2008 Poetic Interlude #5: Driver-in 8

by monkeyball on May 8, 2008 11:50 AM PDT Comment 52 comments

OK, OK, OK.

Emil deserves some recognition.

	G	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	K	SB	CS	AVG	OBP	SLG
2008 - Emil Brown	34	131	21	37	4	1	3	29	5	11	1	0	.282	.309	.397

Aw, hell, he deserves some versification!

Driver-in 8

[Original lyrics (for what they're worth: I disagree with the interpretation of some of Mumbles' words) here.]

The walks are built up
Throw by throw
The bases advanced one by one
And the A's manager says
"Hack, don't take, Driver-in 8
Driver-in 8 hack, don't take
We've been shut out for too long"

[Complete Poetic Interlude after the jump.]

Driver-in 8

The walks are built up
Throw by throw
The bases advanced one by one
And the A's manager says
"Hack, don't take, Driver-in 8
Driver-in 8 hack, don't take
We've been shut out for too long"

And the A's manager says
"Hack, don't take, Driver-in 8
Driver-in 8 hack, don't take
You can reach for bad locations
Better not leave men on base"

I saw a clubhouse with an offense on the fritz
Power numbers lower than J. Kendall's lifetime stats
Runs are scoring in Oakland again
Stats you look up, all you see is sky-high, runs score

And the A's manager says
"Hack, don't take, Driver-in 8
Driver-in 8 hack, don't take
We've been shut out for too long"

Way to beat the hated teams
Way to cue fans' joyous screams
Way to beat the hated teams
Way to give the fans all pennant-chasing dreams

He bounced from team to team, free-swinging journeyman
He is selling faith in the clutch-hit crusade
Uni number 8, left or right field, hear the runs score again
Wielders of stats are stricken dumb

And the A's manager says
"Hack, don't take, Driver-in 8
Driver-in 8 hack, don't take
We've been shut out for too long"
And the A's manager says
"Hack, don't take, Driver-in 8
Driver-in 8 hack, don't take
You can reach for bad locations
Better not leave men on base"

1 recs | Comment 52 comments

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Comments

Tale of the Reconstruction?

"wither fair monkeyball?" ~fsu

by LAXile on May 8, 2008 12:33 PM PDT reply actions 0 recs

Green and gold

We're going to knock balls out of the country's park, for the home team, which is America. @('.')@

by monkeyball on May 8, 2008 1:17 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Talk about monkeyball's passion...

stat-addled alien overlord

by salb918 on May 8, 2008 12:41 PM PDT reply actions 0 recs

Count me in

We're going to knock balls out of the country's park, for the home team, which is America. @('.')@

by monkeyball on May 8, 2008 1:24 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Brilliance!

I needed a team so I wouldn’t turn into one of the eighty million pink hat-wearing Bud Light-drinking mulleted idiots at Fenway.

by Vacafan on May 8, 2008 1:06 PM PDT reply actions 0 recs

Reaction sequence: Admiring nod. Grin. Mildly embarrassing chuckle-snort-hiccup.

(which portions of the linked lyrics do you believe to be inaccurate?)

by 74mk on May 8, 2008 1:18 PM PDT reply actions 0 recs

too many extraneous, unvoiced definite articles

Children look up, all they hear is sky-blue, bells ringing: I never heard the gerund there at the end.

I could never understand half of the bridge, and their interpretation is possible, but clunky (and I always heard the possessive “children’s sleep”).

Field to weed is stricken thin: I always heard “Fields of wheat” (or possibly “weed”; but definitely “of”).

But, it’s Mumbles, so who knows.

You (or anyone else) going to the show at the Greek on the 31st?

We're going to knock balls out of the country's park, for the home team, which is America. @('.')@

by monkeyball on May 8, 2008 1:23 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Alas, I am many hundreds of miles away from Berkeley. Too bad. I’d go just for The National.

by 74mk on May 8, 2008 1:49 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

I feel so old

Not only have I never heard anything by Modest Mouse, I’d never even heard of The National.

We're going to knock balls out of the country's park, for the home team, which is America. @('.')@

by monkeyball on May 8, 2008 2:03 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Modest Mouse is classic rock now,

but only if you’re under 30…

They sound like Neil Young and Crazy Horse meets the Smiths, and in fact, Johnny Marr is Modest Mouse’s rhythm guitar player, but he only joined up after MM got famous.

