The MEI

For those of you who have been tuning in to college baseball recently, you may have noticed a stat we are tracking. It is called the MEI or Morgan Ensberg Index. This stat tracks the number of “Freebies” that teams give up each game. Coach Kevin Hazlett of Mesa Junior College in San Diego introduced me to the idea of “Freebies.” It has changed how I view college baseball games.

What is a Freebie?

The idea is simple. Don’t allow your opponent an extra base without getting an out. Freebies come in many forms, but the MEI tracks five of them.

1. Walks

2. Errors

3. Stolen Bases/Wild Pitches

4. Hit By Pitches

The MEI is Born

Just before the regionals, I presented this idea to the guys in the “Truck.” The truck is the large container that you will see in parking lots sometimes. It is a command center where the producer, director, and every other person involved with putting a show together is located. The response was positive and they said, “Let’s do it!”

How Does it Work?

To calculate the MEI, add together the five variables for each team. The team that has the lowest number will be the team that is expected to win.

Let’s look at three examples from the Super Regionals on June 10, 2011.

Notice the totals of each game. The teams in yellow are the teams that won their games. Each of those teams had a lower MEI than their opponents.

How to Use the MEI

This stat is not 100%. It is less likely to be this accurate at the Major League level. That is because Major Leaguers play a more consistent brand of ball. However, this is a very accurate stat for college baseball. Use this stat as a barometer to help you understand which team is giving themselves the best chance to win.

How do we make this better?

Play around this a little bit and see if it makes sense. If you would like to add a stat like “Wild Pitches” then go for it! This is a good base, but it doesn’t mean that it is a finished product. We have to constantly track its accuracy and see if it makes sense over time.

Joust!!!!!!!

You have to see this!!!!!  This is why baseball players are the funniest human beings in the world!

BIg thanks to Tom Tango for alerting me to this one. Thanks Tango!

Long Time…No Talk

I’m back!  Lots has been going on since my last post.  Here are some updates.

First, I have been doing college games for ESPNU and FOX Sports.  It has been amazing.  College baseball is the best to cover if you ask my opinion.  The reason?  College baseball is not like Major League Baseball at all.  Because college players are learning the game, they are able to use plays that usually wouldn’t be as effective in pro ball.  This has to do with two factors.  The first is professional pitching.  The second is that college defenders are learning how to defend against “small ball.”  Because of these factors, the game will show you something you haven’t seen before.

The second job I have found was with Sirius/XM.  Get this…  Sirius sent me this receiver about the size of an old cassette player.  I plug it into the computer and poof…I’m on the air.  I do a show called MLB Roundtrip.  It is the last show of the day and I love it.  Mike Ferrin is my co-host and he is doing the show in Washington DC.  Can you believe technology?  Our show is Monday through Saturday from 8 to 12 PM PST.  Check us out on XM 89 or Sirius 209.  Heck…call in and we will have a party!  Maybe we can Skype it?  Who knows?

Finally, I started selling sporting equipment for Sport Chalet.  My wife’s family friend is a former pro baseball player named Randy Swank.  Randy offered me a job and is now my first “real” boss!  My job is to go around to high schools, colleges, pro teams, youth sports, or businesses and sell uniforms and any other sporting equipment you can think of.  And when I mean everything…I’m talking football uprights to undershirts.  Any sport…any thing.

I NEED YOUR HELP

There is a really good school in El Cajon, Ca named Christian Union High School.  Their Athletic Director is a guy by the name of David Beezer.  He is a former college football player and he has really helped me out.  I sat down in his office and just asked him what I should be doing.  He told me to be honest and transparent.  He told me to be there to help him make decisions when he has to make orders.  It was incredible advice.

I would love to be able to help other people but I don’t know where to go or what to do.  So I am ready….let me have it.

What do I need to learn?

Have a great week team!

Morgan

PS… I am also working on another layout for the website.  If you have any advice there, I would love it as well.
PSS… I’m looking for a new “14″ logo for the site.  As you know, I love simple.  If anyone has some cool ideas for the logo then let me know.

Manny

Dear Manny,

I am a Christian guy.  There are a lot of emotions going through my mind as I type this.  The most prevalent one is anger.  Here is what I would like to say?

How could you?  You coward!  You are a fake and a cheat and now you want to retire?  No way!  You get back out there and you take the pain.  You stand in front of the cameras and tell us that you are a fake.  Tell us that you only care about money.  Look directly into the camera and tell us that you don’t give a crap about baseball and that this was always about money!  Look into the camera and tell us that you are so stupid and entitled that you are willing to put anything in your body if you think it will help.  You took OVULATION MEDICINE DUDE.  You were such a fake, that you put medicine in your body that helps you produce eggs for reproduction.  You should have eaten raisins.  I hear they help you think.

