The day after I visited the Productive Outs issue, Larry Mahnken published his own debunking of this nouveau statistic at The Hardball Times. Mahnken did a good bit of research on the issue; most importantly, he highlighted the fact that ESPN’s Buster Olney didn’t even define the stat correctly, something which everybody else (myself included) missed.

Mahnken’s piece starts by taking issue with the way Olney presented his figures in the article, and he gets in several good points along the way:

Olney provides very little data, period, and what data he does provide is presented in a manner which will make the non-skeptical reader believe it supports him. The rate of productive outs is given for only 12 teams this season, the top six and bottom six. The top includes some teams that have surprised thus far, the bottom includes teams that have disappointed. The implication being that making or not making productive outs is the cause of their success or failure.

The only “Productive Out Percentage” numbers given for past years are the POP numbers for the Florida Marlins and Anaheim Angels last season, both of whom ranked in the top five. The implication is, of course, that making productive outs is the reason these teams won the last two World Series (over teams that currently rank in the bottom five).

Ignored is the fact that Florida’s POP during the regular season last year is not particularly relevant to their postseason success, and that Anaheim’s POP last season, when they finished 77-85, is not even close to being relevant to their postseason success in 2002.

It’s clear that Olney did very little research for his article, and what research he did do was data mining, trying to find stats that supported his claims.

Because the data is compiled by the Elias “You’ll Know What We Want You To Know” Sports Bureau, productive out data is impossible to find, making an independent study of regular season productive outs almost impossible. However, for the sake of discovering and spreading truth, rather than dogma, I did an independent study of the past two postseasons using the game logs available at Retrosheet. The study was long and tedious, but I believe the results were worth it.

Recall that in Olney’s recent article, he defined Productive Outs as when:

* A baserunner advances with the first out of an inning.

* A pitcher sacrifices with one out.

* A baserunner is driven home with the second out of an inning.

Productive Out Percentage was described as “productive outs divided by the total number of outs.” But as Mahnken points out, this is incorrect. The numbers offered for POP aren’t based on dividing by total outs, nor on dividing by productive out situations. Rather, it’s productive outs divided by outs made in productive out opportunities. Commented Mahnken at the newly reconstituded Baseball Primer: “As for dividing by outs in opportunities, it’s the only way the stat is similar to what Olney listed. If you divide it by all outs, then the Marlins had something like a .090 POP last postseason.”

Bless the patient soul that sits somewhere under Mahnken’s Yankee cap, because Larry and I swapped emails three times before the sublety of the difference between “productive out situations” and “outs made in productive out situations” finally sunk into my thick skull. Using the aforementioned definitions of a productive out as p1, p2, and p3, here is the formula, along with a very similar one to which Mahnken refers in his article, the rate of productive outs (RPO). Larry did an excellent job of spelling out the difference between the two, so I’ll quote his email:

POP = [productive out (p1+p2+p3)]/[outs in productive out situations]

RPO = [productive out (p1+p2+p3)]/[productive out situations (p1+p2+p3)]

If there’s a runner on base with no out, that’s a productive out situation. If the batter makes an out and the runner doesn’t advance, his POP is .000. If he makes an out and the runner advances, his POP is 1.000. If he doesn’t make an out, his POP is .—, because he made no outs.

If the batter has ten productive out situations and makes four outs, two of them productive, his POP is .500 [2/4] , his RPO is .200 [2/10].

It should be pointed out that the hypothetical batter above would have a .600 OBP in those productive out situations, at which point no respectable analyst alive would give a rat’s ass about his Productive Out Percentage. But the difference in the formula is important. It’s the anwswer to the question, “When this guy makes an out, how often is it a productive out?” but not, “How often does this guy make a productive out in a situation which a productive out can be made?” Those are two different numbers. Looking at it back in plain English, I can see why the definition would be prefereable to that of RPO, but the latter is the formula I’d assumed was being talked about when I first read the article. That Olney and whoever’s editing him at ESPN couldn’t even bother to define it correctly still galls me; that I didn’t check it more closely for myself galls me only a bit less.

In the Hardball Times article, Mahnken goes on to point out that while eventual champs Anaheim and Florida did well in POP in the postseasons in which they won, both ranked third among the eight playoff teams in their respective campaigns. Many teams with higher postseason POPs went home earlier than the champs. A much better indicator of team success for the past two postseasons (72 games in all) that Mahnken found was on-base percentage in productive out situations (in other words, getting a hit or a walk instead of making a productive out). OBP in those situations had a .750 correlation with winning percentage, compared to .463 for POP and .283 for RPO.

Furthermore, the overall correlation of POP to winning percentage in the postseason sample was very low compared to more familiar overall indicators (that is, not just in productive out situations):

OBP: .841

SLG: .855

OPS: .874

POP: .463

In the words of Eric Cartman, “Dude, that is f—ing weak.”

Mahnken concludes his article by trying to point out the fallacy of some offhand comments that Yankee announcers Jim Kaat and Paul O’Neill had been making about the current Yankee team. Olney wrote:

As club broadcasters Jim Kaat and Paul O’Neill noted last weekend, the team’s offense is built much differently than in the championship years; in those seasons, the Yankees advanced runners, put runners in motion, bunted occasionally. While they didn’t always have an overpowering offense — the notable exception being the 125-win season of 1998 — they had an efficient offense that provided the team’s typically strong pitching enough runs to win.

Over the past two postseasons (one first-round loss, one trip to the World Series) the Yanks had a POP of .310, while the 1998-2000 teams (all of which featured O’Neill and ended in dogpiles on the pitcher’s mound) their postseason POP was .268. While at first glance this seems worthy of a smirk at Kaat, O’Neill and Olney’s expense, Mahnken himself already reminded us that postseason POPs weren’t especially relevant to regular-season POPs; in this case, the trio has been harping on some heretofore unreported high regular-season POPs of the Yankee teams of yesteryear and comparing them to the current Yankee lineup, and we’ve only got a tiny, now-outdated sample of this year’s model to go on. Hey ESPN, when are you going to update that chart now that the Yanks have started winning?

As tempting as it is to declare total victory over Olney’s ignorant piece, the sample size issue is still something of a fly in the ointment. Seventy-two postseason games is less than half of one team’s full-season schedule. A full season’s worth of data for thirty teams would yield much more substantial (if not necessarily more conclusive) results, as would a full study which included the 142 playoff series since 1969 (the sample of which was the basis of Olney’s postseason postmortem last November). As somebody who’s basked in the raibow of tedium when it comes to baseball research, I can tell you taht Mahnken has done an admirable job of slogging through the play-by-play results thus far, but a larger-scale approach is needed to debunk the stat further.

