FanHouse RobNeyer

I'll just get this out of the way. I hate people who are too reliant on stats when judging baseball players and/or teams. I've said it before, but the game is not played on a spreadsheet. Human beings play this precision sport on the field. On the other hand, it's very much a stat-based game when you are arguing for things such as MVP awards or who qualifies as a Hall of Famer. Bruce Jenkins, of the San Francisco Chronicle, flies to the opposite of the stat-based point of view.

If you require a set of numbers to make a case for someone, you're probably trying too hard. More often than not, players strike a Hall of Fame look by their fifth or sixth year in the league. You see them play, watch how they carry themselves, hear tributes of respect from other players, and you just know.

Look, I'm not going to go as nuts on this paragraph as Ken Tremendous would have (sigh), because I do believe there's a happy medium between the stat sheet and the eye test.

Much has been made of Brian Bannister's baseball smarts. Unlike most players, Bannister has showed off an impressive understanding of underlying sabermetric stats, and has admitted to putting them to use on the mound. Bannister isn't a physically gifted pitcher, so it was something of a blogger geekfest to see him pitch so well in 2007 with nothing more than Pitch f/x, a middling fastball, and BABIP.

Unfortunately, 2008 is not fitting the script. At all. Banny's early 2008 numbers are lagging way behind his 2007 stats, and his most recent start (against the red-hot Yankees) was a five-runs-in-three-and-a-half innings disaster.

Sample size, as Bannister would surely note, is one thing. Having a freakishly unsustainable 2007 BABIP is another. As Rob Neyer notes today, Bannister is an interesting guy, but he's far more so when he's not actually on the mound.

Because, you know, he kinda sucks. Get it?

Everyone is still trying to make sense of the Rockies' incredible stretch run this season. Rob Neyer placed it as the No. 3 baseball miracle of all time. The Rockies, in their post-game interviews after their NLCS win, seemed to be struggling to comprehend it. Others are turning to the special sauce that nearly every team needs to win in baseball's postseason, and surely any team needs to win 21 of 22 games: luck.

And already I can hear Rockies fans readying in their throats a choral scream: "Luck! We don't need no luck! They don't respect us!"

So I'm here to tell you, Rox backers: Relish it. Relish the luck.

Seriously. Go on. It's OK to admit you're a lucky team. Every team needs a little luck here and there, especially in baseball. If luck, in tandem with skill and consistency and talent, has taken your team to the precipice of a championship, don't get angry about it. Don't act like a goofball pickup basketball player who just hit a lucky three-pointer, the guy who wants to act like he was just that good all along. Don't be the New England Patriots, feeling slighted in respect even though everyone already lavishes it on them. Just enjoy it, call yourselves incredibly lucky, light a victory cigar and bask in the rewards that luck has reaped you.

There are 29 other teams, and 29 other fanbases, that wished they were as lucky as you.

Despite whatever contrarian knee-jerk reaction you might have to Dane Cook shouting at you, the 2007 World Series is shaping up to be a classic. The Boston Red Sox, paragons of consistent domination, and the Colorado Rockies, the hottest team baseball has seen in a long, long time, squaring off. It's going to be a good one.

But just how high does the Rockies' incredible run rank? Even without a World Series, is it the craziest team achievement in baseball history?

Fortunately, we have Rob Neyer to put these things into context (free Insider preview; hurry!):

3. 2007 Colorado Rockies

On the morning of Sept. 16, the Rockies were in fourth place in the National League West. They were 6½ games out of first place, and 4½ games behind the wild card-leading Padres. They'd lost three straight games, and they were dead in the water. Or so it seemed. On the afternoon of Sept. 16 the Rockies trounced the Marlins 13-0, beginning a season-ending surge that would include one loss and 14 wins, including a one-game playoff for the wild card. Since then they've swept their Division and League Championship Series, and so they enter the World Series next week having won 21 of 22 games, and it's safe to say that no team has ever entered the World Series on a run like the Rockies'.

For the record, Neyer's No. 1 and No. 2 miracles were Boston's comeback in 2004 and DiMaggio's 56-game hit streak in 1941. No matter what happens to the Rockies in this series, they're already perched near some incredibly lofty company.

Bill James may be the grandfather of baseball sabermetrics, but Rob Neyer has to be considered some kind of great uncle. James was well-established among hardcore baseball nerds before Neyer came along, but it was Neyer's column on ESPN.com that brought sabermetrics into the light and in front of a national audience. The Hardball Times recently caught up with Neyer for an interview, where he discusses how he got his start, including just how rough things were for him before finally finding his niche:

My freelance "career" lasted for 10 months, and I think I made something like $8,000. At best. Those were some lean months, during which I was occasionally reduced to buying food at gas stations with my mom's credit card. When I did that, I would drive 20 miles from town, to avoid running into somebody who knew me. None of my friends knew I was destitute, and a lot of my meals were made with pancake mix I swiped from my roommate (by the way, I owe a very belated thanks to John Cheffey).

Honestly, I hate to even think about what baseball reporting would look today had Neyer decided to pursue something that would have afforded him a better diet than gas station food and pancake mix. As befuddled as some mainstream writers are, no one can deny that both writers and front office execs are a bit more enlightened than they were 10 years ago, and Neyer is at least a small reason why.

FanHouse's Top Five scans the sports blogosphere for the best posts of the last 24 hours so you don't have to. Got something for this feature? Hit us up at fanhouse@googlegroups.com.

1). Vegas Watch leads off the festivities today with an insightful roundup of various baseball analysts' preseason predictions. Two things you thought might be true: Rob Neyer and Baseball Prospectus are good at this; Steve Phillips is not. Surprise, right?

2). As is the norm, Awful Announcing was the first with Mark Cuban video from last night's inaugural Dancing With the Stars appearance. Cuban's performance? I give it a solid eight, especially in the early rounds. What? I'm talking about dancing as if I know anything? Oh, right. Sorry.

3). Are Minnesota and Arizona conspiring to send Larry Fitzgerald to the North Country? From an Arizona summer to a Minnesota winter; do the Cardinals really hate Larry that much?

4). Signal to Noise reminds us that Beras fans ought to know who Brian Griese is, and that if they want to crown him, they can crown him ... but we really shouldn't.

5). In honor of the crazy and regrettable Milton Bradley injury, AZ Sports Hub highlights the top five freak injuries of all time. Ouch.

With a bit of a whimper, reigning AL MVP Justin Morneau has abandoned contract talks with the Twins, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Supposedly, Morneau was offered around $30 million for four years, and said "Thanks ... but no thanks."

That's probably fair, considering Morneau is only 25 and just turned in an impressive offensive season (.321/.375/.559). On his ESPN.com blog (Insider), Rob Neyer points out that J-Morn is still three years away from his walk year, so the Twins have plenty of time to get a deal done before then ... and that Morneau might not be worth the money, anyway:

Here's the good news, if you're a Twins fan: Morneau isn't eligible for free agency until after the 2010 season. That's a ways away, friends. He'll be 29. Past his prime. Morneau's a good hitter. I've liked him for a long time. But right now he's 26, and his career on-base percentage is .338, slugging percentage .501. Good hitter. Not a great hitter, though -- at least not yet. My guess is that the Twins, who develop talent better than anybody, will come up with another good young first baseman between now and 2010.

With that in mind, it looks like Morneau missed his best cash-in opportunity, while the Twins front office proved they're every bit as shrewd as their continued success suggests.