Mark DeCotis loves NASCAR

Which is a sport, when it comes to knowledge, he could...man I don't want to use the phrase 'run circles around me' but I can't think of anything else. Baseball, however, is a different story as we'll see in this piece published by FloridaToday.com (me in regular/Mark in italics):

Gotta love game of baseball

Couldn't agree more Mr. DeCotis.

Baseball's back and it should be savored for what it is: A game that demands perfection yet rewards with failure.

Que?

As the Washington Nationals pitchers and catchers hold their first formal workout of the spring this morning in Viera, they will prepare for the 162-game grind that will test them and their teammates to their limits for precious little in return aside from the monetary compensation.

Que? The monetary compensation is pretty good, even if you're a back up catcher on the Nationals. Right Will Nieves? He made $445,000 last year for a 65 OPS+. So let us not just toss aside the 'monetary compensation.' It's a pretty good return.

Quick, name another group of practitioners -- the lunkheads on Wall Street aside -- who are paid so well to come up short.

Take that! Lunkheads on Wall Street! Way to cause the downfall of the American Economy! You jerks.

I'm waiting. Meanwhile, consider these numbers:

Ooooo numbers...I love those.

Songs are written about teams such as the New York Yankees that won 103 regular-season games en route to their 27th World Series championship in 2009. But, they also lost 59 times.

I don't even know what to say about that. Good teams get songs written about them. And the 59 loses thing...wow...I really don't know how to respond to that. That's a really great season though either way you look at it.

As a team, the Los Angeles Angels led the big leagues with a .285 batting average. That means their batters failed at the plate more than seven out of 10 times.

If we're rounding, then yes. Also you wanted to use OBP there, not BA. NO ONE uses BA anymore, it's soooo...90's.

Conversely, the Nationals ranked 22nd out of the 30 teams with a .258 average.

Yeah, this is WHY no one uses BA anymore. The Nationals ranked 12th in OBP. Middle of the pack. So they actually made up for their poor BA by being patient and getting on base.

Minnesota catcher Joe Mauer won the American League batting title with a .365 average. Great, but he still failed more than six times out of 10.

Or we can say he was successful almost 4 times out of 10. Glass half full/glass broken into shards. Also, haven't half a dozen comedians done this bit about baseball players failing more times than not?

Pitching-wise, four players led the bigs with 19 wins apiece last season. So between them they won 76 games. But they also lost 30.

What does this have to do with loving baseball?

How can you not love a game that looks so simple that the guy balancing a beer on his belly in the Bob Uecker seats can maintain that he could have hit that ball or caught that ball or stole that base? After all, he did when he played Little League.
Guess what Bubba, this ain't kiddie ball.

That has nothing to do with what ANYONE loves about baseball. And should a guy who maintains a NASCAR blog be making fun of baseball fans by calling them 'Bubba'?

As Nationals senior assistant for player development and baseball lifer Pat Corrales -- he's in his 51st spring training -- said: "These are the best ballplayers in the world."

What, did he accidentally go to the Yankees spring training facility instead? I keed, I keed. The Nationals are a professional baseball team and therefore also have some great talent compared against everyday people. Compared against the rest of the league...well...

Any questions about the stature of the bigs were resolved on Friday. That's when a good number of Taiwanese journalists traveled halfway around the world to attend the Nationals introductory press conference at Space Coast Stadium for pitcher Chien-Ming Wang, considered the finest athlete his nation has ever produced.

Seriously? I'm just going to list two here on the site, but you can look it up on Wikipedia for more:
Tiger Mask IV
The Great Sasuke

Yet the claim to fame for the former Yankee is he won 19 games twice while losing six and seven games respectively in 2006 and 2007. OK, but his big league totals are 55 victories and 26 losses and a 4.16 earned run average, numbers that say big league hitters figured him out more than a few times.

Why did that paragraph start with 'yet?' Isn't that part of the reason why he's considered one of the greatest athletes Taiwan produced?
Wang was a pitcher I really liked because he screwed with all the sabermetric measurements for a few years (on the surface). He couldn't strike anyone one out and had no speed on his fastball. He just had a knack for getting guys to hit below the league average and not giving up homeruns. Oh yeah, his wins...HE PITCHED FOR THE YANKEES!!!! And the number that says big league hitters figured him out was last year's ERA (not the best stat I know) of 9.64. Not his 26 loses. Also he has shoulder problems.

That's the truth of baseball. The game day in and day out can engender enough self doubt to derail some careers.

Poetically stated. Pretty much meaningless, but poetic nonetheless.

After all, perfection over an entire season in the bigs is unachievable.

My gym teacher said all I had to do was believe and I could achieve anything. That's why I work as file clerk in Bronson Michigan. Some dreams do come true Jimmy.

And the margin is so thin as to be maddening. The Toronto Blue Jays had the best fielding percentage last season, .988 which translates to 76 errors in 6,169 chances. Still, they finished fourth in the American League East with a 75-87 record.

Alright Mr. DeCotis, this is the worst use of statistics in any article I've ready recently. You can't possibly think that team fielding percentage is the best way to gauge a teams final record. I mean, they're not completely unrelated, but come on. At least use HR's if you're going to choose a counting stat. You obviously sorted through a bunch of stats on the MLB website trying to find one that matched your argument, and since it's baseball and there's like ten-thousand statistics, you were bound to find ONE. Not enough to justify you're position though. To prove the point that the margin of error is "maddeningly thin" I would have gone with records in 1-run games. That shows you what teams were getting lucky and which one weren't when things were close.

As Corrales said, "the ball isn't always going to bounce your way."

A brilliant analysis by the assistant of player development for the Nationals. You really dug hard to get those quotes Mr. DeCotis. Either that, or the assistant of player development for the Nationals is literally a series of inspirational quote posters on the walls of the Washington office. That I'd buy.

To that end, we aren't here to disparage.

Well, you're not here for that...

It's more of a case of respecting the game for its potential to humble, but also to celebrate those who can master it to the extent that it allows.
And no current player has done that better than Seattle's Ichiro Suzuki, who over his stellar, Hall of Fame career has posted eye-popping numbers including a .333 batting average over nine seasons with 2,030 hits in 6,099 at bats.
On the other hand he failed at the plate 4,069 times.
How can you not love a game that difficult?

Baseball is great!

Case Closed!