"Clogging up the bases"

I heard John Gordon, the Twins radio announcer, use this phrase last night about the White Sox. I don't remember exactly what he said, but something about how their power hitters took too many walks and were "clogging up the bases."

Clogging up the bases?

I really don't understand what that means. Because Jim Thome or Jermaine Dye is standing on first base, no one else can get to it, it's unavailable? WTF does clogging up the bases mean? Its sounds to me like a reactionary statement first made by a member of the anti-sabermetrics crowd as a way of devaluing walks.

"You don't want people to get walks because they just clog up the base paths! How in the hell are you going to score runs with guys on base?"

It's such an incredibly stupid statement. It's so incredibly stupid I just can't believe a thinking person would utter it.

Just for fun let's take a look at the teams with the most walks.

1. Chicago Cubs (2nd in runs)
   
2. N.Y. Mets (7th in runs)
   
3. St. Louis (10th in runs)
   
4. Boston (3rd in runs)
   
5. Atlanta (17th in runs)
   

Those are some good teams, two are division leaders and only one is below .500. Two of those teams (Cubs and Boston) are the two best teams in baseball right now according to RS/RA. They don't seem to have a problem with guys "clogging up the bases," even though they're among the league leaders in walks. The very idea that a guy getting a walk is somehow a bad thing is ridiculous, the "clogging up the bases" line, doubly so.

That wasn't the only fun though, later on in the broadcast Gordon was talking about Nick Swisher, who used to play for the Oakland A's, and how in Chicago they "want you to get three good hacks at the ball. In Oakland they don't want you to swing until you have two strikes." The implication was that Oakland's way of doing things is stupid. Again, patience and walks are not good.

My response: "Dude, you watch Joe Mauer play every night. Does he ever swing at the first pitch? Do you make a concerted effort to remain ignorant?"

For a little more fun let's take a look at Nick Swisher's last season in Oakland and Nick Swisher's current season in Chicago.

Team	PA	BA	OBP	SLG	AB/HR	BB/SO
Oak	659	.262	.381	.455	24.5	.76
Chi	421	.228	.348	.405	23.4	.71

He's striking out at a slightly higher rate than last year and going slightly fewer at bats between home runs, but both of those numbers look like normal fluctuations to me. The biggest change is in his three slash numbers, BA/OBP/SLG. If Nick Swisher has adopted Chicago's "three good hacks at the ball" philosophy, as John Gordon claims, it hasn't had any positive effect on his hitting so far and if anything has caused him to fall off a cliff. But John Gordon doesn't care; he obviously has a grudge against guys who walk a lot, like Joe Mauer 16th in MLB in BB/PA and 2nd in BB/K.

Comments like those of John Gordon are why I don't like listening to Twins games on KSTP, they're always clogging up the radio with bullshit.