedly support but couldn’t articulate in past posts.

And besides, I’m terrified to write anything positive about the Mets right now.

This week, Barry Bonds’ agent came out and quashed a rumor that Bonds might consider signing with an Independent League team. But the biggest news regarding Bonds was his agent’s revelation that Barry would sign with a Major League team for the league minimum – prorated, no less.

Immediately the blogosphere responded. Joe Posnanski says he thinks the Royals should sign Bonds.  And Rob Neyer says he thinks Posnanski is crazy. While Sabernomics thinks the Braves should sign Bonds

Who should sign Bonds? I like the idea of the Braves adding Barry. Also, the Athletics were considered the favorites to sign Bonds in the offseason and, now that they’re in the thick of the AL West race and have a healthy Rich Harden, Bonds could help push them into the postseason.

Of course, nobody is going to sign Bonds. Major League teams have made it very clear that they’re not interested.

Isn’t it amazing that teams are willing to give third, fourth and fifth chances to Garry Sheffield, Shawn Chacon, Brett Myers, Milton Bradley, Sidney Ponson, etc., but nobody will pay Bonds the league minimum to bring his insane OPS to their city?

Our landlord recently told us that she’s not going to let us renew our lease, so Suz and I have had to find a new place to live. We found an apartment in a duplex right down the street and it’s great, but it’s a little smaller than the place we’re in now so we’re going to have to get rid of a few things. This morning we sold two end tables and a matching coffee table. Thank god for Craigslist, eh?

Suz and I are going to miss our spacious house and our lovely end tables, but there’s a feeling of freedom that comes with simplifying one’s life. It can be good to downsize, to divest oneself of excess baggage.

Rob Neyer agrees (subscription required). Today he blogs about some of the players he’d kick out of the baseball Hall of Fame. He says he’d boot about 25 percent of Hall members.

Neyer’s attitude is downright umpbumpian. This winter, Nick wrote two posts on the topic of “fixing the hall.” In the first, he talked about the players he wants to induct. In the second, he talked about the players he wants to kick out. Give them a read to see how Nick and Neyer match up.

Here at Umpbump, we value all reader comments equally. But we value some reader comments a little more equally than others.

So it was with great pride that we learned that ESPN stat-head Rob Neyer decided to critique Nick’s post, 33 men (and one woman) out: the all-time worst Hall of Famers, on his blog.

You can read Neyer’s commentary here.

If you’re not an ESPN Insider, you can read the text of Neyer’s post after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t think that I would ever dare challenge Peter Gammons and his views on things. We’re talking about a guy who has elevated his profession to a point that I can’t even fathom me doing in mine (which, by the way, is far less interesting than baseball journalism and will never get me into Cooperstown).

But now, more and more often, I feel like the man is indirectly criticizing me for liking non-conventional  statistics. And I guess I didn’t expect any of this from a guy like him, especially because it wasn’t too long ago that he was considered one of the old school writers who was open to utilizing sabermetrics.

But since late October, here are some things that Gammons has written (seemingly unprovoked, mind you):

Want to know about winners? (Dustin) Pedroia gave up his scholarship at Arizona State to free up money to sign a much-needed pitcher, so when the Sun Devils reached the College World Series, coaches and players had “DP” on their caps in honor of their leader who never got to Omaha. The sabermetrics guys in their garages never understand these things.- October 29, 2007

Raines, Rickey Henderson and Wade Boggs were the best of the ’80s and early ’90s, and while some of our sabermetric fellows do not believe players are humans, Raines made every team he was on better – December 29, 2007

I voted for (Jim Rice), but it’s been interesting that there have been people like Rob Neyer who are so obsessed with degrading Rice’s career. - January 3, 2008

What gives, Peter? All three of these comments were written regarding topics that didn’t necessarily have to include sabermetrics. Gammons was the one who brought up the topic.

Look, I get it. I’m not sure if I’m good enough at analyzing numbers to even qualify as a sabermetrics guy, but as a group, we can be incredibly snarky and too stubborn to take intangibles into account – not because we “do not believe players are humans”, but because none of the hard data proves that these things help in any way shape or form. If we can’t prove that Jason Varitek’s leadership helped David Ortiz hit 5 more homeruns than he would have otherwise, then we can’t take it into account when crunching numbers. It’s all it is.

And I don’t want to speak for Rob Neyer (who has probably penned a few too many words against Rice’s candidacy) because he can take care of himself. But I don’t think that he ever even thought to “degrade Rice’s career” to any extent. I think it’s far more accurate to say that Neyer and others (including myself) disagree with the manner in which Rice is perceived. Simply put, it doesn’t appear to me that Jim Rice would have been even close to the Hall if he didn’t play so many games in Fenway Park. And if he really was feared to the extent that’s been written and spoken about him, he’d have been walked far more often than he actually was. Does this stance qualify as “degrading”? Not to me, it doesn’t. If it does, then it stands to reason that I degrade Miguel Olivo’s career by claiming that he can’t hit a lick.

I really doubt that I would have been bothered by any of these comments had they been written by Skip Bayless or Bill Conlin. But Gammons is obviously a guy I have tremendous respect for. And it makes me a little sad to be honest. See, Peter? We have feelings too.