MLB All-Star Snubs

Now that we (I include you, the reader in this, because I'm nice like that) have looked at the fan vote in both the American League and the National League, it's time to look at the snubs. Because it wouldn't really be an All-Star game if we didn't do that.

American League
Kevin Youkilis - As a Twins fan, I hate to say it but I think Youkilis has been the best first baseman in the AL, probably even more deserving than Morneau. Carlos Pena would actually be another really strong possibility, but he doesn't have quite the ABs that the top guys have.

Orlando Cabrera - Looking at the numbers, he's been a lot better than Mike Young has been this year. Young is only on because they needed a Texas Ranger (and no, Sammy Sosa is nowhere near deserving), but that doesn't make Cabrera any less deserving.

Curtis Granderson - 23 doubles, 15 triples, 11 HR. I'm not sure people know just how good Granderson has been so far this year.

Gary Sheffield - He had a really slow start and he might be penalized a bit because he is a DH now, but he definitely deserves a spot. He should be on the team over a guy like Manny Ramirez, who is having a down year.

Jeremy Guthrie - This is a bit borderline... he's been good, but I'm not sure he's definitely better than any pitcher that made the team. So he gets the weak vote here.


National League

Chipper Jones - He is hurt a lot by the fact that he has had some injury problems and has missed some time this year, but he's deserving, I think. He's got an OBP over .400 and is hitting for a good amount of power. When healthy, he's been the best 3B in the NL this year.

Hanley Ramirez - He's been the best SS in the NL this year... so he should be on the team over Hardy (who made it as a reserve) or Freddy Sanchez, who wins the vote as the worst All-Star this year. For crying out loud, Ian Snell should have been the Pirate choice... Sanchez' only way of being at this All-Star game should have been for him to buy a ticket.

Edgar Renteria - See Ramirez, Hanley. Except replace best SS in the NL this year with 2nd best SS in the NL this year.

Adam Dunn - I was tempted to put Hunter Pence here, but I'll give the nod to Dunn because he has a lot more PAs. Either way, both guys should be in above Carlos Lee. Lee is hitting well, but Dunn is hitting for more power.

Ian Snell - As mentioned, he should be representing the Pirates here, not Freddy Sanchez. He's been very good this year and his peripherals suggest he should be able to keep it up.

Derek Lowe - With all due respect to Ben Sheets (who is having a nice year), how does Sheets get in over Lowe? They strike out a comparable amount of guys, Sheets has a little better control, but Lowe has allowed half the HR that Sheets has.

Who are your choices?

Happy 4th of July!

Hope you have a safe and joyous holiday!

Grading the Fan Vote - National League

Yesterday we looked at the American League All-Star starters, so naturally, it's now time to look at the National League.

Catcher: Russell Martin
Grade: A
Explanation: Martin has easily been the best of the NL catchers this year, so it's good to see him get the start that he deserves. He's very good offensively, solid defensively, and even has 16 SB.

First Base: Prince Fielder
Grade: A
Explanation: I think Albert Pujols would be a pretty solid choice here as well, but so far Prince has been the best. The power is obvious (27 HR, over .600 SLG), but he is also getting on base at a decent clip. Once again, the voters make the right choice here.

Second Base: Chase Utley
Grade: A
Explanation: Like A-Rod in the AL, Utley is so far ahead of the competition here that I don't even need to explain.

Third Base: David Wright
Grade: C
Explanation: Wright is an OK choice because he does play very solid defense and swipes a decent number of bases, but there were better choices. Chipper Jones has been the best hitting 2B, but he has been plagued by injury troubles. Beyond him, Miguel Cabrera may be getting bigger at an alarming rate, but he can still rake. I'd probably give him the nod here.

Shortstop: Jose Reyes
Grade: B
Explanation: I think I have talked about this before, but I don't think Reyes is a bad choice, I just think Edgar Renteria and Hanley Ramirez might be a little better choices. But I really can't argue too much about Reyes, who is superb.

