Pebble Hunting: The Va... (08/17)
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August 20, 2012 BP UnfilteredFact-Checking the Chris Perez Profanity-Laced TiradeBefore Sunday's game, Cleveland Indians closer Chris Perez took a break from shagging flies, ambled over to the right-field foul line, and cursed out an A's fan. You'd think Perez would've known that players rarely come out ahead in public player-fan confrontations. Then again, this is only his fifth major-league season, so maybe he's still getting the hang of the whole heckling thing. Here at BP, we don't condone cursing at fans, but we do place a lot of importance on evidence-based arguments. That's why we've decided to evaluate Perez's responses based not on whether he was wise to make them, or even on the quality of his cursing, but on whether his spittle-flecked statements were supported by facts. Statement:
Verdict: True! Chris Perez has 32 saves. The Athletics, as a team, have 31 saves. If saves determined the standings, the Indians would be in first place, as opposed to fourth place, where they are at the moment. But that wouldn't matter much to Chris Perez, because: Statement:
Verdict: Quite possibly true! Perez probably cares about winning, at least in the sense that it leads to saves, but he also probably takes some pleasure in the suffering of Indians fans. On the whole, winning is a wash. Statement:
Verdict: True! Chris Perez has four blown saves, and he was an All-Star again this summer. (He was also an All-Star in 2011.) From a PR standpoint, Chris Perez is a team's worst nightmare. From a fact-checker's perspective, though, Perez is pretty much perfect.
Ben Lindbergh is an author of Baseball Prospectus. Follow @benlindbergh
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Resident Fantasy Genius: Six Starters for th...
This was not a good article. This isn't something BP should be covering. BP is better than Deadspin. Yet not in this case.
Oh, I don't know. It's quite possible that it's not a good article, but I'm not sure I agree that there are certain subjects BP can't cover. Then again, I'm the guy who once did a blog post on what players would look like with hams for heads.
And women's wrestling in Yankee Stadium.
Unfiltered posts were designed, in general, to have a broader base of topics.
And yet, I too think this was a bad article. It was missing imbedded video.
I wanted to keep my profanity-laced tirade post classy.