March 01, 2007
I Wish I Was As Fortunate, As Fortunate As Me
One of the biggest differences between me and the stereotypical baseball fan rears its ugly head around this time every year: I just can't get excited about spring training. Yes, pitchers and catchers reported on Valentine's Day, and full-squad workouts began soon thereafter, but all that means nothing to me. The only day marked I mean, it's not like these guys take this stuff too seriously anyway. And these nationally televised spring training games - who watches this stuff? Is a Chris Narveson start that appealing to the viewing public?
Still, even though I don't really want to watch the Kyle Snyders of the world facing Rick Ankiel all day long, that doesn't mean I'm not thinking about baseball. There's fantasy drafts, roster moves, far-flung rumors, plenty of intrigue. Everyone has an opinion about what their team should or shouldn’t be doing. Even yours truly, anti-spring training extraordinaire, has to get up on a soapbox every once in awhile. And with the Cards, there’s plenty to talk about. So here’s my wish list for the next month and, well, beyond:
1) Trade Juan Freaking Encarnacion. I don’t care if he gets the Tino treatment, where we pay some of his salary in exchange for a bag of baseballs named Evan Rust, but he just needs to go. With Chris Duncan, Preston Wilson, Jim Edmonds, John Rodriguez, So Taguchi, and even Scott Spiezio on the roster (not to mention Rick Ankiel and Skip Schumaker), there’d be someone around capable of taking his at-bats and putting up at least Juan’s .280/.315/.430 line. Above average defense is not worth that big a hole in the lineup. And none of those guys, with the exception of Edmonds, is going to make anywhere close to $11.5 million in 2007-08. This one's really a holdover from last year - I couldn't stand looking at the guy throughout most of 2006, and I just don't want to have to repeat that in '07.
2) Remain flexible with Adam Wainwright. A scenario, if I may: Jason Isringhausen declares his hip pain-free throughout spring training and pitches effectively. Braden Looper turns into Kent Bottenfield circa 1999 and wins the fifth starter’s job. Wainwright continues to pitch effectively – he pitched three scoreless innings in his first outing the other day – and also ends up in the rotation. On a cold night in early April, however, Isringhausen plants and slips, re-aggravating his hip injury and forcing him to the disabled list for two months. What was a decent-looking bullpen could end up in shambles - if La Russa is insistent on keeping guys in the rotation once they’ve earned a slot (at least, I guess, until Mark Mulder comes back), who would become the closer in that situation? Josh Kinney? Brad Thompson? Ryan Franklin (cringe)? I implore you, Tony: at least remain open to the idea of Wainwright returning to the ‘pen in the event of another Isringhausen injury.
3) Don’t rush Mark Mulder back. As bad as Ryan Franklin, Kip Wells, Brad Thompson, Braden Looper, etc., may be, they still may be better than a Mulder that is less than 100%. The recent news regarding Mulder’s mechanics problems has not been encouraging; in addition, there is not a lot of precedent (based on lboros’ fabulous research over at VEB) for pitchers to have immediate success coming off similar shoulder surgeries. So unless the Cards are really desperate (i.e., Looper/Franklin/Thompson is struggling mightily) when Mulder is ready to return in June or July, they would be much better off to let him work out any problems with his mechanics with at least three starts down in Memphis.
4) Everybody just relax. We just won the freaking World Series, people. The last two defending champs disintegrated into giant balls of angst within both the clubhouse, press and the fan base. Let’s not put ourselves through that. Why sweat the small stuff? Like, for example, whether Aaron Miles is getting 150 plate appearances as opposed to 100, who the fifth starter is going to be, or bugging me about the fact that I totally contradicted my first three wishes with this one. Or getting on Tony. I'd say he's earned a season without Cardinal Nation second-guessing him at the very least. Let’s just sit back and enjoy the play of Mr. Pujols and the boys - win or loss - and coast our way through the first season as defending champs in 24 years. We deserve it.
April 11, 2006
Home Opener Pics & Stadium Notes
If I took a boatload at the exhibition game, then my Home Opener haul was about 2 boatloads. My Flickr account is near it's monthly upload limit already, so I created a photobucket account and put my favorites up there. Some are illustrative of the points I make in the extended entry.
http://s68.photobucket.com/albums/i4/jvonbokel/Cards%20Home%20Opener/
My notes on the stadium are after the jump.
