Randy Johnson -- 44-year-old, veteran of 21 Major League Baseball seasons -- is, expectedly, reaching the twilight of his career. If he decides to hang up the spikes at the end of the season, he would join an already impressive Hall of Fame class five years from now, perhaps one of the best classes ever. However, Johnson has shown that he still has enough left in the tank to get Major League hitters out. His 91 ERA+ and 1.44 WHIP are numbers we haven't come to expect from the five-time Cy Young Award winner, but he's still a quality arm for the Arizona Diamondbacks.

He's hittable, though. As hittable as he was in that miserable 2006 season with the Yankees; likely as hittable as he's ever been in his career. He missed about 75% of the 2007 season with a balky back, and this year, he's not even averaging six innings per start. According to FanGraphs, he's lost nearly 1.5 MPH on his fastball and 1 MPH on his slider. It sounds insignificant, but it's the difference between a dinky foul ball into the left field stands or a double in the left-center field gap.

So, what do Johnson's employers do when it's an unavoidable fact that the soon-to-be 45-year-old can't go the standard five innings and doesn't have the velocity to make his fastball and slider contrast?

Make him a LOOGY: a Left-handed, one-out guy.

Throughout his career, Johnson has been the scariest pitcher that left-handed batters had to face. Ask former first baseman and present ESPN analyst John Kruk about the 1993 All-Star Game (if you click the link, press Ctrl and F, and search for "Randy Johnson is a terror").

This season, Johnson is holding left-handed batters to a paltry .505 OPS as opposed to the .848 OPS of opposing right-handed batters. Over his lengthy career, this has held true as well: lefties have a .561 OPS against The Big Unit; righties have a .657 OPS. Considering that Johnson's present team has just one left-hander in their bullpen (Doug Slaten), Johnson would still have tremendous value to them even if he can no longer pitch as a starter.

Left-handed relievers are very valuable in this age of baseball. Teams often strive for not just one, but two left-handed relievers to maximize their ability to out-maneuver the opposing teams. The only reason why Mike Myers stuck around in the Majors after the 2003 season was because he was left-handed -- had he been right-handed, he would have been kicking around Minor League contracts. Every good team has at least one LOOGY (some of them are not only used as a LOOGY, however): the Red Sox have Hideki Okajima and Javier Lopez; the Angels have Darren Oliver; the Cubs have Scott Eyre; the White Sox have Boone Logan and Matt Thornton; the Phillies have J.C. Romero.

This idea, of course, rides on Johnson agreeing to move to the bullpen in the first place. Judging by former Houston Astro Shawn Chacon's reaction when he was given that responsibility, some pitchers may not want to make the transition. But if Johnson wants to rival Jamie Moyer and see who can pitch later into their 50's, he would undoubtedly become an elite relief pitcher.

On yesterday's episode of Daily News Live, the panelists were debating if the Phillies were better off this year without Aaron Rowand. Their conclusion was that the Phillies, indeed, are missing Rowand. Unsurprisingly, they provided almost no statistical data to back it up besides batting average, so I turned the channel, unsatisfied. Nothing new, considering it's DNL. I guess I have to do the research myself!

First, the obvious: how's Aaron doing this season? We'll cover offense first and get to defense later.

Rowand, 2008: .305/.368/.473 (121 OPS+); 20 2B, 8 HR, 1-for-4 SB (25%)

In a batting- and pitching-neutral ballpark, Rowand is putting up a respectable .841 OPS and 35% of his hits are of the extra-base variety. However, that OPS is only a few points above his career average (.808) so it's not like he's having a career year. Understandably, his ISO is down forty points, switching from a very homer-friendly park (Citizens Bank) to a neutral park (AT&T). He's seen a 6.2% decrease in fly balls, a 2% increase in line drives, and a 4.2% increase in ground balls, and considering how spacious and windy AT&T Park is, you want to be more fly ball-prone.

