30 June 2010

My All-Star Roster

The composition following this statement is a study in trivia. Nothing you are about to read amounts to a hill of beans. Which is saying something for a blog called "braindrizzling" in which the topic is baseball. So you've been warned.

The aforementioned is so mentioned because this is about the All-Star squad, which matters almost entirely in the sense that a dozen of the 64 participants get bonuses for having their names selected. Beyond that, it's the fans game and they vote for the guys they want.

Here's the really surprising part: the masses do a great job. They are far more rational than the players and managers, who seem to select the guys with the best reputations and whom they like the best, respectively.

It doesn't matter, in part because no one has ever defined what constitutes an All-Star-worthy performance. Is it half a season of accomplishment? Is it the best 162 games, from last ASG to this one? Is it just about being the best player? The one fans want to see?  Or is it some combination of these?

Everyone seems to have their own, sometimes variable, formula. Here's mine, and it's no more defined than any other: I vote for the best players having the best seasons. How's that for vague? Albert Pujols is the NL first baseman unless he's hitting .230 with six home runs. Jerry Hairston, Jr. and his .695 lifetime OPS doesn't make my starting roster batting .400 with 20 dingers unless David Wright falls down a flight of stairs and takes Scott Rolen, Chipper Jones, Placido Polanco, Mark Reynolds and the Kung Fu Panda with him.

I take into consideration when a player has only played half of half the season, but I pay no mind whatsoever to whether a player is currently hurt. If he deserves the nod, I bestow it. Let the manager replace him.

That said, here are my votes for the Mid-Summer Classic.
NL
1B Albert Pujols
2B Chase Utley
3B David Wright
SS Hanley Ramirez
C Brian McCan
OF Ryan Braun
OF Andre Ethier
OF Matt Holliday

AL
1B Miguel Cabrera
2B Robinson Cano
3B Adrian Beltre
SS Derek Jeter
C Joe Mauer
OF Josh Hamilton
OF Ichiro Suzuki
OF Vernon Wells
DH Vlad Guerrero

You'll notice that there aren't any rookies or surprise names on this ballot. Jose Bautista is going to have to go all Mark McGwire on AL pitching for more than 260 at-bats before I get ramped up about him. Moreover, not everyone here is having a great year. Jeter's batting .286 with middling power and speed. McCann's at .259 and he's missed some games. They are still clearly the best in their league at their position. (It helps that no NL catcher or AL shortstop is lighting it up.)

There are plenty of tough calls here. Prince Albert sets a lofty standard, but Ryan Howard, Adrian Gonzalez, Adam Dunn and Joey Votto all have OPS above .900. At least one of them will watch the game from a bar. ("Adam, your turn to buy a round!) The same in the AL, where Justin Morneau makes every bit the case Cabrera does, and Paul Konerko and Kevin Youklis are both having great years.

Chase Utley is by far the best second baseman in the senior circuit, so the fact that four other keystoners are putting up the same numbers in bigger ballparks doesn't excite me. David Wright and Scott Rolen are both great candidates, but Rolen has a history of fragility and Wright plays in a cavern. I gave the AL third sacker job to a raking Beltre, but Evan Longoria, ARod and Michael Young all make cases.

In the outfields, Josh Hamilton and Andre Ethier are the in-shooiest. I'm not so sure about Ichiro; you could have reasonably picked Alex Rios, Carl Crawford, Shin Soo Choo, Torii Hunter or Nick Swisher. Brett Gardner, a College of Charleston product, needs to show me more before I elect him to stardom. The same for Colby Rasmus in the NL, who's hitting up a storm, but we've yet to determine whether that front will blow through. Likewise, I eschewed Jayson Werth's ballpark-aided results, and Alfonso Soriano's inconsistency. Andrew McCutcheon is a stud in the Steel City, but he's a lock for the game as the Bucs' sole representative, so I gave Holliday the benefit of the doubt. Yes, I've employed woefully weak reasoning to break what amounts to a tie. It's no worse than penalty kicks.

