Idiots Write About Sports

So many goats in last night’s game against the Mariners, so little time. Ah, but who is the king of all goats? The nominees, please…

• Barry Zito, who began the game by throwing a grand total of six strikes in his first 20 pitches. It is probably not worth mentioning that one of those strikes was the ball Brett Boone hit for a grand slam home run. (Side note: How is it possible that after Boone does his bush-league bat flip routine that the next pitch thrown to him in his subsequent at-bat does not wind up in his earhole? Perhaps this is just a sign that I never much paid attention to those filmstrips on good sportsmanship back in school, but I’ll never understand how Boone remains ambulatory after pulling that stunt.)

Then again, Zito battled back to pitch… well, not a good game necessarily, but an effective one. After his gack-up act in the first, he didn’t allow another run and he had brief stretches where he resembled good Zito — witness the nifty four-pitch strikeout of Ichiro! in the bottom of the fourth. The point is, after that Boone homer put the A’s in a 4-0 hole, Zito could have started thinking about his next start or what Alyssa Milano looks like naked or whatever the hell it is that goes through his mind — instead, he kept his head in the game and minimized the damage. No goat here.

• Eric Chavez, who just does not appear to be seeing the ball at all these days. Witness his strikeout with the bases loaded to end the top of the eighth — a development most A’s fans probably saw as the “all-hope-is-lost” moment in last night’s ball game. Even more distressing — Chavy’s decision to take the hook with the bat on his shoulder. And that follows on the heels of a disastrous performance in Arlington in which Chavez not only snuffed out the A’s only rally with a double-play ball but allowed the go-ahead run to score on a muffed grounder. You begin to wonder when Lew Wolff is going to ask for his money back.

Then again, the A’s knew what they were getting with Chavez. Slow starter, but otherwise solid performer until the inevitable September tail-off. I’ve become resigned to the fact that Chavez is never going to rise to the occasion the way other superstars seem to or show much in the way of fire. It seems futile to blame the guy for failing to be something he never was.

So that leaves us with the one, true goat from last night’s contest…

• Eric Byrnes, and his amazing defensive ability to turn a clutch base-hit into a back-breaking double.

For those of you who missed it, the Mariners loaded the bases in the seventh off of Huston Street with the game knotted at four runs apiece. With two outs, pinch-hitter Greg Dobbs looped a ball to left field. Ignoring a century of baseball wisdom that contends you try and keep the ball in front of you on such a play even if it means conceding the base hit, Byrnes opted to try for the spectacular catch — we shall be generous and say that he had maybe one chance in 20 of actually coming up with the ball. Instead the ball hit the ground, bounced past the sprawling Byrnes, and rolled all the way to the wall, plating all three Seattle runners. Byrnes does the sensible thing, and at worst, two runs score. (You could even argue that only one run might have come in on that play if Byrnes plays it safe — he had a better chance of keeping the runner on second from scoring with a decent throw than he did of making an improbable catch.) Instead, Seattle gets three runs.

I don’t think I have to mention that the A’s managed to score two more runs but couldn’t get that tying run home.

Instead of stuffing Byrnes in a locker, as you or I might do, his teammates rallied to his defense, according to Susan Slusser’s account:

Manager Ken Macha didn’t have a problem with the plunge, saying, “He’s trying to put zero up there,” and Street applauded the effort. “It’s the right call,” Street said. “That’s Byrnes being a hard-nosed player and pitchers appreciate that. Tomorrow, he’ll probably make that catch.”

Not unless he grows three feet overnight, he doesn’t, Huston.

Most galling, however, is Byrnes’ reaction to the play:

“If I got the same ball over, I’d take the same chance,” Byrnes said. “I just came up short.”

He’s not kidding. I’ve seen Byrnes try — and fail — to make that play many times. Last year, there was a Friday night game against the Devil Rays in St. Pete which the A’s were winning quite comfortably when, in the ninth, Byrnes dove for a ball with runners on base. He missed, the runners scored, the hitter wound up on third, and an Oakland laugher turned into a nail-biter that the A’s eventually pulled out. “He’s going to cost us a game one day doing that,” I said at the time; last night, he did.

And that’s what kills me about Byrnes. It’s not just that he’s terrible on fundamental things like not giving up the big play — it’s that he has no interest in learning from his mistakes. Even dismissing second-guessers like myself, how can you see the videotape of last night’s flop and think that you made the right call? There’s a difference between being hard-nosed and thick-headed, after all.

The fawning schoolgirls and Byrnes apologists hate it when you bring up his brain fart against the Boston Red Sox in game three of the 2003 division series. “That was two years ago,” they say. “When are you going to stop beating him up about that?” Well, never… for the very simple reason that, if that game were replayed today, I would expect Byrnes to make the very same mistake — or, more likely, a brand new, more spectacularly bone-headed mistake. And if you’re honest about these sorts of things, you have to feel the same way. I mean, when Byrnes butchers a play like he did last night, do you find yourself saying, “Boy, that’s out of character?” Are you really that surprised when he screws up?

Hustle that really does nothing to help your team win is false hustle. And hustle that actually hurts your team — like diving for a ball you need to keep in front of you at all costs — well, I don’t even know what to call that. But I’m tired of seeing it on display in left field.

Re Byrnes missing the straightforward recovery of a single: perhaps a more generous way to look at this is that, showmanship, grit, and other intangibles aside, it's possible he knows the fate of ballplayers who don't show hustle. Shawn Green, for instance, late in 2003, failed to field a routine single with sufficient speed:

http://dodgerthoughts.baseballtoaster.com/archives/10798.html

The resulting single annihilated an Odalis Perez no-hitter, something that Green had to face in the papers the next day. Moreover, Green's speed had evaporated by that point, something the boo-birds didn't really reflect upon properly.

Now, I'm not saying Byrnes' speed is off at this point -- it is possible, but without having watched him much, I really wouldn't know -- but there are real penalties for failure at that level, and they're usually directed at the guy who doesn't appear to "try" more than the guy who makes the effort but fails. Just ask Milton Bradley, who wouldn't be on the Dodgers but for a sluggish shag of a routine flyball in spring training.

I have no doubt that you're right -- witness Street's quote above as proof that baseball thinking often values the appearance of effort over actual results.

But in this case, this is just the way Byrnes plays -- act first, think later (if at all). Sometimes it pays off; more often than not, it doesn't.

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