Onto some other points I’d like to make on the issue…

One of the more interesting criticisms I received, both here and at Primer comes from one Nod Narb, who wrote:

Lots of well deserved criticism here. I agree with it all. However, I can’t help but think that you haven’t looked at Wilkins’ BP study with the same critical eye. I know a number of studies just like Wilkins’ have shown that Ks aren’t detrimental to run scoring, but it’s a flawed analysis. Not to get into it too much here, but you can’t look at post-hoc outcomes, you also need to consider the other possibilities of balls in play. While a ball in play may lead to a double play, it may just turn into a regular out, it may fall in for a hit, or it may be booted…

If you’re going to be so critical of articles by people who oppose sabermetrics, at least treat sabermetric articles with the same critical perspective.

First of all, I chose to focus on what the writer refers to as “post-hoc outcomes” rather than a more game-theory oriented approach because my interest in the stat was whether it had any predictive value on a large scale with regards to scoring runs, not on a micro level trying to divine what the batter’s intent may have been. I chose Wilkins’ study on strikeouts primarily because of its immediate accessibility rather than its air-tightness. I don’t have the data facility to replicate the BP study, but they do this kind of stuff routinely and have staked a small empire on their ability to do so accurately. I won’t give them a free pass, but given the scrutiny which the group’s work receives internally, I have less reason to doubt that they’ve erred on the level of Olney’s incorrect definition.

Regardless, looking at the post-hoc correlation of strikeouts to runs scored is only one way of looking at the matter. Another way of looking at it is to compare the value of a strikeout to that of a non-strikeout. For that I’ve turned to Tangotiger’s estimable work on run estimation (the “How Runs are Really Created” series), which is a bit tricky to find given Baseball Primer’s transitional dust — it’s in the Google cache, minus the graphics. In the first installment, Tangotiger’s computation based on Retrosheet data from 1974-1990 puts the marginal value of a strikeout at -.269 runs, that of any out at -.265 runs — not a huge difference, but a slight disadvantage to strikeouts if we’re trying to predict the total number of runs. Across the broad range of 24 base-out combinations, a strikeout does slightly lower your run expectancy. Grounding into a double-play, of course is much more detrimental; in the comments section of that article, Tangotiger notes that the value of a GIDP is “about -.45 runs”. Why the inexactitude given his propensity for precision, I’m not sure.

Elsewhere within that article is a chart which has some additional relevance to the situation at hand. As Earl Weaver’s Fifth Law goes: “If you play for one run, that’s all you’ll get.” Using the run expectancy matrix in my last piece, I showed the total number of runs expected in particular base-out situations such as moving a runner from first to second with the first out goes down. But the chance of scoring a single run, according to the data supplied by Tangotiger, actually increases:

Chance of scoring, from each base/out state

	 0 outs	1 out	2 outs

1B     .38    .25      .12

2B     .61    .41      .21

3B     .86    .68      .29

So the runner who moves from first to second with the first out has a slightly higher chance of scoring (41% as opposed to 38%), even while the total run expectancy for the inning drops from .953 runs to .725. The runner moving from second to third on the first out has increased his chance of scoring to 68% from 61% even while the total run expectancy for the inning goes from 1.189 to 0.983. Note that moving a runner from second to third with the second out drastically decreases his chance of scoring, from 41% to 29%. Still, as there are times when a one-run strategy may be preferable — to tie or win a game in the bottom of the ninth, or perhaps to get an early run on the board against a stingy pitcher — advancing the runner with the first out will increase his chances of scoring. One run you want, one run you may get.

Somewhere Earl Weaver is smiling.

First off, thanks to everyone who came by to read my recent Flat Earth Society post, and especially to the other bloggers out there who linked to and wrote about it. As far as I can tell, you all helped set a sitewide record for number of visitors on Wednesday. I’ve got a few points and links to add on the topic of Productive Outs which I will get to sometime this weekend.

Today’s Lunchtime Link (yeah, it’s a bit late) comes via a free Baseball Prospectus article from the other day which I only just got to read (still buried under an avalanche of work). Back in February when Alex Rodriguez was traded, one of the interesting side notes was that Alfonso Soriano’s age was adjusted from 26 to 28, a piece of information of which the Rangers were apparently aware. Hurriedly, I dashed off an email to BP’s Nate Silver to ask whether he’d rerun Sori’s PECOTA projection, but at that point he hadn’t. Apparently it was a popular demand, and after rearranging his sock drawer and cleaning out the rain gutters, he’s finally gotten around to it. Here are Sori’s weighted mean projections for 2004 compared:

          AB    BA   OBP   SLG   EqA   VORP

Age 26   631  .305  .354  .550  .297   56.8

Age 28   625  .299  .345  .537  .292   52.1

The 4.7 run difference comes out to about half a win — not an earth-shaking amount by any means. Silver also points out that Sori’s breakout rate — the chance that he would improve significantly — dropped from 14% to 8%. “It’s a little bit less likely now that Soriano is going to emerge as the true, Sosaesque slugger that some people have confused him with,” he writes. Keep in mind that the above projection is park-neutral; moving from Yankee Stadium to The Hitter’s Paradise at Arlington will inflate his stats a fair amount [oops, it turns out I was wrong. According to Nate, both projections were based on him as a Ranger.]

Silver goes on to point out that the age range which Soriano finds himself is not only the peak of the typical player’s career but also the flattest part of the curve, when his value is changing the least from year to year. It’s down the road where the difference in Soriano’s forecast is felt — 1.2 Wins Above Replacement four years from now; again, not a huge difference. Cumulatively, his next five years (2004-2008) project at about three wins lower than before, 19.5 Wins Above, down from 22.4.

The real difference can be seen in looking at his PECOTA comparables — his “old” Top Five (which is to say his younger one) had Ernie Banks, Sammy Sosa, and Andre Dawson along with Juan Samuel and George Bell; the new one has… Kelly Gruber? Samuel and Raul Mondesi both make that chart as well. Notes Nate, “It is fair to say that the age change radically reduces the chances that Soriano will put together a Hall of Fame-type career.” Not that Cooperstown had started engraving his plaque.

