February 05, 2008
Emotion Versus Stats
Defensive Indifference responds to Catfish Stew over how much emotion and stats should figure into a Hall of Fame argument.
I just want to throw in my two cents on the Jim Rice strikes fear argument. That may have been true in the late 1970s, but most of the years I attended games at Fenway the correct strategy with one out and Rice coming up third was to throw eight straight balls, then let Rice hit the first pitch into a double play. Jim never thought, "This guy is wild, I'll wait for him to throw one down the plate." He thought, "This guy threw eight straight balls, he has to throw his next pitch over the plate, I'm going to swing!" He posted great stats in that time period, but spent a lot of the Red Sox outs.