Todd Zolecki is great

by phatj on Mar 6, 2008 2:58 PM EST Comment 13 comments

[editor's note, by dajafi] Promoted from the diaries, because when beat writers get it right, it's impossible to give them too much credit.

We've been talking about this over on backshegoes.com, but I might as well post it here too.

Once again, Todd Zolecki shows his saber-stripes: http://www.philly.com/philly/sports/20080306_Phillies_show_striking_out_not_all_that_bad.html.

He makes the obvious points: Phillies have led or been near the league lead in both strikeouts and runs scored for each of the last several years, double plays are one obvious downside of putting the ball in play vs. striking out, etc.

On BSG we've nit-picked about this: "Howard is a career .291 hitter. He has struck out 493 times in 1,461 career at-bats, which means he hits .439 when he puts the ball in play. If he could have cut his strikeouts from 199 to 175 last season, his average would have jumped from .268 to .289. He might have hit 50 homers instead of 47." It (possibly fallaciously) suggests that Howard can cut down strikeouts without affecting other aspects of his game.

All in all though, it's a nice piece, one that strikes a nice balance that shouldn't alienate old school readers but keeps us geeks happy too. Not to mention he's not a verbose old crank with a perverse love affair with strained metaphors.

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Re: Todd Zolecki is great

Zolecki FTW.

Crashburn Alley

by Baerwcb on Mar 6, 2008 5:17 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

pimping your link

Look at the kings of not striking out. They are overwhelmingly players with puny to mediocre slugging percentages, like Juan Pierre and Jason Kendall. You don't see 20+ HR player on the page until you hit Albert Pujols. The defense against a swinging strikeout is a shorter swing. Shortening the swing results in more bat control but less power.

Hells yeah. That's what this is about: you don't want Ryan Howard cutting his strikeouts in half if it also means he's cutting his homers in half.

by dajafi on Mar 6, 2008 5:47 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Re: Todd Zolecki is great

Can somebody explain Backshegoes to me? Is it affiliated with this site? If it is, why are there two separate sites? I realize one's a blog and one's a message board, but still.

On a completely unrelated note, here's a really weird interview with Shane Victorino in case anyone missed it.

by taco pal on Mar 6, 2008 7:06 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Backshegoes

It's a little complicated, but here goes.

The folks who started and continue to run this blog "met" on a Phillies message board called philliesphans.com. They started a fantasy league during the 2005 season (I think) and on the league's own message board hatched the idea of starting a collaborative, sabre-oriented Phillies blog. They wanted to do this separately from the message board because article-length pieces don't work well in a MB context.

Philliesphans.com still exists, but backshegoes.com was created about the end of 2006 due to, shall we say, differences of opinion regarding editorial policy. Eventually, the TGP folks all migrated their message board activity to BSG.

by phatj on Mar 6, 2008 8:03 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Re: Backshegoes

Interesting.

It looks like a pretty cool site, but with the amount of activity you seem to get over there, I might never get any work done if I get involved.

by taco pal on Mar 6, 2008 8:16 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Re: Backshegoes

Or it can easily pull you away from doing stuff here as well.

by jonk on Mar 7, 2008 6:34 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Re: Todd Zolecki is great

That Victorino interview is hilarious. Everyone likes a goofball...

As long as he's not John Rocker.

by FuquaManuel on Mar 6, 2008 8:45 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Re: Todd Zolecki is great

I am 99% sure I agree with this statement: the defining indicator of whether someone is an intelligent (read: modern-thinking) baseball fan is his/her position on strikeouts.

I finished breakfast this morning muttering to myself: Todd Zolecki is god; we must all bow down to Todd Zolecki.

by David S. Cohen on Mar 7, 2008 12:01 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

Re: Todd Zolecki is great

The good aspect about Todd isn't in what he writes about, it is in the fact that he doesn't think he knows more than the game. Nobody likes to be pointed out about a mistake or argued with (human nature) but when I wrote to Todd about the issue phatj noted, he was very accomodating and it made me feel awkward. Here, we got a guy who writes good stuff and is intelligent about it and I argued with him on a small point and he was gracious about it. I think Conlin has jaded me.

by jonk on Mar 7, 2008 6:38 AM EST reply actions 0 recs