Really, why stop at mocking Jews, racism and exhbitionism? Eric Collins and Steve Lyons butted heads a few times during last night’s telecast of of the Dodgers at the White Sox, and let’s just say x-rays of Psycho’s head would reveal nothing. Here’s a few of the highlights, as collected by Sons Of Steve Garvey (link swiped from Repoz and Baseball Think Factory)
Lyons: Do you follow some of the other whacked-out statistical categories that are nouveau to the game of baseball?
Collins: I do. It’s ”
Lyons: What are they?
Collins: Well, you got defensive ” for the first time ever you have ”
Lyons: The WHIP ”
Collins: For the first time ever you have categories that measure defense. The UZR: Ultimate Zone Rating. It makes a difference. Everyone talked about it last year. Tampa Bay making it to the post-season because of pitching and defense. Defense matters nowadays.
Lyons: It’s fictional. There is a place, a very small place, for the computer geeks that are now taking over the game of baseball. There is a place, but it’s a small place. We’re seeing way too much of it. UZR. And your WHIPs and your OPSes. They don’t show me what kind of heart the guy has. BABIP?
Collins: Batting Average on Balls in Play?
Lyons: Stupid. Doesn’t tell me if the guy is a player. Doesn’t tell me if the guy can play. Is he a gamer? Does he get dirty? Does he go out there and play hard? Is he a good teammate? None of that stuff tells me any of that. That’s the guy I want.
Collins: That would be your Derek Jeter, we were talking about an inning ago.
Lyons: I’ll take your computer and I’ll toss it right off this balcony here.
Collins: Every computer ever designed would have told you that Alex Rodriguez was a better defender than Derek Jeter when he first came to the Yankees, yet Derek Jeter continued to play shortstop. And that didn’t help the Yankees at all defensively.
Three-one pitch.
But Derek Jeter is a gamer and he’s ”
Lyons: I’ll let you take that up with Joe Torre.
Collins: I bet he’d have an interesting thought on that. Maybe that’ll be my task for tomorrow.
Lyons: I hope you still have a job after that conversation.
The Dodgers and White Sox are currently tied at 5-5 in the last of the 9th at the Cell. I’ll not bother to link to the box score, because it would tell you absolutely nothing about any of the participants’ willingness to get dirty.
None of those stats would tell you if a player took his pants off during a game, therefore they are useless.
Since TV writers have a lot of free time over the summer it sounds like Steve Lyons is trying to bait the FireJoeMorgan guys out of retirement. But this is so obvious, it’s like chumming for sharks with hundreds of bloody seals. I just wish he would’ve gone all the way and blamed Billy Beane for writing Moneyball and mentioned that he’d rather sign David Eckstein over Adam Dunn, then maybe Ken Tremendous’ twitter feed would explode and he’d be forced to do a full post on FJM.