September 13, 2012

Predicting the Most Pathetic MLB Milestone: 500,000th All Time Error!

Have you seen the home page of Baseball Reference lately? Here, check it out.

Notice the top-middle ticker, counting down the all-time MLB errors? The 500,000th error EVER is expected in four days. By their estimate, that puts the “milestone” blunder in line to happen this Sunday, September 16th.

With the hapless Cardinals and Dodgers trying to stay afloat for the second Wild Card in a four-game series this upcoming weekend, the remaining 61 errors could be made by Friday just between the two.

All jokes aside, I’ve discovered a foolproof way to accurately predict which player on which team will make the 500,000th error in Major League history. Stay with me here:

I have faith that the monumental error will actually occur on Monday, September 17th. Why? Because fewer teams play that day, so it was easier to devise my system. Oh just you wait. It gets kookier…

…out of the teams that do play on Monday, the four with the worst team fielding percentages were put into a gauntlet that has never, ever failed before. It has stood the test of time; architectural genius at its finest. And the solution to predicting the baseball gods’ wrath was so simple:

Boom. Yep. Cootie Catcher.

I asked an arbitrary, unbiased baseball fan who has no feeling for or against any of my four teams (the Baltimore Orioles, Tampa Bay Rays, Colorado Rockies and San Francisco Giants) to pick “North,” “East,” “South,” or “West.”

She picked “East,” meaning I did the dirty – S-A-N-F-R-A-N-C-I-S-C-O-G-I-A-N-T-S. This is what we ended up with:

Keep in mind, she can’t see what I’m holding until after she has picked a direction. Next, she chose “South,” meaning I worked those hands again – R-O-C-K-I-E-S:

And finally, the moment we’ve all been waiting for…the direction that will determine the ultimate goat in baseball history. With a deep breath, air laden with tension, the direction “West” was chosen. After lifting the flap, we finally have our ultimate answer:

Ah, how fitting. A good, young hitter who can’t play a lick of defense is going to drop a routine pop-up. I’m sorry, Colorado Rockies’ first/third baseman Jordan Pacheco. You are the weakest link. And you are, without shadow of a doubt, going to make the 500,000th all time error in Major League Baseball history. That’s 20,000 more errors than dollars in your $480,000 rookie salary. Good on ya!

Okay, so it’s a stupid way to go about things. But so is trying to predict who makes the error in the first place! For all I know it could be a multiple Gold Glove winner like Yadier Molina who turns the ticker. Comment below and let us know what you think – who will make that 500,000th error? Vote!

And for good measure, here is what the whole shebang looked like unfolded. A true beauty, I must say: