George was The Boss, make no mistake. He built the Yankees into champions and that’s something nobody can ever deny. He was a very generous, caring, passionate man. George and I had our differences, but who didn’t? We became great friends over the last decade and I will miss him very much.

The problem is listening to John Sterling’s play-by-play. Sterling may be the worst radio announcer of all time (we’re only talking 100 years). I hope he’s the worst. I hate to think there’s someone else out there that combines a more limited repertoire with the same excess of ego.

Admittedly I’m biased by experience. I grew up in the deciduous swamp of upstate New York listening to Yankee broadcasts by Frank Messer, Bill White, and Phil Rizzuto. From left to right that trio produced a blend of great playcalling and great storytelling. Later at night, through the crackle and hum of the analog band, I could pick up Radio Hall of Fame announcer Ernie Harwell on WJR calling Tigers games.

Now I mostly listen to Red Sox games, broadcast by the solid duo of Joe Castiglione and Dave O’Brien. Castiglione has the traditional baseball delivery, gravelly and conversational, while O’Brien is a true professional — accurate, descriptive, and unobtrusive. It’s not surprising that O’Brien also calls games for ESPN.

Sterling does not match up well. It is not his insipid trademark calls, nor his proudly banal understanding of the game that make him awful. It is his lack of cadence and flow.

Thuhhhh pitch.

Sterling must say that 100 times a game. It’s like listening to a man clear his throat for three hours.

I have never noticed Castiglione and O’Brien coughing up a verbal tic like that, so I paid attention the last few games to their technique. What they do is simple. Instead of fixating on “the pitch,” they describe the context of the pitch. They might mention the count, the pitcher’s delivery, the actions of baserunners. Sometimes they don’t describe “the pitch” until after the pitch. Here’s a mix of their calls, the first five from O’Brien, the second five from Castiglione:

Jacoby edging off first base and Garza delivers…
The 2-1 to Ortiz…
The 2-2 on the way to Ortiz…
Bailey takes a strike on the inside corner…
The righty sidearms one for ball one…

The 2-1 pitch…
Count full, runner goes, the pitch is taken low…
Masterson is ready, slings it in there…
The tall right hander is ready, here it is…
At the belt, here it comes, high ball three…

Yes, there’s repetition. But it’s the kind of reptition within variation that makes for good music. Cadence and flow.

That title is straight from Joe Castiglione’s radio call.

But Dustin Pedroia strikes out. Inning over.

Oddly, Joe Girardi brought Mariano Rivera in after Jonathan Albaladejo got one strike on Ellsbury.

Actually, Teixeira is a great fielder. Teixeira has won two gold gloves and could be in line for another, if Albert Pujols doesn’t beat him out. And while Kotchman looks just good this year, in 2007, he had the best zone rating in the major leagues.

This is one reason Teixeira was never a good fit for the Red Sox. The Red Sox already have a good fielder at first. Plus they have a full time DH.

Kevin Youkilis could probably play shortstop better than Derek Jeter, but we’ll never know.

Update: I significantly rewrote the second paragraph when I looked at the 2008 numbers instead of the 2007.

1. Johnny Damon has the highest batting average in the majors since May 20th (not May 19th?)
2. Dustin Pedroia is the hottest player in baseball (not Johnny Damon?).

They are both true. Pay no attention.

He has no power, diminishing range and he made several painful mental mistakes in last night’s game. Fortunately only the lack of power impacts my fantasy team. But who do the Yankees have in the pipeline for next season?

The thing about Derek Jeter is that he has been aging for a while. What masked his decline was an outlier year in 2006. Here’s Jeter’s OPS, and steals from 1999 – 2007, not including 2006:

1999: .990 OPS, 19 SB
2000: .897 OPS, 22 SB
2001: .857 OPS, 27 SB
2002: .794 OPS, 32 SB
2003: .843 OPS, 11 SB (in 119 games)
2004: .823 OPS, 23 SB
2005: .839 OPS, 14 SB
2007: .840 OPS, 15 SB

Clearly this is a player who stepped down a notch about 6 years ago. The 2006 year, however, messes up the picture:

1999: .990 OPS, 19 SB
2000: .897 OPS, 22 SB
2001: .857 OPS, 27 SB
2002: .794 OPS, 32 SB
2003: .843 OPS, 11 SB
2004: .823 OPS, 23 SB
2005: .839 OPS, 14 SB
2006: .900 OPS, 34 SB
2007: .840 OPS, 15 SB

With an OPS of .732 to date in 2008, Jeter may just be having a poor start, or he may have stepped down another notch. After 2001, excepting 2006, Jeter’s OPS slipped below .850 for good. Perhaps 2008 is the year that his OPS slips below .800 for good.

That said, Jeter has two secondary qualities that always add to his value. First, the Yankees always score lots of runs. Second, other than in 2003, he never gets injured. Until this year.

Here’s a typical question and answer in which James innocuously subverts the thesis of Moneyball:

Q: Generally, who should have a larger role in evaluating college and minor league players: scouts or stat guys?

A: Ninety-five percent scouts, five percent stats. The thing is that — with the exception of a very few players like Ryan Braun — college players are so far away from the major leagues that even the best of them will have to improve tremendously in order to survive as major league players — thus, the knowledge of who will improve is vastly more important than the knowledge of who is good. Stats can tell you who is good, but they’re almost 100 percent useless when it comes to who will improve.

In addition to that, college baseball is substantially different from pro baseball, because of the non-wooden bats and because of the scheduling of games. So … you have to pretty much let the scouts do that.

And maybe they could have sat out the playoffs. The importance of Matsuzaka wasn’t just his sterling first half statistics, but the fact that those statistics didn’t accrue to the Yankees. With Matsuzaka, the Yankees easily win five more games. Take a look at their first half and you see multiple losses by guys like Danks and DeSalvo, not to mention Igawa. Different story with Matsuzaka.