Bleacher Report - Articles by Travis Nelson

New York Yankees-Los Angeles Angels: 2009 ALCS Preview

Travis Nelson — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 11:44:00 -0400

The Yankees easily dispatched the Minnesota Twins last week, but they've got their work cut out for them in facing the Angels of Wherever in the American League Championship Series.

Compare/Contrast with the Minnesota Twins:

The Angels finished a close second to the Yankees in run scoring this year, with 5.45 runs per game, compared to 5.65 for the Yankees. Minnesota had scored 5.01 runs per game, but they did so in a pitchers' park, while both LAnahfornia and New York played their home games in hitters' parks, so Minnesota actually had a slightly better adjusted OPS than the Angels, 109 compared to 104. The Yankees' 119 OPS+ easily led all of MLB.

Of course, the fact that Justin Morneau was unavailable for the postseason after having provided 30 homers and 100 RBIs toward the Twins' offense during the season probably puts the Angels roughly on par with the Twins for our purposes. The Angels stole a lot more bases, but otherwise, the net result was about the same.

In terms of pitching, it would seem that the Twins and Angels were very similar as well, given that both teams allowed about 4.7 runs per game (4.69 for the Twins), and had ERAs that were very close (4.50 for the Angels, 4.45 for Minnesota). Again, however, the ballparks skew these numbers, so that the Twins's adjusted ERA+ was only 92, well below the league average, while the Angels were a tick above average, at 102.

Starting Pitching:

Angels

The Angels and Yankees' starters overall had composite ERAs very close to each other, 4.44 for the Angels, 4.48 for New York, but those overall numbers ignore the fact that this Angels' pitching staff is not the same one that started the year. Gone are Sean O'Sullivan, Shane Loux, Trevor Bell, Anthony Ortega and Dustin Moseley, who combined for a 6.51 ERA in 26 starts this year. Sixteen of those 26 starts went to two pitchers (Bell and O'Sullivan) who had never pitched above High-A ball before the start of the 2009 season, and it showed.

And though he isn't "gone", Ervin Santana and his 5.03 ERA are banished to the bullpen and replaced in the rotation by lefty import Scott Kazmir, who has generally pitched well against the Yankees (2.67 ERA in 87 career innings). Kazmir compiled a 1.73 ERA in six late season starts for the Angels, though he got knocked around by the Red Sox in his lone postseason start this year, and is not known for his stamina.

Yankees

Everyone knows that the Yankees plan to use a three-man rotation for the ALCS, with CC Sabathia, AJ Burnett and Andy Pettitte the three named men. Joba Chamberlain is relegated to bullpen duty, where he has excelled throughout his major league career, though he's done little of that kind of work in 2009. If all goes to plan, the only one who will need to pitch on short rest is CC Sabathia, and if he falters, Joba should be able to step up and blow it by the Angels' hitters for a couple of innings to bridge the gap to the usual bullpen suspects.

The Yankees struggled to find an effective fifth starter all year, which skews the team's starter ERA way up, mostly due to Chien-Ming Wang and Sergio Mitre, who won't pitch against LAnahfornia.

The composite stats for the starters who are expected to pitch in this series are as follows:

Team     W   L   ERA  ERA+   G    IP   WHIP    H/9   HR/9   BB/9   SO/9
Angels  53  32  4.22  109  117  721.2  1.33   9.04   1.10   2.96   6.63
Yanks   46  25  3.83  117   99  631.2  1.30   8.30   0.90   3.42   7.70

The Yankees' numbers here are for just three starters, but they do have a notable edge in most areas, except walks per nine. (If you use only Scott Kazmir's work as an Angel the teams are almost dead even, but then why would we want to throw out his deeds in the first two-thirds of the season simply because he didn't have a big "A" on his hat when he compiled them?)

Overall you'd have to say the Yankees have an edge here, if only a slight one, which may be negated by the fact that CC will have to pitch on short rest.

Bullpens:

If the Yankees can get to Kazmir (or any of the Angels' starters) early, their hitters should be able to feast on their relatively soft bullpen, which was 23rd among the 30 MLB teams in ERA, while the Yankees bullpen compiled a 3.91 ERA that was good for 13th in MLB. These, again, are numbers skewed by pitchers who are not on the ALCS rosters. The relevant pitchers' composite numbers are:

Team     W   L   ERA   SV   IP    ERA+  WHIP   H/9   HR/9   BB/9   SO/9
Angels  37  21  4.12   50  509.1  116   1.34  8.61   0.99   3.48   7.12
Yanks   39  20  3.81   51  552.2  117   1.25  7.95   1.14   3.27   8.62

Here the Yankees have advantages in almost every category. The difference in homers allowed is probably mostly due to the New Yankee Stadium's bizarre performance early in the year, but in all honesty, I did not check on that.

These numbers include Joba's stats for the Yankees and those of Ervin Santana for the Angels, each of whom should be considerably better when restricted to relief duties. It's worth noting that Santana has made only three relief appearances in his four-year major league career, plus two in the postseason, with mixed results, but there's no reason to think he can't adjust to the role.

Overall I'd have to give the edge to the Yankees' bullpen, who are more likely to get a key strikeout in a big spot and do a slightly better job of keeping guys off base.

Offense:

I don't have to tell you that the Yankees led the major leagues in run scoring this season, not to mention homers, OBP, Slugging, OPS and OPS+. The Angels were not far behind the Yankees in runs scored, but they accomplished this, as they seemingly always do, more with timely hitting than with sheer brute strength, like the Yankees.

The Yankees got men on base better than any team in baseball and just took their chances at getting timely hitting. The Angels did a decent job of getting men on base (they were third in MLB in on base percentage, thanks mostly to Bobby Abreu and Chone Figgins, who nearly doubled his walk rate this year). But then the Angels hit .297 with runners in scoring position, compared to just .272 for the Yankees. Whether that pace is maintainable is anybody's guess, but in any case, the Angels know how to score runs.

Neither team really has any holes in its lineup, either. The Yankees famously got 20+ homers from seven different players, with another 18 from Derek Jeter and more than a dozen from melky Cabrera. Every starter on both teams hit at least .270 except Nick Swisher, who was second in the AL with 97 walks, providing for a respectable .371 OBP. The Yankees have both speed and power on the bench, too, as Brett Gardner and his 26 steals and Eric Hinske's .512 slugging percentage will attest.

Everyone in the Angels' lineup hit between .287 and .306 except Mike Napoli, who hit .272 and smacked 20 homers in only 114 games. Despite all the talk you've heard about how Abreu made the team more patient this year, nobody besides him and Chone Figgins really likes to walk much. They've got some power, but Vlad Guerrero isn't the threat he once was and Kendry Morales is the only player in their lineup with more than 25 homers. As a team, they were just eighth in homers, though they were fourth in slugging percentage. The Angels can bring in Maicer Isturis off their bench, who hit .300 and stole a baker's dozen worth of bases, but the bench gets pretty thin after that.

Again, the advantage seems to be with New York, but a few timely hits by the Angels could negate a lot of patience and brute strength on the part of the bronx Bombers.

Head-to-Head:

The Yankees split the 10 games they played against the Angels this year, but their 5-5 record belies how badly the Yankees played in many of those games.

      R  2B  3B  HR  SB  CS   BA    OBP   SLG  OPS  BAbip
ANA  65  18   5   9  17   7  .315  .386  .473  859  .363
NYY  55  15   1  15   9   0  .272  .355  .456  811  .291

Other than hitting more homers than the Angels, the Yankees were out-hit in just about every respect. Both teams walked and struck out at about the same rates, but the Angels hit more singles, doubles and triples, hit for a higher average, and stole a lot more bases. Of course, getting caught seven times in 24 tries essentially negated the value of the 17 bases they stole, at least on paper.

In reality, it wasn't quite so cut and dried. The conventional wisdom is that the Angels' speed and Jorge Posada's sub-par arm will allow LAnahfornia to run all over the Yankees, but I'm not so sure about this. Looking back at the season series, I see little indication that the Angels are truly great base stealers. In fact, when you look at all 25 times they tried a steal, they actually succeeded in scoring a meaningful run just one time.

One.

Let me explain:

Among those seven times caught stealing (plus one pick-off of Torii Hunter, courtesy of Andy Pettitte's infamous move to first) five of them resulted in the third out of an inning. Three of those eight times (including the pick-off) came in games that were decided by one run. The Angels may have run themselves right out of three wins.

Even among the 17 successful steals, only five of them clearly helped the Angels. The rest of the steals either resulted in a runner being stranded on second or third, or the runner scoring on a homer, which would have occurred regardless of the base the runner had been on at the time. And of the five that "helped", only one occurred in a game decided by fewer than three runs.

You see, the running game is not nearly so important as some would have you think. For one thing, steals are not always successful. When a base stealer fails, or even if a runner gets picked off, you lose both a baserunner and an out, which compromises anything that might have been done that inning. Even when a rally isn't killed by getting caught stealing, it can certainly be suppressed somewhat. And even when a steal is both successful and results in a run, it is not always a run that's needed to win.

So even if the Angels do manage to wreak havoc on the base paths—and with all the rain in New York this weekend, it's hard to imagine that—it won't necessarily lead to victory. So what else have they got going for them?

Well, overall, in the ten games they played against New York, they hit quite a bit better, as I mentioned. The most glaring difference is that the Angels hit .363—more than 70 points higher than the Yankees—when they put the ball in play, easily the highest BABIP mark by any Yankee opponent this year, and considerably better than the Angels' season mark of .322. Given that the league averaged .300 this year, it's possible that we could see some regression to the mean, but a short playoff series doesn't always allow for the time needed for such regressions.

The Yankees allowed a 6.28 ERA to the Angels in their ten games this year, and though an optimist might point out that a lot of the runs they allowed were given up by the likes of Mark Melancon, Brian Bruney, and Jose Veras, players who are not on the Yankees' ALCS roster. The pitchers who might pitch in the Series, however, combined to allow the Angels a still unimpressive 5.89 ERA. Not a good sign.

Meanwhile, the Angels' pitchers allowed a 5.28 ERA against the 2009 Yankees in the regular season, but when you eliminate the runs allowed by Anthony Ortega, Justin Speier, and others who aren't on the postseason roster, that number comes down to a more respectable 4.52, which is pretty darn good when you consider that the Yankees averaged 5.65 runs per game overall.

In short, looking at the teams' overall numbers seems to show an advantage for the Yankees at almost every turn. Looking at just their head-to-head stats, the Angels appear to be better, but those were only 10 games out of 162, so I'm not willing to lend them so much credence.

My best guess is that the Yankees win it in six, with at least four of the games being decided by two runs or fewer. It's going to be a great series.

Commentary on the Yankees-Twins 2009 ALDS Game One

Travis Nelson — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 20:17:00 -0400

The Twins won their division in dramatic fashion last night, as I had hoped they would, since the Yankees have owned the Minnesota Twins for the last several years. As I wrote after the Yanks swept the Twins in May:

Amazingly, the Yankees have dominated the Twins in this millennium, winning 40 out of 58 contests in the regular season, plus six of eight in the postseason, for an overall record of 46-20 since 2001. This is the second best winning percentage they have against any team in the AL in that span, behind only the dismal Kansas City Royals.

My theory on that was essentially that the Yankees have tended to be very good at hitting homers, while the Twins have not been particularly good at preventing them. The same was true this year, as the Yankees led the major leagues in hitting homers, while the Twins allowed the second most in the AL, and the fifth most in the majors.

That's a combination that could lead to some fireworks, as we've already seen in tonight's game, with homers by Derek Jeter and Hideki Matsui, though admittedly neither of the runners who were on base for those got there by a walk.

When it comes to run prevention, the Twins manage to maintain respectability by allowing very few walks and playing good defense, and 2009 was no different. They allowed the fewest walks, the fewest errors and the fewest unearned runs in the American League this year.

So sure, they allow homers, but they don't give away outs or baserunners, so the homers don't hurt so much. Unfortunately for them, the Yankees' hitters led the majors in walks, so keeping them off the bases isn't so easy.

Generally, I'm of the opinion that Ron Gardenhire is a heck of a manager. His team seems to outperform its run differential just about every year, and he seems to get surprisingly good performances out of teams that consist of one or two stars and a bunch of guys that most people have never heard of.

But I had to wonder in the 5th inning, with Jeter on second base and two out, what he was thinking. He had first base open and needed only one out to escape the inning still down by only one run, and Alex Rodriguez coming up, followed by Hideki Matsui.

"Matsui" as you may already know, is a Japanese word thet roughly translates to "grounder to second," something that he had already done twice in the game. "Brian Duensing" may not be the best known or sexiest name a Game One starter could have, but he's got a fastball with some movement, and that movement had already induced Matsui to produce two of his patented ground ball outs.

Meanwhile, Alex Rodriguez is still, you know, Alex Rodriguez. You know: 3-time AL MVP, a batting title, five home run titles, more home runs than Mickey Mantle or Mike Schmidt, etc. Ok, so he hasn't gotten a postseason hit with runners in scoring position since Game Three in the 2004 ALCS. That's, like, 18 at-bats, spread out over four seasons. Which is nothing.

Much more important, I would think, is the fact that he's had an OBP well above .400 with runners in scoring position in each of the last five regular seasons. Covering more than a thousand plate appearances. Nevertheless, Gardenhire, even after going out to the mound to talk to Duensing and Mauer, decided to pitch to A-Rod, and Rodriguex hit an RBI single to right.

The smart move would have been to intentionally walk him and try to get Matsui to ground out a third time, though with that said, Matsui hit a two-run homer to dead center off Felipe Liriano, so maybe it wouldn't have made any difference at all, but it still surprises me that Gardy would have chosen to let A-Rod hit in that spot rather than let his finesse lefty face the grounder-prone Matsui instead.

Since the Twins never did score another run and it looks like they're about to win, 7-2, it may not have mattered at all, but perhaps if Gardenhire has been listening to all the anti-hype about A-Rod, he'll take that stuff a little less seriously for the rest of the series.

Marlins' Super Prospect Mike Stanton Not So Super

Travis Nelson — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 14:24:00 -0400

Hey, remember Mike Stanton?

No, not that one. He's retired now.

I mean Mike Stanton 2.0, or, wait, 3.0.

Mike Stanton extreme.

I mentioned him in my blog post about Baseball America's top 20 prospects:

Unlike his long-lived but largely un-exciting namesake pitcher, the hitter Mike Stanton is extreme in almost every respect. He's extremely young, having just turned 19 in November. He's extremely tall, 6'5" to be precise, with 210 lbs of muscle on his frame. He swings extremely hard, it seems, as evidenced by his 153 whiffs in 125 games, and also his having led the Sally League in homers (39), slugging (.611) and total bases (286). He also got hit by 11 pitches, not far off the league lead of 17, which suggests that he positions himself extremely close to the plate.

But lest you think he's just a hacker, he also walked 58 times in 468 at-bats for a respectable .389 OBP, very impressive for an 18-year old in his first long look in pro ball. His defense seems a little sketchy at first glance (five errors and only six assists in 107 games last season at Greensboro), but he'll probably be fine in left or right field.

The Marlins may skip High A ball and move him all the way up to AA to start the 2009 season, though it may be worth it to send him to the pitcher-friendly Florida State League (High A ball) first, to see how he does. The main thing will be trying to keep the strikeouts in check. Right now his stats look an awful lot like those of Russell Branyan at this age, so if he can't tone down the extreme nature of his game just a bit, he'll never last in the big leagues.

To be fair, Branyan has managed to "last in the big leagues" in some respect, for a dozen seasons, even if he has hit only .234 in them. The real irony here is that I wrote those words in early March, just before Russel Branyan started having the best season of his career. It's also worth noting that though Branyan hit .322/.424/.621 through the mariners' first 50 games, he hit just .201/.293/.449 in the next 66 games, a performance much closer to his career numbers.

Back pain landed Branyan on the DL a month ago and he probably won't play in the Mariners' handful of remaining games. In any case it remains to be seen whether those 50 games were a fluke or an indicator of Branyan's real talent level, but the preponderance of evidence is with the former.

I stand by my Branyan/Stanton analogy, and here's why:


Name  Year  Age  Lvl    G  AVG    OBP   SLG   OPS
Russ  1995   19   A    76  .256  .326  .534   860
Russ  1996   20   A   130  .268  .355  .575   930
Mike  2008   18   A   125  .293  .381  .611   992
      
Russ  1997   21   A+   83  .290  .398  .663  1061
Mike  2009   19   A+   50  .294  .390  .578   968
       
Russ  1997   21   AA   41  .234  .369  .526   895
Mike  2009   19   AA   79  .231  .311  .455   766

I omitted their rookie league numbers because Stanton only played eight games there, compared to 55 for Branyan, but the rate stats were very similar there as well.

Branyan repeated AA, but played only 44 games there, presumably because of an injury, and he hit .294/.417/.693. I assume that Stanton will start next year at AA as well, as he does not yet seem to have mastered the level, despite the accolades of American League scouts and Baseball America beat writers:

He’s going to be a franchise player,” said an American League scout. “I think he has a chance to be a five-tool guy who hits 40 home runs in the big leagues.”

It’s 80 power on the 20-80 scouting scale, a rarity for any player, even moreso for a 19-year-old. And there are few players with 80 power who can match Stanton’s athletic ability. Even at 6-foot-5, 240 pounds, he has a tick above-average speed.

Personally, I have my doubts about Stanton as a major leaguer, at least as a great one. He's surely no 5-tool prospect. The facts that he hasn't stolen many bases (7-for-12 in his minor league career) or hit many triples (8 of them in over 1000 minor league at-bats) suggest that describing his speed as, "a tick above average" may be overly generous. The fact that he only attempts a steal about once every 23 games suggests that even Stanton does not think much of Stanton's speed.

Stanton's defense is questionable as well. He made 10 errors in 125 games in right field this year, suggesting that the fielding tool may be lacking as well. In the majors, only Justin Upton made more than 10 errors in right field, and Upton's got the wheels to compensate for the occasional miscue.

Stanton did make 10 assists, which might mean he's got a good arm, but if he can't get to anything, what difference will that make? Generally guys who end up being 5-tool players in the majors are 5-tool players in the minors, and so far, Stanton has shown perhaps two of those: hitting for power and (maybe) a strong arm. Scouts have a tendency to fall in love with athletic-looking prospects, regardless of their real skills. Just ask Billy Beane.

Hitting for average? Well, not so much. He hit .231 in over 300 plate appearances in the Southern League. I'll grant that he was one of the youngest players in that league, but .231 is not good. Nor is striking out 144 times in 129 games. He had reduced his strikeout rate a bit early in the season, facing high-A level pitching, but then reverted to form upon his promotion to AA. this years one strikout per 3.02 at-bats at AA is almost exactly the same as his one-per-3.05 at-bats at A-ball last year.

The whiffs don't necessarily kill you. Heck, Mark Reynolds misses the mark more often than a blind meteorologist, and he's still employed. But even Reynolds struck out about 25% less than Stanton does when he was in the bushes. Scouts and coaches chalk it up to youthful exuberance, lack of experience, which might or might not be the case. My guess is that this is how Stanton has always hit, and he'll need ot adjust if he wants to hit major league breaking pitches. At 19, he's got time, but Marlins fans should be happy if they ever see him display three tools in the big leagues, let alone five.

A Royals' Disaster: Don't Blame Kyle Farnsworth...Blame Trey Hillman

Travis Nelson — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 09:45:00 -0400

The Yankees won their 102nd game of the season last night and will easily have the best record in baseball this year, for whatever that's worth. They sent the Royals reeling to their 94th loss of the year, which is no small feat considering that they've got the best pitcher (Zach Grienke) and one of the best closers in the league (Joakim Soria), as Joe Posnanski points out.

On the plus side, the athletic trainer who may or may not be to blame for many of the Royals' woes over the past two decades is finally retiring, so things may be looking up. But that was little consolation last night.

Unfortunately for the Royals, both Greinke and Soria had just pitched on Sunday, and the latter of those threw 46 pitches, making him "not available" for Tuesday night's game, according to Royals Manager Trey Hillman. “He’s just a little sore and needed another day,” said Hillman, according to Bob Dutton of the KC Star.

In his absence, journeyman choke artist reliever Kyle Farnsworth coughed up the lead and lost the game, though in his defense, it's not like he really got hit hard. After striking out Brett Gardner, he gave up an infield single to second base by the Yankees' 3rd string catcher, Francisco Cervelli, who has spent most of the season in AA and AAA.

Next came the only solid hit he gave up all night, a single to pinch-hitter Eric Hinske, on a 2-1 pitch, which moved Cervelli to third base. The good news was that Farnsworth retired the next batter, Robinson Cano, despite going to 3-0 on him first. The bad news was that it was a sacrifice fly that tied the game and blew the Save for what would have been rookie Anthony Lerew's first career win in the majors.

With Johnny Damon at bat, Hinske then decided that since it had been exactly one year and one day since he had attempted to steal a base in the majors, he was due. So he ran and not only made it to second, but went to third on catcher John Buck's throwing error. Damon was then walked to get to the rookie, Juan Miranda, which makes some sense, especially when you consider that Miranda's career strikeout rate in the minors is about once every four at-bats.

Unfortunately for Farnsworth and the Royals, Miranda did not strike out. He put the ball in play, which bounced off the pitcher's shoe into foul territory and allowed the winning run to score.

These were not the Mighty Yankees beating up on the Lowly Royals. These were two back-up outfielders, a 3rd-string catcher and a 4th string firstbaseman who stepped in something lucky on the way to the ballpark yesterday. An infield single. Another single. A sac fly, and the game was tied. A steal. A throwing error. An intentional walk. Another infield single, and the game was over before the Royals knew what hit them. Joe Morgan would be so proud.

You can blame Farnsworth for not throwing enough strikes, or for not getting enough fly balls, though with the reputation of New Yankee Stadium, you can see why he might want to keep the ball on the ground. But infield singles happen sometimes, and so do throwing errors, and neither of those things was really Farnsworth's fault.

They were Hillman's fault.

How? Because he didn't bring in in his best reliever to nail down a close game against a very, very good team. Hillman said that he couldn't bring in Soria because he had thrown a lot of pitches two nights before, but was that necessarily true?

Curious, I wondered whether Hillman typically gave his relievers two or more days of rest after throwing that many pitches, so I looked it up. it turns out that there have been 26 times this season in which a Royals reliever has thrown 40 or more pitches in an outing. This is no great surprise, as relievers often rack up significant pitch counts in an outing.

The real question is how often Hillman tends to give such relievers two or more days of rest between uses, and the answer to that is, "Usually, but not always." There have been six occasions on which Hillman has chosen to use a reliever who threw 40+ pitches with just one day of rest. Those pitchers were

Yasuhiko Yabuta
Carlos Rosa
Victor Marte
Ron Mahay
Jamey Wright
Sidney Ponson

The results were not encouraging.

In those six high-pitch count, low-rest outings, these Royals relievers provided little relief at all, allowing nine runs on 12 hits (including three homers) in just 5.2 innings, for a nifty 14.31 ERA. Hillman almost certainly did not know this, at least not with this degree of detail, as I doubt he would take the time to pore over the stats and box scores as I did.

However, Hillman undoubtedly must have known that his bullpen has not generally done very well when he's tried to push the usage envelope like this, especially since the last time it happened was less than a week ago. Yabuta was brought in to pitch on Sept. 26 after having thrown 53 pitches just two days before, and he promptly allowed four runs to score while retiring only one batter. Hillman hasn't called upon him since.

Joakim Soria, however, is no Sidney Ponson or Ron Mahay.

Those six pitchers have a combined record of 6-14 with a 6.03 ERA with the Royals this year, and none of them is the kind of top-flight pitcher that deserves to be handled with kid gloves, as Soria is. So you have to ask whether these guys pitched poorly in those outings because they needed more rest, or simply because they needed more talent, something even the intrepid Trey Hillman cannot provide.

Wright and Ponson are 30-something journeymen, and lousy ones at that, both with career ERAs over 5.00. Mahay is a veteran LOOGy, and while not a bad one overall, he was bad enough while in Kansas City (4.79 ERA) that they released him, whereupon the Twins picked him up and he immediately started getting batters out again. Of course. On the other hand, that 4.79 is almost exactly the same as the team's 4.74 composite ERA, so maybe Hillman just didn't like him or something.

The other three, Rosa, Marte and Yabuta, are all technically rookies, but Yabuta is 36 and pitched professionally for more than a decade in his native Japan. At 28, Marte isn't young either, and he pitched for a few years in Japan before the Royals acquired him.

Even Carlos Rosa, though not yet 25, is no spring chicken in baseball terms, having pitched professionally since he was 17. He had Tommy John surgery and missed all of the 2005 season, and his minor league track record is spotty, but he could top out as a back of the rotation starter, but no more.