How about the Phillies' center and right fielders? I include right fielders here because Victorino moved from right to center when Rowand signed with the Giants. At the end, we'll see if Rowand and Victorino are more productive than Victorino/Werth-Jenkins.

Overall, the Phillies' center fielders are hitting .281/.353/.441 (114 OPS+); 16 2B, 4 3B, 9 HR.

Phillies' right fielders are hitting .256/.314/.392 (80 OPS+); 17 2B, 8 HR.

Individually...

Shane Victorino: .270/.343/.377 (87 OPS+); 14 2B, 3 3B, 2 HR, 17-for-20 SB (85%).

Jayson Werth: .266/.350/.500 (117 OPS+); 5 2B, 1 3B, 10 HR, 7-for-8 SB (87.5%).

Geoff Jenkins: .249/.300/.393 (78 OPS+); 11 2B, 6 HR, 1-for-2 SB (50%).

So Taguchi has logged 8 defensive innings in center; Victorino has 38 innings in right; Eric Bruntlett has 7 innings in right; and Greg Dobbs has 4 innings in right. These were factored into the overall positional statistics but haven't logged enough innings at either position to "qualify."

What about defense? Using Revised Zone Rating (RZR) from The Hardball Times and Fielding Runs Above Average (FRAA) and Rate from Baseball Prospectus...

Center field

Rowand: 600 def. innings, .949 RZR, 3 assists, 107 Rate, 5 FRAA.

Victorino: 485 def. innings, .893 RZR, 1 assist, 104 Rate, 3 FRAA.

Werth: 201 def. innings, .930 RZR, 2 assists, 109 Rate, 1 FRAA.

Right field

Jenkins: 440 def. innings, .877 RZR, 4 assists, 100 Rate, 0 FRAA.

Werth: 136 def. innings, .913 RZR, 0 assists, 93 Rate, 1 FRAA.

Victorino: 36 def. innings, .900 RZR, 0 assists, 125 Rate, 3 FRAA.

Finally, a look at their salaries...

Rowand: $60 million over 5 years (2008-12); $8 million this season.

Victorino: $480,000 this season.

Werth: $1.7 million over 1 year (2008).

Jenkins: $13 million over 2 years (2008-09); $5 million this season.

Overall, there's no question that Rowand is outperforming all of the Phillies center and right fielders (though Werth is close offensively but with over 100 less at-bats). If we hypothetically back-track and imagine that the Phillies were paying Rowand $8 million only for this season and weren't bound to him contractually afterwards and never signed Jenkins as a free agent, they'd be paying about $8.5 million to Rowand and Victorino in center and right, respectively, and they'd be getting pretty good production.

Instead, the Phillies are paying about $7.2 million collectively to Victorino, Werth, and Jenkins for less production, but save about $1.3 million. Jenkins, by far the most expensive of the bunch, is dragging them down significantly.

To answer my own question, no, the Phillies are not better off this season without Rowand, at least so far. Considering the contract he wanted and eventually got from the Giants, though, the Phillies are better off in the future. Signing Jenkins -- a move that I supported at the time -- has not worked out very well.

* All statistics are prior to games on Tuesday, June 24.

It's cliche at this point to poke fun at Jamie Moyer's age, but it's simply remarkablethat a 45-year-old man is baffling professional Major League hitters with a sinkingfastball that barely tops 80 MPH (according to FanGraphs, it's averaging 80.8 MPH).

Honestly, he's not exactly baffling hitters, as his ERA is still kind of highat 4.09 and between 2004 and '07, his ERA+ has topped 100 only once (2006, 104ERA+). Additionally, his strikeout rate, while never high, is even lower thannormal. In 2007 with the Phillies, his strikeout rate was at 6.01 per nine innings,the third-highest of his career; this season, it's at 4.81. His career averageK/9 is 5.37.

So, we've established that he's not throwing anything out there that's too confusingor too fast for the hitters. What makes him successful?