Does this matter for the Rangers? Silver doesn’t think so. Sori will be a free agent after 2006, when the really big money hits the table. He’ll be only thirty then, but it’s likely other factors — the market situation, the teams interested, his recent performance — will have more bearing than the fact that he’s aged so rapidly. What remains to be seen is how rapidly Rangers fans age from watching him swing at pitches in the dirt. Thus far, Sori’s off to a slow start despite the Rangers’ fast one. Here’s a quick comp between him and his trade counterpart:

        AVG   OBP   SLG   OPS   EQA  HR  RBI

Sori   .304  .344  .446  .791  .273   4   19

A-Rod  .266  .360  .477  .837  .290   6   12

Thus far Soriano’s been downright useless on the road: 12-for-47 with 3 doubles, no homers, and a .319 SLG. Reverse Coors Effect or small sample size? I’m guessing the latter, but that will really cause the Rangers some problems if their new slugger has developed bad hitting habits in his short time at Arlington.

* * *

All-Baseball.com has a couple of links pertaining to me, including a photo of my abbreviated night out at Shea Stadium on Wednesday. In the company of Alex B., Alex C., and Mets ticket office employee Josh O., I caught the first 4 1/2 innings of the Mets and the Giants, missing Barry Bonds due to his illness but seeing Mike Piazza wallop his 352nd homer as a catcher, breaking Carlton Fisk’s all-time record and drawing a huge ovation from a sparse crowd. We left when the Mets grounds crew broke out the tarp, which was just as well; it’s been a frazzling week for me and I certainly didn’t mind getting home in time to catch that night’s handy Yankee comeback. A’s closer Arthur Rhodes must have a tattoo on his butt that says, “Property of the New York Yankees”; his career ERA against the Bombers is 6.75 in 77.1 innings, including some biiiiig hits (14 homers), most notably David Justice’s pennant-winning dinger in the 2000 ALCS.

The Moneyball Backlash is in full effect these days, with no shortage of announcers and writers jumping on the anti-sabermetric bandwagon. Locally, even esteemed Yankee announcer Jim Kaat spent a good time bashing Michael Lewis’ and the use of statistical analysis during the Yanks-Red Sox series, and he’s been at it a few times since then, making YES telecasts just that much less enjoyable (the quality of the Yanks’ play notwithstanding). When I tune in I expect Michael Kay to blow hard, but hearing Kaat head for the dark side is quite dismaying.

The other night ESPN Baseball Tonight’s Harold Reynolds unleashed an anti-on-base percentage rant that was so bitter, I had to TiVo it so that I could drag his ignorant screed out into the harsh light of day. No, I don’t expect any better from him or ESPN these days, but still, somebody ought to whack Reynolds upside the head with a fungo bat. To set up the context, Reynolds’ rant occurred towards the end of the show. Chris Berman had just displayed a chart of the AL On Base Percentage leaders:

Frank Thomas  CHI  .494

Ron Belliard  CLE  .481

Lew Ford      MIN  .473

Jason Giambi  NYY  .453

Melvin Mora   BAL  .442

Berman then asked his fellow Baseball Tonight panelists, “Should we care about that stat?” This was apparently a setup for the show’s “3 Up, 3 Down segment,” so it was more or less written beforehand. Here is Reynolds’ response, transcribed to the best of my ability. You’re really missing his squeaky inflection and condescending tone — his fractured style is more or less captured, however:

I think it’s overrated. I don’t think it indicates how the game is played at all. There are certain roles — guys that get their man over in certain situations — you’re not going to get an on-base percentage for that. I think it takes away from the game. And the other thing is a lot of the guys with high on base percentages, they just clog the bases. Talk about Frank Thomas.

Corey Paterson — these are guy who have bad on-base percentages right now — .309 [OBP]. This guy is going to score runs for you. On this list I’ve got Corey Patterson, I’ve got Jimmy Rollins, and I have Derek Jeter.

Jimmy Rollins last year had a .320 on-base percentage scored 85 runs. He hit 8 home runs. Take away those home runs, he was on base 211 times and he scored 77 times. That ain’t no .500 on-base percentatge, but he’s scoring a heck of a lot of runs.

Derek Jeter ,well we know, .259 [OBP], we know his at batting average struggle and all that. He scores 33 percent of the time he’s on base and that will change as the season goes on because he’s going to be on base. Guys that don’t clog the bases are going to go base to base.

Now I have a problem with everybody saying, oh this is such a great stat. Jason Giambi, if he hits the ball out of the ballpark, that’s great. But if he’s on first base, he ain’t scoring on the gapper, its taking two hits to score him. To me that’s the difference in the game today. Everybody’s saying on-base percentage is the greatest thing ever. Jason Varitek, this guy last year, he scored 63 runs. All right? That’s great, he had almost a .400 on-base percentage. He scored 63 runs! I mean, I don’t get it. I just don’t get it.

Then Frank Thomas, we talked about the Big Hurt. .494 OBP, .489 last year, he doesn’t extend the plate that much. 216 times he’s on base last year, he scored 45 runs. He’s scoring one out of five times he’s on base. I think we’re getting carried away with this on-base percentage thing, because it doesn’t tell the true story of a full game. I’m not going to pitch to Frank Thomas in a situation when I know I got a base open and he’s not going to score on a gapper. I don’t want him hitting the ball out of the ballpark. It changes the way the game is played. I think we’re taking numbers and we’re forgetting all the things that go in to making baseball what it really is.

Whew! Holding up Corey Patterson and Jimmy Rollins as “guys who are going to score some runs” while disdaining the likes of Jason Giambi, Frank Thomas, and Jason Varitek is really something coming from a man with a career .327 OBP and 21 homers. Reynolds seems to think scoring runs has nothing to do with where in the batting order you are and who’s hitting behind you in the lineup, and he doesn’t have much use for those lousy runs scored by big slow guys who can hit the ball over the fences.

Here’s a chart of the players in question. TOB is Times on Base, which is H + BB + HBP – HR. R – HR is the number of times a guy scored besides his own homers, and %R is the frequency with which he did so. HR and R are added for some sorely needed perspective.