But Soria is not a jourrneyman LOOGY or a veteran re-tread or anything of the sort. He's a 25-year old flame-throwing closer who's saved 88 of the team's otherwise pathetic 208 wins in the last three seasons, and who is still under the team's control (subject to arbitration) for the next three seasons. He's a hugely valuable commodity, and you don't throw caution to the wind with someone like that, not in a completely meaningless game in late September.

Soria has never pitched with just one day of rest after throwing 40 or more pitches in his three-year major league career. For that matter, he'd only thrown 40+ pitches once before, on September 1st, earning a 2-inning Save against the Oakland A's, but then did not pitch again until the 5th. He has thrown 35+ pitches and some back on only one day of rest a few times in his career, and with some success, but there's a big difference between 35 pitches and 46 of them, I would imagine.

So you can't blame Hillman for keeping him out of the game, especially if Soria himself said that he was still a little sore. But that doesn't mean we can't ask the question of why it was necessary for him to throw 46 pitches two days ago in the first place.

In that game, Greinke had allowed one run on seven hits and two walks while striking out eight in seven innings of work. At that point, he had thrown just 97 pitches, and had fanned Denard Span and Orlando Cabrera, neither of whom is especially prone to strike out, to finish the 7th.

Greinke has averaged 106 pitches per start this year, and that number would be higher if not for a couple of artificially shortened games. He's thrown 110+ pitches 13 times this year and had not thrown even 100 pitches in over two weeks, so his arm presumably could have handled another inning.

In any case, with a 4-1 lead in the eighth inning, Hillman could have called on Marte or Rosa or Dusty Hughes or Roman Colon or maybe even Farnsworth, though he had thrown a dozen pitches the night before and it says here that Farnsworth is lousy on short rest. But whether Hillman wanted to stick with Greinke or bring in one of those other guys to protect a three-run lead in the eighth is not the point.

The point is that the one thing he should not have done was to ask his best reliever to get six outs to protect a big lead in a meaningless game. Not because he couldn't do it. He could and most certainly did. But because it would most likely make him unavailable the next day, and perhaps the day after that. Which is exactly what happened.

Even if Hillman didn't expect Soria to need 46 pitches to get out of the game, he might have guessed that Soria would use at least 25 or 30, and that this would make him off-limits for the next day's game. As it happened, Soria wasn't exactly sharp, as he hadn't pitched in five days, and he allowed four hits and plunked a batter in those two innings, though he escaped without allowing a run.

And because Soria spent two innings protecting a three-run lead against the Twins, who have averaged just 1.42 runs per game in the 7th inning or later this season, he was unavailable to protect a one-run lead against the Yankees. The same Yankees who not only lead all of MLB in run scoring overall, and have the best home record in MLB, but who have averaged over two runs per game in the late innings this year, have come from behind like a jillion times already this season.

Nah, we won't need our closer against those guys.

Maybe things wouldn't have ended any differently. After all, it was mostly bad luck and some bad fielding that did the Royals in, and that could happen to anybody. OK, so Farnsworth somehow attracts this kind of bad karma more than other pitchers, but still. Soria might not have been any luckier.

But Soria is a much better pitcher than Farnsworth, and given the right circumstances, he likely would have retired the Yankees, especially the 3rd and 4th stringers, with little trouble. We'll never know, of course, because on Sunday Hillman inexplicably used his bullpen like it was the 7th game of the World Series.

Thanks for #102, Trey.

Kansas City's Royal Spectacle

Travis Nelson — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 10:24:00 -0400

Rob Neyer (mercifully back from vacation this week) mentioned today how the Kansas City Royals are seeing a significant increase in attendance this year, this despite fielding perhaps the worst team in the American League, and easily one of the worst three or four in major league baseball.

The reasons for this, as he says, are fairly obvious:

"So what's going on? It's not rocket science. The Royals are essentially playing in a new ballpark, and the people want to see it. The Nationals' attendance went up nearly 400,000 in their first season in Nationals Park; this season it's going to drop roughly 500,000. And roughly the same thing will happen to the Royals' attendance next season."

He's right of course. There was some hope in Kansas City in May, when the Royals still had a winning record and their ace was on the cover of Sports Illustrated, but that's all gone now. The Royals weren't good enough for long enough to really do anything to help the attendance, which usually takes most of a year to increase due to team quality.

So I'm not writing to argue with Rob, but to mention a few things I noticed when I got to attend a game at Kauffman Stadium in May. First of all, even if I hadn't known who was pitching that night, all I had to do was look around the ballpark.

Zach Greinke allowed a run in the first and was all but untouchable for the rest of the game. His complete game beat the Tigers (and their surprising ace, Edwin Jackson) easily, though he hasn't been nearly so untouchable since. He was 8-1 with a 0.84 ERA when that game ended, but he's gone just 3-6 with a 3.84 ERA in the mean time. And he still might be the best pitcher in baseball, overall.

As far as the ballpark, I can see why people would go. It was already a nice park, as I understand it, but it's truly an impressive sight now. The famous fountains in the outfield are now even broader and taller, and the already ridiculously large JumboTron in the outfield has been replaced with an even more ridiculously large High Definition version.

The advancement of technology is a wonderful thing, generally making life better for all who come in contact with it, with the noted exception of those on the receiving end of advances in military equipment.

Speaking of bombardment (see what I did there?) I think the scoreboard in center field is a bit too much.

For one thing, it's about the size of Pangea, but even worse than the size itself, is that because the new high definition capabilities allow the team to put more information on the screen, the people who run things feel compelled to use every last pixel of it.

Don't misunderstand me. I'm an engineer. A numbers guy. A details guy. I'm all for giving fans more than the standard AVG/HR/RBI and a picture of the batter. And while I don't exactly see the point in those random statistics they put up there before each at-bat, presumably to encourage the batter, who almost definitely does not take the time to read them, I don't really mind them either.

I once attended an Interleague game in Philadelphia against the Yankees and I laughed when Rico Brogna came to the plate and his blurb said, "Rico is fifth in the National League with 223 at-bats." He was supposed to be their cleanup hitter, but entered the game with a .256/.314/.404 line that suggested he hadn't been cleaning up much of anything.

I remarked how funny I thought it was when the best thing they could come up with to say about him amounted to, "Well, he sure goes up to the plate a lot!" and the snark had barely escaped my big mouth when Brogna uncorked on an Andy Pettitte pitch and hit a two-run homer high off the right field foul pole.

Anyway, at Kansas City they put EVERYTHING on the board at once:

A picture of the batter, usually trying to look menacing.
Some silly stat (see above).
His AVG/HR/RBI numbers (of course)
Totals for at-bats and Hits (which are now redundant), doubles, triples, and steals
His OBP, Slugging and OPS (yay!), which in subsequent at-bats are replaced by...
His career numbers for whatever particular situation he happens to find himself
His height, weight, and handedness both for hitting and throwing, even though these last two are obvious if you're actually watching the game
His birth date (OK...?)
His birthplace, apparently in case there are people who cheer more loudly for those born in Petosky, Michigan than say, Los Angeles or Puerto Rico. Later in the game, these last three get replaced by...
His record for each previous at-bat
The hitting team's lineup, including their batting averages, positions, and uniform numbers
The name and number of the pitcher
The pitch speed
The defensive alignment
The three batters due up for the other team, with their AVG/HR/RBI numbers
The line score, including runners left on base
The last hitter's accomplishment(s)
The ball/strike/outs count
and last but not least, the official game time.

This is, obviously, fairly overwhelming. And in the case above, apparently the 69 (I counted) different numbers and stats they already had on the board were not sufficiently overwhelming for the Royals' tastes.

In an effort to either impress the masses or perhaps to confuse and scare the opposition, they for some reason decided that Jose Guillen needed MORE numbers on the screen with him, so they stuck a "6540132" in the graphic behind him.

Does anybody have any idea what this is? Is it Guillen's phone number? If, so what's the area code? Should we use his OBP for that? What if he goes into a slump? Wait, never mind. Technically that's impossible for Guillen.

Maybe that's how much they still owed him from his 2009 salary? His height in millimeters? His weight in dynes? Maybe it's supposed to look like a prison number, and they're trying to scare the Tigers' pitchers into letting him hit, lest they should get shivved by inmate No. 6540132. If so, it worked, as Guillen went 2-for-4 with a homer.

Anyway, other than the inmate numbers, many of these things also appear somewhere in most ballparks, but almost nobody else has a scoreboard big enough to handle all of it at the same time.

The one in the New Yankee Stadium might do it, but I haven't been there yet, so I can't attest to how well they use theirs. But subtle is not the Yankees' style, so I'm guessing that theirs is even worse.

Regardless, the profusion of information on the socreboard in KC is clearly too much. For one thing, you can't possibly take in all of that before each at-bat, and you shouldn't want to.

Going to a baseball game is supposed to be about watching the athletic competition and smelling the grass and the dirt and the hot dogs and peanuts and cheering on your team, not constantly having your eyes drawn back to the scoreboard, even if you don't care what Jose Guillen's career numbers are against right-handed pitchers on Tuesday nights with runners on second and third.

Another problem with it is that if there's some kind of technical glitch, all you get is a huge, blue Royals logo. And that bright blue light coming off the enormous screen casts a pallor over everyone and everything in the park, so that the fans in the seats all look like they're extras in a Tim Burton movie.

A screen like this would be great if it were just used for some of those things. Some of the relevant numbers, a picture, the score...that's all fine. You could show replays of significant events of the game, and perhaps even replays of controversial ones. Major League Baseball specifically does not do this last thing because it would inevitably lead to rampant umpire lynchings.

But still, it would be nice to see, on a 200-foot HD screen, no less, exactly where that last pitch crossed the plate (if at all), or whether that ball was fair or foul, or if the runner was really tagged out. In theory, doing this should save umpires about as much grief as it would cause, but in reality it's more likely that umpires would just end up calling every close play for the home team to avoid the aformentioned lynchings. Hard to blame them.

So that's not going to happen any time soon. But whatever they do, they've got to find a way to make the screen a little less scary.

On the other hand, as bad as the Royals have been—they're 25-57 since their high-water mark of 18-11 on May 7—maybe the fans need to be distracted from what's happening on the field as much as possible.

Chad Gaudin? Seriously?

Travis Nelson — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 09:19:00 -0400

Golly, why didn't I think of that?

The Yankees have struggled to find an effective fifth starter all year. The top four pitchers in the rotation have all been reasonably healthy and effective, compiling a solid 38-20 record and a 3.99 ERA. CC, A.J., Pettitte and Joba have done their jobs. None of them is perfect, but they all do a solid job of giving the Yankees a chance to win, most of the time.

But the fifth spot in the rotation has been a disaster. Those pitchers have combined for a 5-8 record and an 8.20 ERA. They've averaged just 79 pitches and just over four innings per start, with only two Quality Starts in 21 outings.

Chien-Ming Wang should have filled that role. Lots of teams would love to have a #5 starter who twice won 19 games in a season, and not a decade ago, but just two seasons ago. But he was hurt and then lousy and then hurt again and then not quite as lousy but then even more hurt and eventually lost for the season.

Phil Hughes was attempted as an interim, and he had his struggles, but also had flashes of brilliance, including outings of six- and an eight-shutout innings in April and May.

And of course Hughes is supposed to become a starter over the long term, but he made the mistake of becoming a very good relief pitcher. Now Joe Girardi either lacks the creativity or the guts to risk making him a starter and presumably weaken the team at two positions.

On the other hand, how you could do worse than a starting "pitcher" with an 8.20 ERA is beyond me.

Oh, wait. Never mind.

In a pinch they tried Alfredo Aceves, but only for one start. He wasn't very good, and they didn't do that agian. Instead they gave the ball to Sergio Mitre, a one-time starter for the Cubs and Marlins who had not pitched in the majors since 2007, but who was mowing them down in the International League.

He was not very good either, but he wasn't completely awful, and they won the game, so they gave him another start. This time he was worse. Fewer innings, more earned runs, but again the Yankees won.

His third start, against the White Sox, was a three-inning, five-run affair that the Yankees lost, but this did not get him sent back to Scranton either. They gave him another start, and, true to form, he sucked, but the Yankees won anyway.

To date, Mitre has pitched more than five innings just once, has allowed 38 base runners and 15 earned runs in 18 innings, and by all rights should have used up whatever slack he had in his leash.

But the obvious answer—or so I thought—Phil Hughes, has not been groomed to replace him. Hughes hasn't thrown more than 40 pitches in any of his relief outings, and he usually doesn't throw more than 30, so Girardi is clearly still not intending to use Hughes as a starter.

It turns out that the obvious answer, according to the Yankee Brass, was Chad Gaudin.

I can't believe I didn't think of it before. I mean, here I was, thinking that maybe the answer was the 23-year-old hotshot with the 95 mph fastball, knee-buckling curve and perfect mechanics.

Or that maybe the answer was the AAA pitcher on our own who's being paid millions of dollars to make fools out of International League batters.

But never in a million years would I have guessed that the answer was a journeyman pitcher who can't keep his ERA under 5.00 despite pitching in the worst hitters' park in the majors.

Gaudin has been with the Padres this season, and the Yankees will make his sixth different organization in his seven-year major league career. Joel Sherman thinks he'll either replace Mitre in the rotation (yes, please!) or help to limit Joba Chamberlain's innings down the stretch (BOO!).

In either case, even if he posts an ERA of 6.27 (as baseball-reference.com's league and park adjustments suggest) he'll be better than the guys they've been throwing out there, if only nominally better.

I'm looking at Gaudin's record and I'm trying to find something good to say about him. The best I've come up with so far is, "He doesn't have that ridiculous goatee anymore," which is admittedly pretty pathetic.

Nothing in his numbers is even remotely as interesting as his facial hair used to be, and nothing is very encouraging either. He's your standard three-pitch guy—fastball, slider, change—none of which is very remarkable. His fastball averages about 90 mph, his change up 85, his slider 80, according to Fangraphs.com.

He's managed to strike out a batter per inning this season, but that's a rate well above his career mark and unlikely to continue, especially since he's moving to the much tougher AL East.

He's walked nearly five batters per nine innings this year, a little more than his usual rate, but has only allowed seven homers in 105 innings. Petco Park surely has helped with that, as only two of those seven were surrendered at home.

Other than the lack of homers, though, he's been horribly unlucky pitching in San Diego, allowing a .441 BABIP in 40 innings there, so perhaps that bad luck will even out in new York.

Even if it does, he's more likely to give up home runs in the New Yankee Stadium, so he's not likely to be much better than anyone else we've seen in that role this year, but perhaps he won't be any worse.

With that said, it may not matter much. If the Yankees use their off days wisely—and they have plenty of them over the last two months of the season—they'll only have seven more starts to give to Mitre/Gaudin/Whatever.

The difference between the kinds of performances they've gotten in this rotation spot and a replacement level starter is probably about negative one win over those remaining seven games.

Slotting in Phil Hughes as the No. 5 starter is probably worth one or two wins above replacement level, so that's a +3 difference, though a little of that may be lost in the bullpen.

This assumes that they use the off days to skip the 5th starter in the rotation, which is what you should do, instead of giving everybody an extra day off, which is what managers actually do most of the time.

The Yankees have enough offense to win some of those games anyway, and with the expanded rosters in September, will have some extra pitching, too, but they don't have a lot of room for error.

The Red Sox are 3.5 games back, but that's hardly an insurmountable lead, especially in early August. And two games behind them are the defending AL champion Tampa Bay Rays, who are far from dead.

Furthermore, the Red Sox will not continue to make the mistake of running John Smoltz out there every five days. He's made eight outings in a month and a half and, despite his two wins, has yet to pitch a Quality Start in any of them.

He had a couple of short outings in which he somehow allowed only one run, but usually it was something like five innings and five or six runs, and this despite having been given relatively easy assignments.

Before facing the Yankees last night, Smoltz had faced only one decent offensive team, the Texas Rangers, and had given up six runs in 5.2 innings against them.

His other six starts had come against the Orioles (three times), A's, and Royals, who are 11th, 12th and 14th in the AL in runs per game, and the Washington Nationals, who are a decent hitting team by NL standards, but would be ranked 4th from the bottom in the AL.

The best thing you could say about his 37 innings of work before last night's game against New York was that he had only walked five batters. This is like saying that one nice thing about the Ford Pinto is that even though they sold two million of them, they only killed 27 people. Of course, Smoltz walked four batters in 3.1 innings last night, so there goes that.

Anyway, the Red Sox are bound to send Smoltz to the bullpen. He's held opponents to a .228 batting average in the first two innings, but they've hit .397(!) after that. Clearly, he can still pitch, just not more than two innings at a time. The Red Sox are too smart not to realize this.

And when they do, and they give his starts to Michael Bowden or Junichi Tazawa or Tim Wakefield (when he comes off the DL), the Red Sox will be a better team. Not a lot better, but better.

Smoltz has been worth about a win below replacement in his eight starts, so assuming that he doesn't get any better for his last seven or eight starts, the difference between him and some replacement-level schmo is about one win.

But if the Red Sox make a move and the Yankees don't, or if the Yankees' move (Gaudin) doesn't work out and Boston's move does, then one win might be all it will take to wrest the division from the hands of the Evil Empire.

Ichiro's Cooperstown Chances Still Unclear

Travis Nelson — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 14:13:00 -0400

Sean Smith at the Hardball Times has a lengthy article about Ichiro Suzuki's chances of being voted into Cooperstown and/or the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame and he does some interesting analysis and makes a few interesting points, though I have a few problems with his conclusions and his paths to them.

He looks at Ichiro's value overall, not just his hitting stats, and compares his Wins Above Replacement (WAR) to those of other mid-range current and probable future Hall of Famers as well as (for reasons he does not explain) to Tony Oliva. He finds that for the eight full seasons that Ichiro has played stateside, his WAR value is comparable to (among others) the likes of Duke Snider, Richie Ashburn, Sosa, Reggie, Vlad, Manny Ramirez, and Clemente, who are all between 40 and 55 WAR. Ichiro has about 45.

That's fine, and instructive even, as it suggests to us that Ichiro's skills as a base-runner and defender help to offset his almost complete lack of power. Smith admits that defense and base-running are difficult to measure and acknowledges that there is some disagreement in the field about just how good Ichiro is in these areas (especially defense) but concludes after a brief survey that he's probably pretty darn good, and I generally concur.

The problems with this are twofold.

The first issue is that the baseball writers who get to vote for Hall of Famers wouldn't know a WAR if is walked right up to them on the street and sang Low Rider. In any given year, Ichiro may have been just as good as any number of Hall of Famers, but the writers don't know that, and most of them aren't going to bother to find out.

They look at batting average and hit totals and awards and what they remember from highlight reels and then they vote based on whatever their gut says they should vote. Here's hoping none of the writers eats some bad sushi the night he decides to fill out his ballot.

Of course this may be more of a help to Ichiro than a detriment. The BBWAA's affinity for shiny objects plays right into Ichiro's hands:

He has a gaudy .333 career batting average, which trails only Ted Williams, Tony Gwynn and Albert Pujols for players since World War II.
He's been an All-Star and won a Gold Glove every season he's been in the league.
He's never hit below .300, had fewer than 200 hits, 100 runs, or 30 steals in a season.
He's never missed more than five games in a season, and usually doesn't miss more than one or two.
He's led the American League in intentional walks three times, which is ironic when you consider that when he does get a hit, over 80% of the time, it's just a single anyway.
He's won two batting titles and may very well take home a third this year.
He has led the league in hits six times (including this year) and holds the all-time MLB record for hits in a season.
He's one of only two players in history to win the MVP and the Rookie of the Year awards in the same season.

These are all big pluses in the eyes of the voters, most of whom also voted for those awards, or who pay little attention to anything beyond the raw numbers.

The other, and more significant problem for Ichiro is that unlike Manny Ramirez and Dave Winfield and Duke and Ashburn and Reggie, those eight years constitute the whole of his major league career. Ichiro may have been just about as valuable from 2001-08 as Tony Gwynn was from 1984-91, but Gwynn had another 12 years in the majors and another 1,591 hits on top of what he did in those eight seasons, whereas Ichiro has only his charming smile.

So career longevity is a problem. Smith rightly mentions that Ichiro is still playing and showing little sign of slowing down, though that's always true right up until it's not. We we can easily see him playing five more years and collecting another 1,000 hits which would make him a shoe-in for Cooperstown, but everyone thought Dwight Gooden and Don Mattingly and Dale Murphy were sure-fire hall of famers when they were in their prime, too, and they never got there for one reason or another.

If Ichiro doesn't manage to keep playing, if he gets hurt in a year or two and finishes with something like 2,100 career hits and hardly any homers, suddenly he's a much less compelling Cooperstown candidate. And if he loses some of his speed as he ages and plays three or four more years as a .285 hitter with no power who gets caught stealing too often and can't run anything down in the outfield, well, then we've got a problem.

But Smith avoids that line of thinking almost entirely, and instead goes backwards, not forward, looking at Ichiro's career in Japan and trying to translate it to the U.S. major leagues. He figures that the baseball writers won't "punish" Ichiro for the fact that he was born in Japan, and plays the "woulda-coulda-shoulda" game to demonstrate that Ichiro would already be a first ballot hall of famer if he'd been born in Florida.

He concludes that Ichiro would have hit .338 over the course of seven seasons here, with similar power (or lack thereof) to what he has shown. This would add another 1,200+ hits to his total, bringing it up to almost 3,200 (and counting!), and all but end the debate about his merits as a hall of famer.

Smith's done the analysis looking at players moving each direction across the Pacific Ocean and presumably has very good reasons for using the numbers he does for those translations, but I think that simply cramming the numbers through a translation algorithm misses something of the human and historical element, and I'll explain why.

In 1994, Ichiro hit .385 for the Orix Blue Wave, with 41 doubles, 13 homers, 29 steals, and nearly as many walks as strikeouts. This, all at the age of 20. Smith has Ichiro hitting .363 for the Seattle mariners with six homers, using his standard translations. He even consoles us that we should not worry about him being so young, as the Mariners had given an everyday job as an outfielder to Ken Griffey Jr. when he was just 19, and to A-Rod a few years later when he was 20. Of course, he ignores the fact that the Mariners jerked Edgar Martinez around until he was 27, but we'll let that go.

Instead, we'll look at the rarity of the suggested accomplishment in itself. Anybody have any idea how rare it is for a 20-year old to hit .360 in the major leagues? Right. it's never happened. In fact, only two players in history age 20 or younger have even hit as much as .330 in a qualified major league season. Those are two very special cases, and neither was officially a rookie, as Ichiro would have been.

Ty Cobb hit .350 in 1907, but he already had a full season's worth of at-bats (over parts of two years) under his belt before that season started. Cobb was maybe the best hitter who ever lived, and the talent level he faced was not what it is now. The other was Alex Rodriguez in 1996, who had 65 games of major league experience before that campaign, also spanning parts of two seasons, and may have had some artificial help, like many in the major leagues did at the time. Anybody else who's come close to a batting average like that had a lot more seasoning in the majors than Ichiro would have in 1994, just two years after graduating high school.

The danger here is assuming that since the Japanese think of their leagues as "major" they must be, and that is clearly not the case. Players who are marginal or worse in the U.S. go to Japan and thrive. Alex Cora, Tuffy Rhodes, Greg Wells, Charlie Manuel - all bench players in the American major leagues who became stars in Japan.

Players who are superstars there, like Hideki Matsui, Kazuo Matsui, and Hideki Irabu, come here and find that they are merely good, if that. Some succeed for a while, though never as much as they did in Japan, and then flame out (like Hideo Nomo), or never really find a way to make it work here at all (like Kei Igawa). If Igawa is any kind of example, the Japanese majors must be somewhere around the level of AAA or maybe a bit lower. I'm not saying that Ichiro could not have done well in the US in his early 20's, I'm just saying that he would not have hit .363.

With that said, it's worth noting that the baseball writers have made exceptions in the past for players who, for reasons beyond their control, did not debut in the major leagues until later in life. The most obvious example lies in the Negro Leagues, in which black stars played until the late 1940's. Those players who got a shot at the majors late in life, even if they had only half a career or less at the major league level, were still taken seriously and given some credit for what they did do, and presumably, what they could have done, if given a chance.

Jackie Robinson, for example, did not debut in the majors until he was 27, and played only 10 seasons. He was elected anyway, based on a combination of his major league accomplishments and his Negro League experience, though the records on those are sketchy at best. Satchel Paige was elected almost entirely on his reputation in the Negro League, as were several others.

