Well said Angelica! :)

I think a lot of sportswriters are angry because deep down inside
they wanted to be a great athlete. Since they didn't have the skills
they become writers. They get the chance to bitch, moan and complain
to make themselves feel better. I think the ones that say hurtful
things are jealous. We know they'd never admit this. Screw them! Manny
is going into the Hall of Fame someday. No matter what they write this
will never change. They'd better learn to deal with it.

Lynne

=0=0=0=0=0=0=0=0=

--- In mannyacs@yahoogroups.com, Angelica Fisichella
<angelica1222@...> wrote:
>
> This article, in my humble opinion, stinks. The very idea that you
can measure fiedling abiltiy by statistics has always been debatable
at best. Clearly this writer has gone out of his way to try to prove
that manny hurts his team, and I dont' think he does a very good job
of it. Whatever...Ted Williams wasn't a great fielder, either :-)
>
> Ciao,
> Angelica
>
> Lynne <lynne@...> wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> Here's another sportswriter with a strong dislike for Manny. Haters! :)
>
> Lynne
>
> =0=0=0=0=0=0=0=0=0=
>
> The 86-year Curse of the Bambino ended when the Boston Red Sox won the
> 2004 World Series. But as long as the American League's best
> right-handed hitter plays left field in Fenway Park, the team's fans
> will continue to moan about Manny being Manny.
>
> Manny Ramírez is, of course, the Red Sox' most accomplished slugger
> and their biggest headache, equally known for his prodigious
> production at the plate and his misadventures in the field and on the
> basepaths. When Fenway denizens dismiss a muffed fly ball or a botched
> rundown as Manny being Manny, they mean that they have learned to
> tolerate his foibles in return for his offensive output. But just how
> much do Ramírez's weaknesses subtract from his one outstanding
> strength? His bat may be worth his $20 million salary, but is the
> whole package?
>
> Measuring fielding with numbers has always been a difficult task. The
> most traditional statistic, fielding percentage, is dependent on the
> whims of official scorers and does not account for a player's range,
> while total plays made per game is a product of the number of balls
> hit to a fielder.
>
> Accurate numerical evaluations of defense only became possible in
> 1987, when Stats Inc. began sending observers to every game to record
> the location and speed of every batted ball.
>
> This play-by-play (P.B.P.) information made it possible to measure
> fielding ability much more precisely, by comparing the rates that
> players at the same position fielded various types of balls — say soft
> pop-ups to right-center field or ground-ball smashes down the
> third-base line. By adding up a fielder's performance relative to his
> peers on every type of play, analysts can produce fairly reliable
> statistical measures of defense.
>
> All of today's best P.B.P. systems agree that Ramírez is the worst
> defensive left fielder in baseball, and by a comfortable margin. This
> holds true even after accounting for the effect of the Green Monster
> wall in left field.
>
> "Manny is at the far end of the as-bad-as-you-can-get-in-the-field
> spectrum," said Mitchel Lichtman, who designed one highly regarded
> P.B.P. defensive statistic called ultimate zone rating, and who
> consulted for the St. Louis Cardinals from 2004 to 2006.
>
> But the experts differ vastly on just how much a single bad left
> fielder can hurt a team.
>
> At one extreme, the most conservative estimates suggest that Ramírez's
> outfield play last season, when compared with an average left
> fielder's, cost the Red Sox 13 runs. That's not good, but not bad
> enough to make him meaningfully worse than elite corner outfielders
> like the Angels' Vladimir Guerrero, the Yankees' Bobby Abreu and the
> Pirates' Jason Bay.
>
> By contrast, Lichtman's system says Ramírez was 32 runs below average
> last year, which would make him one of the game's most overrated and
> overpaid players. If he was actually that awful, he was no more
> valuable than the Mariners' Raúl Ibáńez, the Blue Jays' Reed Johnson
> or the Angels' Juan Rivera.
>
> The truth most likely lies in the middle: the average of the P.B.P.
> systems' results for Ramírez is 15 to 20 runs below average. That's
> enough to take a significant bite out of his value. If his hitting
> begins to deteriorate this season (he turns 35 in May), and his base
> running remains poor (subtracting another two runs or so), he is
> likely to be worth about as much in 2007 as Oakland's up-and-coming
> Nick Swisher. In other words, an All-Star, but not a franchise player,
> and certainly not worth anywhere near his $20 million salary.
>
> So how can Boston minimize the damage from Ramírez's fielding? One
> approach would be to assemble a ground-ball pitching staff, which
> would result in fewer balls being hit to him. But Curt Schilling and
> Josh Beckett surrender lots of fly balls.
>
> The other solution would be to move Ramírez to designated hitter. That
> would require switching the incumbent D.H., David Ortiz, to first
> base. Ortiz is even less mobile than Ramírez, and given his
> corpulence, the demands of playing the field may substantially
> increase his risk of injury. It would also entail moving the current
> first baseman, Kevin Youkilis, to left field (which he might not play
> any better than Ramírez) or to third base (which would then require
> Boston to trade its current third baseman, Mike Lowell, for a left
> fielder).
>
> That said, Ortiz does play first base competently in interleague
> games. And according to Lichtman, no first baseman, no matter how bad,
> could consistently gift Red Sox opponents half as many runs with his
> glove as Ramírez does. Moreover, as Ramírez ages, his fielding is
> likely to get worse.
>
> Even if Boston's fans are willing to live with another year of Manny
> being Manny, the team's fly-ball pitchers may be forced to revolt.
>
> Source: Dan Rosenheck / nytimes.com
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> No need to miss a message. Get email on-the-go
> with Yahoo! Mail for Mobile. Get started.
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>