Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Woohoo! An Update!

Here's a question posed by Brian Kenny on tonight's 5PM Central SportsCenter.

"Why don't they end tied baseball games in a home run derby?"

This question was phrased making fun of soccer for ending in penalty kicks. I would assume he feels the same way about hockey doing this as well. My position: I don't really give a damn what soccer or hockey does to end their games that are tied, however, this is a really stupid comparison.

In the penalty kick/shot situation, it's the shooter trying his hardest to get the ball in the goal, the goalie trying to keep it out. Both players are doing everything they can to make sure they achieve their goal, so the competitive nature of each side being represented on each play does exist. To make this equivalent in baseball, it would have to be a pitcher, actually pitching, against a hitter who's trying to hit a home run. In hockey and in soccer, despite the goalie doing everything they can to try to stop a goal from scoring, these shootouts tend to be 3-2, 2-1, 3-1, etc. There are people actually scoring still.

Let's assume the situation as I stated above was true for a home-run derby in baseball. The Cubs and Cardinals are in a home-run derby to decide who wins in a 4-4 tied game.

First off, how often do home runs occur? The best ABs per home-run ratio for a single season was set by Barry Bonds in his 2001 season, when he hit one every 6.5 ABs. The next two are McGwire in his back to back 70 and 65 seasons, with ratios of 7.27 and 8.02. There are 20 seasons in history where people hit a home run for every 10 ABs or less. Now that's in a single season. The best career numbers in this stat start with Mark McGwire, at 10.61 ABs per homer, then Ruth(11.76), Bonds(12.88), and Jim Thome(13.54), before we hit a bunch of legendary power hitters bunched up in the 14s.

So assuming the situation stated above, Cubs/Cards in a 4-4 tie. Even if a legendary team of hitters was coming up like McGwire, Bonds, Ruth, Thome and let's throw Sosa in there for the 5th guy, chances are, NONE of them would get a home run against an average pitcher.

And that's assuming an average pitcher. If you know you need to shut down the other team from hitting a home run, it's not that terribly difficult. Teams like the Padres could simply throw a Cla Meredith out there, who gets 7.5 ground balls for every fly ball. And no, that's not 7.5 ground balls for every home run, but every fly ball, which could be an infield fly, a lazy can of corn to right, or a blooper over the 2nd baseman's head.

So basically, Brian Kenny, the reason why baseball doesn't end in a home-run derby is because you'd either have to: 1) let the players pick pitchers from their own team that's going to throw up grapefruits, which takes out the key element of competition from the game(pitcher vs. batter) or 2) the home-run derbys would add 2 hours onto the game while each team burned through their relief aces and anyone even remotely capable of throwing a slider or sinker low in the zone.

And on to beer commercials:

While I actually think alcohol commercials in general should be taken off TV and radio airwaves, I still appreciate the fact that Bud Light really seems to be the only company out there that consistently puts out good commercials these days. The most recent radio bit I've heard in their "Real Men of Genius" campaign is the "Mr. Really Big Golf Club Maker." A great line from it includes: "Now instead of slicing our ball 200 yards into the trees, we slice it 300 yards into the trees."

A very amusing little ad. Bravo Bud Light--Even though I think beer advertising glamourizes alcohol, a message minors see, at least your advertising team shows some creativity.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home