There's a lot of variance in his approach to left-handed and right-handed hitters.Being a lefty himself, he avoids throwing his change-up and instead relies moreheavily on sliders. Using JoshKalk's player card for Moyer, let's take a look at his pitch selections tolefties and righties:
   

	Left-handers	Right-handers
Sinker	41.4%	56.75%
Curve	5.73%	3.66%
Slider	46.18%	14.76%
Change-up	6.69%	24.83%

It's almost a rule of thumb that left-handed pitchers don't throw left-handed  hitters change-ups because of the general area that those hitters like to hit  in, and the direction the change-up breaks. Moyer, since he doesn't throw anything  too hard, knows that his change-up isn't good enough to fool a left-hander,  so he doesn't use it that much. Instead, he uses a lot of sliders, since they  break away from the left-handed hitter.
 
  This approach has worked, as Moyer has held left-handed hitters to a .686 OPS  against him while right-handers are hitting for an .833 OPS.
 
  What I found odd is that left-handers are still hitting home runs off of him  at a higher clip, despite having an overall lower SLG: lefties tag one almost  once every 22 plate appearances; right-handers are homering once every 39.5.  His overall HR/FB is at a normal 13.2%.
 
  Moyer strikes both types out at an identical rate: righties once every 8.15  plate appearances; lefties once every 8-even.
 
  The most startling observation is Moyer's sudden ability to induce ground balls,  which is especially important considering his home ballpark -- the very homer-friendly  Citizens Bank Park. Since 2002, Moyer has scraped a 40% ground ball rate just  once in 2006, and that was 40-even. Last season, it was at 39.4%. This season,  49.2 of his batted balls are of the ground ball variety; conversely, he's had  a 9% decrease in fly balls allowed, from 39.4% in '07 to 30.4% this season.
 
  Why is this important? This season, opposing batters are hitting for a measly  .465 OPS on ground balls and .965 on fly balls.
 
  His home/away splits are polarized. At home, he has a 5.32 ERA; away, he has  a 2.76 ERA. It's something you might expect with a finesse pitcher in a homer-friendly  ballpark, but last season, he had a 4.72 ERA at Citizens Bank Park, which was  lower than his road ERA of 5.25. And in 2006, in his half-season with the Phillies,  he had a 3.98 ERA in three starts in Philadelphia.
 
  There may be some mean-regression with his home/road performances, but overall,  Moyer appears to have simply found an approach that works. Both of the Phillies  catchers -- Carlos Ruiz and Chris Coste -- are reputed for calling games and  working well with pitchers, so it's not egregious to suggest that this is the  case. If you buy into a pitcher's performance depending on his catcher, opposing  hitters hit for a .633 OPS when Ruiz catches Moyer (33%); .873 when Coste catches  Moyer (67%).
 
  In his 22nd season with over 3,600 innings under his belt, it's also not crazy  to think that Moyer has used his experience and intellect to his advantage,  especially given all of the great strides in technology that have made scouting  so useful to pitchers.
 
  The last part of Jamie Moyer's value that I'd like to discuss is anecdotal,  so take it for what it's worth. Having watched almost all of the Phillies games  every season, I've seen not only Moyer's starts, but the way Moyer interacts  with his teammates when he's in the dugout. He is almost like another coach,  and not just a pitching coach. One of the Phillies' television broadcasts detailed  how Moyer was helping out a couple of the younger hitters (I forget who, specifically)  with the way they handle their at-bats. After pitching and while his teammates  are batting, Moyer can be seen going over the prior inning with his catcher,  clearing up any miscommunications and going over how they plan to deal with  the scheduled hitters in the next inning. Other times, he'll be talking pitching  with the Phillies' other pitchers. ESPN's  Jerry Crasnick detailed how Moyer mentored Cole Hamels during his rookie  season in 2006.
 
  As much as I hesitate to use and generally dislike arguments that include stuff  you can't measure (intangibles), there's something to be said for Moyer's dual  role as player and coach.
 