Kudos to the fans: most of the names listed above are on the their wish list. In the AL, they've got Morneau at first, Longoria at third and Crawford in the outfield, all legitimate alternatives, though with Nelson Cruz's overblown Texas stats too close for comfort behind Crawford. They totter a bit on the NL squad, with Polanco wrongly leading Wright and Yadier Molina leading McCann. Jason Heyward is their worst selection, but who can blame them for irrational exuberance about a well-mannered 20-year-old stud?

I know, it's all drivel, and we'll forget who went to Anaheim by year's end when the real All-Star team (aka the New York Yankees) collects another championship trophy (yawn.) I can promise you this: it won't be nearly as exciting as the NCAA championship won yesterday by my home state Gamecocks, the pride of South Carolina, who defeated UCLA 2-1 in 11 innings. "No one can lick our 'Cocks."

See, drivel is suddenly looking good.
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26 June 2010

Snooze and Notes


I haven't commented on the blather about an All-Star appearance for Stephen Strasburg because I haven't wanted to dignify the discussion by perpetuating it. But the talkosphere persists, so I'll just point out the following.

Players don't earn All-Star berths on six good weeks of play. If Strasburg's reputation of supernova is justified, he'll collect plenty of All-Star appearances. If he's a flash-in-the-pan, we'll feel pretty stupid about giving him someone else's slot based on six lifetime starts.

It's also worth noting that Nationals management would chew their own arms off before allowing Strasburg to throw in a meaningless exhibition. (Sorry, Bud. Truth to power.) So even if you buy the argument that his selection would goose interest in the contest, he'd likely not pitch, leaving unfulfilled fans grousing.

Between the every-team rule, the lack of definition of what an All-Star is and the myopia of managers, players and fans, it's hard enough for deserving players to claim their spots. If the nation wants to see Strasburg perform, the real alternative is for Fox and ESPN to show an occasional Nats game.

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The trade deadline is looming, so the discussion has begun about which team cashes in the 2010 season and dessicates its lineup. I don't know where the notion derived that the alternative to contending is selling off all your parts, but it's a fallacy. 

Certainly, teams that have no chance this year might be wise to parlay half a year of value in a veteran who won't resign for some young potential. (This isn't always true. Increasingly, front offices are deciding that the two high draft picks they receive when losing a top free agent are more valuable than whatever they can return in trade.) The obvious example is Seattle, where Cliff Lee could bring back some strategically-placed stufmuffins from the Twins, Mets, Red Sox, etc.

On the other hand, it makes no sense for the Mariners, who are probably just a few players away from duking it out for the division, to back up a truck and unloading everything of value from the roster. If they're going to have any chance in 2011, 2012 and beyond, the current stars are going to have to play a role.

On the other end of the spectrum are bottom-feeders like Cleveland, Houston, Washington and Pittsburgh. Darkening their rosters with a anyone over 30 is a mis-allocation of resources that should be remedied by trade whenever possible. Of course, that has nothing to do with the trade deadline, as the Pirates' brass has demonstrated on numerous occasions. The sooner those clubs excise older stars -- cough royoswalt cough -- from their lineups, the more they can get in return. The real issue is that if Houston, Cleveland, etc had any star players, they wouldn't be in their current predicaments.

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The ground ball fairy smiled on Edwin Jackson yesterday, turning every ball hit into an out. Jackson earned a no-hitter against the hit-challenged Rays with a performance that could hardly be called excellence. Jackson struck out six, put nine men on base -- eight via walk and one via HBP -- and needed a sparkling defensive play to prevent a run from scoring and leaving a bases loaded, one out situation. He also got a boost from a forgiving official scorer who posted E-4 on a ball that might have been a hit in any other game.

Jackson needed 149 pitches to get through nine frames, so subtract a sterling defensive stop or two and he gives up runs, takes the loss and doesn't finish the game.

This will be recorded as the fourth no-hitter of the season and will be remembered as the fifth, but it was not one of the 25 best pitching performances of the year. Such is the life of a no-hitter, another piece of trivia that has value only because we notice it.
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20 June 2010

Deconstructing His Ubaldoness


What in the name of Bob Gibson, 1968, is Ubaldo Jimenez up to? Two months into the season, he has already amassed a 13-1 record and a 1.15 ERA. In fact, it's even better than that, because his RA (which neglects the largely irrelevant distinction of unearned runs) is the same other-worldly 1.15.