Outfield: Barry Bonds
Grade: A
Explanation: ESPN may calls Bonds' season lackluster, but he's been the best hitter in the National League and is an easy choice. He's older, he's bad at defense, but he has been great at the dish.

Outfield: Carlos Beltran
Grade: C-
Explanation: Beltran is still a really good player, but I don't think he deserves the nod here. I would take guys like Matt Holliday, Adam Dunn, or even Alfonso Soriano over him. Beltran still plays great defense, but he doesn't steal as many bases anymore and he's not hitting as well as he did last year.

Outfield: Ken Griffey Jr.
Grade: A
Explanation: Griffey continues to hit very well, and I do think he deserves this starting spot. He's 3rd in the NL in HR and 6th in SLG, and combine that with an OBP near .400 and solid defense, he is very deserving of his spot.

Overall, I'm impressed. I thought it was a little better than the American League voting, and pretty good overall. Only 2 starters that I would really have a problem with, and one more that is questionable.

What are your thoughts?

Grading the Fan Vote - American League

Now that that rosters are [mostly] picked, it's time to evaluate how the fans did in voting for the starters. I'll use the A-F grading scale, using my very subjective analysis.

Catcher: Ivan Rodriguez
Grade: F
Explanation: These days, Pudge isn't even one of the 5 best catchers in the AL. His AVG is still a respectable .280, but his OBP is less than .300 (thanks to a pathetic 4 BB on the year), and he's not hitting for that much power either. Jorge Posada, Victor Martinez, Joe Mauer, Kenji Johjima, and Jason Varitek all would have been better choices.

First Base: David Ortiz
Grade: A
Explanation: He's not really a first basemen, but he qualifies there on the ballot and he is deserving of this spot. You could certainly make a case for his teammate Kevin Youkilis (maybe the biggest snub), Casey Kotchman, Justin Morneau, or maybe even Mark Teixeira (though he has missed time), but Ortiz has been very good at the plate, as usual. I have no problems with this choice.

Second Base: Placido Polanco
Grade: C
Explanation: I don't think Polanco was the right choice, but it's not as bad as the choice of Pudge. Polanco has at least been above average. BJ Upton and Dustin Pedroia have both been better than Polanco, but they have considerably less ABs than him. The best choice, I think, would have been Brian Roberts, who is getting on base at a better than .400 clip and hitting for more power than Polanco.

Third Base: Alex Rodriguez
Grade: A
Explanation: It's simply not even close.

Shortstop: Derek Jeter
Grade: B
Explanation: I think Carlos Guillen has clearly been the best SS in the AL so far this year, but Jeter has probably been 2nd best, so he's not a terrible choice. You could probably make a case that Jeter has been more valuable overall, as he is getting on base more and has nearly 60 more ABs. So I'd take Guillen definitely, but Jeter is at least a rational choice.

Outfield: Magglio Ordonez
Grade: A
Explanation: He's been one of the top 2 hitters in the AL all season long (along with A-Rod), so he is the obvious and right choice here. He's getting on base at a great rate and has a ton of doubles. He's one of the top candidates for MVP of the first half of the year.

Outfield: Vladimir Guerrero
Grade: A
Explanation: Among AL outfielders in terms of hitting, there is Magglio and Vlad, and then there is everyone else. Vlad has shown surprisingly good patience, giving him a .423 OBP at this point, and continues to hit for solid power.

Outfield: Ichiro Suzuki
Grade: A-
Explanation: There are a couple other possibilities here, such as Torii Hunter or Curtis Granderson (another large snub), but Ichiro is a pretty good choice. He's getting on base a ton and playing very good defense in CF. It's be nice if he would hit for more power, but he has been very valuable so far.

So overall, pretty nice picks. I would say 2 picks were blatantly wrong, and maybe 2-3 more were questionable. All in all, that's pretty good.