  All that said, I think it's evident how valuable Moyer has been and still is  for the Phillies. He's a free agent after the season and most players would  retire; Moyer is a different guy altogether, especially since he doesn't rely  on velocity, which is the biggest thing to decline with age. If he stays healthy,  he might pitch into his 50's if he has the desire. Moyer is 46 in November  which would put him in a six-way tie as the sixth-oldest  pitcher in Major League history. Maybe Vegas will put some odds on him  pitching again next season. I'll put my money on him.

In one of my rare attacks of thought, I reached the conclusion that baseball broadcasters are terribly underappreciated. Many of those you are familiar with - Harry Kalas, Vin Scully, etc. - are well-compensated but regardless, the task of broadcasting is tremendously difficult, and I do not think many baseball fans realize it.

Every broadcaster differs in how he or she approaches the game, but I attempted to come up with a general list of responsibilities to help put it in perspective.

Research

Most play-by-play and color broadcasters do a ton of pre-game research on players. They read biographies, look over injury histories and reports, and scour tables of statistics. It’s not just relegated to the 50 players on the two teams that are being televised; this includes managers, coaches, front office people, former players for the teams, potential trade acquisitions, famous people from the cities, etc.

It’s a bit easier for the national broadcasts like ESPN and FOX because they’re known well ahead of time and their schedules are “open” (generally speaking) but for that one or two days of the week. Local broadcasters have it tougher because they have to be familiar with a new team and city (and everything that goes along with it) once every three to five days.

They have note cards in front of them while they’re on the air, but you can’t fit all of this information on 8x10 sheets of paper or 3x5 index cards, so there is some memorization involved.

Description

Obviously, the #1 job of a play-by-play broadcaster is to describe what is going on. However, Harry Kalas can’t just monotonously rattle off the events of the game; he must describe them in such a way that keeps the listeners intrigued and eager to stick around. Additionally, he can’t vividly describe each event in the same way; he must vary his word choices, requiring a strong grasp of the English language (or at least an ability to memorize selections from a thesaurus).

The great television play-by-play broadcasters should be able to tell you exactly what’s going on without the aid of the cameras stationed throughout the ballpark. You should be able to lose your picture and still know exactly what’s going on: the pitcher, the current hitter, the runners on base, the inning, the count, the outs, who’s warming up in the bullpen, who’s on deck, the location of the pitches, the batter’s approach in the at-bat, etc.

There’s so much to describe in so little time, which is why I am so enamored with Harry Kalas (that is also in part due to my being a Phillies fan). He paints a picture like the brush of Vincent Van Gogh (am I exaggerating? You decide!).

Partnership

The play-by-play guy and the color guy(s) don’t have to get along with each other outside of the booth, but inside, they have to be able to work well with one another. If they have differing philosophies on the game, they should be able to discuss it on the air in a calm, mature, rational manner that both informs and entertains the listeners/viewers.

The color commentator’s main job is to be entertaining and informative. If he’s a former player, he’s also expected to shed that perspective on the events in the game as they unfold. In this respect, the play-by-play guy’s job is to set up the color analyst to expound.

There is nothing better than listening to a great duo in the broadcast booth. WGN’s Len Kasper and Bob Brenly, in my opinion, are one such duo.

And there is nothing worse than listening to a dull duo, as well. The Phillies employ three chumps to tag alongside the legend that is Harry the K: Chris Wheeler, Tom McCarthy, and Gary “Sarge” Matthews. Wheeler is more enamored with himself and what he thinks are clever terms like “dirtball-type guys” (hat tip to ChrisWheelerGlossary.com); McCarthy is infatuated with meaningless and unrelated back-stories of baseball players; Matthews (who sounds like he has a bunch of marbles in his mouth while he talks) is obsessed with his hat collection.

Taking Directions

One of the subtleties of a broadcast is getting the dialogue to match up with what’s being shown on camera. Sometimes the broadcasters will take cues from “the guys in the truck” to properly set up discussions, ranging from players in the dugout, to fans in the stands, to the mascot, to interesting aspects of the ballpark, etc.