Is UJ really this good? Can he maintain this pace?

It's worth noting that Jimenez is no flash in the pan. He has been considered a prime cut since his signing out of the Dominican at age 16, and has posted a solid first four seasons of work, sporting an ERA around 3.70 and nearly eight strikeouts per nine IP. He's big, coachable and fires mid-90s darts. Scouts have always felt that his control and health were the only things standing between him and stardom.

That said, 13-1, 1.15 with Coors as home base is pretty special. Below-average major league starters sometimes shut down their opponents for two or three turns, but rarely this well, this long. Usually, exploding out of the starting blocks like this takes a combination of skill, luck and good teammates. And Jimenez is no exception.

Ubaldo is responsible for a goodly portion of his results. First, he's averaged more than seven innings a start. That's both a cause of good outcomes and a result. As the best pitcher whom opponents are going to see in a given game, Jimenez helps himself by remaining effective as long as possible into the start and minimizing the use of relievers.

Second, he's fanned 88 batters in 101 innings, which is about his career rate, but he's shaved a walk per nine off his career average. He's surrendered just three taters all year, and six hits per nine, which are both superb, and about half his former rate. But as we shall see, we now have the tools to see that both those figures are a tad misleading.

MLB now records the location, velocity and horizontal and vertical break on every single pitch, and their result. With that information, researchers have been able to tease out correlations that suggest when results are whacky. For example, we know that pitchers have little control over the batting average on balls in play (BABIP) against them. So when we see batters scuffling at .235 on balls in play against Ubaldo, we know that he's got a bill coming due. (Average BABIP in the NL is .298. Some pitchers can sustain a BABIP down around .280, but not much lower.)

We can break BABIP down much more granularly to see how exactly Jimenez has been surfing a wave of serendipity. Although Jimenez serves up line drives about as often as everyone else, the batting average against him on those balls is .600, compared to a league average of .722. So before congratulating him on keeping guys off the bases, he should be offering obeisance to the Patron Saint of Right At Someone. The same for ground balls, which reached the outfield at an 11% rate, a mere shadow of the league rate of 17%. That could be the result of a Rockie infield slick with the leather, which appears to be a fact, but not sufficient to reduce the hit rate on worm-killers by 64%.

It breaks down further. Those three meager home runs? They smack of a visit to Flukeytown. Batters have poked just 5.8% of their fly balls off Jimenez into the stands, about half the normal rate. This is possible if those sky-balls present as pop-ups, but Ubaldo has no particular pop-up proclivities.

There's more. Hitting with runners in scoring position is often cited as a key to run scoring. It's largely a matter of luck that tends to regress to mean for a player, team or pitcher over time. Ubaldo is surrendering just a .186 BABIP with runners on base. It's certainly possible that he bears down more, digs deeper and makes his best pitches when the enemy threatens, but that would show up in strikeouts and walks, not BABIP. Fortune tends not to smile so broadly as .186 BABIPs for whole seasons.

Finally, you may have noticed that Jimenez has 14 decisions in 14 starts. That's unusual for a pitcher who's left 25 innings for his relief corps to handle. But handle they have, watching carefully over those 1-0 leads he's left to them. The bullpen trio of Joe Beimel, Matt Belisle and Manny Corpas are all in the top 20 of reliever effectiveness.

Given all that, how great has Ubaldo Jimenez actually pitched? Baseball Prospectus has created a new yardstick that strips out luck, ballpark and defensive efficiency and measures what a pitcher's ERA would be, all things being equal. In other words, given a pitcher who walks and strikes out at his rate, and who induces grounders, flies and line drives at his rate, what should Ubaldo Jimenez's ERA be? (BP calls this SIERA, for "Skill-Interactive ERA.")  Their analysis suggests that Jimenez has been the 16th best pitcher in MLB with a SIERA of 3.43.

Before you scoff at the difference, remember that a 3.43 ERA is pretty sweet. Based on BP's analysis, 20 more starts at a 3.43 ERA would leave Jimenez with a 2.49 ERA for the year and somewhere between 20 and 22 wins. On the other hand, it's hardly historical, or even the best in the league. It suggests, as does all the information above, that Jimenez is a top 20 hurler on a top five run of luck.
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18 June 2010

Keeping Us On Our Toes


Here's another reason baseball is a great game. An objective pre-reason forecast for the Mets offered little hope. The Queens contingent was drinking from a nearly empty pitching cup and sported Band-Aids all over the field.

