Is Jason Kendall A Sinner or a Saint

One of the more entertaining moments in sports is a baseball brawl.
Even though they're highly unpredictable and wildly messy, they
usually adhere to the following formula: pitcher throws at batter's
head, batter charges mound, pitcher and batter scuffle, other players
on the field converge, benches and bullpens join in.

Such a donnybrook happened last night in Anaheim between my beloved
Oakland A's and the hometown LA Angels. Apparently, Angels pitcher
John Lackey whistled a pitch past Oakland hitter Jason Kendall and
then barked something at Kendall. Kendall took offense at the words
and charged the mound, and both teams joined in the fun. Lackey and
Kendall were tossed for their role in the fracas.

Now, even as a biased A's fan, I have to admit Kendall's charge was
unnecessary. Lackey had thrown him a pitch that started at him and
the curved back toward the plate. I understand that pitchers have to
establish the inside part of the plate in order to be successful.
Kendall wears a big pad on his outside arm, and many opponents accuse
him of using it to get hit intentionally, thus winning him first base.
A teammate of Kendall even said that when he was not on the A's, he
once threw inside to Kendall and Kendall charged him, too. So perhaps
Kendall is a bit feisty, maybe even a little loony.

But does that make him a sinner or a saint? Not in the moral sense,
of course, but in his contribution to his team. Do we judge Kendall
for losing his cool and getting himself ejected from an important
game? There's another way to look at his actions. As crazy as his
behavior might have seemed, maybe it sends a signal to the Angels, and
to other teams who no doubt saw the highlights on SportsCenter that
night, that if you pitch inside to Kendall, and perhaps to anyone on
the A's, there will be retaliation. Maybe it's not fair, maybe it's
not good sportsmanship, maybe it's absolutely uncalled for and
downright inside. But it'll happen.

Jason Kendall is one of those guys who doesn't put up big individual
numbers but is always lauded for being a good team player. I never
knew what that meant. I thought players that won championships but
didn't have good stats were simply lucky to be on the right team at
the right time.

But I think I understand this notion a little better. Now that sports
is a full-fledged business and free agency means players jump teams
much more than in the past, you are seeing the triumph of teams that
espouse such principals as solid teamwork, veteran leadership, and low
player turnover. In college hoops, so-called "mid-majors" are finding
parity with the larger schools, because while the hot prospects will
never play for a small school, other decent players will, and will
stay for four years and together become a formidable team. Teams like
New England Patriots and the Detroit Pistons have had successful
championship runs in recent years due to a steady nucleus of minor
stars who learn how to trade individual statistics for team success.
Meanwhile, teams like the New York Yankees and the New York Knicks
have struggled with their "rotisserie league" approach to buying and
trading mega-stars.

Free agency is the marketplace introduced to sports. It is efficient
in setting the price for athletic talent. I am a believer in free
markets and in stats. But sometimes there are things that don't show
up in the box score. The Oakland A's have been on the mainstream map
of late because of Michael Lewis' Moneyball, which articulated the
small-market A's approach to beating the richer teams: buying
undervalued stats like on-base percentage (OBP) and selling overvalued
stats like saves.

OBP is a particularly telling stat to track, because it gauges a
batter's patience. Here is a classic example of a stat that doesn't
quite show itself fully in the box scores: for the more pitches a
batter sees, the more tired that pitcher is for the next batter. The
most valuable at-bat in a game might not be the three-run home run
that breaks a game open, but the ten-pitch at-bat by the previous
hitter, even if that at-bat resulted in an out.

Sports is easy to dissect because the stats are all there to crunch
and recrunch. But these principles come into play any time you have a
team. You might have some individual superstars on your squad. But
don't underestimate the importance of longevity, of learning to work
as a team, and of underappreciated individual acts that add value to
your whole team. Even if those underappreciated individual acts look
like charging the mound to tackle the pitcher for no apparent reason.