Additionally, they need to set up discussions of replays and it is in the same vein as above.

Statistics

Statistics, believe it or not, are one of the most integral parts of any baseball broadcast. You see them non-stop, especially these days (and that’s a good thing).

While a broadcaster isn’t required to know exactly how VORP or Zone Rating is calculated, he or she needs to be familiar with the basic statistics that they show, especially to foster a discussion with the color analyst.

Segues

Segues are another subtlety of your typical broadcast. It’s irritating to listen to a game where the broadcaster doesn’t know how to segue; he or she haphazardly bounces from one subject to the next with no hint at all. The ESPN Sunday Night Baseball games are a great example of poor segues. Jon Miller and Joe Morgan talk about the most irrelevant garbage and don’t even attempt to connect it to the game. During an Angels-Mariners game, Morgan will talk about he played golf with former Cincinnati Reds’ shortstop Dave Concepcion (a facetious example), seemingly oblivious to the game he's supposed to be analyzing.

The FOX broadcast is similar, as Tim McCarver will go on long, winding diatribes with no point in sight. Whoever he’s paired with will sit back, dumbfounded at how off-track the conversation has become.

Self-Censorship

This is a multi-faceted responsibility. Self-censorship does not just mean to prevent oneself from uttering an offensive word (one that would make George Carlin proud); it involves not letting one’s personal experiences and biases interfere with objectivity.

ESPN’s Jon Miller was born in San Francisco, and has been doing local Giants broadcasts since 1997. During those local broadcasts, it’s usually fine for Miller to root for the home team, but if he’s broadcasting a Giants game for ESPN, he has to remain neutral for a national audience.

If one of the broadcasters has had a bad experience with a member of one of the organizations they’re covering, they have to keep that on the back burner and not let it interfere with the information they’re parlaying to their listeners or viewers. This also goes for broadcasters not having had any experiences: for instance, the recent Milton Bradley incident with a broadcaster for the Kansas City Royals, Ryan Lefebvre.

Lefebvre made a lot of assumptions about Bradley without ever having talked to him, saying that Bradley “has no control over himself,” and contrasted him to teammate Josh Hamilton, who recently fired his agent because Jesus told him to in a dream.

Interviews

As if they don’t have enough stuff to do, broadcasters are also required to do interviews before, during, and after the game. I’m not sure how many of the questions are written for them, and how many they come up with on their own, but the questions have to be appropriate and intriguing regardless.

Segues come into play here as well, because it would be unfair to the interviewee to get caught off-guard. For instance, if they had Josh Hamilton on air for an interview, they can’t go from a 5-for-5 night into the worst days of his drug addiction. That’s a peak right into a valley.

Additionally, self-censorship also plays a role because personal biases can (and do) affect which questions are asked and how they are asked. If a broadcaster is on very poor terms with J.D. Drew, he can’t phrase questions in a way that question Drew’s character or integrity, like implying that he was the instigator when batteries were thrown at him by Phillies fans. The goal of the interview is to obtain information and ascertain a player’s perspective, not to play a game of “Gotcha!” This, obviously, applies to biases like favoritism as well.

Advertisements

Regardless of his or her feelings on economics or the ethics of certain businesses, the advertisements must be given as expected with the snarky comments confined in one’s head. If I was a broadcaster for the Phillies and I had to talk about Lukoil (whose signs around Citizens Bank Park had been removed before this season started, if I recall correctly), I would be very tempted to slide in a snarky comment, but that’s a no-no and part of the job responsibility.

Interest

As mentioned, the goal of the broadcast team is to keep the listeners or viewers interested enough in the game not to switch channels. Even if the game is 14-0 after the first inning, they have to feign an interest level in the game so that the audience will stick around.