It's a long season and the prediction may yet turn out right, but for now, the Mets are 10 games over and knocking on the door of first. How did a squad with a flashing check engine light manage to lap the field for two weeks? 

Well, R.A. Dickey is 5-0, 2.82. It's no knock against the early prognostications that none of them accounted for Dickey. He was neither a Met nor an asset before the season began.

Non-prospect Ike Davis, whose pedigree included half a year at Double-A prior to 2010, has banished the ghost of Carlos Delgado at first base. Pre-season reviews missed that. So sue them.

Mike Pelfrey dipped into 2009's 10-12, 5.03 performance and pulled out a 9-1, 2.39 exhibition so far in 2010. Whoops. Didn't have that.

Jonathan Niese was certainly on the early spring radar screen, but bets on rookies always have to be hedged, right Matt Wieters?

The Grapefruit League roster included train wrecks Oliver Perez, Elmer Dessens and Gary Matthews, Jr. After a few painful looks, Jerry Manuel has minimized their participation. D'Oh! Couldn't have predicted that.

In short, the Mets today aren't the team that broke camp in April. Nor, likely, are most others. The only constant in baseball is inconsistency, which makes pre-season predictions largely academic exercises.

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Word was floating around, as the Pirates sunk in the NL Central like Blackbeard in cement shoes, that manager John Russell and GM Neal Huntington would be jettisoned because of the team's poor performance. Anyone who believed (or reported) this needs a psych eval.

Neither Russell nor Huntington is being paid to break Pittsburgh's string of futility this year. They inherited a patient with strep throat, a broken leg, a bleeding ulcer, elbow tendinitis, diabetes, an ingrown toenail and bilateral plantar fasciitis. Their charge will require time, tender care and lots of patience before he recovers, and any attempt to send him home prematurely will delay his ultimate recovery.

Management in the Steel City gets this and recently revealed that contracts for Russell and Huntington had been extended through next year. There will be a reckoning for this administration, but it's not now. So stop looking at the Pirates' box score unless you've got the 2012 newspaper. 

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Reports, including mine, of the baseball death of David Ortiz have been greatly exaggerated. I revert to my original projection for Ortiz: he will be a diminishing asset, but an asset nonetheless this year. 

No really, that's what I said.
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16 June 2010

The Incredible Shrinking Outfielder


In 1999, I dabbled in an AL-only Rotisserie baseball team. During the draft, my partner and I agreed that the best values would leverage positional scarcity, not pure performance. We set our sights on drafting one of the three transcendent shortstops (ARod, Nomar, Jeter), the only plus-hitting catcher (Pudge), a couple of valuable second-basemen and a key DH asset.
 
Selecting at the end of a snake draft, we nabbed Nomar and Pudge with our first two picks, much to the consternation of our opponents, who were googly-eyes over big boppers like Carlos Delgado and Ken Griffey, Jr. We shocked the crowd again in the next two rounds, plucking Robby Alomar and Edgar Martinez from among a coterie of slugging first basemen and corner outfielders.
 
Not until the 9th round did we finally get around to staffing first. David Segui hit .305 with 19 dingers and 84 RBIs the year prior, certainly not the equal of guys like Mo Vaughn, but within shouting distance. We captured an entire infield of all-stars in exchange for the 20 homers and 40 RBI lost at first base. (We had the best offense in the league, a weak pitching staff and finished second overall.)
 
What made that strategy work was a pile of outfield (and first base, but that’s not so much the point here) bodies in MLB that year. Consider some of the outfield names of the day: Juan Gonzalez, Ken Griffey, Jr., Manny Ramirez, Bernie Williams, Albert Belle, Paul O’Neill, Tim Salmon, Shawn Green, Sammy Sosa, Moises Alou, Greg Vaughn, Barry Bonds, Vlad Guerrero, Tony Gwynn, Larry Walker. Every one of them had a Hall of Fame year in 1998. The best hitters of the day patrolled the distances or made the stretch on 6-4-3s.
 
