Idiots Write About Sports

I will not listen to sports talk radio. I will not listen to sports talk radio. I will not listen to sports talk radio. I will not listen to sports talk radio.

I… uh… listened to sports talk radio this weekend. It was a regrettable decision.

I was driving home from some errands when I flipped on the radio, and Inside Baseball Saturday Night was on. This is not a bad thing — Inside Baseball Saturday Night is a fine program hosted by a bright guy where the talk is reasonable more often than not and the nincompoopery is kept to a minimum. Plus, who can say a bad word about a show co-hosted by Shooty Babitt. Not me, that’s for sure.

Unfortunately, I happened to flip on Inside Baseball Saturday Night just as Marty and Shooty were opening up the phone lines to callers — and that is a bad thing. Callers make sports talk radio well-nigh unbearable since nine out 10 callers are 1) ill-informed, 2) in love with the sound of their own voice and 3) unable to wrap things up once they’ve stopped saying anything useful, which is usually right after the words “first time caller, long-time listener” leaves their mouths.

Even worse, these were sports talk radio callers phoning in to opine about the trade deadline. Nothing, save for maybe phone calls about your fantasy baseball team, are more horrible than trade deadline sports talk radio calls, in which the caller usually proposes something like trading for Johan Santana in exchange for a sack of used baseballs, a AAA backup catcher, and a copy of the Reach Baseball Guide from 1952. One of the things I miss about Los Angeles was being there in the days when play-by-play-man Ross Porter was forced to host the post-game Dodger Talk show; you have not experienced comedy at its highest magnitude until you’ve heard Ross Porter firmly yet politely dismiss a why-don’t-we-get-Chipper-and-Andruw-Jones-from-the-Braves-for-Todd-Hundley-Dave-Hansen-and-a-pack-of-Dodger-Dogs proposals from Jerry in Sherman Oaks. No one could say, “That’s an interesting idea” with as much thinly veiled contempt as Ross.

Anyhow, the first caller on Inside Baseball Saturday Night thinks that the A’s need to trade Zito and trade him now. I don’t agree, but it’s not exactly an unreasonable thing to argue. “We can’t put all our eggs in one basket,” the caller says, and that seems like solid reasoning behind his pro-trade-Zito stance. Tell us your trade idea, sir…

“Barry Zito, Eric Chavez and Mark Ellis…”

Um… OK… lot to give up there… especially since the middle guy is signed through 2011… but let’s here who the A’s would get in return.

“… for Alex Rodriguez.”

Well. That’s an interesting idea, as Ross Porter might say.

Let’s ignore the fact that this trade is thorough impractical, particularly from New York’s standpoint. (So you want the Yankees to give up the best overall player in baseball for a pitcher who will be available on the free market in three months’ time anyhow, a fairly solid third baseman who’s beset by injuries at the present time, and a throw-in second baseman a team with Robinson Cano on the roster would neither need nor want? Anything else you’d like as part of the deal? A moist towlette, perhaps? Whatever Brian Cashman’s carrying in his wallet right now? A Hot Pocekt?) Instead, let us concentrate on the Can’t-Put-the-Eggs-In-One-Basket philosophy that has motivated this fantastical proposal.

Alex Rodriguez makes $25 million a year every year through 2010.

Oakland’s payroll is around $63 million and change, depending on who you talk to.

A $25-million salary would account for roughly 40 percent of that payroll.

That’s… um… one pretty big egg for that particular basket.

Then again, that’s not the dopiest thing I heard this weekend regarding Alex Rodriguez. That particular honor goes to KNBR, which I had on as I was driving back from the bank on Sunday after another Giant’s loss. One of the callers to the post-game rending-of-garments program proposed acquiring Rodriguez from the Yankees via trade. Left unsaid was what piece or pieces of detritus in the Giants organization that the Yankees would be foolish enough to want — but that’s not the dopey thing that was said.

