TDL’s Sports, Wrestling, & Otherwise

At the beginning of baseball season, Pulse did a pre-season round up. One of the questions was: “if you had Joe Buck, McCarver, Morgan, and Kruk in a room with one bullet and no witnesses, what did you do.” We had all the various answers except the correct one: threaten to kill them unless they gave up Michael Kay’s address.

I worked from home yesterday and got the pleasure of listening to Kay and his vomit-inducing Yankee propaganda… including the defense of Joba’s over-celebrating by comparing him to Tiger Woods celebrating WINNING THE US OPEN. Whoever was in the booth with him, to their credit, said “dude… seriously?”

With it becoming increasingly obvious that the National League is at a huge disadvantage in interleague play because they actually have to build a team of 9 baseball players and not 8 baseball players and a roided-up hitting meathead and all (which I’ve been saying for about 6 years, mind you), AL announcers are striking back~!. Kay — and he’s not the only one… I heard it a couple times this weekend — decided to take the defensive and declare: “well, the AL is at just as much of a disadvantage in NL parks because the pitchers might not take more than 3 at-bats all season.”

Much like most other asinine baseballisms, this can be completely and totally disproven with approximtely ten minutes of research:

AVG/OBP/SLG
2008 AL pitchers: 146 PA, .149/.189/.165
2008 NL pitchers: 1095 PA, .145/.183/.183
2007 AL pitchers: 322 PA, .147/.178/.182
2007 NL pitchers: 5577 PA, .146/.177/.188
2006 AL pitchers: 317 PA, .125/.152/.176
2006 NL pitchers: 5648 PA, .132/.167/.175

There is no appreciable difference in relative skill between “pitchers who never hit” vs. “pitchers who hit sometimes.” I will probably go back farther when I get some time. On the other hand:

2008 AL DH: 4104 PA, .249/.337/.420
2008 NL DH: 253 PA, .229/.304/.370
2007 AL DH: 9363 PA, .268/.355/.447
2007 NL DH: 560 PA, .274/.343/.444
2006 AL DH: 9221 PA, .264/.350/.469
2006 NL DH: 540 PA, .243/.311/.364

2007 was kind of a wash (although the AL still won in the important categories even given the much larger sample) but otherwise it’s not even close. The NL is at a much larger statistical disadvantage in interleague play. Sorry guys, I know you don’t want to admit it and would rather continue blatting about the AL being “superior” but it’s basically like a football team celebrating wins while legally playing 12 guys on the field. Or, better yet if the NFC got to use a specialist kicker while the AFC made the quarterback kick field goals.

A little more detail, a very rough work-up of the DH’s production:

Games, At-Bats, R/RBI/HR, Run Creation (R+RBI - HR), RC/G

2008 AL DH: 955, 3587, 541/521/140, 922, 0.97
2008 NL DH: 59, 227, 27/26/9, 44, 0.74
2007 AL DH: 2142, 8145, 1341/1283/298, 2326, 1.08
2007 NL DH: 126, 504, 66/63/19, 110, 0.87
2006 AL DH: 2142, 8035, 1371/1318/392, 2297, 1.07
2006 NL DH: 126, 481, 56/54/12, 98, 0.77

Which indicates that AL DH’s are good for, on average, one run per game while NL DH’s are good for about 3 runs every 4 games.

This is the difference when you have a bench player vs. a full-time DH. And, unfortunately, due to another stupid decision by baseball, the first two games always open in a DH park. And, sorry, I won’t give you “buuuuh, but the DH has to play defense.” Carlos Delgado and Jason Giambi play a servicable first base and they are both complete stiffs.

The DH needs to be suspended entirely in interleague play — regardless of home park and especially in the World Series.