1 - Bringing back the Clydesdales again was a nice touch. I wonder if that's the rebirth of the tradition, or just a one-time thing for the christening of the ballpark.
2 - Overall the sabermetrician in me is really happy with the new stats boards and whatnot. The current-batter-stats show OBP and SLG, but leave out the big 3: AVG, HR, RBI. Surely that's an oversight. I love the in-game updated ERA, and the B/S/Total Pitches board (although I couldn't see it from my seat yesterday). That was the big thing I've been looking forward to ever since seeing it on June 12th, 2003 (Oh, what a game! Well worth the trip).
3 - The sound system was not as bad as I expected. It was really loud early on in the exhibition game, but it appears they adjusted that to a reasonable level. I didn't like the borrowed-from-Houston "Day-Oh!", or whatever cheesy song with the word "Walk" in the title whenever a BB was issued to a Cards player, but I suppose that's inevitable.
4 - The High-Def video board is awesome.
5 - US Cellular's text board is kind of a cool idea. I could see myself texting stuff there on special occasions. I hope this doesn't mean the free birthday recognition on the main board is gone though.
6 - Sometimes the "Vision Challenge" is more like the "Vision Joke".
7 - I'm a bit torn on the "Welcome to Baseball Heaven" thing. It's nice, but it's also very pompous. Hopefully that'll only be there for the inaugural season at most.
8 - I know I need new contacts, but the red text on the Loge deck video board was really tough to read.
9 - Can't stop after 8 ("Play a Hard Nine", get it?), so I'll include a 9th item even though it actually has nothing to do with my own experience of the game or the stadium. I recently decided that John Kruk is my favorite BBTN guy, because all the former player commentators are basically idiots, but he's the only one who acknowledges it. And in last night's show, he certainly cemented that position by going on and on about how classy the Cardinals organization is, and how Busch II was always his favorite place to play because of the fans.
June 08, 2005
Your 1991 Cardinals Part 3
More on the 1991 Cardinals. See also Parts 1 and 2.
There's not a lot you have to say about Ozzie Smith. In 1991 Ozzie was a titan of Cardinals baseball who had been an all star and gold glove winner every year for the last decade. He was 36 years old and had one of the best years of his career at the plate(.285/.380/.367/.747). Using win shares he was the best player the Cardinals had (tied for win shares with Felix Jose but played a much more valuable defensive position).
Ozzie is such a transcendant figure in Cardinal history that I really don't have to say much about him, everybody who was even dimly aware of the Cardinals at this time knew who Ozzie was and has their own memories of him. At this point his hall of fame induction was pretty much sewn up and he was literally a living legend.
Looking back at that time know it's incredible to think that Ozzie's memory has been tarnished so much. Everybody knows the gist of the story: La Russa replaced Ozzie with Royce Clayton and the two fueded bitterly. Smith has been distant from the Cardinals organization ever since. At the time it seemed clear that La Russa was the interloper pushing a Cardinal great aside. I fully expected Tony to get the boot in a few years and find Ozzie ascendent again.
Instead Tony is in his 10th year as Cardinal Manager, he's taken the team to the World Series and to the playoffs 5 chances out of 9. He was instrumental in bringing beloved Cardinal Mark McGwire to St. Louis and guided the team through the death of Daryl Kile. When La Russa goes to the hall of fame (and he will, make no mistake) it's very possible that he will wear Cardinal red.
Now Ozzies legacy is cloudy, he's still a beloved Cardinal, but his self imposed exile has removed him from a generation of fans consciousness. The more Cardinals fans embrace Tony La Russa and the further into the distance the 82 series victory fades the hazier and hazier our memories of Ozzie become. If Tony wins a world series with the Cardinals much will be forgiven, and the other parties to his various petty disputes will suffer in the court of public opinion.
It's amazing to think that Ozzie Smith might not be revered and worshipped as a Cardinal, but he's really not. Sure his numbers up, and he's got the statue, but he's absent from the pomp and pagentry that would keep his name in the forefront of fand minds. Call it a cautionary tale of office politics: Even those you think would be above reproach can find themselves marginalized. Ozzie is one of my favorite players of all time, and I hope he can reinsert himself into Cardinality, but it seems less and less likely every year.
Sad.
