Sitting up and sitting down are the same thing. Skating on thin ice can get you into hot water. Crowing is the opposite of eating crow. Go figure. Time again to put the blog in reverse and examine which 2011 posts were worthy of four and twenty blackbirds and which inspire a meal of humble pie.
Let's start right in the basement with my suggestion that Ryan Howard would bounce back -- barring injuries -- closer to his career standard of .280/.372/.573 with 46 home runs than to his injury-addled 2010 performance of .277/.353/.505 with 31 gone. Doink! Howard barred the injuries, but continued the slide to .253/.346/.488 with 33 homers. Much of the decline is attributable to his burgeoning struggles against southpaws -- a .634 OPS in 2011.
Howard's physical stature and lack of secondary skills has always suggested his decline would resemble voting in Chicago -- early and often. Without the parachute of speed, baserunning, defense or positional flexibility, Howard won't be the first immobile slugger to crash land after 30.
Peering down the division, this post on the Mets recommended that they flip Jose Reyes for some tasty young treats that could help in future years. Before the peanut gallery launches into huzzahs, the reason was not so much that Miami would whisk Reyes away in free agency, but that Reyes was unlikely to continue to deliver high value by the time the Mets were ready to contend. That's probably still true, but I sure didn't see a batting title and 16 triples coming.
Memo to Carolina Panthers: run like Mike Vick from Cam Newton. Avoid Newton, Mass. Don't eat any Fig Newtons.
Let's consider the track record for run-first quarterbacks with low Wunderlick scores from simplified college offenses: Vick, Vince Young, Jamarcus Russel, Cam Newton. Okay, Newton's a better passer than the rest of them. He's also the only one who grew up in the shadow of a sleazebag preacher.
Run like a leaky faucet, Panthers. There are plenty of other areas in which you suck that could use a top draft pick.
Fun! For added emphasis, I noted in the same post that the NBA playoffs were all about determining which team would play the Lakers in the finals. It's prognostications like those that make this a great baseball blog.
Time for a win. Documenting the best pitcher you've never heard of is an oxymoronic exercise. You've heard of Mike Adams now. His prowess is now a matter of more renown after a summer as a hot trade deadline commodity and a fall as a World Series participant with Texas. In Arlington, his ERA ballooned to 2.10 in 25 innings of work and his strikeout rate dipped just below one per inning. That constitutes failure only in contrast to the 1.13, 1.76 and 0.73 ERAs he posted in his two-and-a-half previous seasons in San Diego.
If pronouncing Jose Bautista the real thing counts for anything, the Braindrizzling cap gets a new feather. By May, Bautista had demonstrated that 2010 was no fluke. Starting in July, though, he coasted and cost himself an MVP award. Throw in another feather if there's any credit to be earned for shoveling dirt on the title hopes of San Diego and Minnesota after 50 games. Both teams ended the seasons in the basement and their prospects for 2012 are similarly dismal.
As are the great Ichiro Suzuki's, whose skills retired to Japan without him last year. A mid-season review of Ichiro's decline noted that his offensive value was always about his ability to beat out singles. That singular skill gone, along with prodigious defensive prowess, all Ichiro had left was 40 of 47 steals and a $17 million swan song in '12. His final 2011 line: .272/.310/.335 and less than a win of offensive value above replacement. In 2012, cover your eyes.
By mid-June, Rangers rookie hurler Alexi Ogando was 7-0, 2.10. Closing the first half of the season with a three-run double, this space encouraged all fantasy owners to "sell him now" because his final ERA would hit 3.50 and Rangers brass would limit his innings. Bingo! Ogando went 6-8 the rest of the way and pitched just 64 frames in the second half. And his final ERA:3.51. I stand corrected.
The larger point about Ogando is that no one could have predicted that kind of regression so precisely 20 years ago. Knowing the impact of BABIP, strand rates and workload jumps made that observation possible. The science of player analysis has advanced radically in two decades, and those who ignore it -- or worse yet, denigrate it -- do so at their own peril. Ogando's second-half travails were not only unsurprising, they were easily predictable given some pretty easily accessed information.
So that's the first half of the 2011 season redux. Two more of these to come. Don't say you weren't warned.
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By mid-June, Rangers rookie hurler Alexi Ogando was 7-0, 2.10. Closing the first half of the season with a three-run double, this space encouraged all fantasy owners to "sell him now" because his final ERA would hit 3.50 and Rangers brass would limit his innings. Bingo! Ogando went 6-8 the rest of the way and pitched just 64 frames in the second half. And his final ERA:3.51. I stand corrected.
The larger point about Ogando is that no one could have predicted that kind of regression so precisely 20 years ago. Knowing the impact of BABIP, strand rates and workload jumps made that observation possible. The science of player analysis has advanced radically in two decades, and those who ignore it -- or worse yet, denigrate it -- do so at their own peril. Ogando's second-half travails were not only unsurprising, they were easily predictable given some pretty easily accessed information.
So that's the first half of the 2011 season redux. Two more of these to come. Don't say you weren't warned.
b
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