Who's Who?

Now that Munchausen has thoroughly convinced me that MLB is indeed an ideology, and that I'm a huge sucker for falling addictedly into its clutches, I'm really having a hard time devoting any non-frivolous time to baseball. Naturally, with a sweet wife, an energetic toddler, and a hugely important job, frivolous time is VERY hard to come by. Like Munchausen, I feel like MLB owes me something, with all the time and energy and money I've sacrificed over the years, without having received anything significant in return. I mean, sure, I've been to "Fan Appreciation Night" before (yet still had to pay to get in, pay to park, pay up the NOSE for food, etc... -- yeah, I know, how appreciated would YOU feel) , but since I've never received a personal thank you from anyone (unless you consider those generic "Thank You, Fans!" personal), nor any tangible reward for my efforts, I'm going to really start expending less and less effort feeding my addiction.

That said, I'm still a sucker for baseball and am still learning the sabermetric tools. I'm also still chipping away at my home-brewed blog that will someday replace this blogger placeholder, but that's because I'm honing my skills as a web developer on that project, and it's not specifically tied to feeding the ideology.

So, I still think about baseball a lot, and I've been a bit curious on one thing. I'll just preface this by saying that it's probably a good thing that Spring Training stats are completely meaningless, except to those players inside the MLB ideology whose very reality is affected by such meaningless numbers (I don't think MLB is an ideology to its players -- they're more like bystanders, whereas the owners are the perpetrators, and us fans are the victims). And, incredibly ridiculous sample sizes come into play here, so far.

Nevertheless, I'd like to do a small player A, player B comparison, commonly found on the blogs. Statheads -- the Spring Training stats are courtesy CBS Sportsline.

Name | GP | GS | W | L | SV | CG | SHO | R | H | HR | TB | ER | ERA | IP | SO | K/9 | BB | BB/K | WHIP | WP | BK | HP |

Player A | 3 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 6 | 0 | 6 | 2 | 3.86 | 4.2 | 4 | 8.57 | 4 | 1 | 2.38 | 0 | 0 | 1 |

Player B | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 5 | 1 | 8 | 2 | 1.50 | 12 | 9 | 6.75 | 2 | 0.22 | 0.58 | 0 | 0 | 0 |


(DAMN BLOGGER! I can't put this in a table without it getting all funky, with huge gaps and other things. YUK! Now, when is my home-brewed blogging app going to be finished again???)

Figured out who the two guys are? Again, these stats are completely meaningless, and are about as reliable as taking this weekend's weather and trying to predict how the weather will be from now until the end of spring (and if you were down here in Oly trying to do some shopping like I was, having stores without power, trees across roads, power lines cut and arcing across the roads as well, we're in for a baaaaad spring!).

I'll give you a clue. Player A is about half as old as player B. Another clue -- they're both NRIs not currently on the 40-man roster. And, if Player B makes the club, it will really only be as a placeholder for player A to spend a little time in Tacoma.

Got it yet? Good. Even though the numbers are statistically insignificant, I was still curious.