May 05, 2005
Your 1991 Cardinals Part 2: Todd Zeile
Continuing my reflections on the 1991 Cardinals. Part 1 is here.
Zeile was drafted by the Cards in the second round of the draft in 1986, he was the 55th selection. Zeile was the Cardinals can't miss hitting prospect, the mashing catcher who would go on to have a hall of fame career and lead the Cardinals back to the series. If I had been more sophisticated I might have realized I was being sold a dream by a team with a vested interest in convincing me Zeile would be great, but at the time, bereft of the cyncical shell I would later develop, I bought it.
If, Dickens Style, I could go back and enlighten myself what would I see?
Minor league numbers:
AVG OBP SLG OPS
1986 A .258 .358 .492 .850
1987 A .292 .384 .511 .895
1988 AA .272 .393 .491 .884
1989 AAA .289 .357 .486 .843
Zeile hit for some power, got on base at an excellent clip, and he was a catcher. So yeah, an .843 OPS is a little exciting (Yadier Molina managed a .759 in Memphis last year, 15 years later).
When Zeile hit the Majors he struggled:
G AVG OBP SLG OPS
1989 28 .256 .326 .354 .680
1990 144 .244 .333 .398 .731
You should notice that a lot of Zeiles problem is low batting average (He struck out 77 times in 495 at bats). In 1990 his Walk Rate was .089 and his slugging percentage just missed .400. He was 24 years old. And then history intervenes. Joe Torre came up as a catcher, bounced between catcher and first for a few years until he was 30 and finally switched to 3rd and 1st full time in 1971. Torre hit .363/.421/.555 in that year after catching 90 games and batting .325/.398/.498 the year before. Hoping to save Zeile the wear and tear of catching and ignite his bat the same way his was Torre moved Zeile to 3B full time in 1991.
When Zeile didn't set the league on fire there was grumbling and prior to the season it was widely assumed the move to 3rd would put him back on the world beater track we expected.
Zeile Responded with:
G AVG OBP SLG OPS
1991 155 .280 .353 .412 .765
His walk rate dropped but a 40 point surge in batting average lifted his stats accross the board. He was a decent hitter but not the star we expected. In 1995 he was traded to the Cubs, then signed with the Phillies in 1996 and traded to the Orioles to make room for the Phillies phenom third baseman and on and on until he became known more for his breadth of employers (He's played for 11 clubs) than his on the field exploits.
Zeile was always a decent player. His career high in OPS was .842 with the Rangers in 1999 and he hit 30 home runs in 1997 with the Dodgers. Despite never having an awesome season he did manage a 16 year career with 2000 hits and 250 home runs. But at the start of the 1991 season everyone expected a huge breakout from him, finally freed from the tools of ignorance. It just never really happened. He cruised along and made a bunch of money but he was never an All Star and only widely known because he played so long.
If you told me today that Yadier Molina would enjoy a 16 year career and amass those totals I'd be thrilled at the idea, but Zeile in St. Louis always labored under the weight of our expectations. A long steady career wasn't what we were promised, we were promised greatness. 91 was the year Cards fans began to grow impatient waiting for that greatness, he wasn't catching, he had a few years experience, but he was still just a decent hitter.
I can't help but think that if Zeile would have been left behind the plate he would have had the same batting arc and be a star. As a third baseman he's just a decent hitter, but as a catcher he'd have been a very good hitter and the main flaw in his career, my perception of him, would be fixed.
May 04, 2005
Your 1991 Cardinals Part 1
1991 is an odd year to pick for a flash back into Cardinals history, I'll give you that. But for me those early 90's Cardinal teams are hold a special place in my heart, because they were the first Cardinal teams I followed on my own instead of as ancillary to someone elses fandom.
I thought for sure they had a chance to go all the way that year, so much so that in April when the season started I cut out every box score and kept it. I didn't have cable so the box scores were the only thing I knew about the games. Sometimes I'd watch the local news and catch the score in the evening, and every once in a while a highlight. And at that point they truly were highlights, rare glimpses into the Cardinals season parceled out at random.
Luckily I ended up spending the summer in St. Louis and remember watching Barry Bonds (fresh off of an MVP win in 90) personally strangle away the Cardinals chances (Bonds finished second in NL MVP voting that year. He went on to win the next two). I saw Rheal Cormiers major league debut, I saw a lot of Ray Lankfords first full year in the Majors (.251/.301/.392 with 15 triples).
