A Lazy Sunday for Slow Games and the Head Game

Little to say about the series in Chicago thus far. I suppose it is noteworthy that, given how much concern has been raised by commentators over how many walks our pitchers have given up, there was only one walk in yesterday's 14-7 loss. Otherwise, I'll just stick with saying it's a long season and 162+ is a lot of baseball.

Instead, with a respectful not to the ever eloquent and thoughtful "Lazy Sunday"posts each week at TheDiatribe blog, I'll offer some brief thoughts of my own on this warm Memorial Day Weekend Sunday.

I enjoy pitching. The brilliant game this past week between Masterson and Verlander kept me spellbound watching each pitcher get his outs, or pitch out of jams, or the unbelievable ability of Verlander to find more speed and power as the game goes on.

Now, I know many people don't share my love for close pitching battles.  I remember a close game last season, an inter-league match between Cincinnati and Cleveland on May 21, 2011. I took a friend who is more of a casual fan of the game and after what I thought was a thrilling, fast-paced game we met some friends in Ohio City. They asked how the game was and he said, "Good, it was pretty slow for awhile but it picked up near the end."

I stared at my scorecard in shock trying to figure out how a game that finished in 2:21 could possible have been slow. Through six innings there were only three hits. There was no scoring until the top of the 7th, when Brandon Phillips was hit by a pitch, advanced to third on a single, and scored on a ground-out. The Tribe answered in the bottom of the seventh with a lead-off single by Asdrubal Cabrera and scored 2 runs on a 2-out home run by Travis Buck. By end of the 7th, Josh Tomlin and Hector Bailey had faced a combined 50 batters with 190 pitches. That, to me, was a fast paced and exciting game!

But I recognize how for most of the sell-out crowd that day the highlights were the free Choo jerseys and the thrill of a homerun in the bottom of the 7th. And both were exciting, even if the promotional jerseys had a hot-dog company logo on the sleeve. I can understand how most people want to see towering home runs that make the crowd stomp and cheer. The game I was watching and thoroughly enjoying is more like what Roger Kahn described in his classic on baseball from the pitcher's perspective: The Head Game. Watching the pitcher face off each batter, thinking about what he's throwing and why; trying to understand -- from the distant perspective of the top row of the upper deck -- what he's doing and why. Kahn called it "chess at 90mph", and one of the delights of baseball is playing along in my head and trying to understand, keeping track on my scorecard and revisiting each match-up at a later date, still trying to understand it.

Admittedly, I'm no expert. Neither at pitching nor at chess. I've never played, and whatever daydreams I have of debuting on the mound as a phenomenal left-handed fire-baller, I have never thrown a fastball and only understand the mechanics of breaking pitches in theory. For that matter, my own visual acuity is rarely sharp enough to tell one pitch from another when watching the game. In fact, I'm not even left-handed. But part of the joy of baseball remains watching and trying to figure it out; always learning, always seeing something new and unexpected.

This part of the game has only grown more fun in recent years. Alongside my writings in theory and prose, there are countless blogs and articles at his very moment expanding the statistical representation and analysis of baseball. I can, and will, say more about this in forthcoming posts. But the explosion of sabermetrics and "moneyball" approaches to the game present even more opportunities for delving into the Head Game, really playing along by thinking about the game, and getting more deeply involved.

This is a key point for the use of statistical analysis and modeling, at least for me. Along with each blog post or article out there, there's a comment thread full of arguments ranging from methodological battles over statistical analysis to personal insults to ordinary vapid cheering of the "My team rocks, you guys suck" variety. I can't get behind the methods or the math as a definitive understanding of the game, nor as a process of finding the right or most perfect way of describing and predicting the progress of baseball. But it is, and remains, another avenue of entering into the head game. For that, I'm happy to dive in and dust off my old statistics and calculus textbooks.