The Ten Silliest Things Written by Asher on BaseballEvolution.com

By Keith Glab 1/21/05

Asher B. Chancey is a good friend of mine, and generally very knowledgeable about baseball. But every so often he says or writes something that makes me question his sanity. Here are the top 10 that are documented on this site:

10. "Well, I mean there are plenty of good first basemen, but I don't think there are enough to keep Hodges off of the Top 200."

In Asher’s defense, this is a quote from an all-you-can-eat-sushi overdose session transcribed to the site, so it wasn’t carefully considered. But Gil Hodges does not even rank in the top 40 of first basemen in OPS+, so I can’t even allow bloated individuals make crazed statements about Hodges being on a top 200 list.

9. "McDougald spent 10 years playing middle infield for the Yankees, never accomplished much, and then retired at the age of 32."

Scott debunked this unprovoked McDougald-bashing a few months back.

8. "Walton's teammate, Dwight Smith, was the Rookie of the Year runner up, and he, too, would never do another damn thing after 1989."

Hold it! Dwight Smith must have thought that he was a catcher in 1993, because he tore up the NL at .300/.358/.494. He had 17 batting runs in ’89 and 11 in ’93, but –26 for the rest of his career, including an astounding –11 in just 153 at bats for the ’96 Braves. But while Dwight was a Cub, every year that he had positive batting runs the Cubs finished over .500, and every year he had negative batting runs the team had a losing record. Clearly, the club lived and died with Smith.

7. "Bonds begrudgingly shared his supply of juice from Bagwell with his Giants teammates (except Ellis Burks, who thought that players reaping benefits of which other players could not take advantage was unfair), and the entire 2000 Giants starting lineup hit double digits in homeruns."

Cute comment, but Burks enjoyed some of the best years of his career in San Francisco. His two full seasons there yielded EASILY the highest OPS+’s of his career. If you’re going to accuse anyone on those Giants teams of being on steroids, even jokingly, Ellis ought to be one of the accused.

6. "Any fool who would leave the Rockies deserves what he gets."

I think that Asher might want to examine the stats of certain players after they leave Coors Field.

5. "When the two of them are away from Coors, Batista has easily been the better player."

Batista’s never easily the better player. Aside from joining the infamous 500 outs club in 2003, he’s been no more spectacular than Castilla over the last few years. Their OPS+’s over their last 3 non-Coors years:

Batista: 102, 76, 88
Castilla: 94, 61, 101

I don’t see a clear edge, but I always like to point out that Batista has easily created the most outs in baseball since 2000 with 2,432, an average of over 486 outs made per season.

4. "So, "playing under protest."

That's actually a thing.

You learn something new everyday."

I’d like to think that Asher had known this prior to April of 2004, but it’s a fact I’ll have to accept.

Though only under protest…

3. "Tom Glavine may not make the Hall of Fame. Certainly arguments could be made that he doesn’t deserve to be in. Two words – Don Sutton."

Well, if being Sutton’s superior is the sole criteria for making the Hall, then Bert Blyleven, Tommy Bridges, Bret Saberhagen, Dave Stieb, Dizzy Trout, Billy Pierce, Emil (Dutch) Leonard, David Cone, and a host of active pitchers should all be shoe-ins. I actually agree that Glavine deserves serious Hall consideration, but think that there are better yardsticks than Don Sutton with which to gauge his success.

2. "While his average and on-base percentage are higher than LoDuca's, Kendall actually produced fewer runs and a lower slugging percentage than LoDuca last year."

By "produced fewer runs," I assume Asher means RBI+R-HR, in which case Loduca did outproduce Kendall 135 to 134 last season. But Kendall produced 136 to LoDuca’s 109 in 2003, and walloped him in Runs Created 177 to 143 over the past two seasons. Additionally, LoDuca caught 123 and 130 games in the past two years, whereas Kendall has made Carlton Fisk look like a little wussboy by catching 146 each of the past two seasons. Kendall is not only one of the best offensive catchers in the game today, he is easily the toughest… which is super important at a position where your backup may be Keith Osik.

1. "The Great American Ballpark has played like a hitter’s park."

This makes #1 because it is asinine in two regards (biasinine, let’s say). Firstly, a handy chart provided by ESPN.com shows that the GAB not only isn’t a hitters park, but played like the third best pitchers park in all of baseball last year! Not quite sure how Asher could be so far off on this one.

Secondly, the statement, whether true or false, it has no place in the context of whether or not the Reds are overpaying Eric Milton. Milton is not an extreme power or control pitcher, nor is he an extreme flyball or groundball pitcher. If playing in The Great American Ballpark was indeed a detriment, there is no reason to believe that it would be more of a detriment to Milton than any other free agent pitcher.