Thanks to Tangotiger over at Baseball Primer for linking to my last Joe Morgan Chat Day review. I got just under a thousand hits thanks mostly to the link. That's in my top three.

Anyway, Primer has a discussion trail with some interesting comments (and some that make Joe seem erudite):

(#1) - Joe Morgan
I never said that.

[Mike: Good one!]

(#18) - Fuel on the Fire
From the Rant:

"There are some players (Ichiro for one) who make it on reputation."

BS. Ichiro is first in the league in hits, first in the league in batting average, tied for first in SBs, 6th in runs scored, and still pays the field well. Oh, but he is not an OPS all-star, and all the fans only look at OPS before voting.

Oh and could somebody explain this:

However, their pitches per game started have been cut almost in half (196 to 104)

Was that intended to be sarcasm, or have the A's pitchers turned into deadball pitching specialists?

(#24) - Mike

I meant Ichiro was voted to start based on his reputation.

He is having a fine season. However, Ichiro is 59th in the majors in OPS , but then again he is among the top three outfielders in Win Shares, probably due to his defense . So maybe I'm beating a dead horse here.

I would have voted for Byrnes, Anderson, Wells, Bradley, or Mora before him. But then again I voted for Mondale.

(#25) - Mike (e-mail) (homepage)

By the way, the pitches-per-game is an ESPN stat. I believe that it projected the pitches-per-innings-pitched to nine innings. That's why they were so high.

The numbers quoted are their numbers for the first half [of] last year averaged.