That is how I feel.  Those are the feelings that make me want to lash out.  But I am not going to say that.  I am going to calm down and think before I type.  I’m going to step away from the computer and think about what my actions mean.  I’m going to walk into the living room and hug Beckett, Chase, and Ava.  I’m going to think about my wife Christi and thank God for allowing me to have a wife who loves me.  I’ll be right back.

That took a little longer than I expected.  Here is what I am actually going to say.

Manny.  You’re ripping my heart out man.  I had so much respect for the way you hit.  I told my friends, “Manny doesn’t cheat.  He’s legit.”  But you aren’t man.

I want to be angry and raise my voice.   But I’m not going to do that.  I am calm right now.  This is what I want to tell you from my heart.

You don’t have to be a great baseball player for people to love you.  We love your personality.  You seem to be a happy guy and that is what we love.

Manny, happiness isn’t about money.  I know we are all tricked into thinking that money will make us happy, but it doesn’t have that power.  The only thing that provides us with real happiness is living for something greater than ourselves.

I’m not made or angry with you anymore.  I’m not going to sign off in a condescending way.  In fact I want to thank you for making me realize what this life is about.  I just got back from hugging my kids and kissing my wife.  I have been praying and thanking God for allowing me to have such blessings.

Manny, your actions have reminded me how thankful I am that God blessed me with the natural ability to play in the Big Leagues.  When my kids ask me about baseball and the Steroid Era, I will look at them and say,

“You know you don’t have to cheat to make it in life.  All you have to do is try as hard as you can.  There will be times when you are really tested and you’ll want to take the easy way out.  But you don’t have to because I will love you no matter where you end up.  And if you do mess up, I am going to love you.  And if you mess up again, I will love you.  Beckett, Chase, and Ava, this world will try and trick you into thinking that you need to cheat.  The world will make you think that it is fine to do what everyone else is doing even if it hurts you.  You don’t have to.  Work hard and don’t give in.  Life isn’t about money or fame.  Life is about caring for those around you and you can do that in any job.  Work hard.  You can do it!  I love you.

Dada

Check out the Newhan Story on the Front Page of Yahoo

Check out what Steve Henson wrote…

An Old Ballplayer And His New Soul

Sunday, March 20 2011 8:15 PM

Written by: Steve Henson

It was a simple act. David Newhan held open a restaurant door for a person in a wheelchair. And yet he was overcome by emotion. Gratitude gave way to longing, longing gave way to resolve, resolve circled back to gratitude, and then he wanted nothing more than to find the nearest ballfield, crush a fastball and dash around the bases.

As the wheelchair rolled past, Newhan silently thanked God for his own miraculous luck. A surfing accident off the Southern California coast in September 2009 snapped the C2 vertebrae in his neck — much the way it is done in a judicial hanging — but Newhan’ spinal cord was somehow spared. He walked home unaware of the extent of the injury, surfboard under his arm, and calmly asked his wife to drive him to a hospital.

Eighteen months later, Newhan recognizes in other situations what so easily could have been his own. Divine providence spared him paralysis or instant death, he believes, and he won’t take a single day for granted. He can hold his wife and two children, take strolls on the beach, and — why not take this reprieve as far as he can? — play baseball in a major league uniform.

Newhan is 37. He has spent parts of eight seasons in the big leagues for five different teams. He is versatile, he hustles, he’s a guy coaches say plays the game the right way. Yet he spent the entire 2009 season in Triple-A obscurity and the 2010 season rehabilitating from the neck injury. Transitioning into a coaching career or the broadcasting booth seemed prudent. Easy, even.

To everyone but Newhan.

He got his doctor’s OK to play, contacted the San Diego Padres, convinced them he was serious about a comeback, and headed for spring training. He’s spending most of his time in minor league camp sweating off the rust, but he’s played in one major league game, getting two memorable at-bats.

After enduring some good-natured ribbing from Padres manager Bud Black (“What’s the deal with you, David? Are you here to play or coach?”), Newhan stepped into the batter’s box for the first time and again nearly burst with gratitude. Actor Christopher Reeve had suffered the same injury after being thrown from a horse in 1995 and was left a quadriplegic. Numerous others had died instantaneously. And here he was with a bat in his hands, taking a gulp of warm Arizona air, a voice screaming “Ice cold beer!” in the stands behind him.