This example isn't wholly useful, however, because the Negro Leagues (for the most part) also took place in the United States, and so the voters could legitimately include the accomplishments of Robinson and Paige and Monte Irvin in the Negro Leagues as they evaluated the players' records for the National baseball Hall of Fame, per the voting rules.

Ichiro's previous accomplishments took place not just in a different league, but in a different nation, and therefore should not be considered when evaluating the player's merits for the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Sean Smith's article then goes on to address what the Japanese voters might do for their own Hall of Fame, and concludes that Ichiro has a pretty good shot there, too. I won't get into that because frankly, I don't much care. It's their Hall of Fame, they can do what they want with it.

You see, it is, in fact the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, as in this nation, the United States, not Japan or the world, but the U.S. That's why Sadaharu Oh is not already in the Hall, and that's why the baseball writers will not (and technically cannot) give extra credit for Ichiro's exploits overseas.

But as I mentioned, they may nod need to do that anyway. If he keeps going at anything close to his current pace, he'll collect 3,000 hits sometime in his early 40's and nobody will have to wonder if the BBWAA will ever elect him. The only thing we'll have to wonder about then is whether he might have passed 4,256 if he'd been born here, and of course we'll never know that either.

Cleveland Indians Trade Ryan Garko To San Francisco Giants

Travis Nelson — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 11:29:00 -0400

Well, you can't say the Giants aren't trying.

Yesterday, as reigning Cy Young Award winner Tim Lincecum made perhaps the best start of his young career, the Giants front office was completing a trade for the Cleveland Indians' Ryan Garko, a 28-year old firstbaseman who bats right handed and has a 906 career OPS against left handed pitching (960 this year).

The trade allows the Tribe to give rejuvenated prospect Andy Marte a long look at first base for the rest of the year.

The Indians get 21-year old LHP Scott Barnes, who was ranked by Baseball America as the Giants' 9th best prospect this year. Nothing he's done since then has tarnished that reputation, as he's fanned 99 batters in 98 innings in High A ball this season, going 12-3 with a 2.85 ERA for San Jose.

Garko's eligible for arbitration after this year and is expected to be a part of the team in 2010, but then as Rob Neyer points out, so was A.J. Pierzynski. In talking up the trade, Giants GM Brian Sabean had this to say about Garko:

"Professional hitter, really punishes left-handed pitching. [The trade] complements what we're trying to do to develop Ishikawa. The timing was right. He can drive in a run. He can hit a three-run homer."

I know what Sabean's trying to say here, and though it's hitting below the belt a bit, I would just like to point out the following: Ryan Garko has hit a three run homer twice already this year. Travis Ishikawa has done it three times. So there.

"Professional Hitter" usually means "a firstbaseman who hits like a shortstop" (CF: Greg Colbrunn) but Garko's better than that. Baseball Reference says that the 750 OPS he posted in Cleveland last year (his worst in the majors) would have been more like 771 playing in San Francisco, and that's just a park factor and league run scoring adjustment, not a league quality adjustment.

If there were a way to factor that in, Garko might have posted something like an 800 ops, which isn't very good for a first baseman, but it's better than most of the "hitters" on the Giants' current roster. His current line of .285/.362/.464 would be more like .296/.373/.473 in SF, according to baseball reference's adjustments.

Since the Giants have 4th worst OPS in the majors against LHP, I can see where they feel like Garko can help. Unfortunately, they also have the 2nd worst OPS in the majors against right handed pitching, of which there is a great deal more, and Garko doesn't do much for them there.

Garko is a somewhat better hitter than Ishikawa, it seems, if only because he has more experience in the majors. But Ishikawa debuted in the majors two years before Garko did, landed a starting job two years before Garko did, and his season at AAA blows Garko's best out of the water.

Garko posted an 882 OPS in Buffalo in 2005, compared to Ishikawa's 1107 OPS in Fresno last year. Both players were 24 years old in those years, though it's worth noting that garko regressed the next year in AAA while Ishikawa is holding his own in the majors this year.

So over the long haul, Ishikawa is probably going to be the better player and the better value, as he's almost three years younger, apparently more talented, and significantly less expensive than Garko. But for now, the Giants get a platoon partner who can mash lefties and doesn't embarass himself against righties, while Ishikawa...well...he gets the shaft. For now.

Regarding the pitching prospect the Giants sent to Cleveland, Sabean said,

The pitcher we gave up is probably going to pitch in the big leagues. I think it was good for both clubs.

Again, not to pick nits, but lots of guys have "pitched in the big leagues". He means that they expect Barnes to have some success in the majors, but of course his sentence would still be true if they thought it would take ten years for Barnes to make it to the Show and that he would immediately wash out.

Barnes was picked in the 8th round of last year's amatuer draft after spending three years pitching for St. Johns in New York. Against the Big East competition, he went a combined 17-7 with a 3.39 ERA and 263 strikeouts in 250 innings.

He also walked quite a few batters, 114 of them, but almost never allowed a homer -only about one every 25 innings - no small feat in a league with aluminum bats, which kept his ERA down.

The Giants took it easy with him, giving him a couple of relief outings in Rookie ball Class A Short Season before sending him to the Sally League (single A) for the rest of the year. He compiled a 2.06 ERA and 63 strikeouts in 44 innings of work at the three levels.

This year he's been nearly as good at High-A San Jose, and even more encouraging is the fact that he's cut his walk rate down from over 4/9IP in college to just a shade under 2.5/9IP in High A.

Sounds like a pretty good prospect, right? I couldn't figure why the Giants would give up a prospect as good as Barnes for Ryan Garko. But then a scouting report I read said that he only throws in the high 80's, and guys like that, even lefties, take a long time to learn to pitch in the majors, if they ever do at all, so that kind of explains it. Right?

Wrong. Two other scouting reports suggest that he throws consistently in the low 90's, with improved mechanics, that he's developing his curve and has a change up that's already near MLB quality. So what gives?

I don't know. I'd like to look at the fact that Sabean once traded next to nothing for the likes of Ellis Burks, Robb Nen, Jeff Kent, Jason Schmidt and Livan Hernandez (when they were good) and think that he knows what he's doing, but I have my doubts.

Sabean was also on the losing end of the White Flag Trade in 1997, gave up Joe Nathan, Francisco Liriano and a No. 1 draft pick for one year of A.J. Pierzynski, spent big money on Barry Zito, and seemingly has a soft spot for aging veteran free agents. Some of those work out (Moises Alou) but most do not (Edgar Renteria, Dustin Hermanson, Brett Tomko).

Sabean finally seemed to have figured that out and started developing his own players in the last few years, but then he goes and does something like this, and it makes me wonder. If Garko hits well and the Giants get into the playoffs, nobody will mind if Scott Barnes turns out to be a pretty good major league pitcher a couple of years from now.

The Giants are one game behind the Rockies in the NL Wild Card race, and almost half (26 of 63) of their remaining games will be against Colorado, Los Angeles, Philadelphia or Chicago, the best teams in the Senior Circuit, so they've got their work cut out for them.

Garko might only be worth one or two wins more than Ishikawa over the rest of the season, but that just might make a difference in a race this close.

Free Phil Hughes!

Travis Nelson — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 10:42:00 -0400

I detailed a few weeks ago, when Chien Ming Wang went back on the DL, how I thought that Joe Girardi had dropped the ball with regard to managing his bullpen.

I explained how I thought Girardi could have used Phil Hughes more liberally, for longer outings, to keep him closer to being ready for a job as a starting pitcher, should the need arise.

At the time, Alfredo Aceves was being called upon as a spot starter, though without any intention of him being the long-term solution. Aceves gave up four runs (three earned) in 3.1 innings and promptly returned to the bullpen. The Yankees won that game, as they seemingly always do against Minnesota, so nobody got too bent out of shape about the poor start.

The next time the Yankees needed a No. 5 starter, they called upon AAA re-tread Sergio Mitre, who's 28 years old and whose last good season was, well, never.

He spent four years bouncing up and down from AAA to the majors with the Cubs and later the Marlins from 2003-2006, never pitching more than 60 innings and never posting an ERA below 5.37. His best year came in 2007 when he pitched 149 innings with a 4.65 ERA and went 5-8.

Hardly awe inspiring.

He then missed all of 2008 following Tommy John surgery and has pitched well in the minors this year but is nobody's idea of a long-term rotation solution for a team trying to win a World Series. Well, maybe his own, but nobody else's.

True to form, Mitre pitched 5.2 innings and gave up four runs (three earned), but he got the win, which of course is the point. It's possible that he's going to improve as he gets more experience, that he might even be a better pitcher than he was before the surgery, not that this is saying much.

But of course it's more likely that he'll continue to pitch five innings and give up four runs more often than not, which is not acceptable.

In the meantime, Girardi still hasn't figured out that the solution to his problem is right there, under his nose, in the Yankee bullpen: Phil Hughes.

Following Wang's return to the DL on July 6, Hughes was used for just 12 pitches on the 8th, 19 pitches on the 9th, and then 26 pitches on the 12th, just before the All-Star break. After the break, Hughes pitched two innings on July 17, throwing 40 pitches in relief of A.J. Burnett against the Tigers and getting the win.

At this point, Hughes seemed to be on track to become a starter again. He had increased his pitch count in each of his last four outings and was now up to a little less than half of what would be expected of him as a starter. But then Girardi inexplicably pulled back the reins.

Two days later, he brought Hughes into the 8th inning of a 2-1 game against Detroit and allowed him to retire the side before bringing in Mariano Rivera for the save, even though Mo had pitched two days in a row already.

That's OK for Rivera, who's certainly capable of that, but there's no reason that Mo has to get the save, is there? Other than tradition?

Hughes has been as good as Mariano Rivera or any other reliever in baseball for the past two months, having allowed only two runs in 22 innings of work, including 28 strikeouts and five walks. He was perfectly capable of saving that game for Joba Chamberlain.

Still, I can understand Girardi's thought process here a little. Joba had only one win at home this year, and he wanted to make sure he did everything by the book, lest the lead be blown and Joba take yet another hit in the press (and another shot to his ego) for not getting the job done at New Yankee Stadium.

On the 21st, when Mitre started and went less than six innings, Hughes would have been the logical choice to relieve had he not just pitched an inning two days earlier. With three days' rest in between his 40-pitch outing and this one, he might have been able to throw the last three innings and work his pitch count up to 50 or 60.

Instead, since Hughes had tossed an inning on the 19th, Girardi brought in Aceves, Coke and Mariano Rivera, who did their jobs admirably, I must admit.

But the usage of Hughes last night was truly inexplicable and inexcusable.

With the Yankees riding a five-game winning streak and staked to a four-run lead against the lowly Baltimore Orioles, Hughes came in to relieve Burnett yet again. A.J. had allowed only two runs in seven innings, but was over the 100-pitch mark and not likely to finish the game, so Hughes was the logical choice.

He made quick work of the Birds in the 8th, allowing only a single to Gregg Zaun (whose homepage is incongruously awesome, by the way) but promptly erasing said awesome backup catcher on a double play.

Nifty work—16 pitches—piece of cake, right? Four-run lead, non-save situation, so you leave him in, right?

Wrong. Apparently, if you're Joe Girardi, you send Hughes to the showers and you bring in Brian "Feast or Famine" Bruney, who entered the game with a 4.86 ERA for the season and who had allowed six earned runs in his last seven outings.

Bruney struck out the first two batters he faced, then allowed homers to the next two, suddenly making the four-run lead a two-run lead, and making the game a save situation, which necessitated bringing in Mariano Rivera to get the final out, which he did.

This, it seemed to me, was an obvious chance to continue grooming Hughes for a life as a starter. He could have pitched an extra inning, and even if he got into a little trouble, there was some wiggle room with a four-run lead and the best closer on the planet in the bullpen.

With the Yankees currently sitting in first place, there's no question that Girardi has a good team, probably good enough to make the postseason as they are. There's little question that he knows how to do in-game strategy. Heck, it isn't rocket science.

1) Use expensive and talented hitters to get a lead
2) Use inexpensive but talented relievers to protect lead
3) Use expensive and talented closer to finish game.

The trouble, of course, comes not with the in-game issues, as any eight-year-old could follow the above instructions to manage this team. The problem is that part of a manager's job is to keep winning all season, to keep his players playing well, and to manage their strengths and weaknesses.

Keeping Phil Hughes locked up in the Yankee bullpen, using him only for an inning at a time when he so clearly is capable of much more than that, suggests that Girardi can't do that second thing, and it will cost the Yankees in the long run.

Pittsburgh Pirates Re-Signing Jack Wilson and Freddy Sanchez? Not So Fast...

Travis Nelson — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 13:03:00 -0400

From the Iron City comes this bit of disturbing news:

The Pittsburgh Pirates aim to keep shortstop Jack Wilson and second baseman Freddy Sanchez.

With Major League Baseball's July 31 trade deadline looming, the middle infielders were approached recently by the Pirates about multi-year contract extensions, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Via ESPN.com, the story from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is that the Pirates are trying to re-sign its double-play combo, which is a particular challenge because neither player will reportedly agree to a deal unless he's sure that the other will, too.

It's only natural that the few fans left in Pittsburgh would be wondering about the Pirates, who have already traded away Nyjer Morgan, Sean Burnett, Eric Hinske and most notably Nate McLouth this year and Jason Bay, Xavier Nady and Damaso Marte last year, among others.

There was a lot of coverage of the frustration of the fans and especially the players, including Wilson himself, when the second trade was made last month, though Wilson later apologized for that.

As a fan, or even player, it's understandable why people might be put off by these moves. After all, these are the players you've been watching for years, in some cases, players you know, players who may have done good things in your favorite team's uniform, and from whom you always hoped for more.

Nate McLouth was an All-Star and won a Gold Glove! Bay was the Pirates' franchise player! Nady was hitting .330 at the time! Nyjer Morgan was...I dunno...decent!?

But being trades, you have to examine what the Bucs got in return for all their trouble. The Nady trade got them four prospects, including 20-year-old Jose Tabata, who could still be a very good player, a current member of their starting rotation in Ross Ohlendorf and a bullpen cog in Jeff Karstens.

The Jason Bay trade netted them third baseman Andy LaRoche, who's got a solid minor league record and is only 25, plus three other prospects.

Nate McLouth, who was overrated, about to get expensive and blocking top prospect Andrew McCutchen (who's been very good, by the way) got them three more prospects. And none of the guys traded away, other than Bay, is a star or is likely to become one. For that matter, even Bay hardly qualifies as a "star", but he's closer than the rest were.

This is a team that has not had a winning record since 1992, that has not finished higher than fourth place in its division in a decade, that has averaged 95 losses for the last three years and is again on a pace to finish last in the NL Central.

They do not need to be paying millions of dollars to guys like McLouth and Nady, who in their career years only improve the club by about four or five wins compared to a replacement level guy.

So what do they want with Wilson and Sanchez, who appear to be one or two win players, at best?

Jack Wilson is one of the better defensive shortstops in baseball, I'll give you that. John Dewan's +/- metric regularly rates him between 10 and 30 plays better than an average shortstop, and he's +20 this year in just over half a season.

But he's a below average hitter, even for a shortstop. The MLB average for shortstops this year is .266/.322/.383 while Wilson is hitting .270/.302/.402. The OPSs are almost exactly the same, and would suggest that Wilson is at least mediocre, until you take into account that OBP is more important than slugging percentage.

Recognize, too, that Wilson is already 31 years old, past his prime as a hitter, and likely only to plateau or decline from here on out.

The Pirates have him under contract for $7.4 million, making him the highest paid player on the team. They have an $8.4 million option for 2010 with a $600,000 buyout, which would seem to be the smart route, but GM Neal Huntington is talking about signing Wilson to a contract extension.

Unless that extension includes voiding the 2010 option and paying Wilson something like $2 million a year, I don't see how the Pirates benefit from any such deal.

Sanchez is sort of the anti-Wilson, as he's an above average hitter for a second baseman but a poor defender. The MLB average for second basemen this year is .270/.335/.413, for a .748 OPS. Sanchez is hitting .316/.356/.478, slightly but not incredibly above his career average. Depending on whose numbers you want to use, he's either dreadful or just bad.

His Zone Rating is 19th among MLB second basemen this year. Baseball Prospectus measures him as -1 FRAA this year, after a -6 mark last season. The Hardball Times ranks him eighth in RZR. Fangraphs ranks him 7th in UZR/150. Bill James Online has him as -6 plays, and -2 runs, i.e. below average, but not severely so.

His bat makes up for that, but because so much of his value as a hitter is tied up in his batting average, which tends to be a volatile commodity, if he slips to being a .285 hitter instead of a .315 hitter, suddenly he's below average overall.

Don't forget, too, that Sanchez is also in the plateau/decline phase of his career as a hitter, being only a week older than Wilson is. And given that much more of his value as a player is tied up in his hitting abilities, the erosion of those abilities will affect his value that much more significantly.

So these two guys, two players who are just slightly above average and likely to soon slip even from that modest pedestal, these are the guys that Neal Huntington is talking about locking up for years to come.

Or is he? The story out of the Pittsburgh newspaper is that they're trying to extend the two players, but when you look at the quotes attributed to Huntington, they don't necessarily imply what the Post Gazette reporter Dejan Kovacevic suggests.

"I think it [trading Wilson and/or Sanchez] would be less than an ideal situation. Jack, obviously, is playing great defense. Freddy is an All-Star on both sides of the ball. It would be tough to replace both, no question."

Well, that sure sounds like a guy who doesn't want to lose these players, right? But wait, there's more.

"But, as an organization, we can't be held hostage to fear of replacing. We like our ability to be creative. We feel like we could go out and find adequate replacements."

Adequate. Replacements.

Given that these two are just barely more than adequate as slightly above replacement level at their respective positions, his words seem particularly apt, don't you think? And then, Huntington said this:

"Obviously, the easiest thing would be to keep them here. If we can't do that and we get the right trade, it's something we have to do."

The easiest thing, but not necessarily the best, or even the thing they'll actually do. Sure, the easiest thing is to keep driving that car you already have instead of going to shop for another one. You know its quirks, it's a known commodity for a known cost.

Granted, it's not terribly comfortable and it's got some issues, like the smelly upholstery and the rusty gas tank, but it's mostly reliable.

Still, it's bound to break down one of these days, but car shopping is a pain in the butt, and you'd rather just deal with what you've got. It's easier that way. But in the back of your mind you know that eventually you're going to need another car, and it would be better to get some trade-in value (see what I did there?) for what you have before you run it into the ground.

Kovacevic goes on to say that both players may be willing to restructure the options on their current deals and even to take less money to stay together in Pittsburgh than they would get on the open market, and that this might help their chances of being given a contract extension.

I'll grant that Kovacevic was (presumably) there talking to Huntington in person, whereas I was not, and that perhaps therefore he has a better sense of the intent of Huntington's words than I do, just reading them off the Internet.

But it seems to me that a man smart enough to trade Nady and McLouth and Marte and bay at their peaks, or at least before they started to experience significant decline, is smart enough not to re-sign Wilson and/or Sanchez to some ridiculous contract.

Knowing that his team was going nowhere any time soon, he got value for other players via trade rather than either ponying up millions in arbitration dollars or losing them to free agency, and I fully expect that he'll do much the same thing with these two.

Neither is a star, but neither is an organizational millstone yet, either. They're both decent enough players to serve a useful role on a team vying for a playoff spot, but if these two guys are the best paid players on the roster, then something is horribly, horribly wrong.

Both could have value for a contender, like the Giants or the Angels, who are each contending for a playoff berth but have gotten next to nothing from their second basemen. Or the Red Sox, who just designated Julio Lugo for assignment, and cannot be expected to fend off the Yankees while running Nick Green out to shortstop everyday.

Nick. Green.

Think about that.

Maybe Kovacevic is right, and they're planning on keeping these guys around for years to come.

Or maybe, he's being played, and Huntington is just talking up the value of these two so he can get a little more for them in the trade he's been planning to pull off all along anyway.

Or maybe, just maybe, Huntington plans to sign each of them to a more modest deal, without a no-trade clause, and then flip them to some contender, who would be able to use them for a couple of years instead of just a couple of months.

Stranger things have happened.

Notes and Observations at the 2009 All-Star Break: National League

Travis Nelson — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 10:13:00 -0400

While the pause in official games for the mid-summer classic is not exactly the half-way point of the season (most teams have played 86-88 games) it's a convenient place to stop and take a look around, seeing what's happened up to now.

More important, it's also a good time to try to figure out what the first half means for the second half of the season, if anything at all.

Last year, the Philadelphia Phillies, Los Angeles Dodgers, Chicago Cubs, and Milwaukee Brewers made it to the postseason, and three of those four teams are in the thick of the pennant race once again.

Before the season, if you'd asked me which of the four would not be in the mix, I'd have guessed that it would be the Brewers, having lost CC Sabathia to the Yankees, would have slipped. The Brewers have slipped of course, but not as much as I expected.

Meanwhile, the Cubs have completely fallen apart. They went from winning 97 games last year to a mediocre 43-43 at the break, and the reasons are obvious. The pitching is almost exactly as good this year as last, but the hitting has fallen off a cliff. Last year the Cubs led the National League with 855 runs scored, while they rank second to last in runs this year. Carlos Zambrano, a pitcher who's had only 41 plate appearances, has more homers (three) than the entire team's second base corps (two), in 344 plate appearances.

In their place, the St. Louis Cardinals sit atop the NL Central, with a 2.5 game lead over the Brewers. They won 86 games last year, and though their offense has slipped a bit, the pitching has more than made up for it. Chris Carpenter, four years removed from his Cy Young season and two years from Tommy John surgery, is both healthy and effective, but Joel Piniero has to be the real surprise.

After both the Mariners and Red Sox gave up on him, the Cardinals gave him a chance in 2007, and the results have been mixed. Last year's performance, a 5.15 ERA in 148 innings, did not seem to suggest that he'd found whatever had made him a winner in Seattle once upon a time. But this year, he leads the National League in the fewest walks and fewest homers per nine innings, as well as complete games (three) and shutouts (two).

Oh, and losses (nine), but this is because he gets the sixth worst run support in the major leagues (among pitchers with at least 80 innings).

Albert Pujols is having perhaps the best season of his already amazing career, and he's practically carrying the offense. Ryan Ludwick, while still solid, has dropped off considerably from last year's performance. Rick Ankiel is hitting just .215 and has lost his job to rookie Colby Rasmus, who has held his own.

Troy Glaus, who drove in 99 runs last year, is injured and his replacements have been horrendous, combining to hit .214 with six homers. Cardinals' left fielders, mostly Chris Duncan, have been just as bad, but at least Glaus is expected back at the end of July. The team's last effort to improve at these positions, Mark Derosa, got hurt in the middle of his third game with the team and is done for the year.

The team may look to upgrade again, but more than likely they'll just wait for Glaus to return and try to hold onto their lead. The soft NL Central division seems winnable for this team, especially if Piniero keeps pitching like he has been. Nobody else appears poised to make a run at the Cardinals, though with five teams within five games of the division lead, anything could happen.

Another surprise this year has been the San Francisco Giants' ability to contend. Currently they, not the Cubs, Brewers, or New York Mets, lead the NL Wild Card race, with a 49-39 record. They're not likely to catch the Dodgers, who have the best record in MLB, but their pitching (both the starters and the relief corps) is the best in the league and has helped them to compensate for an offense that ranks near the bottom of the Senior Circuit.

Defending NL Cy Young Award winner Tim Lincecum leads the staff with 10 wins, 149 strikeouts and a 2.33 ERA, but Matt Cain is 10-2 as well, with a 2.38 ERA. Randy Johnson and Barry Zito are not what they once were, but each is capable of pitching a decent game. The Big Unit is 5-2 with a 3.18 ERA in his last nine starts and perhaps is poised for a big second half, now that all the hoopla surrounding his 300th career win is in the past.

Jonathan Sanchez just pitched a no-hitter, hinting perhaps that the lanky lefty may be turning a corner of sorts. His minor league numbers (333 strikeouts and only 12 homers allowed in 253 innings) suggest that he can be very good.

In the non-surprise category, Barry Zito, has been maddeningly inconsistent, pitching eight shutout inning in one game and following that up by allowing nine runs in four-plus innings in his very next outing. And this kind of thing has been going on all year. He was so bad in his first two starts in April that he got himself banished to the bullpen, though he never actually pitched in relief. He came back from that and pitched seven shutout innings to start off a nine-game stretch in which he posted a 2.91 ERA. But in the last month he's posted an ERA of 7.04 in 38 innings over seven starts.

Never mind all the money he's making. If the Giants are going to make it to the playoffs, they need to know which Zito is going to show up for the second half of the season, and so far nobody's been able to figure that out.

