All Hail The Mutha Ship
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Friday, 04 September 09 - 03:21 PM (GMT -05:00) By Mark R Filippi in NY Baseball Digest - Soma Style |
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Resistance Is Futile...You Will Be Assimilated!
Way back in the groundswell that became the Summer of Supremacy that the Yankees enjoyed there was this 'showdown' with the Angels out in California right before the All-Star break. If you can strain your memory, the one kink in the Evil Empire's armor was their record against the top teams. They had been streamrolled by the RSN (0-8), and had been beaten at home during interleague play 2 of 3 by the Phillies among other things. Now after an encourgaing sweep of the Twins, the old spector of the Angels rose up to bite them. A 3-0 trip became 3-3 at the hands of their AL West nemesis and the talk radio chatter about October doom was gainly a steady buzz over the break. Well...don't mess with the Zohan...
ECO Phase - July 7th to Aug 30th (47 games); 7 with Boston, 4 home, 3 away
If you take out those first six games, the Yankee machine came out in the 2nd half determined to use the rest of the schedule as their personal sparring partners. A 9-1 home stand for starters including an 8-game winning streak led to their next and final moment of self-reflection. And again it was against another contending set of teams. First up was a weird 3-game series with the Rays that saw the Yankees win two big and get beat 6-2 in the middle game. But it was in Chicago, as July gave way to August that caused many skeptics to say - see, they're just a bully team. They lost three sloppy games in a row and when they took the field on AUG 2nd they were shaking off a 14-4 drubbing on national TV the day before. With TOR and BOS on the horizon another sweep would be a critical blow to what was (can you even remember) a close AL East race.
So this 2-4 trip turned on a dime and the Yanks rattled off another 2 weeks of dog whistle baseball, going a staggering 12-1 and effectively grabbing the Summer by the short hairs. The Sox left the Bronx chasing the Wild Card and the Yanks suddenly had room to breathe and let their fanbase go back to their customary role of baseball futurists. A pedestrian (for them) 8-5 finish to this ECO phase an eye-popping 34-13. Surrender?
Unlike their counterparts in Flushing who spent their Summer praying in vain for a savior (or a shortstop) to rise from these streets, the Yankees took my advise...here's a recap for fans with their 3-day weekend started:
"From what I can tell, the only scheduled make-up for the 3 rain outs is with Tampa in SEPT. The OAK and LAA games are yet to be set up. And by the time the Yankees head into the stretch their face time with Boston will be down to 3 games on SEPT. So they better not go to sleep at the wheel in the Dog Days or they'll wake up in a Dog Fight for a Wild Card." MRF 7/5
The only Dog Fight these Yankees will have now is with those Angels for home field in the ALCS. Being the #1 seed is somewhat an insurance policy for a team with almost a decade (yes Virginia, 2000 is 9 summers ago) of OCT disappointments. The problem with being perennial World Series contender is that winning 95+ games every regular season is like being an SEC college football team that wins 10 or 11 of 12 games and then loses their bowl game. No one will remember all the pies, all the dingers or all the W's if OCT ends without a parade. For now though, Yankee haters must wait for the mighty to fall. At the moment, they look like they may convert all those home run trots into a historic run that'll make 2000 what it is...
....a distant memory...
I'll dip into the ethers to reflect on their final 30 games way after you put away your BBQ for good and have pumpkins & pennants on the brain.
Me, OTOH, I'm ready for some football...MRF 09.04
The Problem Within Pelfrey...
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Thursday, 03 September 09 - 08:41 PM (GMT -05:00) By Mark R Filippi in NY Baseball Digest - Soma Style |
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Last weekend, Mike Silva from NYBD made me aware of a 'statty" post on NY Sports Dog by Dave Singer that was taking a close look at what's called "The Verducci Effect." The upshot of this rule of thumb is "pitchers 25 and under are at risk of injury or significant regression in the year after their clubs boost their workload by 30 or more innings." It's the basis of the so-called Joba Rules that have tortured Yankee fans all year. The validity of the Verducci Effect is the apple in my apples and oranges argument. It's a correlation he's made independent of a pitcher's context within those innings. This is where the so-called development takes place. Just as we judge hitters based on their performance in clutch situations, pitchers who can navigate out of jams gain elite status. Two out hits, two strike hits, losing hitters after being ahead in the count, high pitch counts early in games or even within innings are a few of the telltale signs of underperforming fans spot from their Lazy-Boys. To me, again there are nice left brain quantitative markers. But they don't help to reveal the 'other side of the baseball card', the one with the player's picture on it.
This is where we get half of the somatic equation's variables filled in. When we focus on context not simply content you match the self or in this case the "Pelf" with his surroundings, which is the environment he's pitching in. Just say situational pitching and it gets easier to remember. This is where the stat geeks (Verducci included) pan back and track innings as a remote metric. Pitcher's like Pelfrey get tabbed by a generic filter. What we can do with a somatic profile is dig a little deeper.
Exhibit A - SEPT 1st vs. Colorado
This game logs come from our friends at FANGRAPHS.com. Mike's up 2-0 at this point. Notice how Mike gets himself in trouble here. One out single, then a walk. But he gets Tulowitski to hit a comebacker. So 2nd and 3rd and two outs. Ugh...another walk. Still it's bases loaded, two outs. Here's where the innings counters just see a generic inning. But not Mike. And definitely not Mike's brain. Walk to Atkins, 2-1 now. Sigh. Well at least he gets the force out to leave the mound up a run. But three walks for Pelf.
Exhibit B - SEPT 1st vs. Colorado
OK, new inning, new context for Pelf. Leadoff single, followed by a sacrifice bunt, so one out, man on 2nd. Not a big jam yet but...BANG. Pelf gets tagged for a homer...hey it happens. Not it's 3-2 Rockies. This is where the unquantified Pelfrey shows up. After the homer, it's like a new inning, bases empty again. Single. Then another single, compounded by an error, which leads to another run. Ugh, now it's 4-2. Again, Pelf stops the bleeding getting Tulowiski (coincidence?) to end the inning right there...
Exhibit C - SEPT 1st vs. Colorado
Down by 2 runs, Pelf gives up a one out walk. Then a stolen base, followed by another walk. Instant jam. And just like the last time, Helton does the damage, only this time it's a dinger. A 4-2 game is now 7-2 and Big Pelf is handing the ball to Jerry and his night is done. Met's lose 8-3. What's there to see is how walks, 2 out hits and back to back hits in the middle of these rallies are all running patterns for Pelfrey all season long. That's where the stat people are focusing. What I'm seeing as a somatic profiler is what happens between those events and how Pelfrey acts after them. We all know how he dealt with the early exit in Colorado now...
Frustrated Pelfrey Blows Off Steam, Mets' Lose
Let me fill in some blanks. Mike Pelfrey's problem isn't found in the increase in innings, his month to month ERA or his K/9. When Mike gets into his self-inflicted jams, he gets company. The catcher checks on him. When Wright was playing, he'd go out to the mound to try to calm him down. The pitching coach does his slow walk. All of these standard coping mechanisms are examples of the somatic blindness of MLB players and coaches. Mike Pelfrey doesn't want to be soothed folks. He's a raging bull out there. The more you interrupt him, the more he has to process.
His brain design is what's known in my circles as ONTOsomatic. It's a primary brain design of ~12% of the population. Just like Joba, Mike needs to monotask on his target or he gets flustered. So all the attempts to get him to stop, calm down, re-focus, etc. are wasted on him. His LOCO (low coherence) patterns that have been the subject of fan and media mockery are external manifestations of Pelfrey's poor levels of neuroception - which sets the threshold for when a person feels a threat of danger from their surroundings. Forget about talking it out with him. That's a bandaid to Pelf's brain. He needs to apply the portable principle of THIS TIME-NEXT TIME-MEANTIME since pitching presents a fixed set of variables that he can't influence directly. Every setback he has will 'load up' again, either later on that inning, that game or that season. It's what Pelfrey does in the 'meantime' to improve his neuroception that'll determine his level of 'situational pitching' next time.
Some easy ways for an ONTO to do that in real time is to practice something I call "visual intermission". All that involves is closing your eyes for a few breaths and focusing on sensing your feet on the ground. The ONTO-based brain loses it's proprioception (ala the phrase losing your feet) more readily than other designs when it's threatened. Since ONTO's are more reliant on top-down motor processing and internal visual information, the combination of removing the external visual (a relative weakness) and letting the bottom-up internal sensory input quiet down is a more efficient way to get a fresh page of neurological 'paper'.
If Pelfrey also practiced the Quick Fix version of SIMPLES during his downtime on the bench, he'd be able to re-boot his brain inning by inning and not get hooked into his ingrained motor codes of his negative history. If the Mets were aware that more variables means a less focused Pelf, they'd have him learn to pitch from the stretch all the time. Like many ONTO's in the big leagues, the more coordinated they feel, the more aggressive they are in the strike zone and the more efficient they are on the mound commanding their pitches and the game as it evolves...
