In the meantime, feast your eyes on this, the quintessential Manny Ramirez:

AP.

Now, I like VORP just fine. But I have a confession to make.

If Junior & Co. are VORPies, I’m a WHIP-py. (I promise, this is about baseball.)

Personally, I like pitching stats more than hitting or fielding stats. It’s just more interesting to me. Hitting is both hard to do and hard to quantify. Fielding is really, really hard to quantify. Pitching can be looked at in a lot of ways, and there are so many stats that give different dimensions. A strikeout pitcher has an impressive K/9IP ratio, while a finesse pitcher will have a good K/BB and a workhorse starter will have a high IP/GS (FWIW, I also like ratios).

In my opinion, though, WHIP is the best measure of any pitcher.

A pitcher’s job is to get outs as quickly and efficiently as possible. A pitcher also has to not let up a lot of runs. A pitcher then has to not allow a lot of baserunners. How do you measure how many baserunners a pitcher allows? Walks and hits. What’s one general measurement of how much any pitcher–a starter or a reliever–throws? Per inning. So that’d be walks and hits per innings pitched.

Also known as WHIP.

Let’s take a look at some of the 2007 WHIPs of some top starters in the AL, huh?

So, looking at this, there’s a bit of surprise–but not much. Santana comes out on top, which I wouldn’t have really expected (I would’ve guessed he’d be in the top five, but not number one). Bedard is a strange case. He won 13 games with a team that won 69 all together last season. Beckett and Sabathia tie exactly, which isn’t surprising at all.* Haren is just a hair ahead of Carmona and Lackey, which I wouldn’t have guessed, but isn’t really all that unexpected. Wang, on the other hand, is the odd one out. I’ve never thought he was a true ace, and not just because he was on the Yankees. (I’m glad he isn’t one.)

What does this mean for the ’08 Red Sox? Good news, mostly. Santana’s in the other league now, and unless the Sox and Mets both make it to the World Series, we’ll never have to play against him. Bedard is in Seattle now. The Mariners won 88 last year, but finished 6 games behind the Angels. They could compete for the AL West, though, this time around. Beckett is good. That’s all there really is to it. Sabathia is good, too, and there’ll most likely be a fierce division battle between the Indians and Tigers (unless one or the other gets lots and lots of freak injuries). As for Haren, he’s in the NL as well, and Carmona’s in the same situation as Sabathia. Lackey and his Angels are good, and that’s all there is to it. They’ll have to defend against the Mariners to keep their division this year. As for Wang… well, let’s just say that he’s hoping Phil Hughes and Ian Kennedy come up big.

*By the way, Beckett’s postseason WHIP was 0.700. Sabathia’s was  2.217.

Disclaimer: I’m getting this information by ear from WEEI. I don’t guarantee this is correct at all. There’ll be gaps. I’ll try and get everything right, though.

Update, 8:08: Gaah. First, my radio mangled the sound throughout the bottom of the fifth and much of the top of the sixth, then Firefox died (how often does that happen? Seriously.) and I lost all of the bottom of the sixth. I hear Craig Breslow did a good job, and I know Hunter Jones did pretty well after giving up a single and quickly getting a double play. Jones through a lot of balls, but did get the outs. I’ll try and get Kyle Jackson’s inning, but the fifth and sixth aren’t going to surface.

FIRST INNING

Pitcher: Justin Masterson (8 pitches, 6 strikes, 2 balls)

First Batter:
Ball
Ground to 3 – GROUND OUT

Second Batter:
Foul
Swinging strike
Swinging strike – SWINGING K

Third Batter:
Ball
Called strike
Ground to 1-3 – GROUND OUT

SECOND INNING

Pitcher: Justin Masterson (9 pitches, 6 strikes, 3 balls)

First Batter:
Called strike
Called strike
Ball
Line drive to 9 – SINGLE (possibly double; the phone rang inconveniently)

Second Batter:
Ball
Strike (unspecified by radio)
Ground to 4-6-3 – DOUBLE PLAY

Third Batter:
Ball
Fly to 7 – FLY OUT

THIRD INNING

Pitcher: Craig Hansen (14 pitches, 11 strikes, 3 balls)

First Batter:
Strike
Strike
Strike – K (sorry, I was totally not paying attention here)

Second Batter:
Swinging strike
Grounder to 5-3 – GROUND OUT

Third Batter:
Ball
Strike
Ball
Bloop to 8 – SINGLE

Fourth Batter:
Called strike
Ball
Called strike
Foul
Swinging strike – SWINGING K

FOURTH INNING

Pitcher: Michael Bowden (11 pitches, 6 strikes, 5 balls)

First Batter:
Ball
Swinging strike
Ball
Pop up to 2 – POP UP OUT

Second Batter:
Called strike
Foul
Ball
Ball
Swinging strike – SWINGING K

Third Batter:
Ball
Ground to 6-3 – GROUND OUT

FIFTH and SIXTH INNINGS are M.I.A.

