Tracy is talking again

Tracy keeps making it harder and harder for me to trust him. Today's PG article talks about his goal to "waste no outs." If that means play good, fundamental defense and don't give the team other outs in the field, I'm all for it. I'm afraid that's not what it means. He's talking, of course, about "productive outs," more or less the stupidest statistic ever invented. An out, in itself, is counter productive. A groundout that moves a runner from second to first is still a ground out. The top three teams in the Majors in productive outs in 2004 (the list appears to be from 2005 due to the presence of the Nats, but it's dated 2004 and Sean Burnett is on the players list so I guess ESPN changed it's team links sitewide) were the Expos, the Rockies, and the Pirates. On the "Jim Tracy or Paul Meyer or possibly both are clinically insane" front, Tracy's Dodgers, the 2004 version which the PG cites as such a good model for the Pirates, finished TWENTY-FIFTH in the league in productive outs. Now, this isn't a bad thing. The Red Sox finished last in the league in productive outs and won a World Series. The problem comes in that somewhere along the line Tracy has decided that "maximizing the efficiency of every out" is of paramount importance when it's not what won him a division last year. Apparently the only thing between us and that extra one win a week (that the article cites as the difference between us and the Astros) is in a whole bunch of sacrifice bunts and hit and runs.

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