So without the oranges of context, all the apples of content compiled about Pelfrey is done in a stat-soaked vacuum. By knowing your pitcher's brain design, teams will be able to navigate them through the situations that cause them to overthink and/or overreact and then underperform. If you look at the original 2009 Met staff, you need different centering mechanisms for Santana (PHYLO), Ollie P/Livan (ECO), and Maine (EXO) or they'll lose the rest-activity rhythm that allows them to pitch at their best. With this SEPT to slumber upon us, maybe we can reach out to Redding (also ONTO), Figueroa (another ECO), Misch (another EXO) or Parnell (another PHYLO). They can reach me at nakedsoma@gmail.com
I'll wait while I watch...MRF 09.03
The Boys Of Slumper
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Wednesday, 26 August 09 - 07:31 PM (GMT -05:00) By Mark R Filippi in NY Baseball Digest - Soma Style |
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You Should See The Other Guy...And The Other Guy...And The...
We're only two days into the EXO phase of this horror show masquerading as a regular season regular season but I already know how the movie ends. In case I lost you with already that comment, here's a quick review of the way the ebb and flow of things were set up for them.
PHYLO Phase - APR 6th to May 13th (34 games); 5 with Philly, 3 road, 2 home
ONTO Phase - May 14th to June 28th (42 games); 3 with Philly, all home
ECO Phase - June 29th to Aug 24th (50 games); 7 with Philly, 4 home, 3 away
EXO Phase - Aug 25th to Oct 4th (36 games); 3 with Philly, all away
Now remember what I said back in APR: "The ECO phase is where the rubber meets the road as the dog days take over, the trading deadline arrives and September call-up's loom." That comment played itself out with disasterous result for the 2009 Mets. The ECO phase had one extra game (a makeup) W in PIT. That game became a dim memory though as the Mets entered PHI that FRI, JUL 3rd just a game out of first.
From there it gets really bleak. The 51 games produced a 20-33 record. That means they were 37-37 as they entered the ECO phase way back on JUN 29th in MIL. They were fresh from a 3-game beat down at the hands of the Yankees, who were just revving their engines at that point. A 2-2 trip ensued between the 3 games in MIL and the one in PIT. Then the PHI did the same number of the Mets that the Yanks did. So two 0-3 weekends in a row vs. their two biggest rivals and it wasn't even the beginning of the underwhelming Summer that unfolded. Back then I had seen the the ECO phase as a very undefined time for the whole division with the Mets still having an opportunity to find their feet...
"The next 37 games are where the Mets expect to be made whole. Don't count on Omar to help them. Don't count on Jerry to inspire them. Don't count on David Wright to lead them. Just scribble SEPT 13th somewhere." July 5th
Wow...I'm a somatic prophet, eh? Well you can cross out SEPT 13th now unless you dread that may be the day the PHI clinch the NL East for the 3rd year in a row. It just hit me. We endured 14 years of the Braves, 2006, and now 3 years of the Phillies. That's just pathetic. And from the looks of it, 2010 doesn't feel like real compelling season at the moment. With now 20 players on the DL (as I write this), and so many of those who remain either playing to the baseball cards (ie. lousy), playing out of position or just plain playing hurt, the EXO phase offers little hope of seeing anything that represents hope. The Wagner waiver deal may lead to a peak at Chris Carter AAA pop? Oops, I'm sorry, the Evil Empire nixed that (1) . Will the DL parade allow us to see the stylings of Lance Broadway in a spoiler game in SEPT? Will Josh Tolle or Ruben Tajada will make an unexpected appearance in the lineup? Or maybe we get a cameo from Wright, Reyes, or Beltran before the serious OCT baseball begins?
Do we even care anymore? Lost seasons tend to test the attention span. When you watch the likes of Johan Santana shut it down in AUG it just points your eyes to football. After you've watched then go 2-5 (road), 3-3 (home), 4-6 (road), 6-5 (home), 2-5 (road, to SD & AZ mind you), then 4-7 (home, including 3 more to PHI), there's an urge to look for other ways to cope with it. Like, for instance, rooting AGAINST the Yanks.
Whatever happens from here it's more about what's leaving this team than what's sticking around. I'm expecting minimal or cosmetic changes from this organization. We spent all last off-season pining away for Manny and defending the 'core'. Who knew we'd spend this season watching Manny get suspended and the entire core being wiped out? 40 years we were given the Miracle Mets. This year we were given the Maloika Mets (2)
A brief season summary in OCT will be uploaded. Like many pop ups this year, I won't be shocked if it drops in as the final thud of the '09 season.
Mid-Season Subway Soma Report
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Sunday, 05 July 09 - 07:32 PM (GMT -05:00) By Mark R Filippi in NY Baseball Digest - Soma Style |
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Meet The Melts, Meet The Melts...
As this post makes it's way into orbit, the Mets are about to play it's 8th game of the ECO phase of the regular season. In case I lost you, here's a quick review of the way the ebb and flow of things were set up for them.
PHYLO Phase - APR 6th to May 13th (34 games); 5 with Philly, 3 road, 2 home
ONTO Phase - May 14th to June 28th (42 games); 3 with Philly, all home
ECO Phase - June 29th to Aug 24th (50 games); 7 with Philly, 4 home, 3 away
EXO Phase - Aug 25th to Oct 4th (36 games); 3 with Philly, all away
Rain fell on May 3rd, making the PHYLO phase 33 games long, during which the Mets achieved a wonkish 18-15 record; going 4-0 vs. the Phillies. That makeup game is set for SUN, SEPT 13th, the NFL opener btw. So the question to ask now is...will it matter? A double-header in PHI on SEPT 13th, a part of SEPT that has proven cruel and unusual the last 2 years, could be something this team keeps it's eye on as they swim for the safe haven of the All-Star break through these next six undermanned missions.
The recently completed ONTO phase was where the Mets wilted under the relentless combination of bad luck and worse planning. For the 4th year in a row, Omar has been exposed for his tendency to lean on 30+ vets only to have them let him down. I can't pin all the blame on Delgado's inevitable trip to the DL. After watching Pedro disappear in '06, followed by El Duque later on in the playoffs, you thought Omar would of learned. But then we watched rotation and the bullpen grind down into powder down the stretch in '07...and yes Tom, I'm still devastated. Last year is still fresh in my mind since once again, with Moises Alou's ghost is in the shadows of Gary Sheffield's aching knees. Is Julio Franco on speed dial?
The Mets stumbled to a 19-22 record over the ONTO phase, pushing their one rainout on June 3rd into the ECO phase, oddly their last win; the 9-8 root canal game with Pittsburgh on July 2nd. They went 1-2 agains the Phillies, both losses in extra innings, both after leading into the late stages, both ending on the pen giving up homers. They end up going a stark 2-10 against PHI and the Yankees, with some of those losses being of the charts painful (Castillo), embarassing (15-0), then maddening (the whole CitiField sweep). They followed that up with this past weekend's whitewash in PHI, closing the 1st half losing 5 straight to their rivals.
It's trends like that, during this phase of the season, when the competitive ONTO cycle makes it's insistence known, that has you wondering. Their overall record over the two phases was a spot on 37-37 .500 record, yet the way they got there, getting contributions from the likes of Santos, Nieve and Nick Evans made you say...is anybody watching this team upstairs? Their recent 2-5 stumble, complete with two unwatchable losses in MIL and a carbon copy of the CitiField Subway series effort in PHI has this team, fanbase and media waiting for the Dodgers and Reds to finish them off. Another 1-5 homestand would bury them and perhaps lead management to drag their feet even more, if that's even possible. I may be completely delusional, but I don't see that happening. The ECO phase suits these Mets. Despite their ONTO hangover (an overrated movie, btw) and a lineup that literally lull you to sleep, this 50 game cycle has the potential to be like a transfusion for this anemic team. They'll be 13 games into that process by SUN. With 5 losses on the books already, let's make 7-6 the aim, which is a 4-2 week. It's do-able.
The next 37 games are where the Mets expect to be made whole. Don't count on Omar to help them. Don't count on Jerry to inspire them. Don't count on David Wright to lead them. Just scribble SEPT 13th somewhere. The division is going to accordian out a bit. The Phillies and Marlins will ride high through July and the Mets and Braves will dog paddle after them. But the ECO energy. Again, the schedule can be the best exilir for them. They don't see PHI until the last 4 games of the cycle, which is a 10-game homestand in late AUG. Not seeing BOS has helped the Yankees focus on getting their swagger back. Getting past the gauntlet of interleague play and division rivalries in May and June will cool off the Mets fragile psyche. They can win those 3-2 nailbiter games against the Astros, Nationals and even the Braves. This year AUG is APR. Swing free & run like hell til then.
