Cup of Coffee

January 25, 2022: Big Boss Man

26 Comments

An old boss and also the owner of said establishment were randomly in town together last night. I haven't seen them in 18 years (longer in the owner's case). It was kind of boggling to consider that distance considering how recent it feels like.

26 thoughts on “January 25, 2022: Big Boss Man”

  1. Yesterday we received a letter from the IRS stating that we had a credit amount, and also requesting that we send our last year's tax forms to them (including supporting documents). Guys, the check for taxes due (the credit amount) was in the same envelope as the tax forms! And it's been almost a year! Seriously?!

  2. Interesting story on NPR on the experiments in the Atlantic League using robot umps and pushing the pitching mound back 1 foot.

    https://www.npr.org/2022/01/25/1075489024/will-baseball-feel-the-same-if-the-umpire-calling-balls-and-strikes-is-a-robot

    Basically moving the mound had no discernable impact on balls in play, in fact they saw more strikeouts, no impacts on pitchers either. And shockingly they found that robot umps are more consistent with their ball and strike calls. Worth the 4 minute listen before HOF results come in.

  3. Today is Hall of Fame announcement day and while I've done a pretty good job of muting HoF Trackers on social media, some of it still slips through the cracks. I guess I still like surprised and not to be spoiled of the results ahead of time.

    1. I'm doing a mini Twitter detox this week. It's amazing how readily my fingers type "tw"+enter

      1. I'm pretty much weaned off of social media now. The only account I still have is Facebook and I almost never use it anymore. I actually unfollowed everyone but a few friends and family so my news feed doesn't amount to much and I don't spend more than a minute or two a day on the platform. I haven't posted anything in weeks.

  4. I’m on a plane today for the first time in a long time. The first leg of my very long day of travel featured some DB in first wearing a “let’s go Brandon” “mask”. That got me thinking about how that the Brandon from that meme is having his life’s dream ruined by a bunch of dopes. Oh well.

    I’m looking forward to the drinking of my drinks while wearing my actual n95 mask.

    1. I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue Twitter

      That's fantastic news. Congrats to everyone involved

      1. Thank you! It's very much meant to be a conversation starter, so I'm glad he had lots of questions.

    3. Saw your video yesterday, too! Congratulations!
      Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, last night my daughter was showing off her CSK-awarded book, not sure I’d seen it before, but now I know to be on the lookout.

  6. I guess David Ortiz is in the Hall of Fame. I don't think it makes a whole lot of sense, to be honest.

    Bonds, maybe he was a big enough jerk to keep him out. He was accused by his first wife of abuse, no way to know if it is true, but that on top of what was obviously a very elaborate and in-depth scheme to not just use PEDs, but essentially be the best PED user he could be? Probably not a nice guy. Is there room for morals in the HOF? I don't know for sure, but I'd remove Ty Cobb if I had the chance.

    Clemens, same as Bonds, maybe he was a big enough jerk to keep him out. He made a blatantly racist statement after the '06 WBC, and eventually sleeping with a kid that he first met when he was 28 and she was 16 is not a good look in my book, even if it's true that they didn't start sleeping together until she was 21.

    However, I don't get the impression that these guys were left out because of their personal lives, I get the impression they were left out because they were known PED users.

    Then we have Ortiz. The New York Times has reported, through sources "lawyers with knowledge of the results" that Ortiz and Manny Ramirez both tested positive in the 2003 testing. In 2003, Ortiz is *exactly* the kind of player that would be incentivized to use steroids. He had just been traded for a pittance and the Red Sox may have been his last chance to stay in MLB, and he was having injury problems. Being stronger with shorter recovery time would at the very least help him train more frequently in an attempt to be more resilient to injury. Then you have Lou Merloni saying that the Red Sox had team doctors in on PEDs, giving the old "you shouldn't do this, *wink wink*, but if you did it, here is how to do it." On top of that George Mitchell was paid by the Red Sox and miraculously there were no Red Sox in the Mitchell Report. There's smoke, I'm too disillusioned not to believe there was fire. I am also disappointed to learn today that a restraining order was issued against Ortiz in 2020.

    Even if you get past all that, on the baseball merits, I don't think Ortiz has a strong case. He never had the highest WAR in the league, he was only top 10 twice. I don't think he really gets any sort of "league MVP" kind of credit. Since he's just a DH, maybe it is more fair to take defense completely out of the equation and go by oWAR. He had a career oWAR of 56.7.

    1st basemen voted in by the BBWAA with the worst oWAR:
    51.1 oWAR -- Tony Perez
    54.1 oWAR -- Hank Greenberg
    54.2 oWAR -- George Sisler
    (56.7 oWAR -- David Ortiz)
    62.2 oWAR -- Eddie Murray

    That's a huge gap between Sisler and Murray. Greenberg and Sisler surely got a bump due to MVP wins. Likewise, Perez surely got a bump for being part of the "Big Red Machine". All three have decent dWAR for a HOF 1B, so they also likely were voted in as (relatively speaking) weak bat, strong glove candidates at the position. A good number at this position (roughly middle of the pack for BBWAA HOFers) would be something like Killebrew's 71.5 or Thome's 77.7. Pujols should be a shoo-in at 85.4 and Cabrera at 79.0. Those guys raked.