No, the dopey statement in question came from whatever open-mouth-breathing ape hosts the weekend postgame call-in shows on KNBR. He dismissed the caller’s trade-for-A-Rod suggestion by stating, unequivocally, that Giants fans should not want a player like A-Rod on their team. “I was in Seattle when he was with the Mariners,” the tool-using primate of a host grunted into his microphone. “And let me tell you: A-Rod is the Armando Benitez of the post-season.” Also, the talking simian opined, Rodriguez piles up big numbers against lesser opponents, but wilts in pressure situations. “Let’s see him hit a homer against the Red Sox,” Monkey Man sneered.

I’d like to address the first part of his argument first.

Thanks to our friends at Baseball-Reference, we can look up Alex Rodriguez’s postseason stats. The first thing we notice is that he has played in 31 playoff games — a ridiculously small sample size that no reasonable, thinking human being would use to make an assesment of any worth. But, since we’re dealing with a radio talk show host here, reason and thought aren’t on the table. So let’s pretend that those 31 games tell us all we need to know about A-Rod. Here’s his AVG/OBP/SLG for the postseason.

.305/.393/.534

Why that’s… pretty good, actually. And not all that out of line with his career averages heading into the 2006 season — .307/.385/.577 — save for a modest dip in power. Yeah, he’s only hit six home runs in those 31 games, which isn’t great but also not exactly the sign of someone who needs to start considering a new line of work.

Also, here are Rodriguez’s averages for the Seattle years, in which Mr. Radio Host gained that special insight into what a lackluster postseason performer A-Rod is:

1997 ALDS: .312/.312/.562
2000 ALDS: .308/.308/.308
2000 ALCS: .409/.480/.773 (!)

Hmmm. Maybe KNBR’s host was thinking of the 1995 playoffs in which Rodriguez went hitless in two at bats. Of course, he was only 19 and not a regular player at the time.

Now, let’s turn our attention to the A-Rod-Chokes-Against-Boston portion of the argument, which is a line of thought actually advanced by reasonable people and not just simpletons who can only land low-profile weekend gigs on sports talk radio. Because this is a point-of-view held by a lot of people, I figured I should actually look into the numbers to see if the perception fit reality. So using the game log feature at ESPN, I looked at box scores for every Yankee-Red Sox game since Rodriguez joined New York in 2004. That’s 47 games by my count, though I admit I may have missed one or two. I then plugged Rodriguez’s numbers for each game into a spreadsheet to come up with his vs.-Boston-only totals.

Against the Red Sox, he hit .280, with an onbase percentage of .379 and a .526 slugging percentage. He’s hit 12 homers in 175 at bats (or one ever 14.6 at bats, if you prefer). Interestingly enough, he’s seven-for-eight on steal attempts — he doesn’t run much, but when he does, he’s pretty certain to make it.

Now I will grant you, those numbers are not eye-popping — solid, but not eye-popping. Just the same, I hope you would grant me that 47 games chosen nearly at random are not much to hang your hat on, assessment-wise. Or to put it another way, which do you think is a better indicator of a player’s worth: 175 at-bats against the Red Sox since 2004 or 6,195 at bats over the course of a 12-year-career. If you answered the former, there’s a job waiting for you at KNBR fielding calls about Ray Durham’s groin from Giant Lou in Colma.

It wasn’t an easy matter, digging up all those box scores — it ate up a not-inconsiderable chunk of my evening. It sure would be easier to make stuff up like our good friend on KNBR does. Then again, I have the advantage of actually knowing what I’m talking about.

Look, Alex Rodriguez doesn’t need me to defend him, which is good, since I really don’t care for him all that much. There are a lot of things to dislike about Rodriguez — his on-the-field performance isn’t among them, though. And while you can make many arguments about Rodriguez — he’s overpaid, there are better players in baseball, what’s the deal with that slap in the 2004 playoffs — you would be hard-pressed to find a team that wouldn’t be improved instantly by adding him to the lineup.

I mean, you can argue that A-Rod would be a terrible addition to a team if you want. But probably not if you want to pass yourself off as someone who actually pays attention to baseball. And certainly not if you’re being paid good money to host a baseball call-in program — unless you’re hoping to make your callers feel smart by comparison, I guess.

I know nothing of Baseball, care little for any verbal radio communication, but agree with everything you have written in the context that most people are not fit to air their opinion. This includes me so please disregard everything I have stated and return to your regular scheduled monotony.

Post a comment