Getting 30 of those 50 ECO games is the aim. Two down, 28 to PITB!
For those of you inclined to look for musical inspiration, I have two ditties here to embody the 1st half's failures and the 2nd half's promise. Enjoy!
"Stranded" "Faaaaaaaithhhhhhhhhh!"
Meet The New Boss, Same As The Old Boss...
The regular season carried a bit of a cloudy of certainty the first 28 games as the A-Rod vigil ended with a very shaky 13-15 record. Since then, well, it's been a bunch of recurring themes. The PHYLO phase of shaking off the cobwebs ended on an upnote, with the Bombers settling in with a 25-19 record and 2 rainouts clipping that phase from 46 to 44 games. If you can remember back to the end of May, the issues were becoming clearer and clearer; they had already lost 5 to the Red Sox without Alex. Wang was faultering badly enough to disappear to the DL. And of course, the Joba talk was gaining momentum, mostly because the pen was getting pinged all over the yard. But the #1 story was the way the new stadium was making most Yankee games into a first team to 12 SUN softball league...
Once the ONTO phase began on May 25th, they began to overcome their early slugglishness. A 4-2 end of May spilled into a 17-11 June, and despite another 0-3 with the Sox, and series losses to the Nationals at home and the Marlins on the road got the fanbase on edge. The power outage peaked with a 4-0 loss to the Braves on June 23rd. And the next night, they were getting no-hit early on. It was in that game that the ONTO inner nature of the Yankees surfaced. Brett Gardner argued a pick off play and Giradi got tossed. Bink, bink, bink, Cervelli homered, A-Rod finally got a big hit and their record since that day is 10-2. They've outscored their opponents 131-51 over that run. But it's not perfect in the new home for greatness. The rotation is hit or miss, but with run support like this, it's more of a nuisance than a problem. The 8th inning is another lottery deal, again, not an issue when you can score 10 runs a game. The "Posada non grata" drama died down, but it's lurking in the shadows. And yesterday, on the last day of the ONTO phase, Jeter and Giradi squared off in a bit of an alpha ONTO showdown. Again, it's fine. They went 24-14 during the most competitive part of the year. Even with the Boston sweep, they went 5-4 against the Sox & Mets, so no face lost overall.
The most glaring indicator is how relatively quiet it's been off the field. When the June swoon was at it's peak, the A-Rod conference call was the big topic of the day. Where is that chatter now? Winning silences a lot of squabbling that will continue to perculate under the radar until that AUG series with the Red Sox, when all these inner demons will reawaken. The ECO phase is not a paved road for this old and tempermental team.
Here's a quick review of the regular seasons rhythms in case you forgot.
PHYLO Phase - APR 6th to May 24th (46 games); 5 with Boston, 3 road, 2 home
ONTO Phase - May 25th to July 6th (39 games); 3 with Boston, all away
ECO Phase - July 7th to Aug 30th (47 games); 7 with Boston, 4 home, 3 away
EXO Phase - Aug 31st to Oct 4th (30 games); 3 with Boston, all home
From what I can tell, the only scheduled make-up for the 3 rain outs is with Tampa in SEPT. The OAK and LAA games are yet to be set up. And by the time the Yankees head into the stretch their face time with Boston will be down to 3 games on SEPT. So they better not go to sleep at the wheel in the Dog Days or they'll wake up in a Dog Fight for a Wild Card.
So we'll leave it there until Labor Day weekend, when most of what I had to say will be washed away with the passing of the Summer wind. I'll leave you Yankee fans with a little warning from Van Morrison. Hum along sapes.
"Keep It Simple"
Check out the APR Season Preview here - http://is.gd/1pWcw
The Beningo Brain Factor
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Monday, 15 June 09 - 11:55 AM (GMT -05:00) By Mark R Filippi in NY Baseball Digest - Soma Style |
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I went to the Met-Phillies game last THURS and for the first time I noticed a clear difference in the tone of the CitiField crowd that is distinct from the crowds I've been in at Shea. Maybe it's result of the last three seasons; a tragic 7th game loss in the NLCS, and two consecutive game 162 home losses to the @#$% Marlins to miss the playoffs. If you factor in the real world strain of the economy, this home crowd arrives at a Philly-Met game with a lot of baggage already. Add in an 11-inning loss the night before when they left 16 runners on base. So OK, this THURS crowd was primed for blood. And here are the Mets blowing another late game lead. And here's Jerry Manuel, leaving in a pitcher with no business pitching to the NL homerun leader in a big spot. It was then that the distinction was obvious. These Met crowds seem to root against what they dread and not for what they want. I saw it in hybrid form on FRI too.
The word in the cultural literature is Schadenfruede; said shad-en-frad. It roughly translates to having more invested in someone else failing than your own success. On the inside, it's more about avoiding an impending misery than it is about approaching a desired result. When the old Shea crowds would sing "Larry, Larry" at Chipper Jones, they were not dreading him getting a hit. They were defying him! It was meant to whip the crowd into a frenzy in anticipation of getting him out. It wasn't used to ward off Chipper getting a hit. That's a good thing, since he regularly did...LOL. Now this CitiField crowd just murmurs in a big spot, even after the roar of relief died down after Takahashi struck out Ryan Howard in that fateful 11th-inning. They've learned to root from their fears. I found myself being pulled into it, literally. Your body folds forward. Your head cranes out like a telescope zooming in. Your back tightens and your knees lock. This is the 'position' most of my fellow fans had at key moments all game. Multiply that dread by ~40,000 and you a lot of fear in the air...
Why does any of this matter? The exciting research done by Rick & Joel Leskowitz shows that fan energy or intent tracks closely with peak moments on the field. Their movie, The Joy of Sox details how the focused attention maybe the biological key to the so-called 10th man...
Now constrast that to the surly, dread-filled crowd at CitiField, which is so saturated with defeat, it has lost it's ability to focus it's attention at all. Instead of a coherent crowd - like the ones we saw in Philly last Fall or the ones going to Red Sox games these days, we see cowardly crowd that is uprooted from it's own influence. If we take our role seriously, just like the players, we need to take our position and be ready to shed the dread.
Here's my simple suggestion; find your feet. Rooting is an old practice that many martial artists do to literally 'ground themselves' before they compete. It aligns you with a more powerful source of coherence, the planet Earth! LOL. We are being conditioned to root from our heads and that leads to ungrounded fans who shout at the enemy out of fear and boo as a reflex to vent their frustrations. It's an angry mob, not a crowd anymore. I didn't notice many fights in the stands THURS but I'm sure there were some. The Philly fans were loud and plentiful thanks to StubHub and fleeced season-ticket holders willing to sell at any price...
In the aftermath of LeBron snubbing the Magic players, Sid the Kid being late to the handshake, K-Rod & Bruney having a flame war, and Laker fans doing the typical 'celebration' destruction, are we so different from the other cultures where a soccer match can serve as a local bloodletting? I watched with soothing happiness how genuinely joyful and peaceful the Garden crowd was in the aftermath of the Cup winner in '94 last night as the 15th anniversary rolled by under the radar. We want the Cup was the unifying desire. That focused attention was palpable all these years later.
All that aside, I still HATE the Yankees, Phillies, & Braves with a passion. The difference is I LOVE the Mets more, even Looie, the poor sap. When I noticed myself getting caught up in the dread-ness THURS, I found my feet and when Ibanez hit that 3-run shot about 9 miles into the mist, I vented quickly and then re-set myself, and my focus on the Red Sox-Yankee game, which gave me something to root for...and that ended well.
When the whole Castillo debacle went down on FRI, I was in my usual spot, kevetching with other Met fans in the Hot Foot Chat Room under my alias Jesse47. I was able to keep my Zen state through what was a very painful and permanent baseball wound. What's interesting is how You Tube documented that moment from a Yankee fan perspective. That same dread was evident, yet the Yankee vibe of decades of dominance and this year's late game heroics prompted many fans to video A-Rod's at bat in anticipation of a game-winning hit. Take a look at the way it played out and how one Yankee fan's mixed emotions shifted from before to after.
For some Met fan perspective, a little Seinfeld moment may help out now. In this case, it was ball that was not caught that was the obstruction!
On to Baltimore sapiens, MRF 06.15
For a little more on the Subway Series and my short interview (last 5 minutes) check out Mike Silva's NYBD SUN show here: http://is.gd/12YM8
Listen back to my interview with Rick Leskowitz from JAN '08 : http://is.gd/12GtC
Couch Somato 101
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Sunday, 10 May 09 - 09:50 PM (GMT -05:00) By Mark R Filippi in NY Baseball Digest - Soma Style |
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Being able to distinguish human behavior from human beings is rare experience for most of us. How someone 'acts' is usually how they are perceived. So when you scale that up to the behavior of group like a professional baseball team, it's fanbase and it's surrounding media, the 'culture' gets a lot more cloudy to read. That's why we can always PROFILE. By being able to recognize the signatures of the 4 Domains from a variety of distances you begin to personally open up your own identity.