What are your thoughts on the picks?

What Killed the Run and Shoot?

Q: What killed the Run and Shoot? Why don't you see "the shoot" anymore in the NFL or major college football?

A: First, you have to distinguish between the "Run and Shoot" as a specific, delineated system, and the individual Run and Shoot "concepts" or routes. And I'm not just referring to spreading with four wide receivers. I'm referring to the specific "Choice," "Go," "Switch," and the broader design of the system.

The first answer is that even if the "the Shoot" is dead, the Concepts live. This is so whether any of their current benefactors would admit it (or, in some instances, whether they even realize they are using run and shoot concepts). Indeed, the concepts are here to stay. Mike Martz with the Rams and now the Lions consistently use forms of Choice and Switch. Petrino at Louisville (we shall see in Atlanta) has used a couple R&S concepts. Even Charlie Weis at Notre Dame uses a play very similar to the Georgia concept. Moreover, the famous four verticals so common today where the slot receiver reads the coverage to attack the seam or the deep middle was largely developed and expanded upon by the R&S. Everyone who seriously considers passing offense should study the Run and Shoot.

The Shoot as a specific, delineated system with the four wide receivers (or two split ends and two slots), a single back, half-rollouts, certain run plays, the protections, the screen, and the like was countered. Offenses responded and have disguised their run and shoot philosophies by calling them different things and showing different looks. There is nothing magical (or surreptitious) about that; it is the West Coast philosophy and it is a good one. The reason people question this is because, for a time, the Run and Shoot had nearly unparralleled success.

As the typical story goes, the zone blitz killed the R&S. The preface to this story is that for twenty years, the Run and Shoot did not get blitzed. Well, it did, but Run and Shoot teams (like the U of Houston) would score 60 or 70 on those teams, and the NFL teams that tried it would give up after a quarter or half touchdowns raining from the sky.

How do you employ a four-wide pass-happy attack that was blitz proof for twenty years? And then why did it suddenly get blitzed out of existence?

The history of the Shoot is a lesson to all offensive coaches, and this same principle can be applied by all manenr of offensive coaches, and is often applied by coaches like Joe Gibbs and teams like the Indy Colts in the use of Tight ends and H-Backs.

The R&S used the RB in the protection. The quarterback would do a half-roll to one side, the line would do a kind of sprint-out/turnback protection, and the runningback would often block the defensive end or end man on the line of scrimmage to the half-roll side. About 8-10 times a game, however, the running back would block the DE for a 1001 count, and then slide off and release for a screen pass as his linemen got downfield to block for him. Against an all-out blitzing team, no one covered him because he had already engaged a defender, so everyone assumed he was in the protection, they would rush upfield, and the runningback would release out into the open field.

It becomes a study in game theory and reading and reacting. So defenses responded to this tactic. They had to keep at least one safety or another defender back to spy the RB. Why does this mean no blitzing? If the RB is able to block the end man on the line of scrimmage while another player must sit back and not blitz, simply to see whether or not the RB releases on a screen. The net result was that R&S teams rarely, if ever, saw Cover 0 blitzing man defenses. They could always release four receivers, block with six (assuming their six could block the other teams' six) and not face any overload blitzes.

Enter the zone blitz. Back in his days with Texas A&M, Bob Davie was an innovator. Against run and shoot teams like the University of Houston, he would run his 3-4 defense, blitz his outside LBs (thus forcing the RB to stay in and block), and drop off defensive linemen and interior linebackers so he could still play zone with six to eight defenders. As a result the R&S's protection and formation scheme broke down. They blocked with six, had the running back on a bad matchup with a good OLB, faced an unblocked rusher, but the defense still had 6-8 guys in coverage, so the R&S's "hot reads" and breakoffs did not work either. The run and shoot finally had to adapt. Sure they could do things like certain quick breakoffs and other gadgets, but free rushers and seven guys in coverage was a losing battle for the QB.