The offense, such as it is, ranks just fourth from the bottom of the NL, tied with Houston at 4.18 runs per game. Given that the Giants play in a pitcher-friendly park and the Astros play in a bandbox, they're probably a little better than they seem at first glance. Second base has been a black hole for the team, hitting just .238/.294/.314, though Juan Uribe is bringing those numbers up. Shortstop and left field haven't been much better, and as much as I like his name, Travis Ishikawa is a first baseman who hits like a shortstop.

The only players who have been above average for their positions are Aaron Rowand and Pablo Sandoval. the Giants bought high with Rowand, signing him to a big multi-year contract right after he hit 27 homers for the Phillies, and they've never really seen that form, though his .288/.348/.458 line is respectable enough for a center fielder. Of course, you expect to get more than "respectably" when you shell out ten million dollars for a player, but that's beside the point. Rowand is not the problem.

And neither is Sandoval.

Kung Fu Panda (aptly nicknamed for his *ahem* physique and for some in-game acrobatics last season) is hitting .333, a notch better than Albert Pujols, and with 15 homers to boot. Last year, he hit.350/.394/.578 combined at Single-A and Double-A and then hit .345 in a late-season cup of coffee with San Francisco.

He absolutely raked in spring training and basically hasn't stopped. His OPS is seventh in the NL right now, better than Lance Berkman, Adam Dunn, Carlos Beltran, Chipper Jones, and dozens of other household names making 20 times what Pandoval earns. He's the feel-good story of the Bay Area, and he was passed over for the All-Star game so that Charlie Manuel could take his favorite toy to the game with him. Ryan Howard, with his .257 batting average, will be one of five Phillies on the roster.

But that's one game. The Giants get Pandoval and his bat for the rest of the year, and if he can get some help, any help at all, the Giants will win the NL Wild Card easily. But if the pitching slips at all, and you would think it will have to slip a little, the Giants will have a tough time holding that lead.

On the bottom end of the National League standings are most of the usual suspects: the Pittsburgh Pirates, San Diego Padres, and especially the Washington Nationals.

This isn't exactly a surprise, but some people saw the acquisitions of Adam Dunn, Josh Willingham, and Scott Olsen, adding them to a core that included Nick Johnson, Ryan Zimmerman, and two high-upside talents like Lastings Millege and Elijah Dukes, and thought the Nationals might not be so terrible this year.

Some of those hitters have hit, but Dukes has not and Millege wore out his welcome and found himself sent off to Pittsburgh. And the terrible pitching and defense (they lead the majors in errors) have more than compensated for any quality the batters may display.

The Nats' bats have been decent enough, ranking eighth in the NL in runs per game, but the pitching has been atrocious. Washington has allowed an average of 5.62 runs per game, with an adjusted ERA 17 percent worse than the NL average. Only San Diego, who allows over five runs per game, despite playing half their games in the best pitchers' park in the majors, is worse, at 20 percent below average.

The Nationals have played better in the last few months, improving from "historically bad" to "god-awful" and are currently on a pace to lose 114 games. Their runs scored/against ratio suggests a 34-win team rather than a 26-win team, so they may improve over the second half, but they could do that and still lose 100-plus games. I hope they can afford another No. 1 draft pick next year after breaking the bank for Stephen Strasburg.

They just fired their manager, Manny Acta, and replaced him with Jim Riggleman, who's an experienced manager if not a good one. Acta's .385 career winning percentage in the majors is the 10th worst all-time amongst the 291 of them with at least two full seasons worth of games under their belts.

Interestingly, two of the nine guys with worse records than Acta also managed teams in Washington. Joe Cantillon went 158-297 from 1907-09 for the old Washington Senators and never managed again in the majors. Then starting in 1961 Mickey Vernon went 135-227 and was mercifully fired a third of the way into the 1963 season for the new Washington Senators. Of the bottom 25 managers on that list, only Vernon got a shorter leash than Acta, 363 games compared to 410.

Both of those Senators teams eventually left town for greener pastures (or in the case of the ones who went to Minnesota, greener carpet) and you have to wonder how long they can keep this kind of ineptitude going before these Washingtons have to leave town, too.

Joe Girardi's Mismanagement of the Yankees Bullpen

Travis Nelson — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 08:15:00 -0400

Just when I thought I knew what was wrong with Chien-Ming Wang, suddenly it no longer matters. Whether the problem before was is slider failing to slide or his sinker failing to sink, the real problem now is his anything doing anything, or rather the lack thereof.

Wang was put on the DL this past weekend after leaving a start early with tightness in his shoulder, which turned out to be a shoulder strain and bursitis, keeping him out for at least two weeks, maybe longer. The really bad news here, for those of you who may not know, is that Wang is no stranger to shoulder problems. According to Baseball Prospectus, he had, "...shoulder surgery in 2001, and recurring shoulder problems in 2003 and 2005." Here's hoping that this is not a recurrence of the same, but I'm fearing the worst.

Of course, even before Wang was hurt, he was lousy. Granted, his ERA had dropped by over 60 percent since coming off the DL (with a hip injury) in May, but when you can allow four runs in 5.1 innings of work and your ERA drops by almost half a run, well, I'd say you've been pretty awful.

But in spite of that, there was reason to be hopeful, as Wang had thrown more pitches and more innings, was getting "stretched out" and looking like he might be back to his normal self some time soon. And then the other cleat dropped.

So now the Yankees are left with a conundrum: Who starts Thursday?

The answer, it turns out, is a strange one: Alfredo Aceves.

Aceves has been a crucial part of the Yankees' bullpen this season, vulturing five wins and posting a 2.02 ERA in 40 innings of work, with impressive strike outs-to-waks ratio rates. Most recently, he pitched four innings of near-perfect ball against the Blue Jays, who would probably be a first place team id they played anywhere but here.

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That outing, however, was only 43 pitches, which is about as many as he's thrown in any outing in the last two months, though he's capable of more. In Triple-A in April he threw 80-plus pitches four times, topping out at 91. But he's thrown more than 50 pitches only once since getting called up in early May, and that was in his first game. Accordingly, the Yankees have set a 65-pitch count limit for him today, which, if we're lucky, will get the Yankees into the 4th inning.

This, of course, severely taxes the bullpen, which will inevitably be called upon to pitch at least four or five innings tonight, maybe more if Aceves gets knocked around. It makes you wonder why, when they put Wang on the DL last week, they called up Jonathan Albaladejo, a reliever (and one of the Spelling Bee All-Stars!) instead of another starter.

It's not as though they don't have any other starters at Triple-A. Take a look at the three-year record of this guy, for example:

 W   L   ERA   IP   H   HR  BB   SO
26  13  3.56  316  299  39  83  255

A solid winning record, decent hit, strikeout and walk rates, allows a homer only once per eight innings...not bad right? And consistency, too. His ERAs over the last three seasons: 3.69, 3.45, 3.65, all at Triple-A. So why isn't he getting the shot today? Is he hurt? Is he old? Has he been lousy of late?

Nope. It's worse than that: He's Kei Igawa.

Yep, he of the $26 million posting fee and $20 million contract, the Yankees' answer to Daisuke Matsuzaka, with a 2-4 record in MLB and a 6.66 ERA.

Igawa probably could be a decent No. 4 starter in the majors if they'd give him a chance, but his signing and subsequent career have been a public relations disaster. So much so, that the Yankees seem to feel it's better to leave him in the International League during what will probably turn out to be his best years, effectively paying nine million dollars a year for a player in Triple-A, than to bring him up. Why chance another meltdown, another four-inning, six-run outing, another chorus of boos and round of newspaper stories about what an awful idea it was to sign him? I don't agree with that, but the facts seem to speak for themselves.

Ian Kennedy is hurt. So is George Kontos. Josh Towers is 32 and his fastball wouldn't impress Jamie Moyer. Sergio Mitre has done well as a starter in Scranton and has some major league experience, but his major league record (10-23, 5.36) is fairly unimpressive. Jason Johnson is 35 and continues to be, well, Jason Johnson. Nobody else particularly stands out.

Except...

What about Phil Hughes? Shouldn't Hughes be the obvious choice to replace Wang in the rotation? He's supposed to be the Yankees' best prospect, their blue-chip young pitcher, the reason they didn't trade for Johan Santana two winters ago, right? So why is he still in the bullpen while a free agent they picked up from the Mexican League starts tonight?

Because Joe Girardi screwed up. That's why.

Hughes had started the year in Triple-A and did well enough to get called up at the end of April, when Wang went on the DL the first time. His results at the major league level were mixed, only lasting more than five innings twice in seven starts and compiling a 5.45 ERA. So, even though he'd been better of late, he was the logical choice to return to the bullpen when Wang returned from the DL.

At the time, most of us assumed that Hughes would pitch long relief, keeping himself ready for a potential return to the rotation in case Wang or another starter faltered. It's not like the Yankees' rotation is a bastion of health and consistency.

Joba Chamberlain was on the DL last August. A.J. Burnett has never pitched two consecutive, healthy seasons in his entire career. Andy Pettitte, despite being the very picture of health for the last four years, is 37-years-old and it wouldn't be such a surprise if he broke down. Wang was just on the DL a month ago and looked like he may have needed to be replaced at any minute.

Prudence and preparedness dictated that the Yankees needed to keep someone waiting in the wings like this in case of just such a scenario. You know the old saying: "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of not having to explain why an obscure nobody is starting instead of your best prospect." Or something like that.

It's not many teams that can afford to keep six or seven starting pitchers on its major league roster, but if you've got them, you've got to use them, and Girardi didn't.

Hughes' first outing wasn't for over a week after his last start, and when he was used, he came in to pitch the seventh inning of a game that Andy Pettitte was winning 4-3, got three outs on 11 pitches, and was gone. Phil Coke pitched the 8th and Mariano Rivera got the Save in the 9th. Hughes presumably could have been left in for at least one more inning, and Mo still could have gotten his Save.
Two days later he tossed 3.2 innings against the Red Sox after Wang was chased in the third. he threw 63 pitches and allowed two runs in a game the Yankees lost, but it was a good, long outing, keeping his stamina up.
His next outing, four days later, was only one inning, 21 pitches, mop-up duty in the 9th inning of a 15-0 game against the Mets. He could have been brought in to pitch the eighth, instead of David Robertson, and finish the game if Girardi had been thinking ahead more. Another missed opportunity.
Three days after that, Wang started and was taken out after five innings, having allowed three runs and throwing 91 pitches, so Hughes started the sixth and allowed only one hit and no runs in two innings of work, using only 24 pitches. Phil Coke and Aceves got the last six outs, but again, Hughes could have gone longer.
Three days later, another single inning of work, with just 11 pitches this time, finishing the 8th inning in a 2-1 loss to the Marlins in Florida. If the Yankees had scored another run or two, Hughes might have gotten to pitch longer, but then if there was a game to save, Mariano would likely have been called upon anyway.
Another three days pass. Another losing effort. Another mediocre start by Wang, who allowed three runs in five innings but was lifted for a pinch hitter having thrown only 62 pitches. Hughes started the 6th and pitched two perfect innings, throwing 27 pitches, but was relieved by Robertson (not a pinch hitter) in the eighth. Another missed opportunity.
Five days later Hughes pitched again, this time for only 1.1 innings, but it was in a clse game against the Mets at Citi Field, and he was brought in during a double swith and taken out of the game for a pinch hitter, so it's hard to argue with his usage there. Still, he threw only 16 pitches, further reducing his stamina.
Two days after that, perhaps the best example of Hughes' misuse occurred at home against Seattle. Joba Chamberlain left after 5.1 innings with the score tied at 3 and Phil Coke got the last two outs in the sixth. Hughes then retired the three batters he faced in the 7th on nine pitches and stood to pick up the Win when Alex Rodriguez hit a two-run jack in the bottom of the inning. For his effort, Hughes was rewarded with a trip to the showers, whereupon Brian Bruney was brought in, promptly blew the lead but held on long enough to get the win when the Yankees came back in the bottom of the 8th.
Three days later it was another short outing, two outs, 15 pitches in the 8th, and then getting out of the way for Mariano Rivera.
And the day after that, when Wang got hurt and left in the sixth, instead of bringing in Hughges in long relief, Girardi first used Robertson, then Bruney, then Hughes for only one inning (eight pitches?!) and then Mariano Rivera, this time in a tied game in the 9th inning.

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for using your closer wherever it seems most prudent instead of at some predetermined time just to pick up a Save. But Hughes had been as good a relief pitcher as anybody in baseball for the past month, including Mariano Rivera, his light workload notwithstanding, and the Yankees could have easily justified leaving him in there for the 9th.

As it happened, that game went to the 12th inning and the Yankees eventually won it, but they needed to rely on Phil Coke for two innings (only the third time in 39 appearances he was asked to get six outs) and Brett Tomko and his 5.19 ERA to do it, as Girardi had already burned through the rest of the bullpen. The better choice might have been to let Hughes pitch two or three innings, knowing that Wang was hurt and that they might need someone to take his spot in the rotation very soon.

Instead, due to regular work of only an inning or two at a time instead of periodic work of three or four innings, Hughes is now unprepared for the role of starting, the role he's been groomed for, the role he's expected to eventually fill. Girardi's justification for leaving him in the bullpen sounds remarkably like the justification once used for keeping Joba Chamberlain in the bullpen instead of the rotation, that he's

A) "not stretched out"

and

2) too important a part of the bullpen to put him back in the rotation.

The first of those, as we've already seen, is nobody's fault but Girardi's, and the second...well, the second just doesn't make any sense. Unless you don't think that Hughes can't be an effective starter, and Girardi certainly has never said that, why would you sacrifice the possibility of him giving you six or seven innings every 5th day so that he can give you one inning every two or three days?

In short, the Yankees are in a pickle here, and it's Girardi's fault. I realize that Girardi has more to think about than how best to keep Phil Hughes "stretched out", that he's got to try to win games, too, but it seems to me that the two goals don't have to be mutually exclusive.

Girardi could have used Hughes more liberally, letting him pitch two or three innings or more several times, allowing him to throw 40 or 50 pitches and then have three days off. This, in turn, would have freed up the rest of the bullpen, Coke and Bruney and Robertson and Aceves and others, making them more available for times when Joba or Wang or another starter failed to give them six or seven innings.

Hughes might not have been able to go eight innings, but he could have made the jump from 50 to 80 pitches without much trouble, and would have been poised to fill that role indefinitely, should the need arrive. As it is, now the Yankees' best starting pitching prospect is still going to be throwing 10-15 pitches at a time out of the bullpen instead of building up his stamina as a starter.

And Girardi has nobody to blame but himself for it.

Marc Rzepczynski and the Spelling Bee All-Star Team

Travis Nelson — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 13:42:00 -0400

What's "Rzepczynski" spelled backwards, if it isn't already?

The Blue Jays are starting a young lefty named Marc Rzepczynski today against the Tampa Bay Rays—one of many starters in the Jays' patchwork rotation this year. He's 23 and his career minor league stats to date (21-11, 2.76 ERA, 277 K's in 254 innings) suggest that he can become a solid major leaguer.

But that's not why I'm writing.

I'm writing about him because, boy, that name is a doozy, isn't it?

I mean, I for one am glad that we no longer live in a world where Aloys Szymanski feels compelled to change his name to "Al Simmons", or Joannes Pajkos feels that he won't be accepted without changing his name to Jack Quinn. But it sure makes for some messy lineup cards.

So, in honor of other guys who've succeeded in spite of the fact that their elementary school teachers probably couldn't spell their names correctly, I came up with the Spelling Bee All-Star Team.

Lineup

Catcher: Jarrod Saltalamacchia

Not a good hitter to begin with, ("Salt-al-MATCH-ee-a", I think) is having an even worse year than normal at the plate, but makes the list on the merits of his 14-letter last name.

Besides, Casper Asbjornson has been dead for almost 40 years.

First Base: Mark Teixeira

I was tempted to go with Doug Mientczwkyzch (Mint-KAY-vich), but Teixiera can actually hit and play defense, and isn't all but unemployed at the moment.

While his name's not that long, there's no apparent reason why it should be pronounced "Te-SHARE-a", so he gets the nod.

Second Base: Mark Grudzielanek

He would be the easy choice here if he weren't retired, but then who am I going to pick, Omar Quintanilla? He's a pinch hitter with a .565 OPS.

Grudz (about whom that sentence above was originally uttered, by Harry Caray) is the obvious choice. He can come out of retirement to play the All-Star game.

Heck, Magic Johnson did it once, right?

Third Base: Edwin Encarnacion

Granted, he's been both lousy and injured this year, but there really isn't any other third baseman in the majors right now whose name is all that tough to either spell or pronounce.

"En-car-NASS-ee-on" never struck me as a particularly tough name to pronounce, but people insist on saying "en-car-nation" or something like that, so Edwin gets a shot.

Shortstop: Troy Tulowitzki

Not a terribly challenging name, but remembering not to put a "t" in front of the "l" in his last name might be a challenge for some.

Nomar Garciaparra, whose first name actually is spelled backwards, would have been an obvious pick 10 years ago, but he hasn't been a shortstop in a long time.

Left Field: Wladimir Balentien

Can't hit his way out of a paper bag, but with that "L" crammed into the beginning of his first name and an "ie" (or is it "ei"?) in his last, we've unquestionably got our left fielder.

Center Field: Kosuke Fukudome

Japanese names tend not to be all that difficult to pronounce, since any consonant is always followed by a vowel.

But this guy's actually playing and hitting a bit, his name is a bit of a mouthful, and if you pronounce it wrong in mixed company, you're probably going to get slapped.

Thus, he makes the team.

Right Field: Bronson Sardinha

What?

Why do we have a player who hasn't played in the majors in almost two years on our team? A player who's not playing professionally anywhere this year? A player with a total of 10 MLB at-bats?

Or, for that matter, a player whose first and last names are not particularly difficult to spell or say? Why?

Because his middle name is almost 20 letters long: Kiheimahanaomauikeo

And that's all I have to say about that.

Starting Pitchers

Left-Handed Pitcher: Marc Rzepczynski

Pronounced...who knows?

Has lots of potential, which is to say he hasn't done anything yet. (Honorable mention: Mark Buehrle.)

Right-Handed Pitcher: Zack Greinke

Not a long or tough-to-pronounce name, but he disobeys the "i before e except after c" rule, so that's something.

It should be noted, however, that he obeys the "if you're the best pitcher in baseball, spell your name however you damn well please" rule, which was admittedly just instituted this year.

Honorable Mention: Justin Duchscherer

Pronounced "DUKE-shur," not "do-SHARE-er" or "Dutch-sher-er," was actually having a pretty good year, with a 2.54 ERA in 2008 before getting injured, and he hasn't pitched since.

Relief Pitcher

Jonathan Albaladejo

Pronounced "All-ball-a-DAY-ho" threw too many balls, all day-o, and got sent back to the minors for it, but he was recently recalled when Chien-Ming Wang's shoulder landed him on the disabled list.

Chris Jakubauskas

This 30-year old rookie was horrible as a starter (2-5, 6.64), but solid in 22 relief innings. Chris "JAK-u-boss-kus" is probably our closer.

Buster Olney's Questionable "Olnalysis" of Colorado Rockies' Huston Street

Travis Nelson — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 11:10:00 -0400

ESPN's Buster Olney writes, at the beginning of a 2,800-word "blog post", that Rockies closer Huston Street has experienced dramatic improvement due to the smallest of changes:

...Bob Apodaca, the Colorado pitching coach, approached him and told him he wanted to make a rather major alteration. "We'd like you to move to a different part of the [pitching] rubber," Apodaca said.

Street didn't buy it. Not then, anyway. But after a mediocre spring training, and after he allowed four runs in his first four relief appearances in the regular season, Street had an open mind. He shifted from the left side to the right side of the rubber, and after he had done it for a short time and saw what the change did for him, he couldn't even imagine moving back to the left. "I don't know why things work out the way that they do," Street mused Sunday, "but they do."

Since those first four outings, Street has excelled, posting a 2.33* ERA, converting saves in 15 of 16 chances. He is 8-for-8 this month as the Rockies have made their push back from deep in the NL West standings to over .500, capped by Street's picking up the save Sunday, closing out the Pirates.

*Editor's note: Actually it was 2.22. I'm just sayin'.

Articles like this one always make me laugh, about how changing from one side of the pitching rubber to the other made someone a better pitcher, or how an offseason training regimen, starting to jog everyday, or eating more granola (or something) made some former star a better player again. Usually, it's just normal statistical fluctuation, but of course, sportwriters can't write about that because

A) it's boring and

B) ZZZZZzzzzzzz......

So, they talk to the pitcher, who probably has never taken a statistics, physiology or physics class.

He explains to them, that this and that is the reason for his sudden success. This is much more interesting, or at least less sleep-inducing, than Chi-square distributions and bell curves and standard deviations and all that rot.

Anyway, by next week nobody will remember what he said or what Buster wrote because they'll have moved on.

Olney's explanation for the improvement is as follows:

When throwing on the left side of the rubber, Street could throw strikes against left-handed batters by running a fastball over the outside corner, no matter how flat it was—and the ball would have to travel a longer distance from his hand to the corner. But once Street was on the right-hand part of the rubber, it forced him to be more disciplined in his mechanics. He'd have to get on top of the ball properly to throw it for strikes to the outside corner to lefties, and inside to right-handers. If he didn't throw the ball correctly, it would drift off the plate.

"I've got more of the sinking action than the running action," Street said.

In case you're wondering, the difference in the distance to one side of the plate from one side of the pitching rubber or the other is, at most, about 0.4".

Four-tenths of one inch.

Or, as they say in France, "almost nothing."

It's a simple geometry problem, with a right triangle, 60.5 feet on one side and two feet (the width of the pitching rubber) on the other. The hypotenuse of that triangle is therefore 60.53 feet, or 60 feet, 6.4 inches. That 0.4" difference represents an increase of 0.7 percent compared to throwing from the other side of the rubber.

No wonder Street's been so fatigued!

He was really quite terrible in those first four games of the season, or at least in three of them. In mid-April, having pitched only four times in the team's first eight games, Street had an 0-1 record with one save and a 13.50 ERA.

Then, he supposedly made this change, and over the next four games he was...still pretty lousy.

He garnered no wins, losses, or saves, and only one hold to go with a 5.79 ERA in those games, though he struck out six and walked none in 4.2 innings.

The real improvement followed that. From April 26th to June 21st, he had 15 Saves, two wins and no losses, 27 K's and eight walks in 23.2 innings, to go with a sparkling 1.52 ERA.

The real improvement was not in the walks, as Olney's analysis (or shall we say, "Olnalysis"?) suggests it would be. In the first eight games of the season, Street issued only one walk in 7.1 innings. After that, Street's walk rate more than doubled, from 1.23 per nine innings to 3.08.

The real problem was that he allowed three homers and three doubles in those first seven innings and change, while in the 23.2 innings after that he allowed three extra base hits total (two homers and a double).

Technically, if he's getting more sink on the ball, this would be one result, and so maybe it is helping. But if so, it's because he's being more consistent with his mechanics, not because of which side of the rubber he stands on before he winds up to throw. He could have done this from either side of the rubber if he'd just been diligent about his mechanics.

Looking at this from the other perspective, if Street has to force himself to "get on top of the ball" more because he can't throw a strike to the outside corner otherwise, shouldn't he now be susceptible to having the ball run back over the middle of the plate when he's trying to throw inside to lefties? If he gets lazy or fatigued and doesn't get the proper sink on the ball, now he's susceptible to allowing doubles and homers, rather than walks.

Yet, just the opposite has happened, he's allowed fewer extra base hits, but more walks.

It still comes down to making sure his mechanics are maintained properly, which he can (theoretically) do from either side of the rubber. The real reason for his marked improvement, I think, is that the Rockies' level of competition has changed drastically from the first three weeks of the season.

Street faced the Dodgers and Phillies, ranked No. 1 and 2 in the National League in runs scored, in six of his first nine games, and his ERA took a beating for it.

Of the 24 games since, 12 have come against teams in the bottom half of the majors in run scoring. Among those, San Diego, Houston, and Seattle are three of the five worst teams in baseball at scoring runs.

To me, that makes a lot more sense than four-tenths of an inch difference causing Huston Street to finally get his mechanics straightened out, and this after having been pretty darned successful in the first 247 games of his major league career.

Olney closes that portion of the blog post this way:

Street cited something that Troy Tulowitzki said recently -- that the Rockies are beginning to expect good things to happen. "You don't know whether success creates that mentality, or whether that mentality creates success," Street said. "I think it's a little bit of both."

Look, pal, that's just plain lazy.

When I was in college, I spent a lot of time studying the Bible with friends from my InterVarsity Christian Fellowship group, using something they called the "inductive method" of study, which essentially seeks to determine what the original author meant to convey to his or her original audience.