That is all.

I was planning on seeing the Sox, as I mentioned before, but it didn’t work out. Instead, I went to Port St. Lucie to see the Mets. I also wanted to see the Marlins and Cardinals at Jupiter, but they packed up just as we arrived (boo! I wanted to see Anibal Sanchez and Hanley Ramirez!).

Back to the Mets.

Yes, I saw this guy in person.

Yes, it was amazing.

Yes, he will be batting this year (HAHAHAHAHA. Ahem).

This kind of blew my mind. I totally fangirled. It was a bit humiliating in retrospect.

Seeing David Wright was pretty awesome, too–he almost gave me a high-five, but a Mets fan barged in front of me and put his hand where mine was. Ugh. (He is, for the record, extremely extremely extremely good-looking in person.) I also almost got into an argument with a Mets fan over who was better, Wright or Lowell. You can probably guess my position.

I even got to see Ruddy Lugo, the younger Lugo brother! I wanted to shout, “Say hi to Julio for me!” but I didn’t–on account of the Mets fans who would glare at me, mostly, and also because he was a bit far away to really hear me.

Yeah–I took about 120 pictures all together, deleted 30 of them (all too blurry, badly shot, etc), and liked these ones, pretty much. I also got some video of Santana throwing live BP–to David Wright, no less, but I didn’t realize that until after he’d walked away (stupid! stupid!).

Instead, I went to Port St. Lucie to see the Mets!  As in, The Good Team From NY. As in, The Enemy-Of-My-Enemy-Is-My-Friend Team. As in, The Team With Pedro Martinez and Johan Santana.

It was AWESOME.

Of course, I would have preferred 1,000 times to see the Red Sox. Of course. But this was pretty good.

Pictures to follow soon..

And in other news, Tito FINALLY got his contract. Good. Of course.

I’m going to Florida!

Well, I’m officially visiting my grandparents, but on Friday I’m going to the first whole-team workout. It’s going to be hot, crowded, and I’m going to wish for really long arms, but I’m going to take pictures and have a blast. I’ll try and keep up with all the Sox news, but I most likely won’t be online…

So, on that note, have a great week!

(I’m also going to the Winter Equestrian Festival in Wellington on Thursday. Woohoo!)

Question: Have you ever been offered performance-enhancing drugs?

“No, never have. But since I never had that chance to say no, I don’t know if I would have said no. Before they had steroid testing, there had always been, in any sport, a closed-door policy. What goes on back there, goes on back there. To a certain extent, things stay that way, but when you have things like [Roger Clemens' and Brian McNamee's congressional hearing], it doesn’t. Everybody wants people to be honest. We all make mistakes. We all screw up. We all sin. We all cuss. Nobody is going to hold that against you usually until you try to hide it. ‘I didn’t do this, I didn’t do this, I didn’t do this. I don’t care what you say, I still didn’t do it.’ Well, some people saw you do it and you still say you didn’t do it. ’Fess up. That’s all somebody is going to look for. Be honest in the beginning and we’ll forgive you.”

He also referred to Andy Pettitte:

“Andy Pettitte didn’t have to say he used it again, but he did. And his account, what was said in the hearing, was, ‘I don’t have to give an account to you. I have to give an account to God.’ That’s the whole thing. You have to be honest. At the end, it doesn’t matter what we think of each other, it’s what God thinks of you and how you lived your life. He used it, as he said he used it, in probably the same way I would have used it had I had the availability to it, through an elbow injury, trying to rehab your shoulder or your knee, or whatever your injury. Because it does help you get back to where you were at 25. There are cells throughout your body that are receptive to it and it’s going to give you a youth feel.”

Fort Myers?

76 degrees.

(They also just showed the pitchers doing some running. Buchholz and Matsuzaka were in the front. Julian Tavarez was lagging way, way in the back. Okajima was quite speedy.)

(Now they’re showing the catchers–’Tek, ‘Belli, Cash, Kottaras–taking BP. Kottaras is looking good. I like his swing. I’d like to see him get some more playing time in the majors later on this year.)

(David Pauley and Julian Tavarez are now walking. No, wait–they’re jogging again, but Tavarez looks quite fatigued.)

Yes… it’s finally, FINALLY here. Took long enough. 109 days… 109 long, painful (but still pretty fun, with all the bragging rights and all) days from October 29 to February 14. But look–we made it!

On a side note, I am quite enamored with Kevin Youkilis’s choice of attire as he arrived at Fort Myers, a week before position players were required to report…

 
Image from Jim Davis/Boston Globe.