Unlike most of the crap that comes out these days, MM are eminently listenable and if you have time in your busy life to get into yet another band, MM is very worthy.

As for me, I’m glad The Fall are still around. They started the year I was born, and if M.E. Smith holds up like Keith Richards has held up, they’ll be around after I’m dead!

"You have to have a catcher or you'll have all passed balls."- Casey Stengel

by Gaijin_Suketto on May 8, 2008 3:46 PM PDT up reply actions 1 recs

thanks. Good info

I think I was vaguely aware of the Marr thing.

I never got into the Fall. They will go on my list of necessary catchups.

We're going to knock balls out of the country's park, for the home team, which is America. @('.')@

by monkeyball on May 8, 2008 4:15 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

The National is pretty excellent.

Some tracks worth checking out are “Fake Empire,” “Murder Me Rachael,” “Cold Girl Fever” and “Slipping Husband.” They remind me a bit of Crooked Fingers (featuring Eric Bachmann, formerly of the godlike Archers of Loaf). Another decent band in that vein is Pela.

As for The Fall: Mark E. Smith is a treasure. A belligerent, insane treasure.

by Ray of Lite on May 8, 2008 11:49 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Life's RISP Pageant

There is an A in Whimsy.

by FreeSeatUpgrade on May 8, 2008 2:07 PM PDT reply actions 0 recs

nice

I’m actually about halfway through adapting the entire album.

You do not want to know what I’m doing to “Cuyahoga.”

We're going to knock balls out of the country's park, for the home team, which is America. @('.')@

by monkeyball on May 8, 2008 2:25 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

do you do parodies about things other than baseball?

...no sarcasm, just curiosity…

"You have to have a catcher or you'll have all passed balls."- Casey Stengel

by Gaijin_Suketto on May 8, 2008 3:47 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

I haven't

... yet

We're going to knock balls out of the country's park, for the home team, which is America. @('.')@

by monkeyball on May 9, 2008 8:27 AM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

So, Brown has a .706 OPS

and is a corner outfielder who doesn’t play specacular defense or do anything really special.

Bobby Crosby has a career .700 OPS and is an above average defensive SS, and we are supposed to want him replaced.

This place is so weird sometimes.

by mikev on May 8, 2008 2:19 PM PDT reply actions 0 recs

as I might have said once ...

expresses a set of idiosyncratic opinions and formulates a set of arguments (the opinions and arguments often self-contradictory, and not always my own)

We're going to knock balls out of the country's park, for the home team, which is America. @('.')@

by monkeyball on May 8, 2008 2:40 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

I wasn't singling you out specifically.

Just pointing it out

by mikev on May 8, 2008 2:50 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Remember how the whole Emil Brown "conversation"

got started though, mikev. Nobody was claiming Brown was going to be an All-Star, or the player that leads us to the promised land. However, the huge amount of criticism the guy took before he even put on an A’s uniform was mind boggling.
So I think it would be insincere to put a spin on it like everyone is making Emil Brown into this larger than life hero when he really isn’t that good …. the fact is, people are defending him now after a large number on this site bashed him mercilessly before he even played a game.
It kind of bugs me now, after Brown has come through time and time again, that those who repeatedly claimed how bad a player he was, can’t even admit the guy has played well. It’s gone from “He’s horrible … he sucks … he shouldn’t be on the team” to “It can’t last … it won’t last … he’s still not very good.”
I could care less about Emil Brown really, it’s just that I’ve never seen an A’s player so thoroughly bashed before he played a game, and still ridiculed in spite on a great April.

I needed a team so I wouldn’t turn into one of the eighty million pink hat-wearing Bud Light-drinking mulleted idiots at Fenway.

by Vacafan on May 8, 2008 3:30 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

I don't care if Brown's good,

as long as he’s lucky.

The world doesn’t care about the labor pains; it wants to see the baby!

"You have to have a catcher or you'll have all passed balls."- Casey Stengel

by Gaijin_Suketto on May 8, 2008 3:51 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

We really ragged on him after the first game

In particular one base running error that may well have cost the game.

By not K’ing like Crosby seems to do in RISP conditions, he has won many over to his side.

Small sample size / dumb luck? Who knows.

by MobiusKlein on May 8, 2008 4:09 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Crosby only K'd 6 times in 39 AB with RISP

with a .857 OPS. He’s doing alright this year.

by asfansince1989 on May 8, 2008 9:57 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

I like him way more than Shannon Stewart

Always have.