In a group of 10 or 15 students or more, we would discuss one small section at a time, say, 10-15 verses of the Gospel of Mark, and inevitably, at least once per session, we would come to some kind of impasse.

One student would suggest that Mark was trying to say this, and another would suggest he was trying to say that, with both interpretations being mutually exclusive, of course. After a while, someone would suggest that, "Maybe it's a little bit of both!"

This happened so often and so consistently, that we coined a term for it: "The Relativistic Third Option." Sometimes, it might have been the best way to interpret something, as certain passages can be interpreted in several ways, none of which is inherently inconsistent with the rest of scripture.

But usually, we were just being lazy. It's often hard work to figure out which of two mutually exclusive options is the correct one, and in this world of post-modern ideas and tolerance and relativism, people are too often satisfied with wuss-out explanations like, "It's a little bit of both."

Either your "winning mentality" put you in a position to help make good things happen, or you got lucky, started to win, and then tried to think about what else you could do to help the team win more. There is no such thing as "a little bit of both" in this case.

Why doesn't anybody ever just say, "I don't have any idea"?

What's Wrong With Chien-Ming Wang?

Travis Nelson — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 09:32:00 -0400

On the heels of yet another loss to the hated Red Sox, and entering a crucial series with the hated Mets, the New York Yankees have some 'splainin to do.

Namely, they have a pretty tall order explaining the continued presence of one Chien-Ming Wang in their starting rotation, given that he seems, statistically at least, to be no closer to returning to the form that twice amassed 19 wins for them.

Those storied* times, the salad days of 2006 and 2007, seemed much farther than two years away as I watched Wang unravel yet again on Wednesday night against the Red Sox, allowing four runs, including six hits and three walks in less than three innings of work.

*Not steroid.

Believe it or not, that start actually constituted an improvement for him, lowering his ERA ever so slightly from 14.46 to 14.34. Oh goody.

Much of the talk about Wang has centered around his heavy, sinking fastball, and the idea that he somehow needs to either get his velocity back or his mechanics straightened out so this pitch can again be the grounder-inducing menace that so frustrated the American League in 2006 and 2007.

The trouble with this, however, is that he's got all his velocity back, averaging 91-92 MPH and often hitting 95 MPH on the radar gun with his four-seam fastball.

The problem isn't his fastball. It's the lack of anything else.

According to FanGraphs.com, between 2005 and 2008, Wang threw his fastballs (including the four-seam and the sinker) 76.5 percent of the time, with a velocity averaging between 91.8 and 93.1 MPH.

This year, while his velocity is just as good (91.7 MPH average), he's throwing one or the other of his fastballs 84.7 percent of the time, a significant difference from his usual modus operandi.

Moreover, most of the extra fastballs are coming at the expense of his slider. Previously, he threw the slider about 15 percent of the time on average, ranging from 12.9 percent in 2005 to 17.1 percent last season.

This year, he's used it only 11 percent of the time, meaning that there are about a half dozen pitches or more per start that used to be sliders but are now fastballs. And, of course, Wang has been getting tattooed all year, so we have to wonder if this is somehow related, right?

This in itself may not be significant, but it got me to wondering why Wang (or his catchers) would be so reluctant to use the slider this season, when he seemed to use it more often and with greater success in the past.

Looking at the MLB Gameday data for his last two starts and comparing them to a good start from last year gave me a possible answer:

The slider isn't, well, sliding.

Last year, Wang pitched a complete game, one-run, two-hitter against the Red Sox in April—no small accomplishment given that those Red Sox finished second in the AL in runs scored in 2008 and eventually won the Wild Card.

During that game, he threw 93 pitches, and according to MLB Gameday, 20 of them were sliders. In addition to the speed of each pitch at release, Gameday provides two measures of the pitch movement, "Break" and "Pitch F/X".

According to MLB.com, Break is

"a measurement of the greatest distance between the trajectory of the pitch at any point between the release point and the front of home plate, and the straight line path from the release point and the front of home plate."

That is, I think, the break is a measure of the difference between where the ball actually ends up and where the batter might think it would end up if gravity and/or spin were not factors.

By contrast, Pitch F/X,

"is the measurement of the distance between the location of the actual pitch thrown over the plate, and the calculated location of a ball thrown by the pitcher in the same way, with no spin..."

That leaves the method of that calculation as an open question, of course, but assuming that these guys have some idea what they're doing, this seems the more relevant number for our purposes.

The batter will assume that the pitch is going to "break" down, if only due to gravity. Even Daniel Bard's fastball, clocked between 98 and 100 MPH on Tuesday night, showed a "break" of three to five inches.

For the record, Wang's fastball/sinker seems largely unchanged, showing a break of 5-8" and a Pitch F/X of 10-14" in that complete game against the Red Sox last April. This year, in his most recent start, the fastball was just as fast, showed a typical break of 5-8" and a typical PFX of 10-13 inches.

But Wang's slider? Last year (in that particular game) its PFX averaged 4.05" (with a range of 2-7), but in his two most recent starts, it's averaged just 2.3 inches, almost half of what it once was, and often only zero or one inch.

No wonder Posada doesn't want to call for the slider. It isn't fooling anyone because it doesn't do anything, having almost the same trajectory as a pitch thrown without any spin at all, according to MLB Gameday and Pitch F/X.

For batters, this is a win-win situation. Either they swing at the occasional slider, which has hardly any spin on it, or they wait on the fastball, which is Wang's only other quality pitch.

The slider is a subtle pitch, so much so that Pitch F/X often has trouble distinguishing it from a cut-fastball and/or even a changeup. It's thrown with a sideways spin that causes it to drift laterally across the strike zone, in the opposite direction of the pitcher's throwing arm. Because it gets no horizontal assist from gravity, the slider doesn't break as much as a curveball does.

But, it does move enough to end up several inches from where you'd expect, either out on the end of the bat or in on your hands, depending on what kind of hitter you are. The best sliders in baseball (Carlos Marmol, Jonathan Papelbon, Francisco Rodriguez, Chad Billingsley) usually break only five to eight inches or so, though there are plenty of pitchers whose sliders sit in the four-inch range.

Two inches (and often one or none) simply isn't enough to fool major league hitters, who are so well trained that they make mid-swing adjustments in hundredths of a second, and are so strong that they can hit a ball out of the park while breaking the bat.

Whether this is a physical problem for Wang or not, I don't know, but I doubt it. Perhaps his foot still hurts and he's somehow favoring it, throwing the slider less often because it bothers him physically.

This is unlikely, as any difference in his delivery due to throwing the slider would be tantamount to "tipping" his pitches, and batters would have picked up on it long ago.

Perhaps he's still rusty, having missed some time due to the foot injury, and doesn't yet have the "feel" for the slider. This seems very likely to me, as pitchers often talk about how difficult it is to get a feel for their sinker, slider, or cutter, and how much practice this takes.

Having missed more than half of last year, and having thrown only about 21 innings so far this year in the majors, (plus 13 scoreless innings in AAA), Wang is a little behind on his usual regimen.

Maybe this means that with a bit more practice, he'll get that feel for the slider—and with it, his confidence in the pitch—very soon. This should enable him to keep hitters a bit more honest and not so frequently serve them the heater they already expect. I just wish the "practice" didn't have to come in Yankee Stadium and against the Mets.

Admittedly, I have not looked over all the available data. Wang has thrown hundreds of pitches this year and thousands in his career, and I simply don't have the time to examine every one, but this hopefully gives us an idea of where to look for answers the next time Wang takes the mound.

New York Yankees Need To Step It Up Against Boston Red Sox

Travis Nelson — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 08:19:00 -0400

Well, it's been a whole month, so I guess we were due to resume the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry.

As you'll no doubt recall, when last we met our heroes—or, at least the last time the Red Sox met them—they were a sad sack of a team, hovering about the .500 mark.

Xavier Nady, Brian Bruney and Alex Rodriguez were all on the Disabled List, and the ineffective Chien Ming Wang would soon join them, as would Jorge Posada.

To make things worse, none of their big name free agent acquisitions seemed to be panning out. Mark Teixeira was hovering around the Mendoza Line, while CC Sabathia and AJ Burnett both had ERAs around 5.00.

Additionally, the patchwork bullpen, put together mostly on the cheap from the Yankee farm system, had failed them miserably, allowing a composite ERA of almost 8.00 in their first five games against Boston, though they'd done mostly respectable work against the rest of the league.

That team lost all five of its early season contests against the Red Sox, with the starting pitching largely to blame, as they got only one Quality Start in those five games.

That performance—Andy Pettitte's six-inning, four-run (three earned) outing on April 26th—met those requirements in name only, and anyway the Yankees could do nothing with Justin Masterson that day.

The third inning of that game, when the Yankees had a 1-0 lead, marked the last time the Yankees have led the Red Sox in their season series, including last night's 7-0 loss.

The Sawx scored a run in the bottom of that inning and then three more in the fifth (including Jacoby Ellsbury's infamous steal of home plate) and have had no reason to look back since. Indeed, the Yankees have given them no reason to glance over their shoulder.

So, with the season series resuming Tuesday night, the Yankees had good reason to be in high spirits. They had Alex Rodriguez and Jorge Posada back, and Chien Ming Wang slated to start the second game of the series.

Mark Teixeira had found his stroke since A-Rod came off the DL, and several Yankees (Damon, Jeter, Cano, Cabrera) were hitting around .300, many of them with power. They sat atop the AL East, with the best record in the league coming into the game...

...and then they lost miserably.

A.J. Burnett, the big name pitcher who came up so very small against the the Yankees' biggest rival in April, managed to lower the bar for himself even more last night, allowing five runs (three earned) without escaping the third inning.

Granted, he's faced the toughest slate of hitters in MLB this year to date, but still, more is expected of a man who's earning more money than the gross domestic products of some small island nations.

Burnett's fastball was plenty fast, usually in the 95-96 mph range, but he seemed to have little idea (or interest) in where it would end up. Working quickly, as if to get it over with rather than to get batters out, Burnett threw 84 pitches—less than half of them for strikes—with his curve proving to be especially erratic.

He threw only five of 16 curveballs for strikes, and one of those was a single by Kevin Youkilis anyway.

With the curve clearly not working, the Red Sox could just sit on the fastball and wait for him to throw a rare strike. And when he did throw strikes, they were belt high, out over the plate, which is why the struggling David Ortiz was able to hit one of them 420 feet into the stands in center field, only his third homer of the season.

What's more, it seems from looking at the pitches on MLB Gameday that Burnett all but refused to pitch anyone inside, perhaps out of fear of another suspension for not actually hitting someone.

JD Drew's two-run double in the second inning, on an 0-2 pitch, was hit off a 96 mph fastball that was supposed to be inside (based on where Posada had set up behind the plate) but ended up on the outside corner. Nobody's fastball is good enough to leave it out there and expect to get batters out.

The relief, such as it was, did better but was hardly impressive. Neither Brett Tomko nor Jose Veras threw even half of their pitches for strikes, and though David Robertson was OK, and the group as a whole allowed only two more runs in over five innings of work, the Yankees' hitters couldn't touch Boston's pitching, getting only two hits off them all night.

Tonight Wang takes the hill against Tim Wakefield, who's 7-3 this year but is only 10-17 with a 5.03 ERA against the Yankees in his career, so the game is up for grabs. Wang, for his part, has been dreadful as a starter this year, 0-3 with a 23.62 ERA, but perhaps he's on the mend and can give the Yankees six solid innings for a change.

If not Phil Hughes will be available out of the bullpen, but by then it may be too late.

Even the Los Angeles Dodgers' Pitchers Can Improve

Travis Nelson — Fri, 29 May 2009 10:26:00 -0400

Rob Neyer commented yesterday on the Dodgers' pitching staff and their general manager's efforts to improve on the (apparently) un-improvable:

The Dodgers could cruise to 90 wins and the division title without making a single move the rest of the season. They're that good and the rest of the division is that bad. But right now they've got one ace (Billingsley), two guys who are pretty good (Kershaw and Wolf) and a bunch of guys you wouldn't want within six miles of a postseason start. Not the way they're pitching lately, anyway. (I still have high hopes for McDonald, and Kuroda was solid last year.)

This was in response to an L.A. Times piece about Ned Colletti looking for pitching. Neyer's probably right about the Dodgers' quality relative to the rest of their sad division, though I'm as sure as Rob.

For one thing, I'm not convinced that either the Padres' or Diamondbacks' hitters can't get their act together and make this an interesting race. Both teams have several guys who are woefully underperforming for no obvious reason, and some of them are bound to find their stroke and bounce back.

Neither am I convinced that Casey Blake, Juan Pierre and Orlando Hudson will continue to hit anything like what they've done so far. Granted, Rafael Furcal and, to a lesser degree, Russel Martin have been disappointing with the bats this year, but otherwise, the Dodgers are mostly flush with over-achievers. Yet again, the odds are not in their favor for that to continue.

But the most tenuous threads holding the Dodger fabric together weave through the pitching staff, especially the starters.

In particular, counting on Randy Wolf to continue to be healthy and/or good for the rest of the year is a fairly dubious enterprise. He hasn't pitched 200 innings in a season since 2003, and from 2004-07 he averaged just 94 innings and 17 starts, with a combined record of 24-18, 4.62 ERA.

He managed to toss 190 innings in 2008, though his ERA in Houston and San Diego (4.30 combined) was a lot closer to his career mark (4.20) than this year's performance to date.

The 2.84 ERA he's posted so far would be not only a run and a half below his career average (at age 32) but also almost half a run below his career best of 3.20, posted in 2002. Somehow that seems unlikely.

The reason for Wolf's unprecedented success is obvious. His BABIP this season is a ridiculously low .247, fully 50 points below the league average, and something over which Wolf has little if any control.

So he's bound to regress some, and probably soon. That will leave the Dodgers with ONE pretty good option (Billingsley) and a lot of question marks:

Two talented but erratic youngsters (Clayton Kershaw and John McDonald),
a decent but injured veteran (Hiroki Kuroda),
three 30-something re-treads (Eric Milton, Jeff Weaver and Wolf, when he falters),
and an organizational soldier pressed into everyday service (Eric Stults).

I don't blame Colletti for trying to improve his pitching staff. Smart general managers can look at a team that's winning and see how it could be even better or might need improvement down the line. Guys like the White Sox' Ken Williams don't recognize good fortune when they see it, leave the roster alone, and end up in third place instead of first.

Projecting the Next 300-Game Winner(s)

Travis Nelson — Fri, 22 May 2009 09:58:00 -0400

In light of the Big Unit's chase for his 300th win, Joe Posnaski recently wrote a column for Sports Illustrated with Bill James and just blogged his own piece on the nature (and unpredictability of) 300-game winners. Both pieces are great, full of well-written insights and clever commentary that most of us only dream of being able to produce. His point, in both cases, can be summed up in the one word that Joaquin Andujar gave us — Youneverknow.

More specifically, Posnaski says the one thing you can't know is whether a guy will win 300 games based on what he does in his 20s, and I have to agree with him there. We've seen too many guys who were just awesome in their 20s (Bert Blyleven, Jim Palmer, Robin Roberts) who didn't quite made it to 300, and others (Doc Gooden, Sandy Koufax, Dizzy Dean, Don Drysdale) who never got close.

Posnaski says you can tell better by what they do in their 30's, especially their late 30's, and illustrates the point with the careers of several pitchers who were great after their mid 30's:

So, it’s really impossible to predict. Randy Johnson only had 99 victories at age 31. Phil Niekro only had 97 victories at age 33. Gaylord Perry, Warren Spahn, Nolan Ryan, Early Wynn…these guys did not look like great bets for 300 when they reached their mid-30s. But they won a lot of games late in their careers. Niekro, as a knuckleballer, just kept going and going and going. Perry had a late career renaissance—he won 21 games as a 39-year-old and 47 more after that. Warren Spahn won 20 games or more seven times after he turned 35. Randy Johnson was probably at his very best from age 35 to 40. And so on.

He's got a point, but I disagree that Ryan, Perry, Spahn, and Wynn weren't good bets to make it to 300 by their mid-30s though. Each of them had about 200 wins by age 35, and all were above average workhorses, if not spectacular. That turns out to be a pretty good bet, actually.

If you look at the 17 pitchers (including Johnson) who've won 300+ games since 1900, 14 of them (82 percent) had about 200 wins (Perry had 198) and a park- and league-adjusted ERA (henceforth "ERA+") of 110 or better by the end of their age 35 seasons. The other three are Johnson and Niekro, two guys who had to take half a career to learn how to pitch, and the ironically named Early Wynn, who got his 300th and final win when he was 43.

Johnson had plenty of potential so he was bound to get his chances. Lefties who throw 100 mph don't grow on trees. But he also had so many control problems that he didn't have his first decent season until 1990, when he was already 26.

Neikro, a knuckleballer, did not make it to the majors until he was 25, and did not have a productive season until he was 28, again because of control problems, although obviously for different reasons.

Wynn was basically a better-than-average innings eater who lucked into playing for the Cleveland Indians in the '50s and later the Chicago White Sox, during their peaks. Good teams will get a lot of wins for a pitcher who provides a lot of innings.

These three are the exceptions, though—not the rules. You can certainly look at Wynn, Johnson, and Neikro and say, "Youneverknow", and that's true, but it doesn't give us any kind of hint at what we might know, down the line. For that, you have to look at correlations. What do the guys who win 300 games have in common, earlier in their careers, and how likely are guys like that to go on to win 300 games?

As I mentioned, excluding the guys who thrived in the late-1800s, there are 17 pitchers who have won or will win 300+ games. As of their mid 30s, i.e. after age 35, 14 of these had at least 195 Wins and an ERA+ at least 10 percent better than the league. Eighty two percent is a pretty high correlation, though it should be noted that 41 pitchers meet those requirements, and only 14 of those have made the 300 mark. Still, 14 out of 41 is 34 percent, better than one in three odds.

At the moment, Andy Pettitte is the only pitcher in baseball who meets these criteria, and giving him one in three odds to win 300 games sounds just about right to me, maybe a little too generous, given that he probably can't survive long if he loses any more off his fastball.

Pettitte had 201 wins after 2007, his age 35 season, and currently has 219 wins, though the trend is of course not in his favor there. But it's not out of the question for him to post four or five more 200-inning seasons with a roughly league average ERA, winning about 15 games per year, since the Yankees will always have good hitters.

The next step down would be Roys Halladay and Oswalt, plus Mark Buehrle, each of whom had or has at least 125 Wins and an ERA+ of 120 or better through (or in) their age 31 seasons. Tim Hudson also met those criteria, but his injury will hamper his chances severely. Johan Santana, only 30 and with 114 Wins already, will likely join them by the end of 2009, as will C.C. Sabathia, who needs only 4 wins to reach 125 and is only 28.

Eight of the 17 pitchers to win 300 games since 1900 met those criteria at one point, though so did 29 other pitchers who never got to 300. Eight in 40 is 5-to-1 odds, so there's a decent chance that one of the six (C.C., Buehrle, Hudson, Santana and the two Roys) will eventually make the 300 mark. None of them has better than a 20% chance, but as a group there's a good chance that one of them is the next 300-game winner. We just don't know which one, yet.

In short, while you certainly can't know in advance who's going to win 300 games, you can take some educated guesses. But these have to be based on how most of the guys who'd done it before did it, not based on how a minority of freaks managed to do it.

Sure, you can drive from New York to San Francisco via Canada or Mexico, if you want to, but most people just take I-80, and even though some of them break down in Utah, enough of them make it that we can at least say that this route is the most likely to work.

Why the Yankees Dominated the Minnesota Twins

Travis Nelson — Tue, 19 May 2009 08:22:00 -0400

The Yankees completed a four game home sweep of the Minnesota Twins last night, stretching their current winning streak to six games, four of which were won by only one run. This improves the Yankees' overall record to 21-17, bringing the team within 4.5 games of the Blue Jays for first place in the American League East division.

A brief look back at the four games:

Friday

Yankees 5, Twins 4: In a game started by two youngsters of whom much is expected, Phil Hughes and Felipe Liriano were both gone by the end of the sixth inning, leaving the game to be decided by the bullpens. Justin Morneau hit two homers and Derek Jeter and Joe Mauer each hit one, as did the scrappy Brett Gardner, his second in two days. This one was an inside-the-park job, though, more his game than the one he hit in Toronto the night before.

Down 4-1 in the sixth, the Yankees scored a run in the seventh, and then three more in the bottom of the ninth, the last two on a walk-off, bases-loaded, two-out single by Melky Cabrera, who's gone a long way toward redeeming himself from both his horrid 2008 season and my skepticism of his value to the team. Twins closer Joe Nathan took the loss, while the Yankees' best reliever never left the bullpen, which came in handy for...

Saturday

Yankees 6, Twins 4 (11 innings): Nick Blackburn and Joba Chamberlain started, and each pitched reasonably well, but again the bullpens would decide matters in the end. Morneau and Mauer each homered off Joba, and Mark Teixeira hit a three-run jack in the third, his eigth of the year and drove in his fourth run of the game with a game-tying single in the bottom of the eighth to make it 4-4.

Bucking standard closer procedure, manager Joe Girardi brought in a well rested Mariano Rivera in the tied ninth inning, and he threw two scoreless innings to keep the game going.

Without their own closer (who had thrown 27 pitches the night before, his fourth consecutive day of work) the Twins were forced to turn the ball over to journeyman lefty Craig Breslow, who walked Teixeira and then allowed a walk-off homer to Alex Rodriguez, his first hit in the new Yankee Stadium.

Sunday

Yankees 3, Twins 2: On the anniversary of David Wells' perfect game against the Twins in 1998, this game was appropriately a pitching duel that remained scoreless until the seventh inning.

Twins starter Kevin Slowey provided the best pitching line of the day, going 7.2 innings with eight strikeouts, no walks, and only two runs allowed. Yankees starter A.J. Burnett walked six and needed 123 pitches to get through 6.2 innings, again leaving the game in the bullpen's capable hands.

Alex Rodriguez hit another homer, a solo shot off Slowey in the seventh. A double and two sacrifices tied the game at 2-2. Jonathan Albaladejo pitched out of trouble in the seventh and then back into it in the eighth, whereupon journeyman batting practice pitcher Brett Tomko rose up from the ashes to get two outs with the bases loaded and preserve the tie.

Girardi brought in Rivera in the tied ninth inning again, and was not disappointed as he pitched a scoreless inning. Alfredo Aceves kept the Twins at bay in the top of the 10th, which allowed Johnny Damon's one-out solo homer in the bottom half of the inning, for the Yankees' third straight walk-off win.

Monday

Yankees 7, Twins 6: Andy Pettitte pitched 6.2 innings allowing 12 hits, one walk, and four earned runs in the only game of the series in which either starting pitcher got a decision. Twins starter Glen Perkins got only two outs and allowed six earned runs in the worst start of his career, and has not had a Quality Start since April 19th. On the plus side, R.A. Dickey provided 4.1 innings of scoreless relief as he continues his comeback as a knuckleballer.

Mark Teixiera homered from both sides of the plate and A-Rod smacked his third bomb in three games, back-to-back with Teixiera in the first. Michael Cuddyer and Denard Span each homered for the Twins, the latter coming in the 8th off Edwar Ramirez. He and Phil Coke made the game interesting in the late innings, allowing the Twins to come within a run before finally capping the game and the sweep with a grounder to second base.

Overall, the Yankees were not exactly dominant in the series, winning the four games by a total of five runs, three of them in their last at bat. But their starters were mostly solid, the offense scored just enough and the bullpen posted a 3.07 ERA in almost 15 innings of work.

Winning close games in your last at-bat is not a recipe for long-term success, however. The Yankees have actually been outscored over the season despite their winning record. Most of that is die to the 22-4 drubbing they received at the hands of the Tribe last month, but even removing that game puts them only slightly in the black.

Amazingly, the Yankees have dominated the Twins in this millenium, winning 40 out of 58 contests in the regular season, plus six of eight in the postseason, for an overall record of 46-20 since 2001. This is the second best winning percentage they have against any team in the AL in that span, behind only the dismal Kansas City Royals.

They do have higher winning percentages against some NL teams in Interleague play, though these are only in a handful of games. Oddly enough, the Yankees' worst winning percentage is against the Reds, to whom they have dropped four of six contests. Fortunately they only occasionaly play a series in the Cincinnati Reds schedule.

Regardless, the Yankees' continued success against the Twins is quite remarkable. You'd expect that the team with the best overall record in this century would do well against the lowly Royals, who have been the worst team of the 2000's, who have had only one winning record (83-79) in the last decade and a half. No surprise there.

