For this installment of “Fact or Fiction”, Yard Work is pleased to bring you two of its long-standing contributors — professional Red Sox fan Bill Simmons and resident science scholar Dr. Robert K. Adair. Let’s get to the questions!
1. Albert Pujols is the best hitter any of us will ever see.
Adair: FICTION. The statement is not provable. “Ever” is a very long time. Colloquially, it can stretch from now until the All-Star Break, from now until the end of the decade, or now until the end of the 21st Century. And so on. But scientifically speaking, “ever” refers only to the infinite realm. All the baseball “we will ever see” must encompass the entire future of baseball. Games taking place in the present day will have a marked influence on all future games; we cannot speak of everything “we will ever see” on a baseball field without being cognizant of the fact that today’s games and players will deterministically influence the games of an infinite number of tomorrows. So we really have no idea whether Albert Pujols, or Barry Bonds, or a child that is currently nine years old and legally blind is the best player we will ever see. It is not an answerable question.
Simmons: FACT. I’m very sure of this. I’m not going to waffle on my answer. I mean, why would you show up here to contribute to this column and then refuse to give an answer? I thought science was all about knowing the answers! This is a sports website; you’re not Tom Cruise dodging Barbara Walters’ interview questions. Anyhow, Pujols entered the pantheon after he hit that home run off Lidge in last year’s playoffs. That was his “Larry Bird in Game 5 against Detroit in 1987” moment. I’m not sure we can call him the “Baseball Jesus” yet, but he’s close. A lot closer than ARod or Bonds, two guys who only hit homers during garbage time in 10-1 games, will ever be. I mean, if the bases were loaded with two out in the ninth, and your team was down by a run, who would you want batting for you? What if your life depended on it? It would have to be Pujols. I don’t think the choice has been clearer at any point in the past 20 years. His start to the 2006 season is like Terry’s run of immunity wins on Survivor:Exile Island, you just know you’re never going to see the likes of it again in your lifetime.
2. MLB is making a mistake by not preparing an official celebration for Barry Bonds’ 715th home run.
Adair: FACT. The glory of baseball culture lies in its focused obsession with numbers. Its fans, never satisfied to limit themselves to simple discussions of “winning” and “losing”, engage in colorful discourse over the meaning of the smallest numerical minutiae. Theories about the Coors Field effect or the early season failures of pitchers in the WBC tournament take on qualities that are every bit as magical as visionary mathematician Johannes Kepler’s wild ruminations on the supra-lunar firmament. Nevertheless, many fans remain resistant to the idea of paying tribute to Bonds’ imminent milestone because he will “merely” take over second place on the all-time home run list. The irony, of course, is this — for decades, the Babe was the most celebrated “second place” finisher in the history of his great sport. Many fans chose to dismiss Roger Maris’ single-season home run mark and continued to recognize Ruth’s record in its place. This state of affairs persisted for nearly four decades, until the bearlike McGwire took both men’s claims to the mark and swatted them out of the record book with one swipe of his mighty paw. Like Ruth before him, Bonds deserves to be celebrated as the worthy runner-up to one of baseball’s most hallowed records, as the Leibniz to Henry Aaron’s Sir Isaac Newton as it pertains to the discovery of the infinitesimal calculus, as it were.
Simmons: FICTION. I can’t even believe people are seriously discussing this. Who celebrates second place? Have you ever taken yourself out for drinks for finishing second in your winner-take-all March Madness pool? Only in baseball would this become an issue. Does the NBA celebrate the players and teams who make it to the conference finals but never get to compete for the championship? If we did, Steve Nash and Chris Webber would be remembered as two of the greatest basketball players ever. Can you name the five most recent runners-up for the AL MVP award, with the exception of David Ortiz? Who did Kelly Kapowski date after she broke up with Zack Morris? Do I need to go on?
SWITCHEROO!
3. The Yankees, A’s, and Red Sox have injury woes and Cleveland is off to a rocky start. It’s time to take the Tigers seriously as playoff contenders.
Simmons: FACT. But barely. The Tigers’ performance thus far in the season presents us with one of the most difficult betting conundrums of 2006. I have to admit that I didn’t see this coming, unlike my buddy Hench who got 3-1 preseason odds in Vegas that the Tigers would finish above .500 this year. I was offset by his confidence at the time, but he’s the one laughing right now.