           PA    OBP  Out  TOB  R-HR   %R    HR    R

Rollins    689  .320  491  211   77   36.4    8   85

Patterson  347  .329  243  101   36   35.6   10   49

Jeter      542  .393  345  202   77   38.1   13   87



Thomas     662  .390  415  216   45   20.8   42   87

Giambi     690  .412  416  243   56   23.0   41   97

Varitek    521  .351  352  181   38   21.0   25   63

The “score some runs guys” scored a bit over one in three times they got on base, while the “clog the basepaths guys” only did so about one in five — a decent point worth making, to cut Reynolds some slack. The BUT in that statement is bigger than Jennifer Lopez’s derriere, however. First off, Reynolds completely dismisses the value of a home run — that’s a run in the bank, while a runner on base is merely a potential run. The cloggers outhomered the scorers by a margin of 108 to 31, about 26 homers per player, to say nothing of the benefits of driving in other runs. Second, even with Jeter missing a month of the season and Patterson missing about half, the “score some runs” guys used up many more outs than the cloggers, 1259 to 1183 — about one game’s worth of outs per player — and they scored 26 fewer runs overall. The scorers are helped immensely by Jeter, who really is an OBP machine compared to the other two. Compare Jeter and Rollins, who scored the exact same number of runs without homers. Rollins used up 146 more outs and only got on base nine more times than Jeter. Harold, HOW IN THE HELL DOES THAT HELP AN OFFENSE?

The answer is that it doesn’t. Yet still some persist in similar lines of reasoning.

Last week ESPN’s Buster Olney reintroduced a “stat” called the Productive Out Percentage which he introduced last fall. According to the article, a productive out is defined as either:

1) a baserunner advancing with the first out of an inning

2) a pitcher sacrificing with one out;

3) a baserunner driven home with the second out of an inning

Productive Out Percentage is the percentage of productive outs divided by the total number of outs. Writes Olney:

… Boston plays the “Moneyball” style — never bunt, don’t take chances on the bases, sit back and let your hitters hack away and do the work regardless of the game situation, regardless of the identity of the opposing pitcher. Other teams — the Anaheim Angels and the Florida Marlins, most notably — prefer to use their outs productively, by bunting, employing the hit-and-run; they put runners in motion and emphasize aggressive base-running as part of a larger strategy to put pressure on the opposing pitcher and the defense behind him.

…it will be interesting to see if, eventually, this passive-aggressive approach hurts Boston, especially with the shift in the team’s makeup. The Red Sox nearly bashed their way to the World Series last year, but they improved their pitching for 2004, shed Todd Walker, added light-hitting glove whiz Pokey Reese, and have been playing without injured Nomar Garciaparra and Trot Nixon, whose rehabilitations are being closely monitored.

… The Marlins and Angels have fully diverse offenses: some excellent power hitters, an essential element; some patient hitters who draw walks, also crucial; they have hitters who make contact, advance runners efficiently; and they run the bases.

The offenses of the Red Sox and Athletics, on the other hand, are effectively two-dimensional, eschewing the productive out within their philosophy. Boston has one sacrifice bunt, Oakland zero, and through games of April 26, the Red Sox rank next-to-last in productive out percentage — a statistic developed by the Elias Sports Bureau and ESPN — at .200; Oakland is last, at .137.

Productive out percentage is the ratio of productive outs — generally, advancing runners with the first out in an inning, or driving home a run with the second out. Last season, Anaheim ranked fourth overall in this statistic, at .347, the Marlins fifth, at .334. Juan Pierre ranked third among individual players, with a POP of .545.

Accompanying this is an Elias-generated list of the top six and bottom six teams in POP through April 26:

1. Detroit Tigers .430

2. Arizona Diamondbacks .417

3. Pittsburgh Pirates .417

4. San Diego Padres .400

5. Texas Rangers .365

6. Houston Astros .349

25. Seattle Mariners .229

26. San Francisco Giants .226

27. Cincinnati Reds .225

28. New York Yankees .210

29. Boston Red Sox .200

30. Oakland Athletics .137

Are the alarm bells sounding yet? They should be. Trumpeting a stat in which the Tigers lead the majors after four weeks is just silly, potential 25-game improvement or not. In all likelihood the three lowest-ranked teams in this stat are going to the playoffs, while the three highest-ranked will be making tee times by August. Furthermore, what of the other 18 teams? It would be helpful to know, for example, how well the division-contending teams are doing, even at this early juncture. It would be even more helpfpul to have a full season’s data, or several full seasons of data to look at so that we can better evalulate the veracity of the stat. Why we don’t have that, here or anywhere else, is a topic to which I’ll return later.

One big problem with the productive out concept is that trading a base for an out is not, on the whole, a good payoff. Looking at a run expectancy matrix such as this one, which was compiled by TangoTiger based on 1999-2002 data, we have (reading across is the number of outs, down is the baserunner situation):

          0     1      2

0      0.555  0.297  0.117

1      0.953  0.573  0.251

2      1.189  0.725  0.344

3      1.482  0.983  0.387

1+2    1.573  0.971  0.466

1+3    1.904  1.243  0.538

2+3    2.052  1.467  0.634

1+2+3  2.417  1.650  0.815

The expected yield of a runner on first with no outs is 0.953 runs. Use up an out to move him to second and the expectancy drops to 0.725 runs, a loss of 0.228 runs. The expected yield of a runner on second with no outs is 1.189, use up an out to move him to third and that drops to 0.983, another 0.206 runs lost. And so on.

But that’s only one part of the matter at hand. Proponents of the productive out tend to decree the walk-wait-wallop model of offense in part because strikeouts don’t advance baserunners, which is certainly true. But strikeouts also prevent even more detrimental events such as double-play grounders,. It’s been shown — most recently by Ryan Wilkins at Baseball Prospectus — that far from the conventional wisdom that batter strikeouts are worse than other outs, they have a slight positive correlation with measures of offensive performance such as OPS and Marginal Lineup Value Rate which correlate well with scoring runs.

Olney’s introduction of the POP stat came during his postmortem of the World Series, when he pointed to Aaron Boone’s at bat in the 11th inning of Game Four, with the bases loaded and one out, when Boone struck out. Olney pointed out the so-called significance of productive outs:

There have been 142 post-season series since 1969. In 130, one team or another has had an advantage in Productive Outs — and in 62.3 percent of those 130 series, the team with the advantage in Productive Outs has prevailed. Factor in the 12 series in which opposing teams have tied in Productive Outs, and it can be said that teams with a deficit in POs have won 34.5 percent of post-season series.

The problem is that even in considering the results of a short series, Productive Outs is an unproductive indicator relative to other statistics. A man named Mitchell Below writing a now-defunct blog called Tribescribe did a handy little study of those 142 series, the results of which are here:

Adv.  Winner  Loser   Neither

R     78.9%   17.6%    3.5%

HR    61.3%   26.1%   12.7%

PA*   57.7%   33.1%    9.2%

PO    57.0%   34.5%    8.5%

BB    56.3%   35.9%    7.7%

Productive Out advantage predicted the winner in 57% of postseason series (62.3% if you exclude the no-decisions as Olney did above), a rate exceeded by advantages in plate appearances (for these purposes simply at bats + walks), homers, and runs. In other words, thanks for nothing. Yes, there are certainly times where a productive out comes in handy, and the Yanks might have had themselves World Championship number 27 if Boone had been able to provide one. But such anecdotal evidence isn’t what holds water in this battle. The real question is do productive outs correlate with scoring runs, or don’t they?