But the Twins? They've got the seventh best record in all of baseball in that time, a .543 winning percentage in spite of their small payroll. They've had four playoff appearances in the last eight years, two Cy Young awards, an MVP award, a catcher who wins batting titles, a continuing influx of young pitching talent...so how are they so terrible against the Yankees?

At Yankee Stadium (either of them) it's even worse. At the Metrodome the Twins are actually somewhat respectable, with only a 13-16 record against the Yankees, but in New York?

The Yankees are 24-5 at home against the Twins since their last World Series victory, including a current stretch of eight in a row going back to July 2007. The Twins have not won a series against the Yankees in New York since 2001, and in one stretch went two whole seasons (2002-2003) without winning any games at all against the Yankees, losing 13 straight.

And there really isn't any explanation for it. The Yankees have generally been a better team than the Twins in the last eight seasons and change, but that much better? No, of course not. The Yankees tend to play better at home, just like most teams, but again, not that much better. Maybe it's just a combination of being slightly overmatched and slightly intimidated by the big crowds in New York.

Maybe it's the Yankees' propensity for hitting homers combined with the Twins' inability to prevent them. In the last eight years, the Yankees have never finished worse than fourth in the AL in home runs hit, while the Twins have only once finished better than eighth in the AL in homers allowed. Interestingly, they usually do much better than that in ERA, finishing no worse than seventh each of the last eight seasons, with an average of less than fifth.

But it seems they have kept the team ERA down mostly by avoiding walks, and therefore extra baserunners when they allow all those home runs. The Twins have finished in the first or second in fewest walks allowed each of the last eight years, with the exception of 2002, when they were third. The Yankees, however, generally have fairly patient hitters, having been in the top three in drawing walks seven of the last nine seasons, including 2009.

That puts a damper on the Twins' strategy perhaps, and lets the Yankees in the door. And so when the inevitable homers are allowed, the Yankees get more bang for their buck than most other teams do, since they tend to have more runners on base.

But it's really the homers that are killing the Twins. Indeed, the Twins have allowed 90 home runs to the Yankees in the 58 games they've played since 2001, a rate of 1.55 HR/game, slightly above the Yankees' overall rate of 1.34/game in the past eight years and change. Twins pitchers, accustomed to allowing about 1.1 homers per game, must find the Yankees quite a shock. Too bad for the Yankees they only get to play them a few times a year.

More Yankees Ticket Shenanigans

Travis Nelson — Mon, 18 May 2009 12:34:00 -0400

In these harsh economic times, I have to wonder why the Yankees think this view is worth $85 per ticket.

They call it the "Batter's Eye View" because the seats are in the Bleachers Cafe, above the batter's eye (i.e. the background against which the hitter at the plate sees the incoming pitches).

In the old Yankee Stadium, this was a large area of old bleachers that were painted flat black, but these days, there is a cafe with tinted glass windows in that spot, and the Yankees decided to charge people for the privilege of sitting in that cafe.

These are perhaps not unlike the rooftop seats across Waveland Avenue in Chicago, behind Wrigley Field. Except in that case, the Cubs found a way to make a profit off their neighbor's real estate, and so it's no longer possible to watch every game in the Chicago Cubs schedule for free anymore.

The Yankees did them one better, and just incorporated the restaurant (and the lousy view) into the ballpark.

The Yankees, like most of the rest of MLB, have been having some trouble selling tickets, with attendance down over 100,000 from last year's pace to date. They lowered prices on some of the most expensive tickets in the house, but those were so preposterously overpriced to begin with that even some of the new prices are still ridiculous.

Wow, two seats near the dugout for only $2,500? Yeah, I guess I don't need that used car after all.

But this may be the shadiest and most ridiculous ploy yet. An email I received from the Yankees today offered a special promotion on these seats in the cafe above and behind center field, which nominally cost $125 each. The seats in the sports bar just below this are $90 each.

No free food. No free drinks. Just seats. And these are about as far from the action as you can get without actually leaving the stadium.

By contrast, bleacher seats cost just $14 each, and have about the same view (unless you're stuck here).

That's right folks, for almost ten times the price of a bleacher seat, you get...shade—and air conditioning. But wait! Not ten times, not nine times, not even eight or seven times—but for a limited time only, thanks to MasterCard, you can get these seats, with their horrible view of almost everything except the center fielder's back, for just over SIX times the cost of a bleacher ticket (plus TicketMaster fees)! Yay!

The email promo offers you a $40 "discount" on the seats in the cafe for this week's games (i.e. Monday through Thursday nights), which brings them down to just over $90 per seat, with fees. All of these games start at 7:05 PM, so the shade probably isn't necessary. And, since it's supposed to be nice all week, the air conditioning probably isn't needed either.

The normal price for these seats is $125! Where else but Yankee Stadium would you be expected to shell out more than a hundred bucks for such a terrible view?

You know how department stores sometimes offer you "free" stuff to promote things, and to get you to spend money there? They'll offer, say, a watch or a pouch full of cosmetics "with a $50 value" if you spend $100.

Except the watch or the cosmetics can't actually be bought in their store or anyone else's. They're produced and packaged expressly for this promotion, so they can say it's got a value of anything they want, because you have no way to prove otherwise.

So you spend your $100.37 to get your watch "with a $50 value", but when you look at it more closely you realize that the watch is made in some sweatshop, has a cheap plastic strap, a cheap digital timepiece, and a cheap plastic fastener. And you're pretty sure you got one nicer than this from a bubble gum machine once.

Or the dollar store, you forget which.

Anyway, that's what this promo is like. If you go to the Yankees website and look at their seating and pricing page, they don't list a price for these seats. You have to check the special page for these tickets, because they're being discounted so much that their nominal value has little real meaning.

While you can buy these tickets at full price, I suspect that most of them get sold at a discount, sponsored by a different company each week, probably. They call the view "one of the most unique in the stadium" which of course is true of any seat in the stadium, strictly speaking.

Then, they jack up the price to unreasonable levels and give you a "discount" so you feel like you're getting a bargain.

On the other hand, the Cubs and the Rays offer similar seats in their parks, so maybe I'm just missing something here. Whatever it is, at those prices, I think I'll keep on missing it, thanks.

Too Early To Send Joba Chamberlain Back to the Bullpen

Travis Nelson — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 10:20:00 -0400

The Good News: Phil Hughes pitched well last night against the Tigers. He used 99 pitches to shut them out for six innings, allowing only two hits and two walks while fanning six.

The Bad News: People are starting to talk about putting Joba Chamberlain back in the bullpen.

The New York Daily News' John Harper makes some good points, but may be reaching a bit here:

"For now, at least, they seem firmly committed to keeping Chamberlain in the rotation. But part of the equation here is that he shows no signs of being a dominating starter."

Well, he was pretty dominant against the Royals two weeks ago, but admittedly he had a tough time with Cleveland and Boston, two of the better offensive teams in baseball. It seems to me that three starts are not much of a barometer for whether he's going to be dominant.

For example, Mike Pelfrey and Scott Baker are both young pitchers, struggling more than Chamberlain in their three 2009 starts. But they both pitched well in 2008, and nobody is talking about taking their starts away. Admittedly, neither of their teams has the potential glut of capable starting pitching the Yankees seem to have, but still, the analogy is worth considering.

One of the reasons Harper suggests changing Chamberlain's role is that he would be able to throw harder and emote more freely in short stints out of the bullpen, rather than having to pace himself as a starter does, and therefore be more effective.

Harper writes: "Since spring training the fastball velocity has been an issue, as he throws mostly around 92-93 mph now as opposed to 96-97 when he was relieving.

"And while his celebrations as a reliever may have been a bit over the top, he seemed fueled by the emotion and let-it-go fire he could pour into a one-inning stint, as opposed to pacing himself as a starter.

"The combination of lower velocity and a mostly placid demeanor have baseball people wondering what's wrong with Joba."

"There shouldn't be that kind of difference in velocity between starting and relieving," one AL scout said Monday. "When (Josh) Beckett is right, he's topping out at 96-97 from start to finish."

Well, not quite that high, and not all the time, but sure, let's say he's right about Beckett. So what?

Beckett has made exactly three regular season relief appearances in his Major League career, and those were six and seven years ago. We have no way to compare whether the four to five MPH drop from starting to relieving is appropriate or normal, at least not from Beckett. Maybe Beckett would be able to throw 102 mph if he only had to pitch one inning a night. Maybe 96 mph is "pacing himself" in Beckett's case, a scary thought indeed.

One of the few instances of a starting pitcher being used for short stints occurs at the All-Star Game. Though they usually work at more modest velocities, pitchers who know they'll only be throwing one inning tend to dial it up a bit more when they get called in to pitch. Brad Penny, who typically works in the 90-91 range, threw 95-96 when he started the 2006 All-Star Game, knowing that he wouldn't go more than two innings.

The fact of the matter is, anybody with any sense who discussed this issue last year knew that Chamberlain would likely not throw as hard as a starter, would not dominate the way he did out of the 'pen in 2007-08. Nobody compiles a 1.53 ERA and strikes out almost 12 batters per game as a starter, at least not for very long, not in this era. If you were expecting that, you were mistaken.

But Chamberlain can still be a good or even great starter, given the chance, without registering a "99" on the stadium gun every time he releases the pill. And perhaps if Pettitte and Sabathia and Burnett and Hughes and Wang are all pitching well, Chamberlain would be the logical choice to relieve, but at this point Wang is a question mark at best, and Hughes has made exactly one good start.

One.

Why would it be so bad to put Chamberlain back in the bullpen?

Rob Neyer answers that question: "I've always come down squarely on the side of Chamberlain starting, for the simple reason that a good starting pitcher is more valuable than a great relief pitcher. Or rather, that a great starting pitcher is more valuable than a great reliever, and there were (and still are, presumably) some observers who believe that Chamberlain can become a great starter."

Chamberlain doesn't even need to become a great starter, though obviously that is still the hope. Neyer said it right the first time: A good starter is more valuable than a great reliever.

Last year, Jamie Moyer, Gil Meche, Kyle Lohse, and Paul Maholm were all good, but not great starters. Each pitched around 200 innings with an ERA just under 4.00. Each had a VORP of about 40 (i.e., they were worth about 40 runs more than a replacement level starting pitcher over the same number of innings).

By comparison, the best relievers (Scott Downs, the Mexicutioner, Brad Ziegler, Joe Nathan) were all around 30. Mariano Rivera had a VORP of almost 35, but he's the exception to several rules, the one about the value of relief pitchers notwithstanding.

So, if Chamberlain is healthy enough to pitch close to 200 innings, and good enough to compile an ERA under 4.00, he'll be worth about 10 runs more than he would if he were to pitch only 70 innings with an ERA around 2.00. Got it?

Ten runs isn't an enormous amount, but it's probably about one win, and in what is shaping up to be a tightly contested AL East, one win might make all the difference. But, as Billy Mays says, wait, there's more.

You see, 70 innings with a 2.00-ish ERA is about the maximum that we can hope for from Chamberlain as a reliever. Sure, he could post a 1.50 ERA. He could pitch 80 or 90 innings. But the Yankees would either have to use him more often or for longer stints, and given their history of handling the kid with, well, kid gloves, that's not likely.

As a starter, however, Chamberlain could still thrive. It will be enough if he gives us 180 innings with a 3.75 ERA, but he could still find a groove and rack up 210 innings with a 2.99 ERA (his career mark as a starter), which would make him...

1) worth about 60 VORP; i.e., twice as valuable as a very good reliever, and

2) one of the best starters in MLB.

Putting him back in the bullpen effectively eliminates this possibility.

Are we really ready to throw Chamberlain's career under the bus after three starts in April? Give the man a chance to build up some stamina. Give him a chance to prove himself against some other teams. Give him a chance to throw more than 93 pitches.

He doesn't have to be great to be worthwhile as a starter. He just has to be good.

But he still might be great. Don't take that away from us.

San Franciso Giants Pitchers Soon to Return to Walking Ways

Travis Nelson — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 19:28:00 -0400

MLB.com's Chris Haft writes that the San Francisco Giants are issuing fewer walks this year, and their pitchers are therefore having more success at preventing runs.

Besides yielding five runs while finishing 4-1 with three shutout victories
on their recently completed homestand, the Giants issued just 10 walks. This went a long way toward limiting their season total through 14 games to 53.

That ranked only 10th in the National League entering Thursday, but it's a considerable improvement over last year, when San Francisco's 652 walks were third-most in the league. If pitching and defense were the chapter headings to the Giants' outline of success as the season began, reducing walks was a critical subcategory. Too many free passes would devalue the talent of their pitching staff.

"The more it's talked about, it actually makes it all worse," pitching coach Dave Righetti said. "But you know what? You have to face it. It's not going away."

The subject of walks may linger, but the walks themselves have been dwindling. In the past four games, Giants pitchers have walked one batter in three games and two batters in the other. Opponents worked for the few runs they mustered.

Is this really such a big deal?

The Giants did walk 652 batters last year, which was second most in the NL, not third, and their rate per nine innings of 4.067 just slightly edged out the Pirates at 4.06 per nine innings for worst in the NL. In the majors, only Baltimore walked more batters per game than the Giants in 2008.

This year, as Haft says, the walks are down.

To three-point-nine.

Right now they're 7th instead of 16th in the NL in walk rate, but the rate itself is not much better than it was last year, and frankly, it's still pretty early in the season. Matt Cain (career walk rate of 3.8/9IP) and Jonathan Sanchez (4.6) and Barry Zito (4.4 walks/9IP since joining the Giants) and Tim Lincecum (3.6) are still on the team, and are not likely to suddenly stop walking batters.

The one bright spot is that this year Randy Johnson takes the starts that last year were given to Kevin Correia and Brad Hennesey and Matt Palmer, who all walked quite a few batters last season. Johnson, though not the dominant ace he once was, only walked 44 in 184 innings last year, and can probably teach yougsters like Lincecum, Sanchez and Cain a thing or two about throwing strikes.

More likely, though, everyone will continue to pitch largely as they have always done, with perhaps a few slight improvements due to age and experience. Other personnel changes that may help, according to Haft:

The Giants don't want an excess of walks from their relievers, either. That's largely why they signed free agents Jeremy Affeldt and Bob Howry, who maintained excellent control in 2008, and gave chances to non-roster right-handers Brandon
Medders and Justin Miller. Medders issued five unintentional walks in 15 exhibition innings; Miller was even more precise, walking one in 12 1/3 spring innings.

Those four relievers have combined to walk 3.9 batters per nine innings, same as the team average, and as I mentioned, only marginally better than last year's staff.

And as for saving runs? Well, certainly they did OK in the last few games, though it should be noted that these were against the Diamondbacks, who finished 10th in the NL in Runs Scored last season, and the Padres, who finished dead last.

Most likely the Giants' pitchers experienced a brief respite from their usual complacency about free passes when faced with a couple of teams that both struggle to score runs anyway.

Just like all the hype about the homer binge at Yankee Stadium last week, it's still pretty early in the season, and any assessment about the nature of either a team or a building is generally pretty premature.

Articles like this get written all the time, especially early in the season. Six years go I wrote something calling Peter Gammons out when he wrote about how the 2003 Baltimore Orioles hitters were suddenly walking a lot more often than their 2002 selves had, describing a change in philosophy that supposedly the whole team had bought into.

The 2002 O's had walked only 452 times, second worst in the AL that year, and their team OBP of .309 was also second worst.

Well, in the end the 2003 Orioles actually walked less, only 431 times, and while they did improve two spote in the OBP ranking, it was because they got more hits, raising the team batting average from a dismal .246 up to a semi-respectable .268. But in the meantime, it looked like a good story to Gammons.

Baseball writers are always looking for a reason for a change or improvement, and are quick to lend credence to changes in approach and philosophy for any perceived improvement, especially if they happen to be the beat writer for a particular team.

But more often than not, these things are just flukes, and they are frequently magnified by the fact that so few games have been played, so the numbers can be more easily skewed.

And just like that, they can be skewed back. Over the next month, the Giants will be playing the DOdgers six times, the Mets three, the Rockies five times, and the Cubs twice, in addition to the Nationals and the Diamondbacks. Let's see if the walk rate improves any fiurther.

Analyzing the New Homer-Happy Ballpark

Travis Nelson — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 09:05:00 -0400

There is a new ballpark from which balls are flying out at a record pace. Home runs are jumping off the bats of both the home team and its opponents, much more so than in the team's road games, begging the question of whether this new park is going to play like Coors Field. Or at least, like Coors Field used to play.

I'm talking, of course, about Chase Field in Arizona.

Granted, it's not that new. But the Diamondbacks and their opponents have hit 23 homers in their nine home games, but only one homer in their three road games, to date. This gives Chase Field a Home Run Park Factor of 7.667 right now, meaning that it is more than six and a half times easier to hit a home run in Phoenix than it is in a neutral MLB park.

That number is asinine, and is obviously a result of the fact that the Diamondbacks have played only a handful of games this season. Chase Field has always been a hitter's park, as we know, but nothing has appreciably changed about it from the last several years. Since 2001, the home run park factor in Arizona has averaged about 1.07, meaning that it's about seven percent easier to homer there than at a neutral park. Seven percent, not seven hundred percent, mind you.

This year, the D-Backs have hosted the Rockies, the Dodgers and the Cardinals, three teams that can hit pretty well. The Dodgers were a little below average last year in run scoring, but they've largely revamped their lineup. At-bats that last year were mostly handled by an aging Jeff Kent and the three punchless musketeers of Angel Berroa, Blake Dewitt, and Juan Pierre are now largely taken by Orlando Hudson, Rafael Furcal, Casey Blake, and Manny Ramirez.

The Rockies and Cards were both in the top half of the NL in run-scoring last year, and in similar, though somewhat muted fashion, some of their offseason moves represent "addition by subtraction" as well. Willy Taveras, Cesar Izturis, and Adam Kennedy, are gone, and their replacements have helped to shore up the offenses of each team. Admittedly, there are some holes in this theory, as some of their hitters haven't really hit their stride and others are over-performing at the moment, but generally I think this makes sense.

Nevertheless, we can see why the Diamondbacks' pitchers have had a hard time at home. And similarly, we can see why the Arizonas have themselves hit so many homers at Chase Field, facing the likes of Aaron Cook, Glendon Rusch, Joel Piniero, and some inexperienced relievers. Their three road games, against a rebuilding Giants team in the pitcher-friendly AT&T Park, have helped to skew the sample.

No doubt, as the season plays out and the D-backs both face and provide better pitching, the homers will slow their torrid pace and we'll return to our regularly scheduled season of only moderately crazy home run rates, instead of the ridiculous ones we have now.

In a related story: The New Yankee Stadium.

There are probably a few sillier notions going around than the one that says the Yankees' new digs are a homer haven, but offhand, I can't think of any right now.

After this weekend's opening series against the Cleveland Indians, as you've no doubt heard by now, the New Yankee Stadium is being hailed as "Coors Field East." The Yankees have hit nine homers in their four home games, to go with the 11 hit by the Tribe. That's 20 bombs in just four games, and if you want to be thorough about it, you can add in the seven homers hit in the two exhibition games against the Cubs earlier this month.

At the pace suggested by these first four regular season games, you'd expect 405(!) homers to be hit over the course of the year, a ridiculous number. For comparison's sake, the most homers ever hit in a ballpark in one season is (I believe) 303, set by the Colorado Rockies in 1999, who hit 144 homers in their 81 home games, but also allowed 159.

At this rate, then, the Yankees' sea-level ballpark, with dimensions almost exactl y the same as their previous home, located literally right across the street from this one and facing in generally the same direction, would have to allow about 1/3 more homers than the homer-happiest ballpark in history at the peak of the steroid era. Which, as I said, is ridiculous.

There have been suggestions that while the official dimensions are the same, the walls themselves are a little bit closer in some areas, especially the right field short porch, though these differences make up less than ten feet in any one location, and usually more like four or five feet.

Similarly, the outfield walls are shorter in a few places, though not very much shorter, and anyway, if you watched Chien-Ming Wang and rookie Anthony Clagett (ahem...) pitch on Saturday, you'd know that few of these homers are just barely clearing the fences. Most are no-doubters, and so we're left to wonder what other forces are at play here.

The elevation and direction are the same. The dimensions are the same, mostly. One suggestion deals with the new, big scoreboards in centerfield, perhaps blocking the wind that used to keep some fly balls in the park, but this too is an insufficient explanation. The old park had a big scoreboard and billboards all the way across the outfield, more than 100 feet high probably, and so while the big, new video board might be bigger than the old one was, it should not make this much of a difference.

The problem in both cases (that is, Chase Field and new Yankee Stadium) is that so little of the season has been played. The Yankees have played just five percent of their 2009 home schedule. Drawing any conclusions from these four games, with no apparent reason for the high incidence of homers to be blamed on the ballpark, is foolishness at best, yellow journalism at worst.

Isn't it just possible that, say, the baseballs themselves are juicier or that the Yankees' pitching staff still has some kinks to work out? Or that, you know, it's a statistical fluke? It would be like assuming that all of the 2,900 miles of Interstate 80 are straight and flat and largely devoid of traffic after having driven only the portion that goes through the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.

I think I'll drive a bit further before making my decision, thanks.

UPDATE: In light of the fact that Accu-Weather has weighed in on this issue, and thinks it may be new wind patterns due to the slightly different profiles of the former and current stadia's grandstands, I decided to posit my own theory on how the wind and weather may be affecting the baseballs hit at the new Yankee Stadium.

Possible Old Yankee Stadium Wind:

Possible New Yankees Stadium Wind:

Hey, my approach is about as scientific as theirs is.

Carl Pavano Makes History Again, Sort of

Travis Nelson — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 15:32:00 -0400

Carl Pavano made his (not) much anticipated return to a major league mound this afternoon, toeing the rubber for the Cleveland Indians against the Texas Rangers in Arlington.

Pavano gave up nine runs, all earned, in only one inning of official work, striking out one and walking three. He allowed two homers, a double, three singles, and faced three batters in the second inning before being sent to the showers.

He left two runners on base, both of whom scored eventually, one on a sacrifice fly, the other on a fielder's choice.

This should be no real surprise, as Pavano has been neither healthy nor effective for half a decade, and his spring training stats (5.70 ERA in 23 IP) did not exactly inspire confidence. But still, an ERA of 81.00?

It's not often you see a pitcher give up at least nine runs without getting more than three outs. Since 1993, this has only happened 15 times, which is more than I would have guessed.

The last occurred in August 2008, when Brian Bannister let the Yankees have a 10-spot en route to a 15-6 drubbing.

An interesting point of note: Kansas City has doled out four of those 15 games, while nobody else has more than two (Arizona).

Bronson Arroyo also did it last year, in June, giving up 10 of the Blue Jays' 14 runs in an embarrassing loss. Such a game occurred only once in 2007, but it was perhaps the worst start in history: 11 earned runs, two outs by Houston's Jason Jennings against the Padres. Someone should have told him he wasn't pitching in Colorado anymore.

The most this has happened in a single year was the four times it occurred in 2006, twice due to the Royals' horrendous pitching. One of those, Mark Redman's nine-earned run, one out start against the Tigers in late September, might be even worse than Jennings', if we use ERA as the barometer. Redman's ERA for that game was (I kid you not...) 243.00!

Then it only happened about once per year, going back to 1993.

Interestingly, some of the pitchers who did this weren't really all that bad. Arroyo last year was already mentioned, but Orlando Hernandez did it in 2000, Tom Gordon in 1995, and Ben Rivera in 1993, each of whom won 12 games in the year this happened.

Though Rivera had an ERA over 5.00 for the year, and only won the games he did because he was pitching for the eventual NL champion Phillies.

Rookie Jason Simontacchi did it in 2002, when he won 11 games for the Cardinals. Ryan Madson did it in 2006, when he won 11 for the Phillies, though admittedly, he was much better in relief than starting that year, and hasn't started since. Redman also had 11 wins in the year he did it, albeit with an ERA of almost 6.00.

But before that? Wow, this almost never happened.

Before 1993, you have to go back to 1987, when Houston's Bob Knepper surrendered nine earned runs to the Cubs in just one official inning, during a season in which he led the NL with 17 losses.

Houston stuck with him, though, and he went 14-5 the next year, but then he went 7-12 for two teams the following year and was done. (Interestingly, Rick Sutcliffe gave up seven runs and six walks in five innings in that game, but got the win!)

The last one before that was in 1976, when journeyman Joe Decker of the Minnesota Twins gave up 10 runs to the Royals (remember when the Royals used to be able to score 10 runs?) in one of the last starts of his career.

He lasted about another month, and then disappeared from the majors for three years, before attempting a brief comeback with the recently formed Mariners in 1979.

And finally, lest you think that such things only happen to lousy pitchers, the first such start belonged to none other than Bob Gibson.

