The Bob Smizik Ban

This accidentally published as "Failure" when I was about 2/3rds done with it. It's essentially the same post with some changes throughout and an actual ending.

I've tried, I really have. About a 8 months ago I swore off writing about the stupid things that come out of Bob Smizik's mouth. My reasoning was that everything he writes is to piss people like me off, and by me bitching about his columns I was only doing exactly what he wanted. Slowly since the end of the season, I've lost sight of that and almost written about Smizik again, but the breadth of the stupidity today is just too much to ignore. Today, he decides to tackle the downside of plate patience. Thus, I have decided to remind myself why I don't write posts about what Smizik writes, then continue my own personal ban on posting about his columns.

He begins by acting on an assumption of what plate patience is that is completely wrong. Exercising patience at the plate doesn't always mean taking pitches early in the count, it means being disciplined enough to not swing at something you can't hit. Sure, there are situations where a batter should take until he gets a strike. Any time a pitcher has thrown a lot of pitches and is struggling with control, especially late in a close game, is a "take until strike" situation. Today on Pirates.com there's another article up about plate patience. Tracy's exact quote is:

"I'm not advocating that you go up there and you take the first pitch. I'm advocating that you go up there each and every time and you get yourself a good pitch to swing at."

His then provides his first example, plate patience is bad because Roberto Clemente did not take many pitches. This is obvious because Roberto Clemente was the best Pirate of the last 50 years (at least, he is when he proves Smizik's point, otherwise he's worse than Paul Waner, partly because WANER DREW 470 MORE WALKS, Smizik actually wrote that) and if he didn't need to take pitches, why should these Pirates? Of course, Roberto Clemente was a fantastic pure hitter that between 1960 and his death after the 1972 season never had an on-base percentage of worse than .356 or an OPS of under .805 (mostly in the 60s, one of the best pitching eras ever). No one tries to change Vlad Guerrero's approach at the plate and if not for intentional walks, he'd walk at a very similar rate to Clemente. Just because it works for Roberto Clemente and Vlad Guerrero doesn't mean it will work for Jack Wilson. All the Pirates are saying is "If you can hit it hard take a cut. If you can't and there's not two strikes, then don't. If it's not a strike, don't swing." Just because Clemente could hit a wider variety of pitches harder than the current Pirates doesn't mean he didn't follow the same philosophy.

Smizik then bafflingly decides that the Pirates batting averages with two strikes is good evidence that plate patience is bad. This is because everyone knows that the only way to get two strikes on you is to take two consectutive pitches, and every time you watch two pitches they will both automatically be called strikes. Those stats don't apply to this argument in any way unless you're assuming that plate patience is defined as "Taking strikes until there are two on you," which is completely moronic. Kind of like the premise of the column.

This is why I avoid Smizik as much as possible. He looks at what people are saying that might be positive about something, and then does his best to piss all over it. Almost everything he says about the Pirates is said simply to be contrary to popular opinion. People were happy to see Joe Randa back, he said that Randa's too old now and he isn't good, we just shouldn't have let him go in the first place. People were starting to rave about Tracy's camp and he shot them right down. Now, people are happy to see that perhaps the Pirates won't look like drunken lumberjacks at the plate and he writes this. Sometimes he's right, like with the Randa column. Sometimes, like with the McClendon/Tracy column, he's not completely off base. Sometimes his columns are further off base than Matt Lawton on a Sunday afternoon, like today. I don't think he really cares, honestly, I think it's all done because it's easier to get people to read what you write when you disagree with what they think. He takes his contrarian position, finds some numbers that he can take out of context to back him up (ironically, the exact reason why columnists like Smizik hate GMs like Billy Beane). This is why the permanent WHYGAVS Bob Smizik Ban is being officially renewed, as of today.