What Do You See?

N.B. Read the intro BEFORE you skip down to the team write-ups, or else nothing will make sense. 

N.B.B. We have had our first three submissions, which are included below. Thanks!

The age if misinformation is upon us, and media conglomerates are responsible. How do we know whom we should trust, and why? One news outlet will run the same story as another news outlet but with a different slant, and we are left to determine which is telling the story accurately, if indeed any of them are. We see this most glaringly in the many reports about COVID-19, the vaccine, and the current health crisis enveloping the world.

And it appears that even in baseball there are two different stories of one event in which we must decide who is, indeed, telling the truth. Our case study this morning comes from current Roo (a player recently lauded by MLB and also our own commissioner) Kyle Tucker. Here is the video of yesterday’s event, and the question I would like you to answer before continuing to read this update:

This clip shows Kyle Tucker getting picked off of third base with one out in the 6th inning of a tied baseball game. Was he:

a) Trying something daring (stealing home) in order to help his team win?

b) Bored, and wanting the game to end as soon as possible?

c) Making sure the Diamondbacks could not appeal Yuli Gurriel’s tag up on a fly ball?

d) Playing a game of pickle in the middle of an MLB contest

What did you answer? This morning I woke up to two different interpretations of this play, from two different media sources. The first article was one I stumbled up on Baseball Prospectus. If you are not a subscriber to BP I don’t think you’ll be able to read it. Here is an excerpt from it, though, about this play: “The video reveals that everyone on the field, save Tucker, knew exactly what was going to happen like it were a Halloween showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show. Even more damning is third baseman Josh VanMeter, wielding all the cumulative boredom and fatigue of a hundred losses, standing at third and signaling for the ball before the runner had even made his break.” The author of this article is “Baseball Prospectus Editors.” It’s as if they don’t want the reader to know who wrote it, because in it they lambaste Tucker for his decision to try and steal home in this situation, saying, “Sometimes you’re so wrong about something that you just fall down.”

Reading the article and watching the video made me come to conclusion that Tucker, indeed, made a dumb decision that could have potentially cost his team the game. But then I opened my email and saw an email sent to me by Ron in the middle of the night (ok, 11pm is hardly the middle of the night but I was in bed). It was a link to a tweet from Jomboy, which included the above video accompanied by these words: “Kyle Tucker gets picked off on purpose because the Astros think that Yuli Gurriel left too early on a sacrifice fly.”

And so I watched the video again, and sure enough, it seemed like Jomboy was right (if you don’t know Jomboy, he is the Yankee fan/content producer who helped uncover the Astros cheating scandal and has turned that into a very successful media outlet, though fair warning – he uses a lot of bad language in his videos).

In older times I would have sided with the more seasoned BP writers when having to choose between two interpretations, especially if someone with the name “Jomboy” was offering one of the opinions. But, in my opinion, Jomboy is absolutely correct (and it pains me to say that as much as, I am sure, it pained Jomboy to laud an Astros player).

Nothing is spared from our own interpretive lenses, even when we believe we are just, “reporting what we saw.” This is true even of these updates, in which I (and Ron) write about your players, interpreting their performance as though we are just reporting what we see in the box score. Oftentimes, when writing the update, I wonder what you, the owner, might see, or how you might tell the story of your team’s performance from the day before. It might be a fun experience to have you comment, if you can, on this post with your own write up of your team. How might it differ from mine? What might you focus on? What do you see that I didn’t see?

So, today’s update will be sparse, because I want to see what you see. This is by no means a requirement for you to do, for you might be unable to do so or perhaps lack any desire to do so. But if you can and want to, indulge me for just today.

Here’s what to do: simply send me an email with your write-up. It doesn’t have to be long, at all. When I get them, I’ll go in and add it to the post, and at the end we’ll have an update written by all of us, with many different eyes through which to see. As a reminder, you can look up the daily stats for your team on this EFL page.

Have fun!