By Ricky O’Donnell
There will always be a disconnect between baseball fans who are into sabermetrics and people who view the game through a more, um, traditional lens. If you grew up learning that the way to play baseball is to bunt, steal, and hit-and-run, it probably won’t matter how many studies show that that isn’t necessarily the most efficient way to score runs. People are generally stubborn, and don’t want to relearn something they already know.
But I’ve never understood when those people blast teams for “hitting too many home runs.” A home run scores at least one run, and scoring runs is kind of the whole point of the game. The Sun-Times’s Greg Couch has done it a couple times this year, once famously bashing Alfonso Soriano for being selfish by trying to hit homers (uh, what?), and more recently wondering if the White Sox can do any real damage in the playoffs by relying so heavily on the long ball.
But if the Sox keeping mashing the way they have been lately, scoring 13 or more runs three times in a four-game stretch last week, even the most old-school critics will realize that hitting a boatload of homers is a pretty great way to win baseball games.
The Sox currently lead the majors in homers with 192, 20 more than the Phillies in the NL, and 30 more than those powerful Rangers. Kenny Williams has assembled the best fleet of power hitters he possibly could, and so far, it’s paid off. With about five weeks left in the regular season, the Sox are 20 games over .500 and lead the Central by a game. Their run differential of +111 is tied for the best in the AL with the Red Sox, and trails only the Cubs overall.
One argument against hitting homers seems to be that critics think they only come in bunches. That may have been the case in 1980, when a team’s best hitter may crank out 25 dongs, but that simply isn’t the case anymore. Just look at the Sox lineup: they start six guys every night who would hit third, fourth, or fifth in most lineups. Sure, their defense may be a little shaky, but over the course of a 162-game season, their power well outweighs that.
–
Week in Review: The Rays are legit, people. If not for A.J.’s standard tomfoolery, the Sox may have been swept at home for the first time all season. A three-game pounding of the Mariners made losing two of three to Tampa a little more tolerable.
Week in Preview: Much is being made of the 14-game road trip Minnesota is currently on, but the Sox head out to Baltimore this week to begin a streak of nine games away from The Cell.
Fields on the Farm: How far has Fields fallen since last year? Juan Uribe starts over him now, and no one seems all that upset. Maybe it’s because Uribe makes Ozzie look civilized by comparison.
The Missile Tracker: Was there any doubt that Alexei was going to knock in A.J. yesterday in the 10th inning after that goofy rundown play? Ramirez is far from a perfect player, but it’s hard to imagine where the Sox would be this season without him.
Over/Under: 100: the number of games the Seattle Mariners, who the Sox swept in a three-game series this week by a combined score of 33-7, will lose this season. In a related story, they’re managed by Jim Riggleman.
Beachwood Sabermetrics: A complex algorithm performed by The White Sox Report staff using all historical data made available by Major League Baseball has determined that the next time the Sox see Tampa Bay, A.J. is getting beaned, probably in the head.
The White Sox Report: Read ’em all.
–
Comments welcome. Please include a real name if want to be considered for publication.
–
Ricky O’Donnell is the proprietor of Tremendous Upside Potential , a contributor to the Sun-Times’s Full Court Press and a lot of other things.
Posted on August 25, 2008