What's a 'Couch Somato"? We all lapse into this mode whenever we're entering into a world we feel we're part of and connect with effortlessly. For some of us, it's a TV show like American Idol. Others are into the microblogging worlds like Twitter and Facebook. For me, it's sports. I probably watch/listen about 500-600 games a year on TV and radio. They are the sound track of my life. Over the years, I have internalized the voices of my team's announcers, mentally DVD'd all the incredible high's and low's they've given me, and enmeshed their 'colors' into my psyche. This is not that unusual. There are millions like me all over the world actually. The only difference between sports and religion is that we sports fanatics curse and then pray and then curse again and religious ones pray and then curse and then pray again. To shift from being a passive potato to an active somato, we need to unhook from this.
What I'll offer here is a quick way to look at events of the first month or so of the 2009 MLB regular season and a little zoom in on the key plot twists of the way the Yankees and Mets have performed to this point.
The non-baseball fanatics can always read my S-list e-book...
Closing The Somatic Circle Of Self-Sabatoge...
When Selena Roberts broke the story on A-Rod back in FEB, the 3rd icon in the Steroid Mount Rushmore was unveiled, literally. We actually saw this act this time last year when Andy Pettitte did his mea culpa in a presser in Tampa. Andy's apology was an afterthought after the histrionics of his old pal Roger Clemens angry tirades all Winter. That 1-2 punch stood in stark constrast to the stoic, unrelenting denials of Barry Bonds, who is STILL awaiting trial for his transgressions. With the revelations of Alex Rodriguez' convoluted past, we now had 3 of kind: Bonds, Clemens and A-Rod. If you could PROFILE their behavior, you'd notice how they each resorted to behaviors from their developmental origins. Bonds is what we call an EXO, a natural loner, with no interior, so his sneering avoidance was expected.
Then we had the Clemens show, which was also a typical display of his biological roots as an ONTO, a self-referencing natural leader who is invested in their image, sometimes to their own detriment, like in this case. So we had the typical fight or flight reactions going so far. Then we get A-Rod, who represents most human beings with his PHYLO signatures. The difference is that his personal incoherence made his Andy Pettitte act look phony. So rather than sympathy and acceptace, as fellow PHYLO Jason Giambi received when his 'number' came up, A-Rod was made the poster child of fallen baseball heroes...that is until this latest entry into the fray - Manny Ramirez, the final piece of the somatic puzzle for us. Manny is a cartoon tutorial of ECO behavior. After his sudden suspension this week, his stated excuse was perceived as disingenuous outrage by the baseball community at large. Much like Bonds, Clemens and A-Rod, the bigger there are the harder the fall rule applied here. It was media clinic in the way Manny was 'processed' by them. What's ironic is that Jose Canseco, also an ECO, doesn't even get the honor of being formally discredited. His media legacy was symbolized THURS.
Now I think we're all done with this in the baseball fan universe. We've seen all of the Soma Stories play out. We can unhook from it and just root like hell and use what's left of those 162 soap opera episodes to escape our own. Let's take a closer look at the local teams and somacize them...
The Ruddy, Riddled Yankees
As the Carl Crawford's home run ball landed just over the fence and just inside the fair ball the other night, we got the signature moment of the early season for the Yankees. Or did we? On FRI night, the returning circus that is A-Rod returned with a bang, literally. But like it's been all year so far, the next night was a clunker. They do have one ECO light shining brightly so far. Can someone tell me what Johnny Damon is taking?
As a team, the Yankees do not complete the PHYLO phase of their season until May 24th. As we wrote in APR, this is the time to build team unity, get the regulars into a rhythm and shake the cobwebs off from Spring training. So far, Joe Giradi is 0 for 3 and the team is 15-16. The atmosphere at the new ballpark, where they're 6-7, is surly and somber. The media has been especially critical, as Bill Madden's essay attests. The team needs to stabilize now that A-Rod is their to anchor the offense and just hope the bullpen woes & injury bug resolve before interleague starts. For more than I can remember, this team got by on image and intimidation. All of that is, as they say, in the Yankeeography. They need to just play. It seems like everything they do is a joyless chore for them.
If they focus on winning the 6-inning Little League game with their lineup and try to get through those late innings with more "Jeterian" ease, they'll have that annoying swagger back just in time to make hey while they move into a phase of the season where they only see Boston 3 times...
Meet The Mojo Risin' Mets...
I left my first game at CitiField on SUN with that familiar Met fan mix of enthusiasm and dread. You can paint your own mental picture from the past. But that spector hangs over this recent 7-game run seems like the old lipstick on the pig pattern recent Met teams have been hidden behind only to revert to form when the stretch run begins. But on this day, Mother's Day, you could sort of bask in the sweet smell of a weekend sweep and let it all sort itself out later. The Mets themselves get no slack time as the Braves roll in MON to complete their 34 game PHYLO phase.
On that front, EXO manager Jerry Manuel has bested his ONTO counterpart in the Bronx. This team is, as they say, jellin'. The early season hangover of the WBC and Ollie P's recent meltdown aside, the bullpen has been stellar and the defense has been resilient if not anything. While Santana continues to operate on a whole different level, the team still take it's cues from it's 'core' as Mike'd Up likes to remind us so often. With only Beltran clicking on all cylinders, Wright whiffing like he's channeling Mo Vaughn, Reyes just now showing signs of life and Delgado showing his age (that pop up in ATL was unreal), the real surprises have come from unlikely sources. ONTO Luis Castillo? PHYLO Omir Santos? PHYLO Bobby Parnell? The list goes on. But this is the type of depth the Mets will need to out-grit the bullies from Philly, Florida and Atlanta.
It's that chronic sense of being the underdogs with the Dutch Uncle that makes the Mets, and their fanbase, so universally misunderstood and vilified around the league. Like the Yankees, the Mets get a break from the Phillies during the next phase of the season. They need to spend those 42 scheduled games standing up to the heat of the first Subway Series in these new parks. I still remember the feeling of hearing Yankee fans celebrate at Shea when they won their last World Series. The angst is still in the air in the CitiField parking lot where the ghosts of dearly demolished Shea still whip in the wind, even when you get to your car 17-13 on Mother's Day.
To listen back to my segment on NYBD, (scroll in 45 minutes): click here
OK, class dismissed...return to your couches and entrain the domains!
The bottom line about team chemisty is simple - winning smells/sells better.
Stay fanatic, MRF 05.10
Subway Soma Baseball Preview
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Sunday, 05 April 09 - 07:18 PM (GMT -05:00) By Mark R Filippi in NY Baseball Digest - Soma Style |
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In breaking down the 2009 regular season, we need to look at the changes in the composition of the team's rosters and the way the schedule is set up to understand where the critical points are to focus on.
They Are The...Yankees
Here's the breakdown of the Opening Day 25-man roster with some additional comments...
Starting Rotation
CC Sabathia - ECO 1
AJ Burnett - ONTO 1
Chien-Ming Wang - EXO 1
Andy Pettitte - PHYLO 1
Joba Chamberlain - ONTO 2
Bullpen
Jonathan Albaladejo - ONTO 3
Jose Veras - ECO 2
Edmar Ramirez - ECO 3
Damaso Marte - ECO 4
Phil Coke - ONTO 4
Brian Bruney - PHYLO 2
Mariano Rivera - EXO 2
Catchers
Jorge Posada - PHYLO 3
Jose Molina - PHYLO 4
Infielders
Robinson Cano - ECO 5
Derek Jeter - ONTO 5
Mark Teixeira - EXO 3
Cody Ransom - PHYLO 5
Ramiro Pena - PHYLO 6
Outfielders
Johnny Damon - ECO 6
Brett Gardner - ONTO 6
Xavier Nady - ONTO 7
Melky Cabrera - ECO 7
Nick Swisher - ONTO 8
Designated Hitters
Hideki Matsui - EXO 4
If you arrange the Yankee roster by their primary domains the team made some slight changes to it's compostion from the 2008 season. Last year, Joe Giradi had 7 PHYLO's and this year he'll have 6, 7 after A-Rod returns if they keep Ransom up on the big team. I had reported it was going to be 5 this year on the SUN NYBD's broadcast, but I saw that they decided to keep Ramiro Pena up to start the season, so that brings them closer to last year's composition now.
They had only 5 ONTO's last year {Joba, Jeter, Farnsworth, Rasner & Gonzalez} but this year the Yanks will have 8 to begin the campaign (again, not 9 as originally reported). With the influx of ONTO blood from the likes of A.J. Burnett, Phil Coke, and the new trio of Gardner, Nady & Swisher, this team will have a renewed sense of natural self-starters, energy Giradi is used to, since he's an ONTOsaurus himself...