Excuse me: Hall-of-Famer Bob Gibson, in 1967.

This was a down year for him, only 13-7, 2.98 ERA in 175 IP, but still, nine runs in one inning? Actually, two thirds of an inning?

The Cardinals would eventually win the World Series that year, with Gobson finishing 22nd in the MVP voting, but that day the Giants had their way with him. I guess the wind was blowing out at Candlestick Park.

This really doesn't mean much, except that Pavano is likely on his way out, which we all knew anyway. Unfortunately for Cleveland, they're counting on him as their No. 3 starter.

In case you had any doubts about how the game has changed in the last decade and a half, think about how these out of control pitching performances used to happen about once every 10 or 12 years, and now they happen about once a year.

Good thing we got this year's out of the way quickly!

Predicting MLB Performance, Using Draft Signing Bonuses?

Travis Nelson — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 13:30:00 -0400

From an interview with Baseball Prospectus' Nate Silver in the Baltimore Sun's blogging branch (the bold emphasis is mine):

TD: I did want to ask you about [Orioles catching prospect Matt] Wieters, because PECOTA seems to have an almost unprecedented crush on him. I was wondering what you made of that?

Nate Silver: [...] The Double-A team Wieters was playing for, when you look at park effects and league difficulty, it was a really tough year for hitters in Double-A. And so that gets ratcheted up quite a bit.

The Eastern League was very competitive. He did about as well as any player can do down at that level. He's a big guy. That translates pretty well. And we look at the size of a guy's signing bonus because that has some predictive value.

The fact that he has a very big pedigree in college and that more often than not, guys who are drafted that high tend to pan out. That combination of things led to a really aggressive forecast where, if he played for a whole year at that level, he could be an MVP contender.

For the record, Wieters is projected to hit .311/.395/.546 with 31 homers and 100 RBI this year, despite the facts that he has only one year of pro experience and it's all been at Single and Double-A.

For reference, that's about as well as Kevin Youkilis or Mark Teixeira did last year, and is easily the most optimistic projection for a rookie player that Baseball Prospectus' PECOTA system has ever made.

I understand some of why PECOTA would suggest that a young player with so little pro experience would play at such a high level in his rookie year. After all, such a feat is not unprecedented.

Mike Piazza hit the cover off the ball at AA and AAA in 1992, and then easily won the NL Rookie of the Year in 1993 at age 24, hitting .318/35/112 for the Dodgers.

He was, it should be noted, a year older, and put up his gaudy minor league numbers at a higher level than Wieters did last year, but the analogy is there. Also, as Rob Neyer pointed out, Johnny Bench won an MVP award at age 22, though he did so after having already played a few seasons in the majors, not as a rookie.

Joe Torre, Yogi Berra, Carlton Fisk, Ted Simmons, Gary Carter and other catchers have hit very well at age 23 or so, but most of those had some seasoning in MLB before that.

And of course those were all before PECOTA. Back in the day, we used to have to rely on scouts and guesswork to figure out how well someone would perform, but today there is an array of different methods, all scientific in some form or another, to do this job.

Bill James, ZiPS, PECOTA, and a half dozen others all have some proprietary methods for guessing at how well players will do in the future, with varying degrees of success. Once in a while you get to peek inside a little, as when Baseball Prospectus introduced and explained PECOTA a decade ago.

For the most part, though, these systems remain hidden, and the specific formulae are always closely guarded secrets. But Silver let the cat out of the bag in this interview, and I can't believe nobody has yet picked up on it:

Signing bonuses??!?

I can understand using players with comparable stats, positions, body types, ages, etc., to try to figure out what someone might do, but signing bonuses? That essentially means that PECOTA is putting some semblance of trust in what the drafting teams think of their draftees' worth, right?

I'm not saying the teams don't know what they're doing, but there is an inherent danger in this approach. Talent and potential aren't the only thing to go into this process. Teams who have more money to spend can afford to give bigger signing bonuses.

The Yankees, for example, routinely give their picks more than "slot money" because, well, they're the Yankees. Or because they're trying to convince a player to sign with them instead of going to college, or playing another sport.

Similarly, Scott Boras' clients get more than anybody else because he's the best agent in the business.

Theoretically then, a Yankees' draftee who wanted to go to college and was affiliated with Scott Boras (such as Andrew Brackman) could easily get a bigger bonus than someone drafted 10-15 spots ahead of him. This despite the fact that he's presumably not as talented, and yet, somehow, PECOTA would increase his projection because of it.

How far down the draft order does this consideration go? Just the first round? The first two, or five? The whole draft? Probably not. And for how long is this a factor? Just with first-year players, or after a year or two of minor league experience?

In any case, most of the time, this is probably irrelevant. I doubt that PECOTA makes a distinction between a bonus of $220,000 and $250,000, or between $19,000 and $30,000, or whatever. But when you start getting into the millions, well, I have to wonder.

Wieters got $6 million from the Orioles, almost as much as 2005 No. 1 pick Justin Upton got from the Diamondbacks. These are Upton's PECOTA projections for 2007 and 2008 as well as the performances on which those were based and the actual performances in the following years, for comparison:

2006 Performance: .263/.343/.413 in 501 PA in Class A, at age 18

2007 PECOTA: .255/.318/.413 (12HR, 10 SB, 62 Runs and 53 RBI in 529 PA in MLB)

2007 Actual: .221/.283/.364 in 152 PA in MLB, after hitting .319/.410/.551 in 100+ games at High A and AA

Looks like PECOTA missed high and wide with this one. Upton was only 19 in 2007, but BP thought he would be just a hair below the average NL hitter that year (which was .266/.334/.423, according to Baseball-reference.com).

Instead, he hit more like the average NL pinch hitter (.228/.311/.358) which is to say, like a guy who does not deserve to play regularly.

What about the next year?

2007 Performance: .319/.410/.551 in 456 PA in A and AA, at age 19

2008 PECOTA: .271/.349/.471 (20 HR, 92 Runs, 78 RBIs, 18 SB in 642 PA in MLB)

2008 Actual: .250/.353/.463 (15 HR, 42 RBIs, 52 Runs, 1 SB in 417 PA in MLB, after 15 decent games in AAA)

PECOTA got pretty close to the mark here. Despite the 21-point gap in batting average and the lack of steals, Upton's actual OPS was within 0.004 of his projection, albeit in a lot less playing time, which is difficult to project.

So perhaps the signing bonus thing doesn't factor in once they've got a couple of years' experience to use for evaluation purposes.

Other 2007 draftees who got several million in signing bonuses either don't have a PECOTA projection for this year (Andrew Brackman) or have projections that seem pretty reasonable given what we have seen of them in the minors (Mike Moustakas, David Price, Josh Vitters).

I also checked Jeff Samardzija, the Cubs' pick in 2005 who got a record $7.25 million so that he would pitch instead of playing football. His projection for last year indicated that he would be terrible in the majors. He surprisingly was not, though their projection for him in 2008 says much the same (6.60 ERA).

I can't check everyone, of course, but my suspicion is that the signing bonus thing doesn't play a very big role. I'm just not sure I get why it should play any role at all.

Silver's explanation for using the signing bonus is that "it has some predictive value," but of course the players who get more money in the draft are the ones the teams think will be good major leaguers. There ought to be some correlation there.

This winds up as a self-fulfilling prophecy, where the the players who are expected to be good are given a lot of money, and then the players given a lot of money are expected to be good. Seems to me there must be a better way.

Fisking Fitzpatrick: Comparing the Phillies OF to the 1930 Athletics

Travis Nelson — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 10:14:00 -0400

Well, I tried to go "old school" with my Canterbury Tales style Phillies Preview, but Philadelphia Inquirer writer Frank Fitzpatrick went old school in a different way in his Sunday column. Fitzpatrick compares the current Phillies outfield of Jason Werth, Raul Ibanez and Shane Victorino to the outfield of the 1930 Athletics, consisting of Mule Haas, Bing Miller and Al Simmons.

He concluded that the Phillies can't match the A's for nicknames, though he admits that neither "Mule" nor "Bing" is as interesting as "The Flyin' Hawiian".

No, seriously, in terms of their abilities, he gives the "...1930 trio a big edge over the Phillies' outfield".

But before we reduce his arguments to rubble, let's ask the obvious question:

Why?

Why are we comparing a team that played 79 years ago, a different franchise, in a different league, in a different park in a different era, with the defending World Champs? Why not compare them to the 1967 Kansas City Athletics, or the 1955 Pirates or the 1884 St. Paul Apostles, for that matter?

It's because those A's were the last repeat World Series champions from Philadelphia, and of course the entire stock of Philly beat writers hopes that these Phillies can repeat as well.

Granted, it's a silly exercise. For one thing, why just compare the outfield? Why not the infield? Why not the starting pitchers or the bullpen or the benches? Besides differences in the leagues and the style of ball, the types of clubs are completely different as well.

The 2009 Phillies are stocked with several good, but not great players, some of whom had career years in 2008. At best, 20 years from now, we might be able to look back and call, say, Chase Utley or Cole Hamels a Hall-of-Famer, but that's a long stretch at this point. In reality, there probably isn't a single eventual Cooperstowner on either the 2008 or 2009 Phillies rosters.

By contrast, those 1930 A's had four of them: Al Simmons, Mickey Cochrane, Lefty Grove and Jimmie Foxx, not to mention a brief appearance by Eddie Collins. The first three were in their prime, in their mid-to-late 20's.

Jimmie Foxx was only 21 in 1929, but had been in the majors since age 17, and had an MVP-caliber campaign in his first full season of work. (The AL curiously did not dole out an MVP award in 1929, and neither league awarded any in 1930, though Simmons and Foxx would have certainly been in the running.)

Fitzpatrick starts out reasonably well:

As a result, anyone interested in comparing Simmons, Haas and Miller with their counterparts on the 2009 Phillies can do so only through the harsh prism of statistics.

But numbers don't reveal everything. They don't consider 1930's lively ball or 2009's menacing bullpens. They don't account for the rigors of train travel, the daunting glare of the 24/7 spotlight or the spitball and slider.

He then proceeds to base most of the rest of the article on anecdotal evidence and hearsay, all but ignoring any intelligent statistical analysis.

Quoting Dave Jordan, the head of the Philadelphia Historical Society:

"...the old A's outfield looks far, far better. Simmons does that all by himself, and Miller and Haas were very solid performers. Victorino may, in coming years, approach Miller. I don't think Werth can even be placed in a fair comparison with any of them."

Fitzpatrick and his sources are correct in saying that Raul Ibanez, the most accomplished of the three Phillies' outfielders, is no match for the best of the A's outfield, Hall of Famer Al Simmons. The Inquirer article cites Simmons' career batting average of .334, his hits and homer totals, but forgets to mention how significantly these were inflated by the era and the ballpark in which he played.

If you "neutralize" his stats, his career batting average drops to .312, still very good, but not quite so impressive on the face of it. Similarly, he loses about 15 homers and almost 200 RBI over the course of his career. If you neutralize both of their career stats lines, they actually come out quite a bit closer than you would think:

Simmons: .312/.356/.498, with 22 HR, 113 RBI & 93 Runs per 162 Games
Ibanez: .280/.340/.463, with 21 HR, 90 RBI & 78 Runs per 162 Games

That's still a big disparity, but not as big as you might think.

For comparing the other two, he then quotes someone named Bill Kashatus, who wrote a book about the 1929 Athletics:

"What I see in those numbers is that while the power stats are comparable for center and rightfielders, Haas and Miller had higher batting averages and were much more disciplined at the plate than Victorino and Werth, as evidenced by the difference in strikeouts."

Wait, so he's saying that these players from Shibe Park in the 1930's hit for higher batting averages and struck out less often? Well, then they must be better players, right?

Except that they're not.

For one thing, comparing strikeouts is just ridiculous. In 1929, the American League averaged 2.92 strikeouts per game, and then in 1930, it jumped up to an average of 3.32/game.

Last year, the National League averaged almost seven strikeouts per game. Baseball is played differently now. Everybody swings harder, pitchers throw harder, and the strike zone is half the size of what it was three quarters of a century ago.

For example, Jimmie Foxx led the American League in whiffs every year from 1929-31, and his total for three years (220) was only 10 percent more than Ryan Howard did all by himself last year (199), which didn't even lead the league. There is no good way to say that Werth or Victorino has less impressive bat control than two players from 1930.

Another big difference, of course, is the relative number of runs scored. In 1929, in a league that averaged 5.01 Runs/Game, Bing Miller created 103 runs, or as many as would normally be scored in 20.6 games. Mule Haas created 99 Runs, enough for 19.8 games.

In 1930, the American League averaged 5.41 Runs/Game. Miller, despite hitting .303 with 100 RBI, created only 88 Runs, enough for 16.2 games. Haas created only 74 runs, good for 13.7 games' worth. Simmons created 148 and 166 runs in those two seasons, good for 29.5 and 30.6 games in 1929 and 1930, respectively.

For comparison's sake, last year's outfield played in a league that averaged just 4.54 runs/game, and Ibanez played in the American League, which averaged 4.78 Runs per game. The 2008 Phillies outfield was not better than the 1930 Athletics' outfield but it's closer than you'd think:

       Simmons   Miller  Haas          Total 
1929     29.5    20.6    19.8           69.9 
1930     30.6    16.2    13.7           60.5 

       Burrell  Shane   Werth  (Ibanez)   Total (Tot w/ Ibanez)
2008    23.3     20.3    18.5   (22.6)    62.1 (61.4)

So, even though Simmons has a big edge on Burrell (or Ibanez), the edges for the other two outfielders are very slim, comparing 1929 to 2008, the first Championship year for each team.

And then both Miller (age 35 in 1930) and Haas (age 26) drop off notably the next year. Werth and Victorino are both in their late 20's, and should not see any significant drop off due to age, though Werth may have peaked last year, and in any case, his track record suggests that he's never more than a checked swing away from his next DL stint.

Ibanez, on the other hand, will be 37 this year, and will probably start to decline at any moment, but if the other two pick up his slack, there's no reason that these three can't provide about 60 games worth of runs for the 2009 Phillies, just as Haas, Simmons and Miller did for the 1930 Athletics.

Another comparison made in the article pertained to speed, with Kashatus saying,

"What always amazed me was that Haas in 12 full seasons in the majors totaled 12 stolen bases. With his speed, he could have stolen much more. Then again, the . . . A's weren't built to run. They were a power-hitting team."

This last part is true, though I find it amusing that a guy whose nickname was "Mule" was actually considered fast.

Technically, it's not clear whether he actually was very fast or whether he just had incredible instincts when it came to chasing fly balls in the outfield. Most of the literature talks about him being a great fly chaser, but little of it actually talks specifically about his speed. Similarly, Joe DiMaggio was widely regarded as one of the best in centerfield, but never stole more than six bases in a season.

The 1930 A's were second in the American League in homers, slugging and runs scored (all to the Yankees, of course), but only 7th in steals among eight teams. If you can score 951 runs without risking skinned knees and broken fingers, why bother, right?

These Phillies are different, though. In addition to all the homers (they led the Senior circuit with 214 of them last year) they also had the 3rd most steals (136) in the NL, and were 4th from last in getting caught.

Victorino stole 36 bases himself last year, 6th in the NL, and should probably be compared to Miller, not Haas, as Bing stole 24 bags in 1929, 3rd in the AL, and is the only one of the three with any propensity for swiping bases. He dropped off significantly in 1930, stealing only 13, but also getting caught 13 times.

Another quote from Kashatus:

"Both Werth and Miller are disciplined hitters, though. They both work counts well and can hit in the clutch. But Miller was more of a contact hitter who considered it a disgrace to take a called third strike."

Werth is, indeed, a very patient hitter, seeing 4.51 pitches per plate appearance last season, which would have ranked second in the majors (behind Nick Swisher) if he'd had 19 more plate appearances. Even though he struck out twice as often as he walked, and about 40% more than the average NL player, he waited for his pitch to strike out. Dammit.

Miller was, though not abnormally averse to the strikeout, at least relatively adept at avoiding them. The average American Leaguer in 1930 struck out 56 times in 585 at-bats, while Bing would swing and miss only 25 times that year.

So Kashatus was right about this one, though I would have liked to see some evidence, rather than just taking his word for it. I guess newspapers aren't the place for tables of numbers and complex statistics, unless they refer to the stock market.

Now if we can just get Charlie Manuel to wear a high, false collar and a bowler.

Brett Gardner: Put Me in Coach! I'm Ready to Make Outs!

Travis Nelson — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 09:09:00 -0400

The Yankees are reportedly planning on letting Brett Gardner be the regular center fielder this year, at least until he demonstrates that he can't handle the load.

In my mind, his four seasons of fairly lackluster performances in the minor leagues have already demonstrated that he's not ready.

Nevertheless, Yankees manager Joe Girardi has tabbed Gardner, not Johnny Damon or Nick Swisher, to be the everyday centerfielder. And if Girardi decides to stick with Gardy despite all evidence that he knows how to do little other than run fast and make outs, I am hereby patenting the term for this tendence as a "Gard-On", as in:

"I just don't get why Girardi has such a Gard-on for this guy. You'd think they were having an affair or something."

Gardner has evidently won the job on the strength of his strong performance this spring, in which he's hit .367 with three homers, six RBI, nine runs and five steals in six attempts in just 21 games.

In case you were wondering about the level of competition, these homers were hit against:

Brett Cecil, a 21-year-old who had a 4.11 ERA in 30 IP in AAA last year,
Aaron Harang, who went 6-17, 4.78 for the Reds in 2008, and whose 4.56 spring ERA suggests that he hasn't appreciably improved over the winter, and
Brad Mills, a 23-year-old Blue Jays prospect who has not yet pitched above AA.

In addition to the unimpressive competition and the fact that he has not hit one out since March 9, those three homers equal the total he hit in 341 at-bats in AAA last season, or one third of his entire professional career home run total, in 381 games.

So, while it's possible he suddenly somehow acquired the power he has always lacked, it's more likely that this is a fluke, and Gardner won't hit more than one or two homers all year, if he plays daily.

In somewhat related news, the Yankees announced last week that Derek Jeter will be moving back into the leadoff spot, a role in which he has performed admirably at various times in his career.

Indeed, Jeter's career line in the No. 1 hole (.315/.389/.471) is almost exactly the same as his overall career line (.316/.387/.458).

Despite his weaknesses, one of Jeter's greatest strengths as a player is his ability to adapt, and to do what needs to be done, regardless of changes in circumstance.

If there's anyone who can be shuffled around the lineup to help the team function better as a whole, it's Derek Jeter.

So, they don't need their centerfielder to also serve as the leadoff man, as Damon did for the last few years. That should help Gardner a bit, dropping him back down to the bottom of the order, where the lower pressure may allow him to thrive.

Or, more likely, the lack of protection in the order will enable opposing pitchers to challenge him, and his weak bat will be exposed all the more.

Jason Rosenberg from IIATMS commented over at ShysterBall:

...Here’s what Gardner isn’t: a power hitter. Here’s what the Yanks don’t need: A power hitter. What DO the Yanks need: A CF with speed and a hitter who can get on and help manufacture a run.

[...]

Tell me I am crazy, but if Gardner’s on first, they are going to hit and run like mad as Jeter is so adept at slapping the ball toward rightfield. As the 2B goes to cover the base (Jeter being righty and all), that creates a massive hole for Jeter to try to shoot the ball through. Gardy’s going first to third a lot this year.

Melky ain’t.

With all due respect, Jason, power hitter, schmower hitter.

Gardner's just barely a "hitter" at all. His career minor league line is .291/.389/.385, with nine homers in almost 1700 plate appearances.

Baseball Prospectus' 75th percentile projection for him is only .266/.353/.375, which last year would have given him an OPS that ranked 125th out of 147 major league batters.

In other words: he'll have to defy three-to-one odds just to be awful.

Gardner's 90th percentile projection from Baseball Prospectus (meaning that roughly one out of 10 players with a similar profile does this well) is .288/.376/.412. That's statistical speak for "moderately useful" or about as well as BJ Upton did last year.

But Upton is younger, more experienced, and still has potential, as everyone expects him to hit with more power, in addition to the speed and the newly found patience he exhibited in 2008.

Gardner would be maxed out at that level, with nowhere to go but down. Unless Gardner is saving dozens of runs with his glove and those speedy legs, there's no way he should be a viable option for a team trying to win a championship, not for more than a couple of weeks as a stopgap.

More likely he'll compile numbers closer to BP's weighted average, which is .252/.339/.350 (689 OPS), and which would make Gardner one of the dozen or so worst regular hitters in the major leagues this year.

For comparison, Chone Figgins of the LAnahfornia Angels had a 685 OPS, which ranked 11th from the bottom. That's IF Gardner meets his weighted projection.

In all probability though, given his statistical profile, he'll end up performing more like Michael Bourn of the Astros, who was dead last out of 147 qualified MLB hitters last year in OPS (he only played as much as he did, both in Philly and Houston, because GM Ed Wade has a gard-on for the guy. See how that works?).

Take a look:


Name    AVG   OBP   SLG  OPS   AB    R   2B  3B  HR  RBI   SB  CS   BB   SO
Bourn  .285  .379  .393  772  1552  280  48  36  16  142  163  28  227  339
Gardy  .290  .389  .385  774  1448  297  55  28   9  124  151  31  233  287

Those are the minor league stats for the two players (complements of the Baseball Cube) and they are eerily similar.

Other similarities include that they're both an inch or two under six-feet tall, with listed weights of 180 lbs.

Both bat lefty and play center, and Gardner, like Bourn before him, will get his first shot at extended playing time in the majors at age 25.

If there is any difference to speak of, it's that Gardner struck out 10 percent less often in the minors than Bourn did, which may suggest slightly better bat control, but not much else.

It should also be noted that more than half of Bourn's numbers were compiled at AA, while Gardner's were spaced pretty evenly between Single-A (both high and low), Double-A and AAA.

If you look at their college numbers, at first glance it appears than Gardner (.382/.456/.508) was a vastly better player than Bourn (.320/.431/.371) but this is largely a result of context.

Gardner went to the College of Charleston, in the Southern Conference, with such luminous institutions as Wofford, the Citadel, Appalacian State, and Elon College (long live the Fighting Christians!).

During the three years that Gardner attended college, there were 33 different players drafted from that conference, and four of these have made it to the majors, at least briefly.

Among these, the best (so far) is probably Tom Mastny, a nondescript relief pitcher in the Cleveland organization.

By contrast, Bourn attended the University of Houston, in Conference USA, with much larger schools like Tulane, UNC-Charlotte, and Texas Christian.

In his three years, there were 66 different players drafted, and 12 of these have been in the majors for some span of time.

The best of these are Chad Tracy, Jesse Crain, Dan Uggla, and Kevin Youkilis.

Clearly, Bourn was up against much stiffer competition. So it looks like the differences in those college numbers are a wash, too.

This, of course, is largely irrelevant now, since we have close to 400 minor league games to examine, a much better indicator of future major league performance than college numbers.

And those numbers suggest that Gardner will be one of the fastest and most prolific outmakers in the major leagues this year.

On another team, he'd be a great bet to rack up 50 steals and 500 outs, but I think the Yankees will grow tired of his act by the end of May, and either Damon or Swisher will be out patrolling center field.

The Yankees can afford to take a hit on defense if it means they'll get reasonable production from their hitters.

Either that, or they'll end up trading for someone they think can play regularly, eating a lot of salary in the process. Someone like Aaron Rowand, or (God help us...) Juan Pierre.

Ick.

2009 Phillies Preview...in Iambic Pentameter (sort of)

Travis Nelson — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 12:15:00 -0400

The Phillies won themselves a World Series,
Beat the Tampa Bay Rays with rel'tive ease!
A championship! And long-awaited!
City of Brotherly Love, elated!
But now they face a new season: Oh-Nine,
Their foes take aim, they'll have no easy time
Repeating as Darlings of October...
Will their season end before it's over?

Starting Pitching:

The team's hopes start with Hamels, their big ace
The Series MVP, the Phranchise Phace,
Two hundred innings plus, this year he'll give
And each time out, he'll keep the hope alive.
A nasty change-up from his arm, sinister
Will make opponents hear, "Sit down, Mister!"
At only twenty-five and not abused,
His arm for 20 wins could well be used.

Brett Myers gets the nod as starter, second,
For thirty starts again, he should be beckoned.
He's better than his middling ERAs
But needs to prove it, get back to the days
In '05, '06, under four he stayed
And he still can, he's only twenty eight.
A breakout season they need, not a LAIM
Fifteen-plus wins, he's no one left to blame.
If he can't do it now, he never will
A few more years, and he's over the hill.