I don’t have an answer for that, as I lack the facility to process play-by-play data — it will take a Keith Woolner, a Tangotiger, an MGL to answer that question. But all of this brings me back to what I was talking about above with regards to the incomplete reporting of the team POPs in Olney’s article. If this stat is so damned important, then why isn’t it being calculated on a daily basis? The answer may lie with the players involved.

The Elias Bureau has a very colorful history in its proprietary dealing with statistics; if you’ve ever read any Bill James, you know that Elias’ obstinance is what led to the founding of STATS Inc. and James’ alliance with it. Back when the first Olney article was published, Baseball Musings’ David Pinto, who used to work for STATS, had this to say about POP:

This is Elias playing politics. The Elias Sports Bureau cannot survive without the support of the leagues. What they see is themselves being made irrelevant by the likes of Billy Beane and Theo Epstein, who look to non-Elias people for information. If I’m an owner, I have to start asking why MLB is paying the Hirdts big money to keep stats, when others can do it as well and cheaper. So Elias has decided to appeal to all those GMs who think Beane is wrong.

Pinto, who now works for a company called Baseball Info Solutions along with other STATS vets, has been critical in the past of Elias for being more interested in peddling trivia than in educating fans or media clients about the game. And I’m afraid that short of a usable, testable statistic to add to our arsenal, that’s just what we have here: trivia. I’m not saying that productive outs here and there aren’t important or that they won’t win you a game, but creating a stat which one columnist occasionally pulls out of his ass to selectively support his arguments is irresponsible at best and intellectually dishonest at worst.

That’s the battle sabermetrics faces these days. Grinding persuasion won’t work on some people, while others see the use of statisics as a license to selectively pull numbers out of the air without regard to their foundation. For every convert that Moneyball made, there’s a guy with a career .397 OBP who’s joined the Flat Earth Society and declared that chemistry is what matters, and another who declares that really, it’s what guys hit on alternate Tuesdays when they’ve got the platoon advantage in a road game.

Back to Jim Kaat, Larry Mahnken had some good lines the other day, which I’ll close with because they really sum this whole mess up quite well:

Listening once again to Jim Kaat spout more half-assed comments about how the game is supposed to be played, I’m starting to come to that realization I suppose all people come to as they get older, that you can’t change the minds of the previous generation, you have to win over the minds of the next one. I should let Kaat and Kay’s foolishness roll off my back a little, and focus more on presenting information to the casual observer of sabermetrics in a way that might be more appealing. Let the media and fanboys fawn over Derek Jeter’s defense; we can’t change their minds, it’s the unbiased who we have to educate.

Amen to that.

Postscript: BP’s Derek Zumsteg has been beating POP like a rented bat-boy over at his USS Mariner blog. Rather than making this article even longer by attempting to incorporate his take, I highly recommend you read what he has to say as well.

Post-Postcript: One more thing. After the commercial break following Reynolds’ rant, BBTN went to a quick segment on Rickey Henderson, who signed with the Newark Bears of the independent Atlantic League again. The irony is killing me; somehow, I think it went right over Reynolds’ head.

I’ve got a couple of longer entries I’m dying to write up, one on the aforementioned Steinbrenner piece, the other on Productive Outs, but double-booking myself for work is really cramping my style. Not that I mind the money, but it’s limiting me to some quick hits here and there…

The latest news on the steroid front is dismaying unless you have little need for civil liberties, but leaving that can of worms aside for the moment (let’s see, the first inflammatory email should be arriving… now), the superficial evidence that Major League Baseball’s testing policy has changed the on-field product significantly is tough to find. I offer you a couple of thumbnail comparisons for today’s Lunchtime Link. Sample-size caveats apply, of course.

ESPN.com’s Baseball page has been running a little panel (righthand side, just below the columnists) called the Juicebox which is tracking year-to-year scoring and power comparisons. As they explain, “MLB has instituted a steroid policy for the first time this season. ESPN.com looks at 2004 power numbers compared to the last two seasons.” Here are the numbers through last night:

Through May 4      2004    2003    2002

Homers Per Game   1.065   1.071   1.043

Runs per game     4.899   4.728   4.618

Doubles per game  1.901   1.816   1.793

Aggregate SLG      .426    .422    .417

Scoring is up 3.6% off of last year and 6.1% over two years, doubles, and slugging percentage are slightly up, and homers, while not surpassing last year’s rate, are still up 2.1% percent over 2002. If the sudden lack of steroid-taking is having an impact — and I’m not so naive to believe that some players haven’t switched to whatever’s beyond THG in the cat-and-mouse game of detection — then it must be the pitchers who’ve been hurt more by giving up the juice. Unless it’s warmer weather, higher winds blowing out, or our old friends, random chance and small sample size, that is.

Onto Exhibit B… given the media outrage which surrounded the issue back in March, one would have expected fans to be staying away in droves as they found out their heroes were tainted by the possible use of THG and other performance-enhancing drugs. Just the opposite appears to be true. Major League Baseball announced yesterday that attendance for the season’s first four weeks had set a new record. The average attendance through May 2 was was 29,363 per game, the highest since detailed breakdowns were first recorded in 1980. That’s a 15.1% increase over last year, more than 3800 fans per game.

A few reasons for the attendance spike come to mind, of course. Home-and-home matchups for key interdivision rivalries such as the Yankees-Red Sox may have a disporportionate impact at this point. The Yanks and Sox, to continue with that example, have played 7 times in 25 games, comprising 28% of both teams’ schedules thus far; in a 162-game season, the 19 games between the two make up only 11.7% of the total slate. The two games in Japan between the Yankees and the Devil Rays both drew 55,000, essentially the same as a Yankee home game, and new ballparks in San Diego and Philadelphia are packing people in. According to Slam! Sports, the Phils are up 94% at home over last year through 11 dates, from 20,782 per game to 40,244. The Padres are up as well, but only 35% over last year, from 26,841 to 36,325. Cherrypicking a few more teams, the World Champion Florida Marlins are up 86% to 31,411, the Chicago Cubs are up 30% to 39,490, and the Detroit Tigers are up 34% to a whopping 19,035 per game.