I wanted to go back and look at that team, see how they did, who they were, and who they became.
The Cards starting lineup, Circa 1991:
C Tom Pagnozzi 28 .264 .319 .351 1B Pedro Guerrero 35 .272 .326 .361 2B #Jose Oquendo 27 .240 .357 .301 3B Todd Zeile 25 .280 .353 .412 SS #Ozzie Smith 36 .285 .380 .367 OF #Felix Jose 26 .305 .360 .438 OF *Ray Lankford 24 .251 .301 .392 OF *Milt Thompson 32 .307 .368 .442
Tom Pagnozzi is the reason the Cardinals held on to Mike Matheny so long. He set the bar for Cardinal catchers at good defense no offense. This year he managed a .319 OBP and a .351 SLG. His EQQ (Adjusted accross eras) was .254. In 2004 Ben Molina matched that number exactly, Mike Matheny managed a .223. So maybe Pagnozzi wasn't as bad as Matheny, but he wasn't on the team for his offense. 1991 was one of Pagnozzis best seasons, he hit only 2 home runs but managed 5 triples, nearly half his career total of 11. I don't remember any of those triples, but I do remember Pagnozzi running. He was not quick and I would give a lot to see him rumbling around second.
He was 28 and won his first Gold Glove that year. His Baseball Reference Page says it all: My first hero. My momma never told me about OBP, Danny Wild.
Looking back on Pedro Guerrero and it's obvious that he was old and ready to decline. Guerrero joined the Cardinals in 1988 at 32. The year before in LA he put up a .338/.416/.539 that would look good in 2004. In 1988 it was inhuman. By 1991 I still held some hope that Guerrero of old would come back and lead the Cardinals to glory. In 1991 he managed .272/.326/.361. He was over the hill at 35 and would play only one more year.
The secret weapon.
I'll admit I was never a big Oquendo fan, as a middle infielder he lived in Ozzies shadow, as a hitter he lived in just about everybodies shadow, and he didn't run. But in hindsight a player who gets on base at a .350 clip (.240/.357/.301) and can play literally anywhere is a valuable thing. Consider last year Tony Womack put up a .307/.349/.385 and was a decent second baseman.
Next Time: Todd Zeile
April 19, 2005
Milestones at Miller
I had a great time this past weekend at Miller Park. Saw some good friends, family and baseball. Saw the roof open and closed. Saw the Cards sweep the Brewers.
Does it get better than that?
I even got snuck into "Club Level" by my friend Russell Badgett, an honest to goodness Brewers fan. Rusty showed me a great picture he STILL had on his cell phone of a home-made banner at Miller last year marking the 100th win by our accomplished Cards club.
Also, no one's mentioned it yet, but Sunday marked our beloved TLR's 800th win as a Cardinal.
Tony, odi et amo your moves... but thanks.
Let's see what else we can get done this year at Miller Park.
As an aside, I was surprised by the following trivia at MP on Sunday:
What Brewer holds the single-season record for hits:
a) Jeff Cirillo
b) Cecil Cooper
c) Robin Yount
First of all, I was surprised no Paul Molitor. Secondly, I was surprised at the correct answer.
Thirdly (I'm really uncomfortable writing "thirdly"), I was surprised that about 30-40% of the fans were clearly Cards fans. My brother-in-law Jeff told me that for Cubs games, it's about 75% Cubbie fans. Maybe the Cards and Cubs could schedule a road series there, a sort of Trading Spaces for baseball freaks who are just looking for an excuse to drive. Hmmmm, but let's not get started on the scheduling between the Cubs and Cards.
March 01, 2005
Dave Duncan: the Shiznit?
Every season when the postseason winds to a close, there are always managers fired, coaches hired, and the baseball pundits roast Larry Bowa or praise Dusty Baker for the quality of their work. But does any of us actually believe that a single manager can make the difference between an 80-82 record or winning a division? So many of the decisions in roster construction or bullpen usage are “by the book” that the number of decisions a manager makes can’t add up to that many wins over the course of a season. But the pitching coach seems to be different from the hitting coach, or the eight thousand bench coaches and basepath coaches each team carries. Leo Mazzone in Atlanta, Don Gullet in Cincinnati, and our own Dave Duncan are all credited with reclaiming lost arms from the garbage and making them into quality arms.