The A's colors are green and gold.

by mikeA on May 8, 2008 4:33 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

But you just did it yourself

You said he had a great April.

A .709 OPS is not a great April. I just hope that everybody in baseball keeps thinking that he’s a magical RBI machine so that Beane can flip him for a decent prospect later in the season.

by mikev on May 8, 2008 5:00 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Mike,

you don’t have to sell me on OPS … I think it’s a great stat that reveals much more about a player than the “traditional” stats do … but you can’t completely disregard RBI, either. There is something to be said for knocking runs in. Sorry, you can talk about opportunity, or luck, or whatever else, but RBI’s are important.
Again, go ahead and trumptet OBP and OPS, but at the end of the day, if nobody’s gettin’ all your baserunners in, they don’t mean squat.

I needed a team so I wouldn’t turn into one of the eighty million pink hat-wearing Bud Light-drinking mulleted idiots at Fenway.

by Vacafan on May 8, 2008 7:41 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

I think the issue with RBI is its predictability

RBIs are incredibly important, obviously. But is knocking in runs a skill you can isolate, different from the BA/SLG component of OPS?

That is, if you have one player with an .800 OPS and 30 RBIs, and another with an .870 OPS and 17 RBIs in the same number of ABs, who’s more likely to succeed more (maybe even to drive in more runs) over the rest of the season?

"And Julio Franco is batting right-handed!" -- Wayne Hagin, A's radio play-by-play, mid-80s

by Nick on May 8, 2008 7:51 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

You're absolutely right Nick

I understand all the arguments for OPS, and I understand that Brown’s high RBI total doesn’t mean he’s the second coming of Babe Ruth. I don’t think Emil Brown is going to the Hall of Fame, by any means.
Again, my point is this … you don’t bash the guy above with the .800 OPS and 30 RBI!! No, he’s not as good as the guy with only 17 RBI, but “he ain’t bad,” either, you know what I’m sayin??
That’s the only thing that’s really bugged me …. the fact that Emil Brown leads this team in RBI - not a great thing, but certainly not a “bad” thing - and he still gets criticized for it.
Your points about the “rest of the season”? Again, you’re absolutely right … but why do we keep talking about projections?? We have no idea what’s going to happen the rest of the season … but why is that part of the Brown conversation? We should just compliment him for doing his job and leave it at that.

I needed a team so I wouldn’t turn into one of the eighty million pink hat-wearing Bud Light-drinking mulleted idiots at Fenway.

by Vacafan on May 9, 2008 8:13 AM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

I've been stricken dumb

The A's colors are green and gold.

by mikeA on May 8, 2008 2:50 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

As a comparison: Brown .706 OPS, Hannahan .754 OPS

But that’s total.

With RISP:

Brown 1.20 OPS, Hannahan .679 OPS.

Brown basically embodies the A’s offense so far, looks pretty weak overall, but clutch with RISP. I’d like to believe the A’s are for real, so I’ll keep believing in Brown as well, only one stats means anything at the end of the season, how many wins we have.

What can Brown do for you?

by asfansince1989 on May 8, 2008 9:53 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

If you make noise, he will come...

CLUTCHY McCLUTCH

Enjoy the game

by DCinWC on May 8, 2008 2:42 PM PDT reply actions 0 recs

I wonder what the record is for most RBI's in a season with a sub 700 OPS.

Rubin Sierra somehow extracted 101 RBI’s from a 678 OPS in 1993. No other candidates come to mind, though.

by 74mk on May 8, 2008 3:57 PM PDT reply actions 0 recs

So

Emil Brown is having a Rubenesque season?

"Tomorrow it may rain." - Leo Durocher

by andeux on May 8, 2008 4:12 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Paul Byrd apparently has had Reubensesque seasons

We're going to knock balls out of the country's park, for the home team, which is America. @('.')@

by monkeyball on May 8, 2008 4:17 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

1. I blame my misspelling of “Ruben” on a certain Ratto-defending, monkeyball-antagonizing ANer.

2. If I had any skills whatsoever, I’d have put Emil’s head on Bacchus’s shoulders:

by 74mk on May 8, 2008 6:20 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

no, no, no

This is AN—you want to put Emil’s head on Salome’s salver.