Looking at the two teams most implicated by the BALCO revelations, the San Francisco Giants have only risen 1% to 38,573 (a lousy on-field product — “Bonds and Schmidt and the rest is shit,” said somebody the other night — may have something to do with that), but the Yanks are up 36%, from 34,196 to 46,415, and that’s without including those Tokyo games, for which they were the road team. The Devil Rays are up 63%, but if you leave out those two games, they’re only up 12%. It’s still very early yet — sound the sample-size siren one more time — so all of these extreme numbers may level off, but anybody positing a theory that the fallout from BALCO is having a negative impact on attendance is in for some rough sledding.

Call me anything you want but don’t call me late for my Lunchtime Link. I know how to tell time, but if my lunch doesn’t coincide with yours, then just put this between two slices of bread tomorrow…

It seems like such a distant time when the Yanks were stinking up the House That Ruth Built, swept in humliating fashion by the Red Sox while scoring four runs over a lost weekend. But a 6-0 week that included a sweep of Hudson-Mulder-Zito (and that less-heralded trio Anderson-Villacis-Affeldt) has banished many of those bad memories to the dustbin. Five or more wins in a row always impresses me, as it usually means that a team went through the rotation once without any starter blowing them out of a game — each Yankee starter pitched six innings or more this time around. That’s a pretty good definition of “firing on all cylinders” in this sport.

This time through the Yanks got solid turnarounds from previously awful Jose Contreras and Mike Mussina, plus a nice lift from fresh-off-the-DL Jon Lieber, who finally debuted as a Yanks some fifteen months after signing with them. Combine the Yankee six-pack with what is now a four-game Sox skid (swept by Texas!), and the Yanks are a mere one game out of first in the AL East, holding a 14-11 record. The panic of seven days ago seems so last week!

Fortunately the great Roger Angell set down a few of his thoughts in the most recent New Yorker. It’s not a full-length article, just one of those “Talk of the Town” pieces, but it’s a tasty little morsel even if the author can barely disguse his glee at watching the Yanks falter:

Red Sox fans and local Yankee haters (there are a lot of these) exulted but also shook their heads: geez, what’s wrong with those guys? You could blame injuries (Bernie had missed most of spring training) or age (the Yanks are the oldest team in the majors) or jet lag from the season-opening series against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays that was played in Tokyo, but it was the beautiful and eloquent unpredictability of baseball itself that was making this happen: the sport once again showing us that statistical unlikelihood can come in bursts and bunches, a virus from nowhere, and for a time sever the game and its players from all expectation. Think of Mel Gibson taking up the harp, President Bush being late for a Cabinet meeting while he finishes “The Ambassadors”: this was better.

Thanks to Twins Fan Dan for calling my attention to the piece, and for fellow WCW (will you guys get a friggin’ name already) blogger Ken Arneson for hitting the nail on the head when it comes to Angell’s genius as a classic prose stylist.

…some of which may be expanded upon in the near future:

1. Homer Bush, the futility infielder with quite probably the best name in baseball history, is back wearing Pinstripes. I’m so irrationally happy that I could go turn over a car, March Madness style. The good news comes at the expense of Travis Lee, who is likely headed for shoulder surgery.

Noted elsewhere in the above-linked Newsday piece is that reliever Steve Karsay is once again cooked: “Torre said he doesn’t expect Steve Karsay to pitch this year. Karsay suffered a setback a few weeks ago while rehabbing his surgically repaired right shoulder.” Delicate flower, that Karsay, who may be adding the second two-year gap to his resume (assuming he ever pitches again, which, come to think of it, I’ll take the under…).

2. The New York Times has a must-read four-part article on George Steinbrenner. As somebody who grew up rooting for the Dodgers and hating the Yanks, I always viewed Steinbrenner from afar as an embarrassing boor, as obnoxiously nutso as Charlie Finley, Ted Turner, or Ray Kroc were at the time (late ’70s into early ’80s), but with a better ballclub. Growing into a New York City resident who roots for the Yanks while Steinbrenner still owns the team has been one of the more interesting facets of this whole sick and twisted tale. Seeing things from the inside — a ballclub representing our fair city — I admire Steinbrenner’s desire to provide a team that can kick your city team’s ass, and to some extent his ability to spare no expense in doing so.

The difference at this point is that compared to the horror stories of my youth, George mostly manages to stay out of harm’s way while trying to manipulate the team via his idiosyncratic view. Think about it: apart from the obvious concerns about running a ballclub, what is the Yankee braintrust for besides a collective insulation from The Boss’s worst impulses? The last time Steinbrenner fired a GM was 1990, the last manager to go went in 1995. You’d think he might have outgrown his trigger-happy reputation somewhere along the line, but this is New York, right?

Eh, my views on the topic are much more nuanced than this late-night ramble can convey, so hopefully sometime this week I’ll put something together on King George and his madness…

On Thursday I took Baseball Prospectus/Pinstriped Bible author Steven Goldman up on an offer to trek to the Brooklyn Public Library in search of photos to augment his forthcoming biography of Casey Stengel, Forging Genius (due in October from Brassey’s). Focused as the book is on Casey’s career before he made routine work of winning pennants as Yankee manager, Steven was looking for photos of Stengel’s time with the Dodgers either as a player (1912-17) or a sub-.500 manager (1934-36) — Dem Bums, indeed. He’d been led to believe the library had stacks and stacks of old Dodger photos on file, and anticipating both the need for assistance and my own glee at sifting through such arcana, he invited me along.

Also accompanying him was Andrew Baharlias, the former staff counsel of the Yankees (1997-2002), whom you may recognize from a few articles on Baseball Prospectus, most recently one on what he termed the Yankees Defensive Employee Retention Program. Through some miraculous luck on a three-train odyssey, I arrived at the library on time, only to find that Steven and Andrew were two rivers away, still stuck in traffic entering the Holland Tunnel on the Jersey side. I took the opportunity to avail myself of some mediocre Chinese food while soaking up the gorgeous sunshine on the fringe of Prospect Park, checking out the war memorials at Grand Army Plaza as I awaited their arrival. Hey, it beats working.