Now I’m hardly unbiased about Dunc. I have my very own Dave Duncan official jersey I wore to the NLDS game 4 and two games of the NLCS. I suppose with Tony I can take him or leave him, but the combination of Duncan and Walt Jocketty since 1996 has been the largest component of making the Cardinals the perennial contenders that have dominated the Central since 2000. One key to their success has been getting excellent value from their starting pitchers. The Cards have been able to save money on the rotation to pay for an extra All-Star hitter or two. How have the Cardinals brass been able to do this? Is it luck? Walt’s keen eye? Or is it Dunc’s miraculous skill in not only reviving lost arms but holding them together with spit and bailing wire?
I started this article with the idea of putting some semi-quantitative data together to justify my love of Dunc (which is ridiculous; love should be unconditional, not subject to tests. I’ll always love you Dunc! Call me! I'll never foget that night on the beach in Cabo!). Of course it turns out that you really can’t use the same metrics to measure both relievers and starters, and relief pitchers are far too variable year to year because of their small innings pitched. So I decided to use the metric SNLVAR from the baseballprospectus website to look at Duncan's starters. It stands for Support Neutral Value Above Replacement (Lineup adjusted). Essentially it is defense, ballpark, and opposing batter neutral. It works like a counting statistic, so more innings collected gives a higher number, which for starting pitchers is fine.
To see if Duncan could fix broken pitchers, I took the three years a starter pitched before he came under Dunc’s tutelage, weighted more heavily for the most recent seasons, and the seasons he pitched for Duncan, weighted more towards the first season under Dunc (I weighted the seasons 135|531 where there were three seasons, and 5.5 | 3.5 for two seasons, and no weight where there was one season either before or under Dunc). I did the same for pitchers who left Dunc for “greener” pastures, weighting the last season under Duncan and the first season away from him the heaviest. I only considered the seasons working for the Cardinals, since most of the pitchers have some sort of story behind them, and I only know those in the Cardinal uniform.
What comes out of this is a list of 15 starting pitchers since 1996 who were starters either before or after the toiled for Duncan (Andy Benes is counted once for each stint):
Duncan's Babies Benes, An. 1996 Morgan, M. 1996 Osborne, D. 1996 Stottlemyre, T. 1996 Bottenfield, K. 1998 Merker, K. 1998 Oliver, D. 1998 Benes, An. (2) 2000 Hentgen, P. 2000 Kile, D. 2000 Hermanson, D. 2001 Williams, W. 2001 Finley, C. 2002 Tomko, B. 2003 Carpenter, C. 2004 Suppan, J. 2004
It’s actually easiest to just divide these sixteen cases into three categories: Dunc’s failures, successes, and no effect.
Failures:
Brett Tomko represents Duncan’s greatest failure as a pitching coach for the Cardinals, and that in itself is not too bad. He didn’t start much in 2001 or 2000, but he was average in 2002 for the Padres, and an average starter for the Giants last year, but a disaster for the Cardinals in 2003. His SNLVAR for these three years: 4.1 | 2.3 | 3.9. (An average starter will post about a 3.8 SNLVAR in 200 innings). There isn’t really anything I can think of to mitigate this; Tomko stunk for Dunc and was average everywhere else he played.
Mike Morgan is also probably not on Dunc’s Christmas Card list, though it’s tough to remember the last time he was actually decent other than 1998 for the Twins, but it was 1995, when he started 17 games for the Cards and posted an ERA of 3.88. But for Dunc in his first year for Walt and the MICDS boys, he started 18 games and had an ERA of 5.24. His weighted SNLVAR before Duncan was 1.21, and after was 1.77, but he gave a 0.60 performance in 1996. Morgan rarely pitched a full season at this point, always finding a way to miss about half the season. Age and injuries most likely played more of a roll in his performance than his work with pitching coaches.
The final pitcher (seriously, there are only three!) was Andy Benes in his second go with the Cardinals. After a snafu with getting a contract into the league office in the off-season before 1998, he spent two seasons with the Diamondbacks. When he came back after his collective bargaining-induced exile, he posted an adequate season of 3.7 SNLVAR after seasons of 3.5 and 3.4 for the Snakes. However, he fell off a cliff in 2001, going -0.6 in 107 innings. He resurrected himself down the stretch briefly in 2002 to earn a 3.2 SNLVAR in only 94 innings. However, that middle season drags down his weighted average in his second stint, and is counted as a failure by this system. However, I don’t think anyone expects a pitching coach to lay his hands on an arthritic knee and effect a cure. In fact, I think that some credit must be given for that fabulous comeback in 2002, though whether to Duncan, Benes, or someone else, I don’t know.
