Tasers, Stats and Love For You-Know-Who

Career Opportunites is playing on my iPhone here at work. It's a pretty awesome song by The Clash, and it always makes me think of the blown chances I've had to do something with my life. You know, like getting a job that's important enough that I don't have time to write baseball blogs on the clock. So, the theme of this blog will be that I try to tie together the baseball topic I want to write about with the song playing on my iPhone.

Fire On High (School Kids) - This ELO masterpiece, and theme song of Funtown's Astrosphere, sets up one of baseball's most recent stories perfectly. The 17-year-old who got tazed. (After having very little success researching the proper verb to use, I decided to simply go with the one that I think looks coolest, the one with the "z". Meanwhile, did you know that TASER is an acronym for Thomas A. Swift's Electric Rifle?) So, some doof jumps onto the field and runs around waving his t-shirt like a doofus. Some tubby cop shoots the kid in the back with a stun gun, ending the ruckus he was causing in a heartbeat (a possibly irregular one, now). My opinion: Come on, dude. Did they really have to taze the teenager in the back? Were they afraid he was going to Rat-Tail Ryan Howard with his shirt? (Looking up Rat-Tail to make sure it was a wikipedia-approved term for towel-snapping led me to finding the picture below.)
Jumping onto a baseball field and running around is and has been a part of the game for decades. But the punishment here did not fit the crime. If your friend got pulled over for speeding, and was levied with a $250 fine, then the next day you got pulled over for speeding and they sentenced you to four years in prison, you'd be pretty shocked. Not as shocked as Steve Consalvi was on Monday, but shocked nevertheless. The point is, no fan to my knowledge had ever been tazed for running around on the field before. Unless you're informing people ahead of time that the penalty for entering the field of play is 50,000 volts, it's kind of a douche move. But I get it. It's obnoxious, people shouldn't do what that kid did. Yet, packing a ballpark full of drunk fans is like begging for tomfoolery. Stadiums aren't going to stop selling beer, though, are they? I think not. I recognize that I am in the minority on this topic. Something like 73% of respondents to an MSNBC poll voted that a Taser is an acceptable tool to use in the situation. I respectfully disagree with those people.

The Day And The Time (For Sox Bats To Get Going) - So, it was a Shakira song that popped up just as I finished writing on the last subject. Embarrassing. Anyway, the Red Sox wasted an entire series' worth of offense on last night's game. I predict they'll be supporting Jon Lester with an output of two runs tonight. (Of course, that's all they gave him during his last start and he won anyway.) The offense last night was really nice to see, though. I'm pumped that J.D. is heating up. He's 9-for-17 over the last four games with 7 RBIs. He's still striking out way too much, but hopefully he'll see his batting average continue to climb, if only to get the haters off his back. Oh, and the "D" still stands for Durability. 25 of 26 games for Durability Jonathan Drew.

I Can't Stand Losing (To) You - Getting swept by the Baltimore Orioles was a travesty. I mean, seriously, have you seen the Orioles? What a joke. It's not like the Orioles were starting a hot streak either, because they went right back to losing Monday at Yankee Stadium.

Promises - I couldn't really think of a way to tie this into a baseball topic. Stupid Eric Clapton. So, instead I'm going to talk about random stats for a while. I like the Defense-Independent Pitching Stat, so let's look at the top ten AL pitchers in that category:

1. Francisco Liriano 2.38
2. Brett Anderson 2.54
3. Doug Fister 2.85
4. Brett Cecil 2.95
5. Carl Pavano 2.97
6. Colby Lewis 3.06
7. John Danks 3.22
8. David Price 3.22
9. Brian Matusz 3.26
10. Jered Weaver 3.27

Now, essentially, this stat takes into account only strikeouts, walks and home runs, then calculates what their ERA would look like assuming that everyone had the same defense behind them. It's kind of silly, but I like what it can tell us. Things like Liriano's and Fister's seasons so far might not be flukes and that they are actually pitching great. But beware of Mitch Talbot (6.01), Brian Bannister (5.31) and Jeff Niemann (4.81), fantasy owners. Their spiffy ERAs are mirages, I promise you. Hey, look, I tied it together after all.

My Back Pages - Rich Harden (5.61) is on that list of mirages, too, unfortunately. Fortunately for Rich, he's one of my favorite players and I will immediately jump to his defense here. The league-leading 23 walks Harden has given up so far are undoubtedly the reason his DIPS is more than two full runs higher than his actual ERA. And that walk total is out-of-control ridiculous for only the month of April. But April is gone and so are Harden's problems with the base on balls. I sat in front of my computer watching ESPN's Gamecast of last night's Rangers-Athletics game. It featured two of my fantasy pitchers going head-to-head, Harden and Dallas Braden. And Harden was simply brilliant during his first start of May. He went seven innings, walked nobody, struck out nine and only gave up two hits (the first, a double to Momaw Navaughn teammate Rajai Davis). Harden's performance ranked as the sixth-best start of the season for an American League pitcher (his game score was 82). I'm telling you, Rich Harden is about to get hot, and you don't need to check the back page of the sports section to figure that one out.

Just What I Needed - A good song to end on. I doubt I'll write an article with this theme again, since, aside from Fire On High (School Kids) my topic headings really blew. But I hit the highlights of what I wanted to write about in this article: D.J. Jazzy Drew, Richy Rich Harden and that silly tazing incident. Most importantly, I wasted about two hours of work writing this. And that's just what I needed.