They upgraded their ECO roster as well, dropping from 8 in '08 to 7 to begin the '09 season. But when you swap out a Carl Pavano for a CC Sabathia and Damaso Marte for a LaTroy Hawkins, the losses of a Bobby Abreu and bench player like Wilson Betemit from a chemistry standpoint are easily absorbed. So the Yanks' natural rebels are less intrusive and more talented...
Finally, the EXO roster is basically the same, with one giant change. The integral addition of Mark Teixeira to the team and the 'exo-dus' of perennial intellectual Mike Mussina combined with old standby's like Rivera, Matsui and Wang gives the Yankees an EXO in the infield, the starting rotation, closer and one off the bench. That completes a very potent, but very seasoned lineup, one that faces a daunting schedule that I predict will present some difficult obstacles.
The Schedule
A one-page printable MLB schedule for the Yankees is posted here... (1)
The way I break it down is by the 24 oscillations of road trips and homestands into 4 'soma seasons'. The Yankees actually have only 23 of them this year. We begin with the PHYLO phase, time to build team unity, get the regulars into a rhythm and shake the cobwebs off from Spring training. The next season is the ONTO phase, where the teams face a lot of rivals, including their interleague clashes, with the result being a place in the race at the mid-season point. The ECO phase is where the rubber meets the road as the dog days take over, the trading deadline arrives and September call-up's loom. Finally, the stretch run, the EXO phase, where the season boils down to a few key moments of do-or-die baseball.
PHYLO Phase - APR 6th to May 24th (46 games); 5 with Boston, 3 road, 2 home
ONTO Phase - May 25th to July 6th (39 games); 3 with Boston, all away
ECO Phase - July 7th to Aug 30th (47 games); 7 with Boston, 4 home, 3 away
EXO Phase - Aug 31st to Oct 4th (30 games); 3 with Boston, all home
The season has a funky rhythm to it with two +40 stretches and two -40 ones alternating...Boston shows up in the 1st and 3rd phase with 12 of the 18 meetings taking place during them. By the time they finish their series in Boston on AUG 23rd, they'll only have 3 games in SEPT left with them. Those last 30 games are peppered with a heavy dose of TOR (6 games), TAMPA (9 games), and a big 6 game road trip to SEA and the LA Angels deep in the pennant push of SEPT. Oofa!
Prediction
Sorry Crankee fans, but this team is a low 90 game winner in a division that'll put you in 3rd in '09. Why? I just can't see all those +30 year old players being able to handle 10 Red Sox games and 2 West Coast trips in the last 50 games or so. I can't see all their younger players competing on a par with Boston and Tampa's young talent. I think the division is a 97+ target and the wild card is around 94 or so. These Yankees will need to override A-Rod's absence early, then handle the avalanche when he returns, just to get to July 10+ over .500. So it'll be a winning record, but not a 27th World Championship for the Bombers.
Meet The Mets, Meet The Mets...
Here's the breakdown of the Opening Day 25-man roster with some additional comments...
Starting Rotation
Johan Santana - PHYLO 1
Mike Pelfrey - ONTO 1
John Maine - EXO 1
Oliver Perez - ECO 1
Livan Hernandez - ECO 2
Bullpen
Bobby Parnell - PHYLO 2
JJ Putz - ONTO 2
Darren O'Day - ONTO 3
Brian Stokes - ONTO 4
Pedro Feliciano - ECO 3
Sean Green - PHYLO 3
Francisco Rodriguez - ECO 4
Catchers
Brian Schneider - PHYLO 4
Ramon Castro - PHYLO 5
Infielders
Luis Castillo - ONTO 5
Carlos Delgado - PHYLO 6
Jose Reyes - PHYLO 7
David Wright - PHYLO 8
Alex Cora - PHYLO 9
Outfielders
Ryan Church - ONTO 6
Carlos Beltran - EXO 2
Daniel Murphy - ONTO 7
Fernando Tatis - ECO 5
Gary Sheffield - ONTO 8
Marlon Anderson/Nick Evans - ONTO 9
Jeremy Reed - EXO 3
If you arrange the Mets roster by their primary domains the team made some overt changes to it's compostion from the 2008 season. Last year, under Willie, they had 8 PHYLO's anchoring the team and most them are back (Johan, Castro, Schneider, Delgado, Reyes, and Wright). This year, they added Sean Green, Bobby Parnel and Alex Cora to the mix, giving them 9 PHYLO's for '09. When Santana pitches and Cora plays 2b, the Mets will have 6 PHYLO's on the infield and in the battery. I hope it's a day game with that many gross motor natural followers out there at once.
They had only 5 ONTO's last year just like the Yankees {Pelfrey, Schoenweis, Castillo, Marlon Anderson and Trot Nixon; remember him??}. This year the Mets begin the year with 9 ONTO's and this is a real face changing move. With the addition of J.J. Putz to the pen, Murphy to the everyday lineup and Sheffield to the bench, and even holdovers Stokes and Church, this edition of the Mets will have some newfound spunk up and down the lineup. Even if they bring Evans back and cut bait with Anderson, that's just a swap of an old ONTO for a younger one...
Like the Yankees, they had a lot of turnover in their ECO roster. Last season, they had an injury-riddled ECO cluster that really left them short-handed at the critical times late in the season. With K-Rod and Livan Hernandez joining the staff and Sanchez and Pedro exiting, the 5 ECO's they have now will provide both bench strength (Tatis) and some agita (Ollie P) so watch these sapes...especially from August 25th on...
The EXO roster is noticeably lacking one Billy Wagner and one Aaron Heilman (though I fully expect him to bite us back in SEPT when the Mets play the Cubs a whopping 6 times!). All that's left to keep the ONTO's in line are steady's like Beltran, John Maine and a bench player, who may be on the Buffalo shuttle a lot, Jeremy Reed....so it'll be up to Jerry Manual, the EXO skipper to point all the arrows in one direction. That completes a highly transformed roster that faces a marathon schedule that starts & ends fast and has over 90 games in the middle. The trading deadline may bring a shakeup to this team as Omar tracks a certain A's outfielder...
The Schedule
A one-page printable MLB schedule for the Mets is posted here... (2)
Here's the 4 'soma seasons' the Mets will face this year. Beware of ATL!
PHYLO Phase - APR 6th to May 13th (34 games); 5 with Philly, 3 road, 2 home
ONTO Phase - May 14th to June 28th (42 games); 3 with Philly, all home
ECO Phase - June 29th to Aug 24th (50 games); 7 with Philly, 4 home, 3 away
EXO Phase - Aug 25th to Oct 4th (36 games); 3 with Philly, all away
The season has a crisp beginning with three 6 game series, two 3 game ones and a big 8 game home stand in early May when the Phillies visit CitiField for a 2 game tilt. The ONTO phase opens with West Coast trip that leads into an interleague series in Boston. They get the Phillies and Yankees for 9 games before this phase ends, so the ONTO's will be called upon. The ECO phase is the one that will test the heart of this team to it's...ugh...core. They have 7 games with Philly sandwiched into back-to-back 10 game stints on the road and then at home at the hottest time of the year, mid-JUL to early AUG.
They go West again in mid-AUG and then get the NL West here with Philly for another 10 game run that sets up the frantic 36 game EXO phase where the Mets have run out of gas the last two years. That phase is marked with 6 games with those nasty Braves, 9 with the Marlins (God I hate them) and those 6 games I mentioned with the Cubs around Labor Day, when I'm on Aaron Heilman watch 24/7.
Prediction
The is the 4th attempt for 'the core' of Reyes, Wright, Beltran and Delgado to win a World Series as a unit. In 2006, they lost 2 key starters as the playoffs began and then saw it all end in a downpour in Game 7, as Willie's Warriors bowed to the Cardinals version of magic...ugh. The two collapses that followed in '06 and '07 also pointed to pitching as the starters and the bullpens of both seasons left the offense with no margin for error as they topped the '06 NLCS defeat with 2 soul-crushing playoff misses. This year, it's really the same old song. The starters after Johan are the key.
The offense will frustrate and fascinate Met fans as usual. The bullpen will not cause as many sleepless nights, but this team will stick to form and short of scoring a Matt Holliday at the deadline, it's ~92 wins and a wild card berth at best this year. I actually see the Braves winning the division as they just out-hit and out-grit the Mets and Phillies. I see those Phillies being unable to hide their weakness in their rotation and defense and their bullpen performance returning to Earth enough to keep them in high 80's.
Those three 10 game stretches are the acid test sapiens. If they can win 14 or 15 of the 20 homes and get maybe 12 on the road, they may have enough in the gas tank for the SEPT sprint this time.
The playoffs? Please...it's April...let me enjoy the season a little now...