Successes
The very first success for Duncan under the Arch was that very same Andy Benes four years earlier in 1996. He had been below average and on the decline in San Diego before he came to us posting SNLVARs of 3.9, 3.3, and 1 on his way out. He posted a great season and was the best starter on the division winning team with a SNLVAR of 4.6, which he followed up with a good 1997 of 4.1. We’ve already seen that after he left he declined to 3.5 and 3.4, leaving these two seasons under Dave Duncan is by far his best.
His next triumph was the canonical Kent Bottenfield who posted a fabulous 4.4 SNLVAR in his first stint as a full time starter. He then of course was the magic beans that bought us Jim Edmonds, and away from Duncan’s sheltering brows, he went from bad to awful for the Angels and Astros going 1.8 and -0.9 before disappearing from the scene. I always thought that Walt should have tried this type of move more often, turning junk into trade value (though Edmonds turning into a Hall of Famer is probably just a lucky break). Duncan could another Chavez Ravine, lowering ERAs and making pitchers look more attractive than they really are in a trade. Suppan and Marquis would fit into this mode well this year.
Darren Oliver is often forgotten, but his 1999 season clocks in at a freakish 5.3, which he never even came close to before or after without Duncan.
Darryl Kile is one of the most well known of Duncan’s successes, a Cy Young contender in Houston before his disastrous journey into the clouds. He was even better for Duncan than he was for the Astros, posting 6.2 and 7.6 before his 2002 was cut short by his untimely death. It’s easy to say that just leaving altitude was the solution to his problems, but there weren’t a lot of teams that were jumping at the chance to get him, and remember that Mike Hampton never bounced back, even under the supposedly great Leo Mazzone.
Woody Williams was an out of nowhere trade after the deadline, that really brought Duncan’s skills to my notice. Unfairly maligned as a mediocre pitcher in San Diego before the trade, he posted SNLVAR s of 3.4, 5.4, and 4.7 the years before he was traded, and a prorated 3.2 before he was traded. Everyone remembers how he pitched down the stretch in 2001, which prorated over the full season would have been worth a SNLVAR of 8.8, more than enough to win a Cy Young in a full season. He followed this up with a SNLVAR of 3.8 in half a season and 5.5 in 2003. He went from an above average pitcher that was driven from SD for reasons that are still unclear to me to a staff ace that was occasionally hampered by injuries.
The final success story is last year’s Christ Carpenter, who came off an injury to be the ace of the 2004 pennant winning staff. Touted both last spring training and the year before as an ace in waiting, he always seemed overrated to me. He had one good season with the Jays in 2001 when he posted a SNLVAR of 4.9 before succumbing to injury. Of course last year he finally showed his promise under Duncan and earned a 5.2 in abbreviated action.
The remaining five pitchers either played as expected, or didn’t play enough to get a good read on their skills. Donovan Osborne in 1996 had one healthy season under Duncan bracketed by a whole bunch of injured years. Todd Stottlemyer had a great year in 1996 with a 4.4 SNLVAR surrounded by many years of below average play (two of which were with the Cardinals). Kent Merker was just continuing his decline from his glory day(s) on his way through town in 1998. Chuck Finley was good after his acquisition in 2002, but not much better than his prorated numbers for the whole season or his years before. And Jeff Suppan showed a little improvement with a 3.8 after 3.6, 2.2 and 3.8 SNLVAR years.
Overall, there are very few true failures under Dave Duncan (though it must be said terrible pitchers don’t get a lot of starts and wouldn’t show up in this study). Even his ambiguous pitchers for the most part did well or at least gave the Cardinals one good season. But it is the number or success stories, where a pitcher came to the Cardinals as junk at best and became a star that stands Duncan above his peers. I thought coming into this that Duncan would be the guy you meet in the casino in Vegas. “I’m an awesome gambler,” he says, “I’ve won more than I’ve lost!” And you’re like, “well, I’d expect almost half of the guys here to say that.…” But Duncan has hit the jackpot an alful lot, and has rarely missed.