VeggieTales
Gonna move quickly today for various reasons.
FIRST BASE: NEW PITCHERS MOVE WEST New Giant Brad Penny’s 8-inning shutout performance in his return to the NL Wednesday night goes in the “well, that was predictable” Hall of Fame. I don’t have a fundamental problem with the DH like some NL fans, but I recognize the disparity it’s created between the leagues. Unfortunately, it’s a problem that’s impossible to fix because the DH is the highest-paid player in the AL, on average. But this is getting ridiculous.
Scott Kazmir made his Angels debut last night, throwing 8 Ks and losing. Ho-hum. The Red Sox lost to the Rays, the in-feuding Marlins won, as did the Rockies to stay one game up in the NL Wild Card.
SECOND BASE: NON-STEROID RELATED ASTERISKS Prodded by a reader, we looked into why Dan Marino’s 22* lost pounds carried asterisks all over the Nutrisystem website. Turns out that the FTC throws up a red flag for weight loss “systems” that advertise losses of more 15 pounds over any time period. Now, we weren’t saying that Nutrisystem didn’t work: just that disposal income-having celebrities like Dan Marino and Chris Berman were far more likely to have hired personal trainers to lose their more than 15 pounds of weight. We’re sure that anyone who engages in portion control — be it through Nutrisystem or anywhere else — is apt to lose weight, should they add some exercise into the mix. Preferably vigorous exercise, and ideally under the watchful eye of a personal trainer. But I’m sure Dan Marino knew that!
THIRD BASE: NO YOKE If you haven’t seen the video of hundreds of thousands of baby chicks being put through meat grinder in Iowa as a bi-product of our egg consumption machine, it’s, uh, here. I would say it’s gruesome, but it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that our meat and egg consumption habits are brutally bloody and mechanized. I sure know, and I continue to eat meat. Why do I do it after seeing videos like this?
The answer is simple: I like it. The organization that made the video, Mercy for Animals, created the video and uses it to advocate for a vegan diet. They have done a real service here, but a vegan diet is only the simplest solution to a complicated problem, and not one that’s likely to get the marginal results needed to affect widespread change. It’s sort of like asking teenagers not to have sex: some will listen, but most will not. You bring parade a pregnant teenager through a high school, and they will become a cautionary tale for as long as they’re within sight. Same thing with the video (which, again, is good and useful) — some people will be affected immediately and give up meat entirely. That is good. For the others, better solutions are needed.
The most effective way to push the anti-cruelty agenda is to emphasize the planet-wide costs of the mass creation and shipping of meat and eggs. The website referenced at the end of the video, chooseveg.org, has a section devoted to the costs of eating meat, and the UN has called for a drop in meat consumption because of the effects on the environment. But it goes beyond that: animal rights organizations must outline ways for people to eat meat if they want to by referring them to humane, self-sustaining, organic farms. If eating meat remains taboo to change organizations, everyone’s going to want to do it (such is the nature of taboos, see: our drinking age). If we can take the small step of getting people to realize the real costs of what they eat, and not just meat (corn-based products do serious damage as well), we’ll take a giant step toward a smarter, healthier future. But without some loud allowance toward eating meat — with responsible-sourcing guidelines — the movement seems to be missing something vital to its success.*
* Go vegetarian organizations that do this are to be saluted.
HOME: I’M NOT SAYIN’, I’M JUST SAYIN’ Saw Inglourious Basterds last night. At one point, a Nazi officer is attempting to negotiate a surrender and asks for land on Nantucket. Tarantino be knowin’.
Off tomorrow for a miraculous four-day weekend. Be back on Tuesday.
You’re not the first to have claimed it, but I’ve yet to read a compelling argument for how the DH has caused the imbalance between the leagues.
There are payroll differences between the leagues which likely account for much of the competitive difference, but why assume that’s caused by the DH? Is there any evidence that NL teams would be setting their budget differently if they had to employ a DH? Isn’t it more logical that they’d just use those financial resources on players at other positions?
Also, the imbalance between the leagues if fairly recent. Why didn’t the DH cause a difference during the first 25 years it was around?
I would say it’s likely that if you took the average salary of the DH compared to 20 years ago, and showed the ratio to that of other positions, you’d have your answer. Hell, just look at your fantasy baseball scoring system, and there’s your answer. Rewarding hitting in a vacuum — an ability which was not available to/not practiced by teams until the last decade or so — was simply not done. Also, players were not “groomed” as DHs until recently, i.e., played as an exclusive DH in college or the minor leagues. Now that they are, and are thusly the highest paid player on the field, that accounts for (a lot of) the payroll disparity AND the interleague disparity. Look at it this way, too: even if a player is not groomed as a DH, an AL team has considerably less risk in offering a long-term, high paying contract, because there’s always the DH safety valve. I would guess that this opportunity leads to an overlap in such contracts — basically, betting that only one will “go bad” — that has a further effect on driving AL payrolls up. NL teams can’t afford to take those risks, not because their payrolls are small: I think it’s entirely likely that it is the cause of their smaller payrolls, both on a micro (individual team) and macro (NL-wide) basis. The marginal value of what the Dodgers are going to get from Jim Thome is so small per dollar that it won’t be copied by teams (in future years); but in the AL, it’s the rule if you want to compete, and win, and wins make money (up to a point).
I still don’t follow the logic as to why NL teams wouldn’t just spend the extra money on a better #3 starter or shortstop.
Isn’t it more likely that the difference in payroll is due to some combination of NL teams on average playing in smaller markets and having stingier/less agressive owners?
I think you might be on to something that the DH allows AL teams to sign players that wouldn’t be as attractive to NL teams, so they get some advantage from being able to select from a slightly larger player pool, but the AL’s edge should be because it gets those players at a discount (there are only 14 potential places for Jim Thome to play, but there are 30 potential places for Derrek Lee to play, so Jim Thome should be cheaper in the offseason).
So, it seems possible that there is some edge from the DH, but it’s an edge that’s entirely separate from payroll, which is another area that AL teams have an edge in.
Also, now that I’ve looked at the data, over the last 10 years, the difference in NL & AL payroll is almost entirely attributable to the Yankees & Red Sox. New thought experiment – if you had just switched the Yankees & Red Sox with the Mets & Dodgers, would there have been any difference between the leagues over the last decade?
Well, I think you answered your own question as to why DHs still command top dollar when their are fewer teams involved in the bidding — two of them are the Yankees and Red Sox, thus keeping the price of DH-types high across the board.