We're going to knock balls out of the country's park, for the home team, which is America. @('.')@

by monkeyball on May 8, 2008 6:24 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Combine AN memes: "Gardening in Right"

stat-addled alien overlord

by salb918 on May 8, 2008 5:49 PM PDT reply actions 0 recs

there must be time for better things

We're going to knock balls out of the country's park, for the home team, which is America. @('.')@

by monkeyball on May 8, 2008 6:14 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

OK, before sal says it ...

“Everybody Hurts”

We're going to knock balls out of the country's park, for the home team, which is America. @('.')@

by monkeyball on May 8, 2008 6:15 PM PDT reply actions 0 recs

BOOOOO!!!

stat-addled alien overlord

by salb918 on May 8, 2008 6:38 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Donna Reed is not my mom!

One of my favorite REM lyrical suppositions.

Well done, o monkey!

"And Julio Franco is batting right-handed!" -- Wayne Hagin, A's radio play-by-play, mid-80s

by Nick on May 8, 2008 7:25 PM PDT reply actions 0 recs

Ill be at all the games starting friday

by buckfan6 on May 8, 2008 8:21 PM PDT reply actions 0 recs

I presume your moniker refers to Peter, not Travis

We're going to knock balls out of the country's park, for the home team, which is America. @('.')@

by monkeyball on May 8, 2008 11:01 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

other possibilities

Sidarmer sleeps tonight (about Eck)
Jocketty got a raw deal
Range currencies (about Ellis being underrated)
Don’t go back to midland

stat-addled alien overlord

by salb918 on May 8, 2008 8:45 PM PDT reply actions 0 recs

when mikeA buys a Fremont ballpark village condo ...

Don’t Go Back to Rockridge

We're going to knock balls out of the country's park, for the home team, which is America. @('.')@

by monkeyball on May 8, 2008 11:00 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

What I've noticed about Emil Brown

No runners on base: Brown is basically useless. I’m sure the stat people know the numbers, but he never seems to get on base.

Runners in scoring position: As documented, Brown has been remarkably successful.

One reason for this is that Brown, when facing a pitcher in trouble, seems to realize that the pitcher is going to want to get ahead in the count and throw a strike. Brown’s game-winning hit the other night came on just such a pitch, a fastball down the middle, thrown by a pitcher who didn’t want to fall behind in the count.

It wasn’t a difficult pitch to hit. But the A’s have been taught so well to take pitches, to work the count, that sometimes they forget the situation. A walk wouldn’t have helped all that much. It would have loaded the bases, and then someone else would need to get a hit.

Brown was trying to get a hit, and jumped on the first pitch he saw.

I know, I know. It won’t last. It’s just a streak, a statistical fluke. Whatever. He’s driving in runs and helping my team win, so I like him. Perhaps he has a career year. I’m not going to bet on that, but it’s been known to happen.

by bear88 on May 8, 2008 11:23 PM PDT reply actions 0 recs

I didn't understand the acquisition....

I bashed (mildly) before he even took an AB, but, like you, I’m on board now. He’s driving in runs… consistently. Do I think it’s a fluke? No, I think he’s actually better on a better team, that puts potential on base in front of him more than the Royals ever did.

Career year? This is Emil’s!

Foolsh, the most insane regular poster on AN since oaktoon left - salb

by FoolshGame22 on May 9, 2008 1:06 AM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

puts potential "runs" on base...

in front of him, that is.

Foolsh, the most insane regular poster on AN since oaktoon left - salb

by FoolshGame22 on May 9, 2008 1:07 AM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Last year

everytime we had runners in scoring position we had hitters come to the plate and look to take walks.

Strike one right down the middle

Basically Emil Brown uses his aggressive approach and if it’s anywhere near the plate then swing.

Pretty simple

Yeah, he’s going to fail and no one expects him to keep it up but it is obvious that you get a pitch to hit, you do so and not look at it go past especially if it’s a meatball

by Trainman on May 9, 2008 10:35 AM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

What's the frequency, Kenneth (Macha)

stat-addled alien overlord

by salb918 on May 9, 2008 9:26 AM PDT reply actions 0 recs

... of your bullpen use, uh-huh

We're going to knock balls out of the country's park, for the home team, which is America. @('.')@

by monkeyball on May 9, 2008 9:31 AM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

all of Monster

What’s the Frequency, Kenneth (Macha)
Cust With Eyeliner
King of Injury
I Don’t Sign, I Trade
Tall 59
Stat Tendencies
Tongue
Bang and Blame
I Blew Your Game
Drive Me In
Ballpark Envy
Lew