I empathized with the broadcasters covering the 22-inning Rockies-Padres game on April 17 (and 18). It was scoreless until the 14^th inning, where both teams scored one run. The broadcasters had to refrain from slumping into that monotonous tone where it’s obvious that all they want to do is go home and sleep. Their employers were praying that, as the game dragged on, they were interesting enough to keep the audience tuned in and exposed to their sponsors’ advertisements – money in the bank.

. . .

Hopefully, I’ve been able to get you to appreciate broadcasters a bit more. I think I’ve touched on most of the important aspects of the job, but if you think I failed to mention something, or covered something incorrectly, let me know in the comments!

There was only one group of people happy with Gavin Floyd's pitching performance against the Pittsburgh Pirates yesterday: those who own him in fantasy baseball leagues. That's because he was only charged with giving up one run in his start yesterday against the Pittsburgh Pirates, despite really giving up seven runs. Six of those seven runs were unearned and thus don't harm his ERA, a sentence that sounds like angels playing harps to anyone who has Floyd on their fantasy roster.

A former top pitching prospect of the Philadelphia Phillies, Floyd scuffled until finding some magical cure for what ailed him before the 2008 regular season started. He posted a 3.16 ERA in April and a 3.27 ERA in May, and he had a couple no-hit bids thrown in the mix.

In June, it would appear, Floyd has kept up his successful ways with a 3.12 ERA in his four starts thus far, but further investigation is required. Through his first ten starts in April and May, Floyd had allowed a total of four unearned runs, 15% of his total runs allowed. Last night against the Pirates, Floyd allowed seven runs, a whopping six of which were unearned. Overall, Floyd has allowed 12 earned runs this season, 27% of his total runs allowed.

More than one in every four runs that Floyd allows is not being credited to his pitching. That will make judging his performance thus far a bit hard, no?

Let's take a look and see whether or not Floyd was totally innocent, as his earned runs total seems to indicate. The damage occurred in the second inning of the series finale of their inter-league series with the Pirates. From Yahoo! Sports:

So, Floyd had the bases loaded with two outs before Ozuna's error occurred. Clearly, he was in a bit of a pickle without the help of shoddy defense. Ozuna's error, obviously, allowed the inning to continue instead of allowing Floyd to walk back to the dugout, get a cup of Gatorade, and discuss metacognition with fellow teammate and intellectual Jim Thome.

But does, or rather should, the buck stop there? Once the teammate botches a play, the pitcher is off the hook, providing there are two outs when the error occurs?

Clearly, Nate McLouth's double wasn't Ozuna's fault. Neither was the Freddy Sanchez homer. Or the Jason Bay double.

And, hey, if we're blaming Ozuna for all those runs, shouldn't we also credit him for that Adam LaRoche strike out? I kid.

I'm positive the subject of unearned runs has been discussed many times before by people much smarter than I, though I haven't seen the subject covered too much. Is the solution really so simple as to eliminate unearned runs entirely? Or is that too far, making ERA now unfair to the pitchers who have subpar defenses behind them (and, subsequently, disfavoring non-strikeout -- and to a lesser extent groundball -- pitchers)? What would be a happy medium?

Unearned runs are hashed out in Major League Baseball's official rules, and judging by the glacier-like movements at which change is made within the sport, don't expect UER's to be modified or eliminated any time soon.

Inspired by Steve Ethridge's articles on CollegeHumor.

With all of the serious baseball discussions taking place recently, I thought we could all use some levity. After reading this, you'll realize why I'll never be a playwright on Broadway.

[Scene: After a hard day of work, Joe Morgan of ESPN and Marcus Hayes of the Philadelphia Daily News are sitting in a diner relaxing and having a cup of coffee. The two people in the booth behind them are talking loudly, so they decide to listen in on the conversation.]

Billy Jameson: My, that Ryan Howard is one great ballplayer.

Nerdy McNumbers: He sure is! So is Manny Ramirez.

Billy Jameson: You know why they are so good? Because of their selfish attitudes and lack of hustle!