Newhan backed out of the box and gathered himself. He took another deep breath and told himself to return to the moment. He set up in his left-handed stance and drilled the first good pitch he saw into right field for a single.

He ran to first.

“Just to be on the field was awesome,” he says. “I see someone in a wheelchair and think about how lucky I am to have a full recovery. How bad would that person want what I have been blessed enough to be doing?”

His second time up, he drove a pitch into the left-center field gap but the left fielder made a running catch. No matter. Newhan has carried the euphoria of those two at-bats with him through the grind of daily workouts. His goal is to make the Padres’ Triple-A team, polish his game and be available to the big club as the season progresses.

Newhan is primarily an outfielder, but he’s also played a lot at second base and some at third and first. He’ll happily play anywhere now. His recovery from the accident is complete, and reaching the big leagues again would bring closure to his career.

“Let’s see where it leads,” Black says. “You can never count David out. He’s already proven that.”

Black wasn’t necessarily referring to Newhan lying on the ocean floor, filling up with water and terror. But he might as well have been. Because no obstacle Newhan faces in baseball can come close to that moment.

He sneaked out to catch a few late waves that afternoon, two blocks from his home in Oceanside, Calif. Newhan grew up in Southern California and attended college at Pepperdine in Malibu, so surfing was as much a rite of passage as baseball. He was no novice.

“It wasn’t like I wiped out,” he says. “I made a bad decision by jumping off my board. I was far enough offshore and didn’t think it was shallow. I thought I’d skim the top of the water.”

Instead, his head struck full force into a sandbar. He went completely numb, barely aware of the salt water coursing through his nostrils.

“I had a stinger throughout my whole body,” he says. “I was trying to move knowing I couldn’t. I was floating up. I thought, ‘If I can get my head above water, I’ll try to call for help.’”

His next thought was more of a prayer: “Jesus, let me move.” His arms and legs responded, and he grabbed his board and slid his belly onto it. He slowly paddled to shore, gingerly walked home and called his wife, Karen, who was visiting her parents 10 miles away.

“I think I should get an X-Ray,” he told her. “Something happened, and something is wrong. My neck is locking up.”

The hospital emergency room was packed and Newhan sat for several hours before receiving care, unaware that if shards from the vertebrae shifted even a millimeter, he would die. Finally it was his turn, and a CT scan revealed a spiral, compound fracture in three places. The doctor gasped, the nurse called it a “Hangman’s break,” and Newhan was fitted for a neck brace.

He wore a halo brace for two months, then a smaller one for another month. He slept on his back. He couldn’t lift anything heavier than 10 pounds. He was allowed 45-minute walks in the morning and evening with Karen. Sometimes they’d bring along their son, Nico, and daughter, Gianna, who now are ages six and three.

“Karen has been unbelievably strong,” Newhan says. “And for her to support me giving baseball another shot, I can’t say enough how much that means.”

Recovery accelerated when he began an alternative physical therapy regimen called the Egoscue methodwith trainers Jordan Feramisco and Liba Placek. Within a few months, Newhan built a batting cage in the trainers’ Sorrento Valley, Calif., facility and began giving hitting lessons to youngsters in addition to taking swings himself. The baseball bug had bitten him again.

He put out feelers to major league teams last summer but couldn’t find a taker. He kept working out, and a few months ago made a call to longtime friend Jason McLeod, the Padres assistant general manager. “All I want is a shot,” Newhan told him. Nobody expects Newhan to return to the peak form he displayed when he hit .311 for the Orioles in 2004, but eventually contributing in a utility role would be enough.

And if it doesn’t work out, Newhan won’t be down. He’s played for nine organizations in 14 pro seasons. He’s been demoted. He’s been released. He’s been through a lot. And as everybody knows by now, he’s a tough out.

My Friend Broke His Neck

My friend broke his neck.

The moment his head hit the sand bar he knew he was going to die.  He couldn’t feel his body and the waves kept pushing him back down to the ocean floor.  What was going through his mind?  I’m sure he said a prayer.  I’m sure he thought about his wife, son, and daughter.  I wonder if he thought about his baseball career?

My friend didn’t die. He lived and the story is amazing.  He is in Spring Training right now trying to make a team.  But I am not going to tell you the rest.  My hope is that reporters start asking around.  They can find him and it will be the biggest story of Spring Training.

Happy hunting.

PS…To My Buddy, I know you wanted to keep a low profile, but people need to hear this story.

Morgan