Sorry to bother no one

For the approximately zero people that read this blog, Flotsam Media has an absolutely fabulous post about gritty players, incorporating "math analysis" within it.

DIRT
The most important factor in determining a player's GRIT is his uniform. A player who is "containing, covered with, or resembling grit" will show visible signs of his grittiness on his uniform. Dirty uniforms are good; bloody uniforms are better. A true team player, the gritty player is prepared to sacrifice his body at all costs. This is one of the few ways gritty players are efficient, since they probably aren’t as well compensated as their genuinely talented teammates.

Go read it. You will be an infinitely better person for it.

Theriot to host baseball clinic

That's right, you heard me.

High school baseball players who want to polish their hitting and fielding skills can pick up a few pointers from Cubs shortstop Ryan Theriot in January.

Those 14-18 year olds probably exceed him in height about a foot, but he probably exceeds them in grit points by about 3 million.

By the way kids, you're probably better off going to a baseball clinic hosted by Stephen Hawking.

More Eckstein

ESPN.com had a poll today asking what player you would rather have: Alex Rodriguez or David Eckstein. The results are lopsided, but a little staggering at the same time

69.6% Alex Rodriguez
30.4% David Eckstein

Ken Tremendous over at FIRE JOE MORGAN gives an awesome synthesis about this apparently tough decision.

Now, I suppose it is possible that some of the 150,000+ people who have voted in this poll were taking into consideration things like salary, or the current 3Bman on their favorite team, or something. But the question is, straight-up, who would you rather have?

And 30% say Eckstein. Thirty percent. Thir. Ty. Per. Ce. N. T.

That means that more than 45,000 people sat at their computers, and thought it over, and they said, you know, I don't want the guy who is 32 and had a .354 EqA+ last year with 54 HR. I want the 32 year-old who only played in 117 games last year (and 123 the year before) and hit 3 HR and had a .275 EqA+, and who needs a relay man to get the ball from short to first.

Who are you people? What is wrong with your brains?

But hey, with a scrappy mentality like him, who WOULDN'T take him over the soon-to-be AL MVP?

This surprised me a bit

The Hardball Times is a great baseball think tank known getting truths out of the value of players in the present and the future. But when I read an article today about writer Lisa Gray's favorite baseball players, guess who cracked the top 10?

10) David Eckstein, aka "That Dratted Pest." True, he's neither graceful nor hot. Come to think of it, he's not the best fielder, hitter or basestealer either. Drafted in the 19th round, released by the team that drafted him, he simply refused to lose and his indomitable spirit triumphed over all scouts' predictions. After the 2002 World Series, Barry Lamar Bonds expressed his admiration for The Pest's ability to make so much of so very little. As for me, when I fall into a funk, unsure of my ability to even begin to start to think of doing what needs to be done, I think of The Pest, and I say to myself—if he can play major league baseball, then you can cook that dinner for 18 people tonight (it is too the same thing, and if you weren't men you'd understand perfectly.)

Granted, she lays it out at the beginning saying that the type of players she likes are ones that are "drafted at the bottom of the barrel, expected to be minor league filler, at best, and through persistance and sheer force of dominating will, worked themselves into the major leagues." Still, there are many, many players better than Eckstein (who is a "Dratted Pest" for reasons that aren't good) who probably do better than a career .262 EqA (when league average is .260) and .362 slugging percentage.

Eckstein is pretty decent at getting on-base, but this has to be said people - just because ESPN tells you that a small white dude who is Mr. Scrappy McScrap Scrap doesn't mean he is particularly valuable to your team. It truly surprised me that one of THT's writers thinks in this mindset.

The White Sox and their old ways, as usual.

Just for starters, here is a post by RJ Anderson at the sabermetrics blog Beyond the Box Score, explaining how even though players like David Eckstein and Aaron Rowand can be valuable to a certain extent, they will probably be overpaid in the offseason.

While part of the attraction of Eckstein will be his World Series rings and Most Valuable Player title, Aaron Rowand and his nose fracturing collision with the wall and numerous diving catches will be remembered more so than his frightfully similar season in 2007 to that of 2004. Rowand's line drive rate went down from 22% to 19.8, in 2004 it was 19.5. His walk rate 6.1 was higher than the 4.3 and 5.2 posted, and his BABIP went from .297 and .318 to .348, again close to 2004 and .341. With that line drive rate he's expected to have a BABIP of .318, it's reasonable to expect his .309 batting average to slip back below that line and into the .260-.280 range.

Let me say that while I think both can be valuable to a team at a certain price, I feel they'll be paid more than they're worth, and on certain teams that makes them bad buys. With that being said I fully expect Kenny Williams to overspend for both of these players and hopefully the Chicago media won't be as oblivious to why the team failed rather than how next year.

Oh that delusional Kenny Williams cracks me up.

Oh how I was taught wrong...

I started watching baseball intensely around 1998. Sammy Sosa instantly became my hero when I saw him battle with Mark McGwire for the home run record. One corked bat, many "I appologi.." coming out his mouth, numerous steroid allegations and a busted boom box later, not so much. I decided that I wanted to look for something more in a sports hero. Since ESPN was my sports bible at the time, I subconsciously looked there. Only then was I brainwashed to think that I was missing many things in my sports heroes - Energy! Passion! Spark! Grit!

From that point on, I had grown to appreciate the scrappy player who was fast and stole bases, colloquially known as "Grinders." So of course, I thought that players like David Eckstein, Juan Pierre, Scott Podsednik and Darrin Erstad were the prototypical heroes of sports. Because they apparently had this undying fire and passion that could only be explained by their love of the game.

Boy was I wrong and brainwashed.

These guys actually were puke. They usually posted high batting averages and had a high number of stolen bases, but is this actually valuable in baseball? No! These players typically posted a mediocre to bad on-base percentage, a horrible slugging percentage, and were notoriously praised for bunting and stealing bases all the time, a technique commonly referred to as "Smallball" or "Smartball." I don't know what these people consider smart, because if you just look here, you can see that the least amount of runs scored are when people don't get on base, and that fewer runs are scored when outs are traded for them. These people are just mediocre, at best, players. That is all. People can talk all they want about these players giving a spark and energy to their, but they don't. If you want to look for a spark for a team, a firework lighting off in a team's dugout would give more spark to a team.

So why Ryan Theriot's Socks, you ask? Because Ryan "The Riot" Theriot (ooh, extra scrappy nickname!) was the last player I would ever like coming from this category of "Grinders." I even bought a Theriot Cubs shirt. When I finally stopped listening to the nonsense of ESPN and realized that he is just as valuable to baseball as Smirnoff Ice is to a man's social life, I created this blog. This blog is intended to reference all the erroneous appraisal these kinds of players get in sports media, in an effort to bring a certain phrase to people's attention: Say No to Ryan Theriot!