Once they arrived, it quickly became apparent that the three of us were swatting flies with a sledgehammer. The librarian handed Steven only about a dozen manila folders, many containing only one or two photos, a stack hardly as thick as a dime-store novel. Even after poring over the binder listing every potential folder, we came up with only about two dozen files which seemed relevant. Donning white cloth gloves so as not to mar the photos with our fingerprints, we spent about an hour carefully examining each shot, reading captions on the back and laughing at some of the more outrageous pictures: Dodger manager Wilbert Robinson, “Uncle Robbie,” riding a bicycle, Giant manager John McGraw and his wife, who looked exactly like him (not a compliment), a young Yogi Berra with a basketball, a great shot of some not-so-tough-looking Brooklyn schoolkids burning Casey in effigy during the 1952 World Series, one holding up a sign that said “Casey Stinky Stengel.” Hoodlums!

Steven rejected many photos for being outside the time period, several with players wearing the wrong uniforms (Van Lingle Mungo as a Giant just doesn’t cut it). In all we only came up with about seven as relevant to the book: Dazzy Vance, the great Brooklyn hurler of the Twenties, the aforementioned Uncle Robbie bike shot, a good one of Yankee manager Joe McCarthy with owner Edward Barrow and another of Barrow with Larry McPhail and George Weiss, a shot of Max Carey and Bill Terry, and so on. Hardly the bonanza we’d envisioned. Still, it was a fun exercise, perhaps moreso for me since I didn’t have to cross state lines, nor did I have anything at stake other than an opportunity to pick Steven’s brain a bit and hear a few of Andrew’s war stories from his time with the Yanks.

Since the photos in question, mostly from the defunct Brooklyn Eagle, aren’t online, for today’s Lunchtime Link, I’ll leave you with a shot that is. It’s one of my all-time favorite baseball photos from another source, the Library of Congress: Casey as a Dodger circa 1915, wearing a pinstriped uniform and sunglasses, looking like one cool mofo standing in the Ebbets Field outfield (the shot was also recently used in the SABR publication Deadball Stars of the National League). Casey’s mouth is open like he’s carrying on some long monologue in Stengelese, and if you’re like me you’d willingly shell out a pretty penny to hear those thoughts.

The Big Apple Baseballist outing to Yankee Stadium was a success, both for the eleven of us who attended the game and for the home team, who beat the A’s 5-1 behind Jose Contreras’ surprisingly decent performance. Representing were bloggers Alex Belth, Alex Ciepley, Cliff Corcoran, Avkash Patel, and Jason Wojciechowski, as well as Justin Poon, Geoff Silver, Nick Stone, Ameer Youssef, my girlfriend Andra, and myself. We sat way up high — Row U, two from the top — but as we were about halfway between home plate and third base, we still had a pretty decent view. Hey, what do you expect for $5 (or $9 once TicketRapist takes their cut)? Some people swear by (and in) the Yankee Stadium bleachers; me, I’m an upper deck guy — I love the birds’s eye view of the field, though I almost always sit in the lower portion (Tier Boxes) instead of the nosebleeds. Geoff, who worked for the Cincinnati Reds for four years and is currently pursuing another job in baseball, said it was the worst seat he’d had in years, but he had obvious fun talking everybody’s ears off, and I think everybody else enjoyed the game as well. Alex C. got to play with his new cell phone, which has a little camera built in, providing a few mementos of our night: our view from the top, myself and Justin, Alex B., Nick and Cliff.

For the first time since early 2000, I didn’t keep score at a Yanks game, preferring instead to mingle within the group. Both Belth and Corcoran kept score, though I teased Alex when I looked down and saw him missing about three innings worth of the A’s hitting. The horrific “security” at the Stadium cost us a good bite of the first frame, as the Yanks did most of their damage while we were settling into our seats. They put together a three-run rally on the strength of three singles, two walks, and a sac fly, keeping the line moving in the Nine-Eight Style.

But the big story on the night was Contreras. After three disastrous starts, the Cuban — well shepherded by Jorge Posada — earned his first win of the season. He scattered four hits in six innings, made one mistake that highly-touted A’s shortstop Bobby Crosby hit over the leftfield wall, and only dawdled a couple of times. As Sam Borden of the New York Daily News put it:

There were hairy moments, but this time Contreras worked around them instead of buckling under. Last night’s third inning had the potential to become like the third inning 11 days ago, when Contreras imploded despite holding a six-run lead, but something was different this time.

After Bobby Crosby led off the frame with his third homer of the season, Contreras steeled himself – and got a little help from his fielders, too. With two outs and two men on, Eric Chavez smoked a line drive that Jason Giambi said he didn’t see “until it was behind me.” Still, the first baseman flopped to his right and snagged it, saving at least one run and getting Contreras out of his biggest jam of the night.

Giambi’s gem was all the more surprising given the low regard with which his defense is held, but that was a play that would have made a Gold Glover proud. Big G later stroked a solo home run, as did Posada, who retook the AL lead with 8. Derek Jeter continued his struggles, falling to 0-for-32, although he reached on an error and drew a walk. With the early lead, the crowd got behind Jeter every trip to the plate, forty thousand fans chanting his name and rooting like hell for a hit. Alas, he didn’t even get the ball out of the infield. The rumors are starting to build that his hands are hurting, though he refuses to admit that’s the case. Next up on his epic futility streak is Joe McEwing’s 0-for-33 in 2002; company like that is not good to keep

The only other downer on the night was the news about Bernie Williams, who tweaked his surgically repaired knee the night before, and who’s had plenty of chances to remind us his shoulders aren’t in such great shape either. I’ve seen his future, and it includes lots of DH time; Bernie’s days as a Gold Glove winner are over. Speaking of bad news and shoulders, Travis Lee is headed to Dr. James Andrews and will likely have surgery. All of this means that Tony Clark, rehabbing Kenny Lofton, and Bubba Crosby — who’s on a slide of his own lately, having gotten only one hit since his big day a couple of weeks ago (did I tell you?) — will be sticking around for the foreseeable future. Jorge DePaula having gone under the knife, the Yankee system is notoriously bereft of tradeable talent, with catcher Dioner Navarro the plum of the system, though GM Brian Cashman has been talking up the likes of AA pitchers Sean Henn and Chien-Ming Wang and Class A closer Edwardo Sierra. Get used to this team, as it will likely be awhile before the Yanks can add another name that doesn’t make fans scratch their heads and go “He’s still alive?” But if they keep playing like they’re supposed to, it won’t matter so much.