    LF voted in by the BBWAA with the worst oWAR:
    45.8 oWAR -- Jim Rice
    (56.7 oWAR -- David Ortiz, not a left fielder)
    62.0 oWAR -- Al Simmons (one of the better dWAR scores for a LF)
    64.1 oWAR -- Willie Stargell

    Manny Ramirez was his teammate and had an 81.8 oWAR. Jim Rice was a huge outlier with just 45.8 career oWAR -- he was a questionable selection on his 15th year of eligibility. No way he makes it in if he would have played for the Royals, but he played for the Red Sox and had an MVP award, so he got the Jack Morris "story outweighs the career" entry into the Hall. Plus his candidacy really picked up during the steroid era when the writers were looking for non-steroid-linked players to push.

    RF voted in by the BBWAA with the worst oWAR:
    53.1 oWAR -- Willie Keeler
    (56.7 oWAR -- David Ortiz, not a right fielder)
    59.1 oWAR -- Vlad Guerrero
    62.8 oWAR -- Larry Walker

    Why use WAR for these comparisons, you might ask? I chose it because its purpose in the first place is to help us compare players at different positions. DH is an especially problematic position in the HOF because the position didn't exist for a long time, and for many teams over the years, it hasn't been so much of a dedicated position as a place to give a guy half-a-day off or take advantage of a platoon match-up.

    If you want to look just at DH guys elected to the Hall so far:
    80.4 oWAR -- Frank Thomas
    66.9 oWAR -- Edgar Martinez
    56.7 oWAR -- David Ortiz

    He's behind non-HOFers like Dick Allen (70.2), Rafael Palmeiro (67.5), Mark McGwire (65.4), Bernie Williams (63.2), Bobby Abreu (61.6), Shoeless Joe Jackson (61.2), Dwight Evans (60.5), and Jason Giambi (58.4).

    Looking at other positions, I feel like it's a pretty big joke that Ortiz is getting in ahead of Kenny Lofton, Andruw Jones, Scott Rolen (honestly, WTF is up with Rolen at 63%?), or even Graig Nettles.

    In summary, *relative to other BBWAA HOF inductees*...

    ... Ortiz would have weak offensive value as a first baseman.
    ... Ortiz would have weak offensive value as a left fielder.
    ... Ortiz would have weak offensive value as a right fielder.
    ... Ortiz is 10 wins behind Edgar Martinez, the lowest-valued DH currently in the HOF.

    Additionally, he's reported to have used steroids and he had a restraining order out against him last year.

    I think he belongs in the Hall of Near Fame along with the vast majority of the Veteran's Committee selections and at least Jim Rice among BBWAA inductees.

    2. There's smoke, I'm too disillusioned not to believe there was fire.

      Re: Ortiz and the 2003 PED tests, I’ve wondered why Rob Manfred would go so deliberately out of his way to specifically clear Ortiz’ name by casting doubt on the testing and whether Ortiz was a genuine positive. Rob Manfred, the same guy who was the point man in MLB’s unethical, dubiously legal Biogenesis investigation. Rob Manfred, the same guy who allegedly paid Biogenesis founder Tony Bosch well into six figures for cooperation in that investigation. Why clear Ortiz ahead of his HoF ballot debut, but not say, Jeff Bagwell, who never tested positive yet endured speculation by HoF voters until he was elected two years after Manfred became Commissioner?

      I’m not huge into conspiracy theories, but when it comes to this Commissioner’s track record, I don’t think he deserves the benefit of the doubt.

      1. I’m sure the league and its national broadcast partners thought more than once about how a Red Sox PED scandal, just as the team had finally won another WS, would hurt their viewership and ad revenue.

  7. In other HOF news, Joe Nathan falling off the HOF ballot in his first year is an absolute joke. He has a better or equal JAWS score compared to Bruce Sutter, Rollie Fingers, and Lee Smith. He has a strictly better R-JAWS score than all three of them. The only "pure" relief pitchers in the HOF (fewer than 100 games started) are:

    Mariano Rivera
    Hoyt Wilhelm
    Goose Gossage
    Lee Smith
    Rollie Fingers
    Bruce Sutter

    Nathan is firmly in the middle of that group, along with Billy Wagner. It would not be totally unreasonable to consider Jonathan Papelbon, Tom Gordon, and Francisco Rodriguez for the HOF as well.

    Lee Smith is a reasonable bar for entry -- Trevor Hoffman is not.

Comments are closed.