Thursday, February 14, 2008

Spring Officially Begins

Well, Spring Training at least. Hard to believe that pitchers and catchers reporting considering the fact that I just literally spent half an hour rocking my car back and forth to get it out of a parking space. You wouldn't believe how hard it is to get your car to move just a few inches when it's on inch thick ice covered in a foot of melting snow. That was definitely the most time intensive alcohol run that I've ever gone on.

Moving on, so yeah, it was actually sunny today in a part of the country today! I can definitely understand why Papelbon's so happy. I haven't mentioned it yet, but he's by far my favorite Red Sox player. In 2005, Papelbon had his first call up and Johnny Damon left the team. So I took the number eight from Damon's jersey and the number five left over from an old Garciappara jersey and made a Papelbon jersey.

It was a little risky, given the fact that Papelbon only had 34 innings of major league experience, but he looked like a solid prospect to me. And two years later, I couldn't be happier with the choice. It hasn't just been Papelbon's performance which I've been pleased with. You can tell that he has fun. The guy's straight up crazy and doesn't give a shit what people think about it. That's my kind of guy.

Remember in little league when people used to say that the point of playing ball was to have fun? What ever happened to that?

7 comments:

Michael said...

great pic of pap!

Olde Town Glory said...

Hey, thanks for the comment Michael. Feel free to comment any time!

Anonymous said...

Pap's my favorite too

Michael said...

thanks, i'll do that. though i'm a yankee fan, i like reading other blogs respectfully and am not a troll.

Olde Town Glory said...

That's no problem Michael, I don't have anything against Yankees fans. I saw your comment about Papelbon being not being more dominant than Mo's ever been. I don't know if you'll look back there for the comment so I'll leave my response here.

Papelbon's worst H/9 IP the last two years was 5.27 which is better than any H/9 Mo's ever put up over his career. Papelbon's also put up back to back years in which he struck out more than a batter an inning, something Mo's never done. And Papelbon's put up WHIPs of 0.78 and 0.77. The lowest WHIP that Mo's ever put up was 0.87. Mo's never put up an ERA close to being under one like Papelbon did in 2006. He's never struck out anything near 12 batters per 9 innings like Papelbon did in 2007. And he's never allowed anything close to less than 5 hits per 9 innings as Papelbon did last year.

If you want to make an argument for Mo though feel free. Again, thanks for commenting. If there's anything else I say that you don't agree with feel free to challenge me on it. If I can't back it up I'll retract it.

Michael said...

on can pick and choose whatever stats you like to prove points. there are a few years where mo had a lower ERA than pap.

i think it's just foolish to make a blanket statement like "pap is more dominant than mo ever was"

PS i'm not trying to get you to retract anything...it's your blog.
keep up the good work.

Olde Town Glory said...

No problem. Perhaps "retract" wasn't the right word to use but what I meant to say was that I'm more than willing to admit when I was wrong.

Before I made the statement about Papelbon, I looked through the stats. There were a couple years in which Mo had a lower ERA but ERA isn't the best judgment of a pitcher's performance. I was looking more at the overall numbers. And there are no two years in which Mo put up the same kind of overall numbers which Papelbon has put up. I'm talking about hits rates, strike out rates, WHIP, etc. The one thing Mo's done better is not walk as many people, but it's not enough to make up for the greater amount of hits that he gives up, hence why his WHIP was never as good as Papelbon's have been.