The Yankees shook themselves out of their four-game funk with a six-run rally in the eighth inning on Tuesday night against the Oakland A’S, coming from behind to win 10-8. Ruben Sierra delivered a pinch-hit two-run double that hit the chalk of the leftfield foul line, exactly the kind of break the Yanks have been starved for lately — though they certainly had their share in the inning, with Gary Sheffield getting a key infield single. The team was all smiles afterwards, looking as though the weight of the world had been lifted from their shoulders. Even surly Mike Mussina, who barely managed to avoid going 1-5, was upbeat.

Because Andra was TiVoing her teen dramas, I listened to the game via the web starting in the fifth. By the time the bottom of the eighth arrived, announcer John Stirling (he of the infamous, annoying “Thhhhhhhheeeeeeeee Yankees win! The Yankees win!” call) had all but buried the team, saying that there was no way the Yanks were going to pull this one out after blowing a 4-1 lead and then falling behind 8-4 on a series of bad breaks and defensive miscues. I never did get a chance to hear him eat those words, as midway through the rally, Andra’s show ended and I switched over to YES just in time to see Sierra’s at-bat.

Despite the win and the ten-run outburst, Derek Jeter continued his slump, falling to 0-for-28. But he received plenty of respect last night in the form of a hearty ovation from the fans in the seventh inning and in an intentional walk from Ricardo Rincon just after Sierra’s double. Think about that for a moment: the guy’s hitting .169 and carrying the league’s longest 0-fer (and the longest Yankee slide since Tin.000 Martinez went 0-for-28 in 2000), yet with two runners in scoring position, first base open and one out, the A’s elected to give him a free pass to set up the double play rather than give him a shot at breaking the game open with what surely would have been a dramatic hit. It may just have been sound baseball strategy, but it was also an acknowledgement that sooner or later, Jeter’s going to get a hit that will make him look just as clutch as he always was, and he’ll be back in the good graces of the Yankee Stadium throngs.

I’m headed to tonight’s game in the company of several other bloggers in the form of my Big Apple Baseballists posse. While I wish the weather was a bit warmer and I already dread watching Jose Contreras fiddle around, it feels a whole lot better to head to the ballpark with the Yanks back on the good foot.

* * *

Lunchtime Link: Most of you who read me regularly know that I’m not always able to post on a daily basis, in part because I hold myself to a high standard — If I can’t write at least four or five paragraphs on a topic, whether it’s original or an article I read elsewhere, I generally don’t bother. But as a way of rewarding my daily readers for stopping by, on days where I might not post something longer I’m going to make every effort to give you a quick hit relatively early, something to read at lunchtime or print out for your commute home. I won’t be able to offer as much commentary as I usually do, but at least I can point you in the right direction for something I found of interest.

Today’s link is from The Hardball Times: Steve Treder‘s piece on the West Texas-New Mexico League of 1937-1955. Treder dug out his old Spalding Baseball Guides and Sporting News Baseball Guides to take readers on a tour of this obscure league, where high altitudes in places such as Albuquerque made for a hitter’s heaven and a pitcher’s hell — we’re talking league batting averages above .300 and runs per game topping 7.0 per team. Amid this museum of the statistically absurd, Treder points out a pitcher with a 15-13 record and a 9.21 ERA and an oufielder named Bob Crues who in 1948 hit .404/.491/.848 with 69 homers and 254 RBI in only 140 games. Crues’ team, the Amarillo Gold Sox, scored a whopping 1267 runs that year and hit .323 with 214 homers. Suffice it to say that if you like to ogle eye-popping stats, check out Treder’s entertaining, well-researched piece.

If you’re a Yankee fan, the funk is everywhere today, and I don’t mean in the good, George Clintonian sense. It’s on every back page tabloid, every local newscast, and the look of every interlocking NY-wearing fan. Gray skies and rain in the city, combined with an off day, leave little to think about but the severe beatdown administered by the Red Sox. Behind a fairly vintage-looking — in result, if not speed of fastball — Pedro Martinez, Boston took the third game from the Yanks on Sunday, completing their sweep of the weekend series and extending their advantage to 6-1 thus far this year. Javier Vazquez gave a noble effort on three days’ rest, but one hanging mistake to Manny Ramirez cost him the ballgame, 2-0. The Yanks scored four measly, stinkin’ runs the entire series, two of them merely window dressing on a game that had long been decided.

With apologies to the ASPCA, Yankee GM Brian Cashman summed it up best for Lawrence Rocca of the Newark Star Ledger:

“I’m going to go home, kiss my wife, hug my kids,” Cashman said, “and kick the (blank) out of my dog.”

Even Derek Jeter got booed, and with that 0-for-25, it’s understandable. Red Sox fans and even local writers such as George Vescey get it wrong if they think that Yankee fans are spoiled, short of memory and quick to turn. Jeter is the Yankee captain, carrying a $189 million contract, and when Yankee fans boo him, they’re not booing the clutch shortstop of six World Series teams so much as releasing their pent-up frustration at the lousy play of this overpriced team and reminding, in the words of a man from nowhere near New York City, “Nobody Slides, My Friend.” We know the Yankees will do better, but polite applause and encouragement won’t tide us over until then. New York City — and the Yankees — ain’t for the fragile or the faint of heart. Fuck that weak shit.

Bless his intangibles, Jeter knows this as well as anybody else, which is why he didn’t give anything but his usual pat, bland answers when questioned about the booing on Friday:

“I don’t blame them,” Jeter said flatly… “We would have booed ourselves tonight, too. It’s hard to imagine being worse than we were tonight. Put me at the front of that list.”

A civic crisis might have erupted if Sox fans had treated Nomar similarly — Pedro would have demanded a trade — but in Da Bronx, it comes with the territory. If our hometown heroes can’t get over a case of the April boo birds, then they won’t be worth a tinker’s damn when the chips are down in October.

Which isn’t to say any Yankee fan should walk around miserable, looking to bust the nearest Sox fan in the chops when he taunts you over the weekend’s results. Smile, play nice, adjust your imaginary monocle and tell him something like, “Your Beantown side surely got the best of us in this exhibition, old chap, but when the real games start, our Bronx nine shall top you.” In the grand scheme of things, both the season and the all-time rivalry, this weekend’s sweep quantifies as small tater tots. As a wise man said back in 1978: “It doesn’t matter where you are when the leaves are on the trees, it matters where you are when the leaves are on the ground.”

Better days lay ahead, but if you want to revel in the past, check out Cecilia Tan‘s list of The 50 Greatest Yankee Games of all time — she’s working on a book, due out next February, and she’s left one slot open to be decided via a readers poll (I’m going to suggest nine in the ninth from ’98). Who knows? By this October the next Aaron Boone may make that last slot a moot point.