Somatic Spectating
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Monday, 06 October 08 - 04:59 AM (GMT -05:00) By Mark R Filippi in NY Baseball Digest - Soma Style |
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Like you, I cringe when I hear baseball announcers wax poetic about a given player or manager's 'body language'. As an expert in the field, it usually amuzes and upsets me at about an equal rate. What I'd like to share with you is a bit of a trade secret about the underlying rhythm of a typical MLB game...
Baseball is designed to exploit the brain's weakness, which is why failing 70% of the time gets you a ticket to the Hall of Fame. What you have embedded inside the game's exchanges are a set of saturation points that provoke each player to either rise or fall to meet them. With a little practice, you can begin to notice how a certain player, or a certain team rides these points out within the context of an at bat, a half inning, a game, a series, or a season. It's a subtle skill to master, but what I want to share with you here, it's a face value deal.
Question: Can you count to five? If the answer is yes, you can soma spectate.
Here's all you need to know. Baseball is loaded with recursion, it practically oozes with it. What's recursion? It can get complicated, but all it means is that the cyclical nature of baseball provides a rich environment for players and fans alike to feel the tension mount within an at bat, an inning or a game and sense when a moment of truth is about to surface. The brain thrives on recursion. So why is it tougher to get things done at the end of a game even though the rules are the same? Recursion has a cousin called iteration. So now we have this big egghead deal.
"To iterate means to repeat. However iteration should be distinguished from simple repetition, which may produce nothing. In the process of iteration a series of actions is carried out, the result of each action in the series becoming the object of the same action the next time it is performed. Recursion is related to iteration by a simple twist of definition. Instead of the result of an action being the object of the repeated action on the next occasion it is performed, as in iteration, in recursion the object of the action becomes itself; in other words the action becomes a self-referential one. Iteration takes place in a series of steps in time, while recursion takes place outside time or rather embraces all times in its definition. Iteration works forwards, by taking a value and then building on it to produce the next in a series; recursion, on the other hand, takes a value and defines it in terms of itself.. Recursion and iteration can be seen to be inverse processes rather like multiplication and division, or addition and subtraction. What is inverted is time: iteration takes place in time as it moves forward, while recursion involves an apparent backward step in time, implied by the element of self-reference in its definition." Bother this guy!
So skip all this and just accept that the rhythm of a baseball game is slow enough for the novice observer to apply simple rules of thumb to track a game. One of the oldest 'rules' in terms of brain research is the '7 plus or minus 2' one coined by George Miller in studying working memory. It gets abused but in baseball it has a real world application. It has to do with another almost mystical principle from off all things, the car manufacturing industry. It's a problem-solving method called "The 5 Why's" which in a nutshell is a way to use that "7 plus or minus 2" rule to get to the root cause of a problem. In our case, it's a way to see into the recursive nature of the game. Here's how...
1) Track the 5th pitch in a sequence to a batter: This is when the pitcher or batter will reach the bottom of that "7 plus or minus 2' saturation point and establish who is influencing who in that exchange. IOW, a learning threshold is reached and a new environment is about to emerge. That 2-2 pitch is where the recursive nature of the game and the brains involved iterate to a place where something has to change. Now, that'll apply every 5th pitch too, so in a 12-pitch inning, it's shifted twice too.
2) Track the 5th batter a pitch faces in an inning: Again, it's the combination of the repetition of the lineup's sequence and the capacity of the working memory of the defensive players. Look for more 'mental errors' in the field after this point in an inning. The paradox is that you also see more 'baserunning blunders' too so go figure! Again, if you track a pitch count or a batter faced count, the pattern of change is still there. It's less about the result than the fact that as the game progresses you are adding in more complexity to the mix, which leads to more unpredictable behavior. So within each context, like a 5-pitch ab you have recursion, which adds depth. As that batter cycles around for their 2nd or 3rd ab, you have iteration, which adds bandwidth. It's like a crossword puzzle if you can imagine it. Recursion travels vertically through a game, iteration travels horizontally through one. The emergent 'big picture' remains hidden until the game ends.
3) Track the game itself: I don't wonder anymore why it's an 'official game' after 5 innings or why a starting pitcher is credited with a decision after completing five innings. I know the logic behind it, but on a somatic level, it's in completing that inning that you get the recursive depth you need to filter out all the volitional (conscious effort) of both teams. After that inning, it's more about memory, instinct and more raw neurobiological tone.
4) Track different plays: When does the 5th foul ball occur? the fifth fly out or ground out? Each of these 'events' have feedback loops of their own which works in the other way too, so the 5th put out by a fielder or the 5th assist by an infielder creates yet another nuance in the game's myriad of somatic exchanges. All the subtle aspects of the game like pickoff attempts, batter's squaring to bunt, 3-2 pitches with the running going, etc. are all little ripples in the overall conversational arc of a ballgame. Try tracking when a pitcher shakes off a sign if you can. It's funny how often the 5th one is a game changer. It's not superstition or coincidence. It's brains!
Now the stats types can't figure any of this out. It transcends their filters. That's because you are framing a baseball game the same way you would any social exchange. And just as you have a learning curve in any dynamic setting, the 'organism' created by the two teams reaches a saturation point itself and it will spike momentum toward one side. This is best illustrated in one-sided games. Notice the similarity of a typical learning curve and the fan graph of SAT's Brewers - Phillies game. This gets into trajectories and other nonlinear
aspects of social systems that are best 'seen' outside the context of tracking a game...
All of this stuff is part of the concept of transitional states that any living system uses to move across a phase space, in this case, the context of a game. Take a look at the way an individual and a group moves from one point of stability (pre-game) through the dynamics of playing (in-game) and then arriving at new point of stability (post-game). Of course this occurs on smaller scales within an inning, an ab and even pitch by pitch! And if you want to get fancy, you can track the 5th time a team faces the same opponent during a season or every 5th time a batter faces the same pitcher, situation or split and see how they perform. It's in these saturation points that careers are made.
The Satir Model of Change
The Cycle Of Transition
This is what's known as period doubling in nonlinear dynamics. It's part of a six-stage attractor system that moves a living system to the threshold of changing form. For us, it's the flocking of all those 5th step saturation points, where recursion and iteration peak and the traditional rules of expectation no longer apply. It's why baseball flows.
Other games have clocks on them. Other games have players changing on the fly. Other games have units and multiple substitutions. Baseball offers the dyadic exchange of a pitcher and catcher, a pitcher and a batter, even an umpire and a pitcher if want to go completely nuts with this. It's just baseball that provides a design where you can train your eyes to notice the transfer from conscious effort to other-than-conscious results.
All that said, if you pitch Manny inside with runners on, you get what you deserve!
Enjoy tracking the LCS's, MRF 10.06
Wasted Nostalgia - A Painful History Lesson
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Monday, 29 September 08 - 06:24 AM (GMT -05:00) By Mark R Filippi in NY Baseball Digest - Soma Style |
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Wasted Nostalgia
After having the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, and having been through the daily grind with the 2008 edition of the NY Mets the entire season, I'm suddenly aware of why the whole cycle of last year's collapse played out almost like a script this week. I'm a student of human nature and a lot of that nature has to do with cyclical rhythms. Think of them like a wheel turning on a constantly changing road. So a baseball team has cycle that begins with an off-season, then a pre-season, then a regular season and hopefully, it culminates in a successful post-season. That mirrors the 4-fold pattern we experience within each lunar cycle, each of the 4 seasons and even within each breath we take. But put all this aside. Let's reflect.
The Mets returned home this week for the final homestand at Shea. Inside the working memory of the media, the fanbase and even the team's upper management was the creeping spector of more of the same, dread. It was carried within the psyche of the organization through the whole cycle from the moment they collapsed last year, which was chained to the shackles of their heartbreaking post-season in 2006. The 2008 Mets, who had endured a rollercoaster of their own the whole season, were facing the opportunity to clinch a playoff spot, and last MON, they had two possible doors to take. The theme for the week was this 'Shea Goodbye' nostalgia that would hit it's crescendo on SUN, when management had staged a post-game production involving a roster of Met heroes from the team's 45 years of Shea history. Would the Mets focus on their past or fuel their present? Now that the week has 'passed', here's what I learned painfully.
Baseball has a funny justice. The 1969 and 1973 teams were remembered as magic carpet ride teams, even though they both spent large portions of those seasons in last place. The identity of the franchise until they broke through in '69 was just that, losers. To me they really took on the 'mantle' of the old Brooklyn Dodgers and NY Giants teams that toiled in the large shadow cast by the team with a history worth reliving, the Yankees. This underdog mentality has permeated the Met franchise for it's whole history. It's no coincidence that the emotional center of the fanbase is wrapped up in things like miracles, magic and the 'amazin's'...and of course, the rally cry 'Ya Gotta Believe' - implying that even when they're in a position to be considered the favorite, they need some kind of cosmic support to get the job done. The unsaid idea is that even when they win, it's up to luck not the performance, preparation and ambition of the team.