So it was not merely "disguising coverages," (as Run and Shoot QBs and receivers were well coached and could still find the voids or the single man), or the blitzing (as shown above, Run and Shoot teams could defeat the blitz), it was the defensive combination of always being able to always get an unblocked rusher, eat the RB, and run a disguised zone that eventually rattled and slowed down the "pure" Run and Shoot.

So did the R&S die? In a sense. Even those who still swear by it, like Hawaii's June Jones, both do not run the same "Shoot" in exact form, have changed their protections, and remain bitterly secretive regarding the system, fearing another breakdown.

But in another, perhaps larger sense, the Shoot is stronger than ever. More teams and more teams use its concepts. And, for a "dead offense," it still stirs up quite a bit of discussion, no?

Passing Concepts

I've had a few questions recently regarding passing concepts. For a primer, here are a few previous posts on the subject:

Organizing Pass Plays as Concepts
Further Note on Concepts
Packaging Concepts

Q: I have some questions concerning different passing concepts. Unsurprisingly, I've found many different opinions concerning number of concepts and names for them. I've heard some coaches say that every passing play falls into one of four different concepts, including: vertical stretch, horizontal stretch (outside in, inside out), flood concept, or a single receiver concept. However, I did read the Norm Chow article on your website and saw how there are coaches who believe there are many more than that. This seems confusing. For example, some coaches have a "Quick Game" concept. How can that be a single concept when most of the plays in the quick game use a different concept? In our quick game we have a four verts play that is a vertical stretch concept. [Ed Note: Is it really a vertical stretch? Or a "deep horizontal stetch" on the F/S?] I am aware that a single play can have more than on concept in it and I understand that different coaches have different names for the same plays/routes/concepts etc. I am just looking for some more clarification on ways to tell which category a certain passing play fits.

A: Passing concepts are intended as a tool and a framework to attack defenses. I put up multiple approaches to show that there isn't one hard and fast way to go about it, and to demonstrate that it's just a way of thinking about passes that can improve your approach. I think you can keep the number of concepts fairly small.

I will note that I think there is something to Norm Chow's "oblique" or "triangle" concepts, (which really is just the combination of a hi/low and a horizontal stretch). So my advice is to just tinker with it and come up with a framework that works for you. On one level, I'm convinced that there are really only three "concepts" - vertical stretches (hi/lo), horizontal stretches (in/out or out/in), and man concepts (rubs, option routes, or just plain old routes good against man). Then from there you break them down further (two level or three level vertical stretches; 1-2 in/out reads or 1-2-3; triangles which are both 1-2 hi/lo and 1-2 in/out reads).

In the end, it's about finding a way to structure your offense so that it (a) makes sense, (b) is tight and efficient with a core set of plays, with the best way of achieving this being to eliminate duplicative concepts, and (c) gives you a quick framework to draw upon when attacking defenses.

ESPN is Stupid Sometimes

OK, a lot of the time. But anyway, look at this screencap off the front page of ESPN, which was on as of Sunday night when I wrote this.


WHAT? "Despite a lackluster season?" Bonds is having a lackluster season? That's news to me.

OK, maybe Bonds' power numbers aren't quite what they were from 2000-2004, but he's bee extremely effective at the plate so far this year. Consider:

- He leads the MLB in OPS.
- He leads the MLB in OBP, which is currently at a ridiculous rate above .500.
- He is slugging over .600, which is 4th in the MLB.
- Oh yeah, HE LEADS THE MLB IN OPS.

Sure, he's not good defensively anymore. And his baserunning skills are not what they once were. But if that is lackluster, I'm not sure what's good. When he's playing, he's been easily the best hitter in the National League so far.

Also, I just love one of the other options there:

"Vote: Who deserves to be there?"

Um, ESPN, the fans just voted who they think deserves the be there. What are you trying to prove? Isn't that a bit redundant?