Wire stories like to point out Erstad's .291 career batting average, a respectable number as far as batting averages go. But throw out his big 2000 and that number drops to .277, hardly what you're looking for from an $8M a year player who doesn't walk or hit for power. He isn't all that young any more either, having turned 28 two months ago.

I hate to harp on this story too much, because people like Rob Neyer and Joe Sheehan (Baseball Prospectus) have already had a field day ripping the Angels for what will most likely turn out to be a very poor decision. So in conclusion I'll say two things. First, Erstad probably will hit enough to justify his contract in one of the four years. Second, he now makes more than Jim Edmonds, a (superior) player the Angels traded before the 2000 season rather than give him a contract extension. The mind boggles.

Boggle boggle.

Before you freak out about Prior's pitch count on that particular afternoon, I'd direct you to a piece by Will Carroll (more on him below) over at the Diamond Science website. In it, Carroll argues that while pitchers are inherently likely to be injured -- there's a better than 40% chance a pitcher will spend some part of a given season on the disabled list -- pitch counts alone are not an accurate way to measure or predict injury.

Carroll is not arguing that pitch counts mean nothing, or that young pitchers should be left on the mound until they've thrown 130, 140 or even 150 pitches. Rather, he's simply saying that given the available data, we don't have enough information to assess a pitcher's chances of suffering an arm injury due to workload. While this line of thinking doesn't directly fly in the face of everything the "enlightened" baseball community has to say on the subject these days, it does serve as an interesting viewpoint for the opposition.

With the bases loaded and two out, Ben Davis hit a high popup down the right field line. Pursuing the ball were 2B Ricky Gutierrez, 1B Jim Thome and RF Matt Lawton. Thome, the slowest of the three, slowed down slightly when it was clear the other two had a better shot at making the catch. Lawton, who was coming in on the ball, was the clear choice to make what should be a routine catch in this situation. Instead, Gutierrez didn't yield to Lawton and attempted to make an over-the-shoulder catch.

It would have been a tough play -- tougher than the one Lawton could have made by coming in on the ball -- but one he should have made. As you can probably guess by where this is going, Gutierrez missed the ball completely, which bounced around in the right field corner, and when the dust had settled Davis was standing on third base.

Shortly thereafter, the following was shown on the scoreboard: "Scoring Decision: Triple".

It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that half of the people sitting in my immediate vicinity let out an audible groan. "A triple? On a routine popup? Give me a break!"

It's clear that errors are not being charged to fielders when they should be. To be charged with an error these days a player has to either let a slow roller go through his legs, or... I was going to say "drop a routine popup," but if Sunday is any indication, that doesn't even cut it.

If official scorers are too busy giving gift hits to the home team on what should be routine plays, why should we even bother taking note of fielding percentage or error totals anymore? The statistic has been abused and compromised to the point that it has almost no redeeming value as a means of defensive measurement.

The solution is simple: Impartial, MLB-appointed official scorers who travel with each umpiring crew. Until then, don't waste your time looking at fielding percentage or taking note of errors when scanning the boxscores each day. If you need any extra convincing, just remember the tale of a catcher who hit a popup and wound up with a triple.

about the author

Jason Michael Barker hopes they don't start handing out errors in baseball writing, or he's going to be in big trouble. Go easy on the "EW"s when you write him at jmb@strikethree.com.

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