But put all that aside too...the lesson learned SUN was ever more basic.
Even the most obscure minor league franchise would of known that the season-long swan song for Shea Stadium would be running parallel to the on-field success of the 2008 team. When they had the 20-year celebration of the '86 Mets in 2006, they tried to create that bridge too. That night the Mets rallied to beat the Rockies with a 6-run outburst that I felt at then time was largely fueled by the pre-game, PRE-GAME pep rally held to honor the '86 team. The 2006 Mets were invited to that party.
At Shea, Cheers For Past And Present
But now the scars and baggage of the '06 playoff loss and the '07 collapse weighed on this team through Spring Training (pre-season) and well into the first 70 games of the regular season. All season long, the Met brass conducted a pre-game ritual of counting down the remaining games at Shea. Sometimes they had a former player do the honors. When I went to the SEPT 22nd game with the Cubs, they properly had Ed Kranepool reveal his old number 7 before the game. But it was 'met' with idle, polite applause. Why? I have a few reasons. Some are just the rapidly vanishing affordability of bringing a family to an MLB game. Some are the new partnerships the Mets and other teams have created with ticket re-sellers.
I sat in the Loge section that night surrounded by Cub fans. Most were from a group attending to see their relative, Staten Island's Jason Marquis, pitch in his hometown. But all over the stadium you saw Cubs fans and lots of empty seat. This was a vital game in the last week of the season! Where was everyone? The vibe was further quieted by the tenuous start of rookie Jonathan Niese, who eventually gave up a Grand Slam to Marquis, which broke the game open. The NL East was slipping away again! By the time the game ended, 9-5 Cubs, I heard a chant that I had to ask my friend to decipher. When he told me it was "Let's Go Cubbies" I had to take a walk to process it. A week or so later, here's what was lost.
The opponent was the Cubs. The '69 Cubs are the timeless foil to the '69 Mets. We had 50 former Mets rolling into town for the big closing on SUN. Why not stage a 2-hour parking lot rally each night and introduce these early Met heroes to the current fanbase? Connect again. Feel like winners BEFORE the game. Raffle off some Shea Stadium memorabilia and have that build up all week to winning high ticket items like some seats or a piece of the scoreboard - bypassing the eBay market in the process and making showing up for this pre-game celebration a week-long opportunity. Give something back to these fans who are not empty seats or Cub fans!
The Yankees USED the All-Star Game this Summer in conjunction with the corporate machine to create a genuinely wonderful baseball festival at the Javits Center. I still feel the event was spot on perfect despite the fact they botched my CD recording of the Mookie Wilson's Bill Buckner moment. They served the old, new, phony and diehard fans equally. Why not take the last homestand in the heat of a pennant race to get these former Mets out in the parking lot, taking pictures, signing autographs, whatever...so the fans walking up to Shea knew they were in a special place at a very special time. Instead, it was a flip of a number & tension.
What we realize now, a day or so later, is that we didn't just lose a chance to play in OCT. We lost a chance to memorialize Shea as a fanbase. My daughter cried more about the reality the stadium, this leaky cement bucket of a stadium is soon to be reduced to a parking lot. So it's that loss and the last this and the last that at Shea that the core of the fanbase is feeling. I can at least say I went to two of the last seven games. Next year is totally different. It'll be about the gain of CitiField, the novelty of going to see your first this and your first that in the new place.
I went to the rain-soaked THURS game against what was the Iowa Cubs now, as Yankee great Lou Pinella rested his regulars, essentially saying here Mets, have a 2-2 split. The night was raw and the game had the feel of a team and a fanbase about to panic. The Cubs took an early 3-1 lead but when the Mets tied it 3, the sparse and often distracted crowd was into every pitch. As the rain and wind swept over us in the upper deck that night, the Met bullpen did it's thing. In an instant it was 6-3 Cubs. The crowd went berserk and I was right along with them. Enough was enough already. With the angst meter on 10 the Met willed a W in the bottom of the 9th, giving the faithful one last magical moment at Shea...
But the opponent changed on FRI. Into town for the final series were the vipers, the Florida Marlins, the second division executioners from the '07 Collapse. Did the Mets seize that opportunity to bring out the '73, '86 and 2000 Met heroes to incite the fanbase in the pre-game hours? Nope. Instead all we heard about was rainout scenarios and tiebreakers. So the FRI crowd was again sparse and flat as was the team. A 6-1 loss resulted.
But the rollercoaster didn't end there. On Saturday, with destiny out the 2008 team's hands, the modern Mets franchise pitcher, Johan Santana, did his best 2007 imitation of John Maine and tossed a stirring, incredible 3-hit complete game shutout. It was a religious experience for me and I was alone at my desk in the office. The man walked on water for us. I had thought all week that since the SAT game was a day game that the post-game time was a perfect window for a bigtime on-field celebration that would allow fans on the field one last time to run the bases, and take their pictures of the stadium for their own 'baseball library'. To underscore this, the Mets also knew that both the Phillies and the Brewers played late games on SAT. How cool would it have been to let the fans watch these games unfold on the Diamond Vision like we see NCAA bubble teams do each Spring? How special would Shea have been after the Brewers lost and the Wild Card was again tied? Again, more opportunity lost to connect, to make pennant race baseball fun, not scary, to make it a party. But just as they had done in the wake of THURS comeback, the Mets let all that positivity waft right into Flushing Bay. But they has SUN.
I watched the pre-game ceremonies on SNY-TV. It was the first time all week that they were even on-site, which I thought was misguided. But I did see a red carpet and I did see old Mets entering the stadium. But instead of a raucous, even riotious, pre-game pep rally that would span the 45-history of Shea Stadium and attempt to boost the 2008 team one day beyond the 2007 team and maybe, just maybe, overwhelm a Marlins team that was the only obstacle to at least a playoff game with MIL MON.
Instead, we got what? A rain delay. Now the only advantage we had left, the opportunity to post a crooked number on Miller Place's scoreboard and make that final game there a little tighter for the fannies who btw filled those seats, as the two games unfolded. The eventual post-game wake was poignant and so somber. Howard Johnson was not able to enjoy it at all. He's probably going to be fired as hitting coach soon. The SNY announcers, SNY's Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling, who are also '86 icons, were openly emotional about the broken heart they suddenly felt. And Doc Gooden, this one really gets me, who hasn't set foot into Shea since he left in disgrace (according to who I don't know), was not able to truly experience the warm welcome return to Shea he deserved. I cried.
What was the move? Of course, do that whole ceremony at 1pm, sure do it in the rain, what's the difference? I would of started the day at 9am with a tailgate to end all tailgates. Have Billy Joel's concert DVD playing on the Diamond Vision. Have the 50 former Mets in the picnic seats during the pre-game time for a one-time only Shea Goodbye BBQ for their families and friends. Then, to include the 2008 team and their lousy rotten opponent, have the whole Tom Seaver-Mike Piazza first pitch, close the gates moment, closing the door on the Mets underdog past and have Mr. Met take off the last number and reveal the CitField sign as the public address announcer introduces the 2008 team - like it's a playoff game, which means introducing the Marlins one by one too, creating the ultimate home field advantage for what was a one-game season. If we won, it's a similar scene to the one I propsed for SAT. Once we lost and it was over, the centerfield fence could of opened and the Met brass can again let the fans, the real fans who were in all the raffles I wanted, get their prizes...
Even game shows have parting gifts...OK, we lost, but here's a $750 Dream Seat or a $50 Ticket Window sign. Throw us a bone here?
Shea Stadium Memorabilia Auction Final Price List
~ This next section is for the diehards only ~
To sum it up, the Mets approached the last homestand with their past, present and future all misaligned. Instead of using the past as a galvanizing fuel for the fanbase, who were skittish after last year's failure, they waited until after the whole thing crashed down to take a bow & go.
In the underachieving 80's, when they had a run from '84-90 and won one World Series in 1986, the unraveling was the desire to rid the team of it's bad citizens. So out went Strawberry, Kevin Mitchell, Lenny Dykstra and in came Kevin McReyolds, Gregg Jeffries and local boy, Frank Viola. The 'cleansing' backfired horribly in the early 90's when the Mets fielded The Worst Team Money Could Buy and spent the rest of the decade toiling in their misjudgments. It would take a Mike Piazza to instill hope again.
When they signed Pedro Martinez and then Carlos Beltran, the battle cry was this was the beginning of the New Mets. Four seasons, one playoff run and two consecutive September collapses later, the marketing of these 'New Mets' has to stop. Despite all the modern burdens of trying to appeal to the highly coveted 18-34 year old male demographic, the Mets have added in other barriers. The most obvious effort to appeal to the cultural diversity of the New York area, with the whole Los Mets dealio. But no matter what ethnic background you're from, the fans want to win!