Nerdy McNumbers: They lead the league in showboating -- and in strikeouts. One day, I hope to be as cool as them.

Billy Jameson: Me too. Speaking of cool, you know what we need more of? Statistics. Especially statistics that sound weird when you say them.

Nerdy McNumbers: Yes, agreed. Statistics make the thick rims of my glasses tingle with joy.

Billy Jameson: Not as much as my calculator battery!

Nerdy McNumbers: Good one! I'll have to write that one down and post it on my blog, where I take potshots at credentialed members of the mainstream media.

Billy Jameson: I blog too! I live vicariously through the players I watch and then try to tear them down by writing nasty things about them on my blog while I wear footie pajamas in my mom's basement.

Nerdy McNumbers: Quick question: On which hand should I put my catcher's mitt?

Billy Jameson: Which hand do you throw with?

Nerdy McNumbers: I don't know, the last time I put on a glove it was for safety reasons so I could play with my chemistry set.

Billy Jameson: Let's change the subject quickly so we don't come to the realization that we can't play sports well.

Nerdy McNumbers. You're right.

Billy Jameson: I’ve been trying to think of ways to tarnish the reputations of some of the great ballplayers from yesteryear, do you have any ideas?

Nerdy McNumbers: Let’s create a bogus theory where a player’s value is correlated with how many times he gets on base, instead of how many times he sacrifice bunts or let his grit emanate in the clubhouse. This will surely make people realize that Ted Williams and Hank Aaron should have been bench players.

Billy Jameson: Ha, grit! That’s as real as the Easter bunny! Conversely, we could say that strikeouts really aren’t all that bad!

Nerdy McNumbers: What shall our “strikeouts are good” statistic be called?

Billy Jameson: How about EqVFORRAPRPIBAB?

Nerdy McNumbers: Sounds confusing. Let’s use it! Only we will understand it. All of those capital letters are sure to throw everyone off, and even if they start to get it, we have that lower-case q.

Billy Jameson: Now, we need to infiltrate the mainstream media and get them to publish articles about our insane points of view.

Nerdy McNumbers: We can campaign against traditional statistics and shift the focus away from the actual game and onto statistics. Let’s call people who only look at AVG/HR/RBI and W-L/SV “stupid.”

Billy Jameson: No, that’s not condescending enough.

Nerdy McNumbers: I’ve got it! Let’s call them “basic.”

Billy Jameson: That just may be insulting enough to work!

Nerdy McNumbers: I can’t wait until games are played by number-machines instead of by actual people. Being that I have never played a minute in competitive sports, I don’t understand the minutiae of the game, so I hide behind statistics. We need to take the human element out of the game for people like me.

Billy Jameson: Indeed! I would rather sit in front of my computer screen for 12 hours looking at random assortments of zeroes and ones than watching actual human beings play America’s pastime, or worse, actually playing it.

Nerdy McNumbers: In order to further our plan of dominance, we also need to discourage current and future ballplayers from taking a team-first mentality. I say we scoff every time someone mentions how much leadership a player has, and say that hustle doesn’t really win ball games. It's blatantly obvious that the qualities that are generated by our computer programs -- like GPA in math classes -- help win games.

Billy Jameson: Additionally, we need to pay no mind to how “fiery” a player is, even if he’s really fast.

Nerdy McNumbers: That may be too out there. We all know that all fast players are fiery and have lots of determination, as shown by how hard they slide into second base, and then argue when they are called out on a close play.

Billy Jameson: Do you want to eventually rule the game of baseball so that we number-crunching, mom’s-basement-dwelling nerds can finally be good at something? Stick to the plan. Fast players don't have fire and determination, not if we have anything to say about it.

Nerdy McNumbers: You’re right, I’m sorry.

Billy Jameson: I forgive you. All right, it’s getting late. Let’s go home and sleep on our ideas. Tomorrow, we will strike vengeance upon everyone who was better than us in gym class in high school!

Nerdy McNumbers: Roll initiative!