Blanton's number three, an innings-eater
His slider, curve and low 90's heater
Provide six innings, quite reliable.
Mechanics make him inviolable.
Perhaps not much to watch, not exciting
Won't miss bats, without a slider, biting,
But more than earns his modest salary
(Though he should maybe watch the calories!)

Fourth is Jamie Moyer, ancient of days
Who helped the Phils to beat the Tampa Rays.
Sixteen games he won through the long season
Though some thought him done, and with good reason.
For two years more the Phillies, they signed him
And though his best seasons are behind him
He might give just enough to be useful
Though I doubt it, if I must be truthful.

The Number five spot, quite likely revolving:
(Kendrick's not much good, and not evolving.)
Chan Ho Park could start sometimes, but it seems
His ERA, helped by Chavez Ravine
Will likely blow up this year in The Vault.
The minors seem bare, though not Ruben's fault,
Won't help much, unless someone surprises.
The same poor pitching, in many guises.

Bullpen:

Closers can't remain perfect, as Brad Lidge
Was in '08. He'll drop off, just a smidge,
But should remain a thoroughbred stopper
Helping the Phillies remain on top, or
Barring that, at least he'll fan his share of
Batters, for Phillies Phans to cheer thereof.
But if Philly's season hopes, they Phalter
It won't be his fault, he's like Gibraltar.

After Brad Lidge, rounding out the bullpen:
Madson, Condrey, Chan Ho, Eyre and Durbin,
Some quality arms, some who are re-treads.
"Condrey and Durbin," say some cooler heads,
"Should regress some from last year's performance.
Low ERAs, with little conformance
To anything they had done before this!"
By not pointing this out, I'd be remiss.

But Madson is a solid reliever,
With two good seasons, he's made believers
In Philly and beyond. Hitters hate him
And his slow change-up, "Bland ultimatum!"
They'd rather be challenged with smoking heat
But it's off-speed stuff he uses to beat
Them, and more of the same you'll see this year
He's both young and quite good, so have no fear!

Scott Eyre is the Phillies' only southpaw
Due to Romero's run-in with the law
From tainted powder, 6-Oxo Extreme
(Of pitching 'fore June, he can only dream),
But once he returns the Phils are stronger,
Though in contention, perhaps no longer
They'll be if the starters cannot maintain
Their '08 levels and be more than LAIM.

And those who don't start should pitch some innings,
Out of the bullpen, vulture some winnings,
Though Park and Kendrick and Happ aren't much,
To coax outs from them will take a soft touch.

If there's more relief help, it's hard to see.
Majewski, Zagurski, Dave Borowski?
All washed-up and lousy they were last year
Such dreck in the majors? No! Please not here!

Offensive Starters:

1)
As for the offense, begins the order:
Number 11, a man much shorter
Than many of his peers, though they can't boast
Of an MVP, to him, they must toast.

But from that height, he seems to have fallen,
Though still a great shortstop, Jimmy Rollins.
His glove is no slouch, he's earned two Gold ones,
And backs up his words (he utters bold ones!)

His bat, more than adequate, it should yield
A hundred-plus runs, if he stays on-field,
Hit a few homers, could walk more often
But don't expect vintage Kenny Lofton.

2)
The two-hole, also manned by a shorty,
With O-B-P's well over .340:
Shane Victorino, "Flyin' Hawaiian"
His small stature, his talent belyin'.

Decent BA, a handful of homers,
Good defense (among center field roamers),
Excellent speed (he'll steal 30 bases),
Still in his prime, just 28, he is.

3)
Second baseman, Utley, the third batter,
Should this year 40-plus doubles, scatter,
And hit 30 taters. Runs he'll drive in,
And score some himself, plus make some divin'

Stops up the middle. Perhaps a Gold Glove?
Alas, last year's voters showed him no love
Though vastly better he was than Brandon,
(The voting gets increasingly random.)

Regardless, Chase is the best keystoner
In MLB. At that, he's a loner,
An MVP threat, without any peer,
But Philly will need more than him this year.

4)
Cleanup man? First baseman, Ryan Howard
Last year with much undue praise was showered
For driving in runs and hitting some jacks.
Such people ignored the cost of those hacks:

Almost 200 whiffs, low O-B-P...
His VORP, on his own team, ranked #3!
Still he had value, not a bad player,
But much like Casey, per Ernest Thayer.

Likely to improve on .251,
But not the best fielder under the sun,
Defense atrocious and legs immobile,
But more power than erstwhile Chernobyl!

5)
Raul Ibanez bats fifth, plays left field,
(Philly to Burrell's demands would not yield.)
Out goes The Bat they thought not a keeper,
And in comes Raul: Older, not cheaper.

Still can't play defense, walks much less often,
Hits more singles, (the blow, this should soften)
But little difference in their net effects
Should there be this year, unless one gets wrecked

With injuries, or else early, ages.
Smart cash is on Raul, say the sages,
To start his decline phase, slow attrition.
By June, for Pat, Phils' Phans could be wishin'!

6)
Next we have Werth, him, finally healthy,
Had a career year, made himself wealthy,
But can he build on last year's good numbers?
Or will his bat instead choose to slumber?

The more common problem for him has been
That his wrist ailment, to heal wasn't keen,
But with a full year in '08, he proved
That he's OK now, beyond this he's moved.

A great hitter, like Manny, 'gainst lefties
But batting left, his numbers aren't hefty,
Now he must try to hit righty pitching
Or maybe just when he hits, not switching.

7)
The next, um... "hitter" is Pedro Feliz
Who seems to make outs with relative ease.
Suppos'd to stabilize the Corner, Hot,
But hitting .250 is all he's got.

Despite his weak bat, swings for the fences,
No need to walk, he makes no pretenses,
Still plays good defense, but won't steal a base,
OPS so low, how's he show his face?

Better third basemen? Twenty, easily,
Or more, but Philly's minors got measly
Production from theirs, so help's not coming.
City of Brotherly Love? Soon bumming.

8)
Last in the lineup is the day's catcher,
Often Ruiz, whose bat is no match for
Chris Coste, not that his lumber's so awesome,
But at least his bat isn't still playing possum.
Ruiz, now 30, has slim potential
To help the Phillies' run differential.
Nor does Lou Marson, or Ron Paulino.
Eight's a black hole for the Phils, as we know.

The Bench:

The Phillies back-ups, they should do just fine,
Long as they're usually riding the pine.
Not a bad bunch here, some players, decent
But none whose star was bright very recent.

Jenkins, fifth outfielder and pinch hitter,
May be tempted to feel rather bitter,
Signed with the Phillies to be a starter
But found hitting righties last year harder
His one skill gone and injuries nagging
Geoff found his at-bat count sort of lagging.
A different approach he seems to have found,
And hopes for a 2009 rebound.

Stairs has experience, hitting, eating
Now 41, his career's depleting.
A timely bomb made him Philly's hero,
But this year he'll post too many zeroes.
Still hits a homer or walks on occasion
But where can he fit in their equation?
Just a DH in the League, National
They'd cut him loose if they were rational.

The mid-infield back-ups, Bruntlett and Giles
Like pre-owned cars, with no shortage of miles.
Both about 30, with little upside,
Bruntlett, all over, can field the horsehide,
And run just a bit, in case they have need.
Giles once had some pop, and a bit of speed,
And could bounce back, getting out of this rut...
(Monkeys could also fly out of my butt!)

More likely someone like Cairo, Miguel
Or Pablo Ozuna will get to tell
His wife he won the job in Spring Training.
Giles seems to have no more miles remaining.

Main corner back-up, Greg Dobbs they will ring
To spell Feliz from all his out-making.
Not much for defense, Dobbs won't be used long,
But his bat makes up for all his glove's wrongs.

Summary:
Finally, putting these things together
You will all likely want to know whether
The Phillies will win. What are their chances
Of returning to October Dances?

The Phillies will have trouble reprising.
The Mets are no slouch, and the Fish, rising,
Make stiff competition, as do the Braves
Though none of these teams will draw critics' raves.

Injuries could, the Phillies, sabotage.
Last year they had few, they're due a barrage,
And with some key players, like Cole and Chase
High injury risks, the Phils could, the race
Concede by August, dig too great a hole
To climb out from, as these hurts take their toll.

Too many key players with sudden peaks
Last year aren't likely to keep up those streaks,
Or stave off aging, they're due to endure
Declines in their 40's, they will, for sure,
Show signs of slipping, and with that, the team
Will need much luck to stay up in the stream.
The odds will catch up with the Phils this year
Eighty five wins is the safe bet, I fear.

Curt Schilling Not Cooperstown-Bound

Travis Nelson — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 13:45:00 -0400

Curt Schilling announced his retirement yesterday, which immediately begs the question of whether he belongs in the Hall of Fame.

No.

There, now that the suspense is gone, let me explain.

There are really only two arguments for Curt Schilling going to the Hall of Fame. These are, in the order of their importance:

He helped end an 86-year World Series drought in Boston, and helped win two other championships as well, amassing an overall postseason record of 11-2 with a 2.23 ERA in 133 innings. Without this, we wouldn't even need to address this question.

When he was healthy, he was one of the best pitchers in the game, winning 20+ games three times and fanning 290+ batters four times.

Taking the second part first, Schilling has been quite good in the postseason. His 133 innings, 11 wins, 120 strikeouts, and .846 winning percentage are all among the top 10 all time for career postseason performance. 10 of the 12 postseason series in which he was involved were won by his team, including three of four World Series.

In my mind, however, this should only be a tie breaker, not an argument unto itself. Dave Stewart and Orlando Hernandez were also great in the playoffs, but the rest of their careers don't measure up.

Greg Maddux was so great in the regular season that nobody will care about his 11-14 record in the playoffs when it comes time to vote for him. Schilling will get a few extra votes for helping his teams to win three World Series, but I'm not sure that will do it for him.

And that's it, really, because nothing else holds up for very long. The more closely you look at his career accomplishments, the less impressive they seem.

His 216 career wins rank just 80th all-time, far fewer than most of the pitchers in the Hall already.

In terms of his competition, that total is also way lower than not just future locks for Cooperstown like Randy Johnson (295), Greg Maddux (355), and Tom Glavine (305), but also borderline cases like Mike Mussina (270) and definitive "no's" like Jamie Moyer (246) and David Wells (239).

And these are his contemporaries. Older guys like Jim Kaat (283), Tommy John (288) and Bert Blyleven (287) have been shut-out with much more significant career totals, and in some ways, better cases for the Hall.

Or, if you'd prefer to compare him to current Hall of Famers, it's no great chore to find some to whom Schilling compares favorably. Herb Pennock, for example, went 240-162 with only a 106 adjusted ERA and two 20-win seasons.

Hal Newhouser won only 207 games and averaged 100+ walks a year for a decade, whereas Schilling, eventually, had impeccable control. Rube Marquard won only 201 games and rarely led his league in anything.

Jesse Haines has a very similar record (210-158) but only a 108 adjusted ERA. There are others, but you see where this argument could go: "Because Player X is in the Hall of Fame, Schilling should be, too."

The trouble with this is twofold:

1) Some of those pitchers are so-called special cases, who lost time due to WWII, or pitched in an extreme era, or otherwise were somehow worth more than the apparent sum of their ERA and Win totals.

B) This approach waters down the talent level, turning the Hall of Fame into the Hall of Pretty darn good.

Just because Haines and Pennock (and Jim Bunning, and Ted Lyons and Eppa Rixey and...) are in Cooperstown doesn't mean that they belong there. Writers make mistakes, and it doesn't help things to compound those mistakes by adding more players of this caliber to what was supposed to be a shrine to the best of the best.

So if we can't justify his enshrinement based on him being better than several existing Cooperstown residents, we're left looking at Schilling's own accomplishments, and how they compare to his competition in his own career. Was he one of the best pitchers in his own era?

Yes, sometimes.

For example, his career winning percentage of .597 is quite good, but not even as good as contemporaries like Andy Pettitte, Mark Mulder and Roy Oswalt. Or even Bartolo Colon and Freddy Garcia, for that matter.

Granted, Schilling pitched for a lot of bad teams early in his career, which skews that number a bit, but he hasn't pitched for a losing team since the Phillies in Y2K, so that certainly helps.

Not a fan of wins and losses? Think they're archaic and a poor measure of a pitcher's worth? Well, generally I agree with you, so let's see what else we can come up with...

Earned run average is much better, as it doesn't rely on the hitters, like wins. Schilling's career ERA is 3.46, which is pretty good, especially in this day and age.

That ranks 11th among current major leaguers, behind Pedro Martinez, John Smoltz, Johnson and Maddux, but also behind (believe it or not...) Roberto Hernandez and nearly tied with Tim Hudson and Carlos Zambrano.

His adjusted ERA of 127 (i.e. 27 percent better than the leagues in which he pitched) also ranks 11th among current major leaguers, though just 46th all-time.

If you remove the players who were predominantly relievers (Mariano Rivera, Hoyt Wilhelm, Doug Jones?!?) and the pitchers who thrived in the Dead Ball Era (Smoky Joe Wood, Addie Joss, Rube Waddell, etc), Schilling ranks around 20th to 22nd all-time, depending on whether you want to include the likes of Walter Johnson and Pete Alexander, players whose careers straddled the lines of the Dead Ball Era.

That's still pretty good, but only about as good as Kevin Brown and Sal Maglie (both 127), and not nearly as good as Harry Brecheen (133) or Spud Chandler (132), who admittedly had shorter careers. Contemporaries like Randy Johnson (137), Pedro Martinez (154) and Greg Maddux (132) blow Schilling away in this regard.

Younger pitchers like Oswalt, Johan Santana, Brandon Webb, and Roy Halladay are all better than Schilling at relative run prevention, though these have a while to pitch yet and will inevitably drop off over time.

Schilling's career strikeout total, 3,116, is also a point in his favor, as only 16 men in history have struck out more than 3,000 batters, and he is 15th among them. John Smoltz is likely to pass him in 2009 if he can pitch even half the season, but then nobody is likely to bump him down for several years, at best.

Of the 14 men ahead of him, 12 are either in Cooperstown already or are likely to be. The other two are Bert Blyleven, who could still pick up another 12% of the voters in the next three years, and Roger Clemens, who was considered a lock for the Hall before his name got rightfully tied to the steroid scandal.

Personally, I'd vote for him anyway, but the BBWAA probably won't.

Though that's just one thing, it's a big one. Even if you believe that strikeouts are boring and fascist, you have to admit that they're effective. When the baseball writers see him on their ballots, they'll certainly see that Schilling took care of his own business more often than all but about 15 guys in history. That is pretty impressive.

But is it enough? Sure, Schilling eventually developed impeccable control as well, leading his league in WHIP and in Walks per nine innings twice each. He also led in K/W ratio five times, and his career rate is the best of anyone since the 1800's (Tommy Bond), at which time it took between six and nine balls to walk a batter, depending on the year.

That is, Schilling has the best ratio of strikeouts to walks of any pitcher who's tossed at least 1000 innings since they invented the six-pitches-or-fewer walk.

On the other hand, Schilling never led his league in ERA (real or adjusted) or shutouts, or strikeout rate, some of the signs of dominance you see frequently from Hall of Fame pitchers.

He was often a workhorse, during the infrequent healthy stretches, leading the league in starts three times, in wins and innings pitched twice each, and in complete games four times. But herein lies the trouble. Schilling amassed 3,261 innings in his major league career, good for 95th place all time, but fewer than Kenny Rogers, or John Smoltz.

It's also way fewer than Mike Mussina, Randy Johnson, Maddux, Glavine or Clemens, his primary competition for enshrinement in Cooperstown.

As it happens, it's also far fewer innings than those pitched by Dennis Martinez, Charlie Hough, Jack Morris, and Frank Tanana, none of whom is likely to ever be in the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown unless they buy a family pass.

Despite pitching for 21 years, he averaged just 155 innings per season, if you include 2008, when he had an $8 million contract from the Boston Red Sox but did not throw a pitch. For comparison's sake, Smoltz averaged 162 innings per year, and that includes the missed Y2K season and four years where he intentionally pitched only in relief (and was excellent at it).

David Wells averaged 164 innings per year. Jamie Moyer? 170 IP/year. The Big Unit? 192. Mike Mussina averaged almost 198 innings. Maddux and Glavine and Clemens are all over 200.

You get the point, I think: Schilling was great on certain occasions when he was healthy enough to pitch every 5th day, but such times were infrequent. He had five or six seasons (1997, 1998, 2001, 2002 and 2004, probably 1992) when he was among the five to 10 best pitchers in baseball, though you'd be hard pressed to say he was ever the best, even in those years.

He had five other years in which he pitched fairly regularly, and with decent success.

And then he had ten years lost all or partly to his either lack of focus (as was the case early in his career) or, more often, to injuries. Edgar Martinez will suffer from the same problem: great peak value, but not enough time when he was fully healthy.

Not that the injuries are necessarily his fault, but neither should we simply ignore them and give him credit for what he might have done if healthy. Don Mattingly and Orel Hershiser and Albert Belle don't get credit for lost time, and neither should Schilling.

Curt Schilling Retirement Retrospective

Travis Nelson — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 11:00:00 -0400

Curt Schilling has unofficially announced his retirement from Major League Baseball, following a 20-year career in which he went 216-146 with a 3.46 ERA that was about 27 percent better than the average of the leagues in which he pitched. He was named to six All-Star teams, pitched in three of them, starting the 1999 and 2002 contests. He was the MVP of the 1993 NLCS and the co-MVP of the 2001 World Series.

He won several of the minor awards that MLB started handing out recently, like the Babe Ruth Award and the Hutch Award, but never won a Cy Young Award or a regular season MVP. He finished second in the CYA voting three times and fourth once, which gives him the highest award shares total of anyone who's never actually won it, for whatever that's worth.

Schilling was probably at least as famous for his outspoken nature as he was for his pitching prowess, making himself a regular fixture of talk radio call-in shows wherever he pitched and eventually blogging as well. Whether you liked him, whether you agreed with him or not, you had to give him credit for having a personality in a game that seems largely devoid of interesting characters these days.

He started out as a second-round draft pick of the Red Sox in 1986, when he was 19, but Boston would give up on him before he was 21. They saw his strikeouts dropping and his walks rising, took a look at the personality associated with those disturbing trends, and figured they could spare him. During the stretch drive in 1988, they traded him to Baltimore with Brady Anderson for Mike Boddicker, who helped the Sawx win two division titles in three years.

Though Schilling did well, winning 13 games for Baltimore's then-affiliate AAA Rochester as a 22 year old, Schilling was not yet ready for prime time, having pitched only a handful of mostly forgettable games in the Majors before Baltimore sent him to Houston with Steve Finley and Pete Harnisch for Glenn Davis. He was 24, and already with his third different franchise.

It was allegedly in Houston that Schilling's career got the kick in the pants it needed, from none other than Roger Clemens. While Schilling was goofing off in the weight room at the Astrodome, the Rocket lectured the arrogant kid with the earrings and blue hair about how to approach the game better, and to his credit, Schilling took it to heart.

Though there was no obvious or immediate improvement while bouncing back and forth from AAA to the Majors in 1991, Schilling refocused himself. When the Phillies traded Jason Grimsley for him the following April, he finally put it all together, winning 14 games and pitching 226 innings with a 2.35 ERA that trailed only three others in the Senior Circuit.

In 1993, he won 16 more games and pitched 235 innings for the worst-to-first Phillies, who lost the World Series to the Toronto Blue Jays. Not that you can blame him for that, as he threw 147 pitches in a complete game shutout in Game Five, which may be why he developed a bone spur in his elbow and a knee injury that limited him to just 82 innings (plus 14 in the minors, during rehab) in 1994. The following year he had his season truncated in August when he needed shoulder surgery to repair a torn labrum, which also cost him the first several weeks of the 1996 season.

Like many pitchers who undergo such procedures, Schilling returned throwing harder than he had when he was young, as he had to be more disciplined to perform the rigorous work of rehabilitation. Though he went only 9-10, he struck out 183 batters, 10th in the NL, with a strikeout rate that was fifth among qualified pitchers.

In 1997, he led the NL with 319 strikeouts and was among the league leaders in several other categories, including ERA (eighth), wins (fifth), WHIP (fourth), complete games and innings pitched (third), K/W, shutouts, and strikeout rate (second). On a personal note, I saw him fan 16 Yankees at Veterans Stadium on Labor Day that year, including the second, and so-far last, Golden Sombrero of young Derek Jeter's career. When they asked him after the game what he thought of Schilling's fastball, he responded, "You're asking the wrong guy. I didn't even see it."

Schilling was just as good, if not better, in 1998, but the Phillies stunk even more than usual, so he went 15-14 in a season that might have won more acclaim for him if it had been with a team that didn't lose 87 games. He went 15-6 for the 1999 Phillies but again had a season (ahem...) cut short when he needed arthroscopic surgery on his pitching shoulder in August, and was not his usual dominant self upon his return in September.

Frustrated and unconvinced of the Phillies' long-term plans, Schilling sought a trade and got one to Arizona in the middle of Y2K. The following year the Diamondbacks became the fastest franchise in history to win a World Series, in just their fourth year of existence, as they beat the Yankees in an emotional, exciting seven-game series.

The next year they Diamondbacks again won their division but were swept out of the playoffs by the Cardinals, despite Schilling's seven strong innings in his lone postseason start. He pitched fairly well again in 2003 but not often enough as an assortment of injuries limited him to just 168 innings, this after racking up over 250 in each of the previous two seasons.

That winter, Arizona, wanting to rebuild, actively shopped Schilling. Though he had expressed a desire to pitch either for the Yankees or the Phillies, it was Boston who eventually nabbed him, playing to his ego and talking him into joining the team, to take a run at history. They even somehow managed to work a million dollar bonus into the contract if he helped to deliver a World Series championship and end the Curse of the Bambino in 2004, despite the fact that such bonuses are not allowed per the MLB collective bargaining agreement.

Theo Epstein flew to Arizona and stayed the Thanksgiving holiday with the Schillings, playing to Schilling's well-known penchant for using the tools of the Information Age to inform his pitching approach, his desire to be a part of history, and even going so far as to describe what his and his wife's charity work might look like in Boston.

Meanwhile, Epstein had already worked out a deal with Arizona's owners, who, after asking the moon and stars of the Yankees, inexplicably let Schilling go for the frankly ridiculous sum total of pitchers Casey Fossum, Brandon Lyon, and Jorge de la Rosa, and minor league outfielder Michael Goss.

Fossum has been with three different teams since, and is 26-41 with a 5.90 ERA in 552 innings in the intervening years.

Lyon missed all of 2004 and half of 2005 with injuries, and is 11-15 with 42 saves in 58 chances and a 4.04 ERA since returning. He's expected to be the Tigers closer this year, despite the 4.70 ERA he posted in 2008, which lost him the closer's job in Arizona.

De la Rosa never pitched for the Diamondbacks and didn't do much for Milwaukee, Kansas City, or Colorado, either, amassing a 25-31 record and a 5.55 ERA in 404 innings over five seasons.

Michael Goss never got but a handful of at-bats above Single-A, and has been trying to stay afloat in the independent leagues since 2005.

It was, in short, a horrendous trade for the Diamondbacks, though a great one for Schilling and Boston. Schilling won 21 games and finished second in the Cy Young voting to Johan Santana, helping to lead Boston to their first World Series title in 86 years. Perhaps best of all, they came back from an 0-3 deficit to beat the Yankees in the ALCS, with Schilling famously pitching through an ankle injury that required him to change his bloody sock every few innings.

The following year injuries again limited his contribution to the team, as he pitched only 93 innings and won eight games. His lack of availability in the playoffs helped lead to the Red Sox' first-round exit at the hands of the eventual World Champion White Sox, who had not won it all since 1917. So, in a way, Schilling helped to end two such streaks. Maybe the Pale Hose owe him a million bucks, too?

Healthy again in 2006, Schilling won 15 games and led the team with a 3.97 ERA, but Josh Beckett had trouble adjusting to the American League, and their teammates faltered, dropping to sixth in the AL in runs and 11th in ERA. The Red Sox did not even finish second in their division for the first time since 1997.

But the 2007 team came back with a vengeance, leading the AL in wins and ERA, finishing third in runs scored, winning their first division title since 1995, and winning a second World Series in four years. Schilling missed more time due to injuries, pitching only 151 innings in the regular season and winning nine games, but he was healthy enough to go 3-0 with a 3.00 ERA in four postseason starts en route to his third World Series ring.

He re-signed with Boston for 2008, but his shoulder flared up again in Spring Training that year, and he would not throw another Major League pitch. Now 42, he has decided to hang up his spikes, though probably not his laptop or cell phone. Schilling likes the limelight too much to simply fade into obscurity.