In-house factions led to an awkward firing of Willie Randolph, and mysterious medical management decisions about everyone from Moises Alou to El Duque to Ryan Church and Billy Wagner, all the way down to whether or not John Maine would be used in the bullpen last week. So instead of basking in the intensity of hosting a 1-game playoff with the Brewers, the Mets fans were left to decipher Omar's GM Speak again.
"We'll be open to everything. You don't lock yourself in. We're open to consider everything, [because] we're not playing this week. We have the talent to be playing...We have a tough challenge ahead of us."
Click for the complete article
Sorry kid, no medals for trying...
October won't miss us one hit, er bit, MRF 09.30
Feng Shea
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Thursday, 25 September 08 - 02:59 AM (GMT -05:00) By Mark R Filippi in NY Baseball Digest - Soma Style |
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I'm posting this in an attempt to demonstrate, first to myself, and then to you, what happened at Shea Stadium on WED night. By knowing WHAT a player's primary domain is the emotionally invested and nervous fan can balance themselves out a bit as they endure these gut-wrenching pennant race games. I'll focus on profiling the critical at bat's in the bottom of the 9th and top of the 10th inning and then you can use whatever baseball analysis you want to fight me off. First, here's the FanGraph for that Nasty Ninth again...
Bob Howry pitching for the Cubs. Look at this man. He scares me. His profile is what we call an ONTO in this work. They are self-referencing in the way they process, which is a good behavioral assest for a relief pitcher. They can tune out all external distractions and tune into their own inner voice and it'll guide them through. But wait, leading off the 9th for the Mets is rookie sensation, Daniel Murphy. He's also an ONTO. Notice in how both images the eyes are 'tiger-like', almost like an old and young predator side by side. So Murphy attacks and hits the 1-2 pitch for a triple to right center and it's checkmate for the Cubs. But no one told the man on the mound. They made a visit to the mound and talked it over and decided to go after the struggling, but still very dangerous, David Wright. Wright is what we call a PHYLO. They are gross motor dominant individuals and are bias to seeking support from others in pressure situations. They tend to be very jumpy, like scared bunnies, or they'll shut down and be a 'deer in the headlights'. Now this is where the 1st person awareness of this type of information is useful in the moment to a fan...
You're thinking - "All he needs is a fly ball" - "Why is he swinging at 3-0" - "Why is fouling off these flat pitches" - "OMG - why did he swing and miss at a ball two feet outside?" Easy. Once you get to the 5th pitch in any sequence, the 'conversation' reaches a critical point that extends beyond the body. If you've ever played sports, it feels like slow motion sometimes. All you hear is your heart beating inside your head. All you can do is react. It's all instinctive and very intense. Look at those red bars up top. If Wright KNEW that Howry was an ONTO, he could of done any number of things to break his rhythm there.
The ONTO-PHYLO dynamic is classic case of a bully and a buddy. Howry is trying to bully Wright into swinging at his pitch and Wright is a million miles away, trying to control his reflexes. It's easy to fool or overpower a PHYLO in that sitution, no matter what their skill level is. The deeper the at bat went, the more fragmented the PHYLO's attention gets and the more focused an ONTO's gets. So the old tiger beats the talented deer and Wright swings at ball 4...
One out...
After two intentional walks, the stage is set for another Met ONTO, Ryan Church. Like David Wright, Church has been underperforming down the stretch and has been swinging weakly, but for a different psychomotor reason. An ONTO has more fine motor control than a PHYLO. They are precise and purposeful in their movement patterns. Watch Murphy swing. It's like a snapping turtle. Church, OTOH, is dialed down and is swinging like an impulsive PHYLO. Howry was able to get a 1-1 cookie right over the plate. An ONTO in the zone would of lifted that pitch to the warning track. But Church locked up and it was strike one. The pitch he hit was ball 3. He hit a ground ball to the 2nd baseman who inexplicably threw home, when a double play was in the offing. So despite yet another mental error by Chicago, the Mets had one more shot. But as Ramone Castro lumbered to the plate, I was resigned to a painful fate. This PHYLO has been injured all year. Now the whole game was on his shoulders. Howry overmatched him. Three pitches and it was out #3 and the ninth inning rally was another excuiciating Met failure.
My baseball take: I'd of had Wright take on 3-0, fake a bunt on 3-1 and then step out of the box, get very quiet and still, close his eyes and let the crowd noise fill his body and then step in for the 3-2 payoff pitch. Game over.
Short of that? I'd of let them load the bases, but not without having Delgado steal 2nd during Beltran's intentional walk. A balk, a wild pitch, or an ill-fated pickoff attempt could of emerged since ONTO's don't like surprises. The other way to play that bases loaded situation is to have Church, an ONTO, bunt towards 3rd on the first pitch he can reach and force the pitcher to make a play moving away from 1st, as Church, a lefty, runs like hell to first. Game over.
There's no way anyone on the Cubs is ready for that. Hell, I wasn't and I was screaming for it. Do something out of the ordinary! The game is tied!!!
OK? Two outs. I pinch hit Robinson Cancel for Castro. Why? Because he's a PHYLO who has been cheerleading for 9 innings. He's a huge baseball story. This was HIS moment. The man would of bounded out of the dugout like the emotionally-enhanced ECO Ramon Martinez did in both the 7th and 8th innings and the Shea Stadium crowd would of willed a 7th run out of his bat. I swear.
Now let's breakdown the critical at-bat's in the fateful top of the 10th inning. The Mets extended Luis Ayala to a 2nd inning after his 1-2-3 9th inning. I wasn't too nervous, but as I scoured the lineup, I felt a 1-2-3 10th was all he could stand. After that, a buzzsaw awaited him. So, I was up and yipping when Ramirez snagged fellow ECO Soriano's dying quail in short right field for the 2nd out. I had diverted my eyes to check the 10th inning scheduled hitters for the Mets and looked up to see PHYLO Ryan Theriot's sound single to center. OK, Ayala gotten 5 in a row, what's a single. Just get the next...
Derrek Lee? Oh no! He's an ECO, the ONTO Ayala's natural somatic enemy. When Theriot stole 2nd, unlike the announcers on WFAN and SNY, and the dozens feverishly typing in the Metsblog chatroom, I wanted them to put Lee on and pitch to Ramirez. The chat room shouted me down, and when Ayala whipped a fastball by him for a 3-2 count, I just closed my eyes and waited.
The fact that he hit a pitch even more outside than the one Wright flailed at is besides the point. ECO's are notoroius bad ball hitters because they have a raw, and highly keen spatial awareness. That often makes them look lanky, clumsy and sloppy. But in pressure situations, form is not as central as function and so ECO's often thrive because they lack the focus that weighs down on their PHYLO and ONTO counterparts. It's also the #1 reason they screw up!
So yeah, Lee could of just as easily pop out and ended the inning. But if Ayala knew he was facing an ECO there, walking him to pitch to the ECO behind him in the order would of seemed like a better option. Look at how both players eyes are so 'horse-like' and mismatched. The more variables in the situation, the more predictable the behavior gets. A tie game with 2 on and 2 out is an advantage to the ONTO, who can use the loosely-goosey nature of the ECO to get him to swing at a lousy pitch early in the count. Instead, Ayala was flat as a dog after surrendering the run to that bloop from Lee. His concentration broken, he tossed a cookie and Ramirez deposited in the Shea picnic seats.
My baseball take: I would of taken Ayala out after the single or just had him walk Lee for me first. Then I would of brought in John Maine, another warrior, who was just activated and had been warming up. Why? John's an EXO, a cyclops of a pitcher, who would of coolly and calmly dispatched Ramirez like a robot. Of course, the Mets would of have to use him to open the 11th had they not scored in the 10th, but I'm just offering an option that would of galvanized the crowd before the Lee bloop and maybe, just maybe, we're still 6-6 at Shea...
If you're lost about all the ONTO, ECO, PHYLO, EXO terminology, download a copy of our e-book "The S-List" or click over to this quick overview page.
If you'd like to see how deep this approach can go: Click here
So to sum it up...the Cubs' PHYLO singled, stole second and scored the winning run. The Met's PHYLO struck out with a runner on 3rd and no outs. The Cub's ONTO reliever got out a tie game, 9th inning after giving up a lead off triple but got a PHYLO to whiff, an ONTO to ground out and another PHYLO to whiff. The Met's ONTO reliever took a 2 out, bases empty situation and let up a single to a PHYLO, a stolen base to the same PHYLO and then a 3-2 bloop double to a big, lanky ECO and then to finish it off, a dinger to the next ECO.
That's what I saw...Now, just because you know this doesn't mean you have a secret advantage. It doesn't guarantee success. What it does is give you a way to see human interaction as an interplay of common elements in uncommon ways. Most approaches try to find more refined differences and then fit them into a commonly used map. This approach is 180 degrees from that. It accesses a rarely used territory to find more refined ways to see what remains the same in human behavior in a variety of contexts. It's fun. Almost.
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