Idiots Write About Sports

One of these days, before sitting down to watch the Sunday night baseball game on ESPN, I’m going to have to remember to chant “I will not let myself get irritated by anything Joe Morgan says tonight” 100 times or so. Perhaps this simple koan will lure me into a Zen-like state of tranquility where I’ll be oblivious to Morgan’s preposterous ramblings. Or maybe I just won’t be able to hear him spew inanities over all that chanting. Either way I come out the winner.

Joe’s gem tonight, offered up after Jon Miller noted Tejada’s nifty start this season (.348 average, .395 onbase, .523 slugging through 33 games): “Well, of course last year, he got off to that bad start because of his contract.”

Ah yes — that old saw.

Joe Morgan isn’t the only person perpetuating this fiction. By now it’s become conventional wisdom — Oakland owner Steve Schott informed Tejada in spring traning that team wasn’t planning on resigning him, and Tejada was so devastated by his owners’ callousness and penny-pinching that he put up numbers of .161/.230/.286 in April 2003. Since he finished with a .278/.336/.472 stat line, clearly something was affecting him for that first month of the season, so everyone concluded it was the bad vibes emanating from that ogre Schott.

Only one problem with that theory: up until this year, Tejada’s April numbers were always poor. Or at least, poor compared to his numbers during the other months of the year. Take a look at his career numbers broken out month-by-month:

April: .254/.316/.398
May: .290/.335/.510
June: .273/.333/.452
July: .264/.333/.456
August: .278/.341/.487
September: .271/.337/.457
October: .378/.425/.595

Anything stand out there?

Let’s throw out October, since it’s only 10 games and 37 at-bats and clearly not a relevant statistical sample. For the most part, that leaves us with a guy who hits around .270, give or take, gets on base 33, maybe 34 percent of the time, and slugs around .450 or higher. Except in April, when his average and on-base percentage are off by 20 points, and his slugging percentage dips below .400.

Now, undoubtedly, Tejada’s poor April 2003 numbers are depressing the overall totals — but not by that much. So was Tejada upset by not getting offered a contract extension back in 2001, Joe?

I realize that the simplest explanations are often the best. (Premise: Miguel Tejada had a really bad April in 2003. Premise: Miguel Tejada was told he wouldn’t be getting a contract extension before the 2003 season. Conclusion: Miguel Tejada had a bad April 2003 because he didn’t get a contract extension.) But a lot of things happened to Tejada right before the start of the 2003 season. For the first time in his big-league career, he was playing for a manager other than Art Howe; perhaps the transition didn’t go as smoothly as any had hoped. He won a MVP award, which, in addition to placing demands on your off-season schedule can also cause you to put unrealistic pressure on yourself (“Since I won this award, I better prove that it wasn’t a fluke…”).

Did any one of these things cause Tejada to get off to a poor start last year? Maybe, maybe not. But they probably contributed to some degree, along with the uncertainty surrounding the future employment of a player who typically enjoyed his best numbers in months not beginning with “A.” At any rate, the reality of Tejeada’s 2003 season is probably a little more nuanced than Joe Morgan was painting it Sunday night.

But then, when has Joe ever let numbers and facts get in the way of a good dig at the Athletics?