By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
July 1, 2014
Based on the first few months of the MLB season it would seem that anti-intellectualism, stubbornness and a total lack of urgency created by the ridiculously long 162-game marathon season is so ingrained into baseball lifers that nothing can be done about it.
Early managerial evidence shows that it doesn’t matter if your father was a blue-collar worker at Corning Glass or a European History professor and the author of “A Schopenhauerian Critique of Nietzsche‘s Thought.”
Nor does it seem to have any impact on day-to-day baseball decisions if your “skipper” barely scraped by to graduate from Perrysburg High or if he has a degree from a prestigious Ivy League college.
You’ve heard all of the jokes. Brad Ausmus is Jim Leyland with abs. Or that the new Tigers manager isn’t much different than the old one except he doesn’t spit his chicken dinner at Chris Iott and Matthew B. [Aggressive] Mowery.
Hell, some of my conspiratorial followers have gone as far as to suggest that Gene Lamont is actually some sort of Svengali puppet master who has been calling the shots and that Ausmus is the equivalent of George W. Bush to the slob’s Dick Cheney.
The fact is that Ausmus had told anyone willing to listen this offseason that he wasn’t a devotee of advanced metrics. You didn’t see Ausmus taking a break from Spring Training to make an appearance at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference to discuss his theories on SIERA or UZR.
Look, we were all in denial when we assumed that Ausmus’ Dartmouth background meant he would bring the Tigers into the 21st century when it came to advanced metrics. I had moronically convinced myself that he was only poo-pooing his true thoughts on SABR in deference to the man he was replacing and that once he got the reins we would see lineup constructions based on math and logic.
Boy, did I have my head buried in the sand. Yeah, I originally championed the hiring of Manny Acta – the golden boy of said Sloan conference back in March – but the minute Ausmus got the gig I conditioned myself to believe shit was going to be different with Cancer Stick enjoying retirement.
And there is plenty of evidence I could post arguing that the difference between Ausmus’ and Leyland’s baseball philosophy is minimal — from batting Don Kelly in the #2 and #5 hole repeatedly; to playing “small ball” with the bunt at the bandbox known as US Cellular on the South Side of Chicago; to asking Torii Hunter to lay down a bunt (he can’t do it), which if successful, would result in taking the bat out of the hands of the reigning back-to-back American League MVP.
But NOTHING Ausmus has done is more Leyland-like than his continued insertion of Hunter into the two-hole in the lineup this season even though the evidence against Kwame Kilpatrick and Bobby Ferguson was less conclusive than Hunter’s collision with the wall known as Father Time.
As I write this article, Torii Hunter owns an on-base percentage of .277. How bad is that statistic? In ALL of BASEBALL there are only ten guys who get on base at a worse clip than the Tigers’ regular #2 hitter!!!!!!
Read that again five times and then set yourself on fire.
Ten guys. In the entire major leagues. This is the guy who is supposed to set the table for Miguel Cabrera and Victor Martinez. I am surprised Sally Struthers isn’t doing an infomercial for Miggy and V-Mart where flies circle their sullen faces.
If Hunter is going to play at all he should be at the bottom of the lineup. Furthermore, there is absolutely no reason why the guy should be a regular at this point in his career other than out of asinine blind loyalty. It would be one thing if Hunter brought anything ELSE to the roster — but not only can’t he reach base, he is also one of the worst defensive players in the game.
In 17 days this carcass turns 39 years old so I am guessing that unless he discovers the Fountain of BALCO his WAR of MINUS 1.4 is irreversible. In other words, Hunter is not as good as anyone you could call up from Toledo (please see Ezequiel Carrera) to ostensibly replace him.
This would be tragic enough if Hunter were batting ninth for the team, but MENSA Surfer Boy continues to write his name right in front of Miggy’s because Ausmus thinks Torii is the most “comfortable” there. Hunter’s failure to provide Cabrera and Martinez with RBI opportunities isn’t even something new. This started under urine-stained underwear’s watch.
The following are Hunter’s OBP by month since last August:
August 2013: .312
September 2013: .295
April 2014: .342
May 2014: .287
June 2014: .211
I’m not even bringing up Torii’s OBP of .238 in the ALDS and .259 in the ALCS last season.
Brad Ausmus on decision to bat Torii Hunter second: “It boils down to that I think he’s comfortable there. He performs better there.”
— James Schmehl (@jamesschmehl) June 29, 2014
He performs better batting second?!?!?? How bad would the guy with the negative WAR be if he weren’t “comfortable?” Purposely sabotaging the team? I can’t really tell if that isn’t the case currently.
(And don’t even get me started on his artistic bat flips when he routinely flies out to left-center field. That nightly display has become even more aggravating than Phil Coke’s sky-pointing antics. And for someone who is on the record as saying he doesn’t want a homosexual teammate, Torii sure has a certain dramatic flair for discarding his wood. The gentleman doth protest too much, methinks.)
This is all absolutely incredible and a repeat of everything we hated about Leyland except Ausmus doesn’t have the excuse of being computer illiterate or owning a Motorola Star Tac flip-phone.
And it’s not like the Tigers don’t have other options for the two-spot in the order. Against right-handed pitching the #2 hitter should OBVIOUSLY be Alex Avila, who has a .374 OBP against them.
The other day I calculated that it would take Hunter 26 straight at-bats of getting on base to equal Avila’s OBP and things have only gotten worse since then.
Against lefties, Eugenio Suarez should be penciled into the two-hole until further notice. The kid has crushed southpaws in Erie, in Toledo and now with the Tigers. And please don’t give me this shit about asking too much of a rookie. Does this kid look scared at ALL to you?
Furthermore, did ya know that even though Suarez didn’t make his MLB debut until June 4th, he actually has more WALKS this season than Hunter does?!!?!?
Yep. 9 to 8.
Torii Hunter has eight walks in 267 plate appearances. He draws a base on balls 3% of the time. That is who you have batting in front of Miguel FUCKING Cabrera!!!!
This isn’t even sabermetrics. Or math. It’s COMMON SENSE, which is maybe the scariest part of the whole damn thing.
Because it’s not like Ausmus is learning his lesson about the team’s failure to get on base at the top of the order. On Sunday, he penciled Austin Jackson and his .312 OBP (it’s now .309) into the LEADOFF SPOT against the Astros. Predictably, A-Jax went 0-for-5 with four strikeouts. The one time he actually put the damn ball in play, the diving-averse centerfielder grounded into a rally-killing double play.
And Ausmus said afterward that he’d like to get Jackson more time at the top of the order!!!!!
I waited YEARS for the Tigers to replace Jim Leyland with a younger, more intelligent, computer-savvy manager who would utilize advanced statistics to the Tigers advantage and give the team a competitive advantage against flat-earthers like Ned Yost and Ron Gardenhire.
Instead we got a fucking MIMBO who can’t even comprehend OBP.