On one hand, the Tigers are due. They just are. They’ve been an embarrassment since Comerica Park opened and there’s too much great baseball history in Detroit for those woes to continue for much longer. On the other hand, Detroit already has the Pistons (who are a shoo-in to head to the NBA Finals for the third straight year) and the city just hosted Jerome Bettis’ huge homecoming party AKA the Superbowl. There’s only so much success that one city can have. Then you have the Leyland Factor. He couldn’t win with Bonds, Bonilla, and Van Slyke in their primes and we’re supposed to believe that he can lead Justin Verlander, Chris Shelton, and Placido Polanco to the playoffs? Isn’t this team only one Kenny Rogers tantrum away from a complete collapse? How long until Rogers snaps and slugs one of his infielders after a costly error? Two months? Three at most? But the Tigers currently own a 6.5 game lead over supposed heavyweights like Cleveland and Minnesota, and the constant comparisons to last year’s White Sox can’t be ignored. So I like the Tigers’ chances.
Adair: FICTION. Yet another question that can only be answered by entering the realm of probability. Will the Tigers make the playoffs? I have no idea, but as chance would have it (yes, even physicists can be punny from time to time!) I was ruminating on this very matter earlier in the week. I created a numerical model that is qualitatively similar to Baseball Prospectus’ Postseason Odds Chart that incorporates a 6th derivative Runge-Kutta approximation method in formulating the head-to-head win probabilities. For the interested reader, the full results have been submitted for publication in an upcoming issue of the American Journal of Physics. Baseball Prospectus has an optimistic view of the Tigers (their chances of making the playoffs have consistently fluctuated in the 70-75% range), but my revised model is far more pessimistic. I estimate they only have a 30-35% chance of playing baseball past the first week of October, with the Indians and White Sox leading the way in the AL Central at 40-45% and 60-65% respectively.
4. Delmon Young’s 50-game suspension was far too harsh.
Simmons: FACT. 50 is a large number. That’s a lot of games. Ron Artest was suspended for what, 65 games? Young threw a bat. Artest threw a tantrum that you had to see to believe, tried to beat up a bunch of fans, and earned “Save Until I Delete Status” on my TiVo. That’s the Triple Crown of memorable and punishable sports incidents. And he got only 15 more games than Young? Something doesn’t add up.
Adair: FICTION. Many commentators are referring to their emotions in their attempt to judge on this matter. Unfortunately, Mr. Simmons is one of those people. As you might expect, I frown upon such visceral reactions. The only fair and reliable way to legislate on Young’s actions is to refer the matter to a rigorous scrubbing through the immutable laws of physics.
Any analysis of this sort requires a reference point. In this case, let us recall Pete Rose’s 30 game suspension from 1988. This punishment was levied following his infamous “bumping” incident with umpire Dave Pallone. Even though this precedent was established in the major leagues, it should apply equally well to the minor leagues because Newton’s Laws of Motion remain invariant as one moves between sports leagues. The proof of this fact is trivial, and I will not take the time to expound upon it here.
I have broken down the tapes of both incidents on a frame-by-frame basis. Young’s bat had a mass of 0.93 kg, or 33 ounces in layman’s units, and was traveling at a speed of 16.5 +/- 1.8 meters/second. Neglecting the rotational component of momentum of the bat, we conclude that approximately 15.3 (kg meters)/second of momentum was imparted to the umpire’s body. In comparison, Rose’s actions against Dave Pallone were far slighter. Judging by Pallone’s very small recoil following his interaction with Rose, the bumping and shoving motions resulted in minimal impact. Neither Rose’s body or hands were moving with any significant speed (< 1.5 meters/second) and the actual mass involved in the momentum transfer was very small, not more than one percent of Rose’s body weight. Therefore the maximum momentum that could have been imparted to Pallone was 2.8 (kg meters)/second.
Finally, we see that in proportion to Rose’s punishment, the minimum duration of Young’s suspension should be 30 * 15.3/2.8 = 164 games. This is approximately one and a half seasons of minor league baseball. It is of the utmost clarity that Young’s suspension was not nearly severe enough. To summarize: it sucks to be Delmon Young right now. One’s initial reaction may be to declare that a 164 game suspension is too harsh, but as I have shown here, that punishment is completely consistent with natural phenomena.