Now, name the best outfielder in baseball today.
 
Go ahead. I’ll wait.
  
(Whistles Jeopardy theme...)
 
Stuck on Ryan Braun? Jeff Kemp? Grady Sizemore? The remnants of Ichiro perhaps?
 
A list of the top 10 hitters by OPS last year includes just two deep-fly catchers -- Joey Votto and Derrek Lee. You have to reach down to #6 on the list in the AL today to find an outfielder – Alex Rios of Chicago. Not exactly Sammy Sosa. In the NL, Andre Ethier and Colby Rasmus are 1-2 in OPS. Today. Check back in September. Neither has this kind of pedigree. (To be fair, they may turn out to. Rasmus is a sophomore; Ethier has a four-year record of accomplishment, though this would represent a quantum leap.)

That's heads; tails is where all the batsmen have gone. Today, shake a tree and a middle infielder with a good stick will fall out. Cano, Zobrist, Mauer, McCann, Jeter, Posada, Furcal, Escobar, Tulowitzki, Uggla, Utley, Pedroia, and Rollins jump to mind. Pivotmen and backstops, all. There are no 5’8” 160-pound slapsters filling the infield positions anymore. If Adonis can handle the position defensively, his team will gladly leave him at short.

Whether it's a paradigm shift or just a phase we're going through, it's one I don't think baseball has ever seen before. Put me in coach! I want to play centerfield!
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Back Here on Planet Earth...


AP summary of Mets-Indians game:

Johann Santana won for the first time in four starts and NY rallied to beat Cleveland.

Santana (5-3) gave up four runs and seven hits over seven innings as the Mets won their fifth straight and ninth of 10.

The left-hander fell behind early, struck out only one, but earned his first win since beating the Yankees on May 23.

During that stretch, he had two no decisions despite not yielding a run over 15 consecutive innings.

Francisco Rodriguez worked the ninth for his 14th save in 17 chances despite yielding a two-out, two-run pinch homer to Shelley Duncan.


Braindrizzling summary of Mets-Indians game:

David Wright had three singles and Ike Davis homered as the Mets pummeled Justin Masterson and the Cleveland Indians.

Despite the worst outing in his last four starts, Johann Santana was credited with his first win of that stretch, thanks to the Mets' 12-hit attack. Previously, he had two no decisions despite not yielding a run over 15 consecutive innings.

Santana gave up four runs and seven hits, and struck out only one over seven innings as the Mets won their fifth straight and ninth of 10.

Francisco Rodriguez nearly blew a three-run lead in the ninth, surrendering a two-out, two-run pinch homer to Shelley Duncan before registering a third out. He was credited with a save.
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12 June 2010

USA! USA! USA!


A brief diversion to soccer as the World Cup begins. A few things Americans need to know about the World Cup.

1. It's great that ESPN is broadcasting the games because it means that, for a moment at least, there will be massive coverage, talk, speculation, anticipation and hype about the biggest sporting event in the world.

2. It's miserable that ESPN is broadcasting the games because it means that, for a moment at least, there will be slanted coverage, ignorant talk, irrelevant speculation, anticipation of all things American and malignant hype about the biggest sporting event in the world.

3. The World Cup is not about the USA. It's about the world. Get over it. Americans can almost be forgiven their profound ignorance of the rest of the world with respect to the Olympics. After all, the media coverage could hardly be more jingoistic and the results feed the notion that the games are all about America, except for stupid sports like fencing and biathlon (i.e., sports that we are not good at, as opposed to smart sports like mogul skiing and extreme snowboarding and softball.)

4. The US has no realistic chance of winning the Cup. And guess what, that's okay. It doesn't make America less wonderful. I'd still rather be American than Argentine or Italian. Regardless of the outcome of the US-Algeria match, the US GDP is still thousands of times greater.

5. The real contenders are Brazil, Argentina, Germany, Holland, Spain, Italy and Portugal. France might complain that they belong in that field. Everyone else is competing for a good showing, much as teams in the NBA's Western Conference did this year.

5. The US-England match, which has yet to start as of this writing, is THE LEAST IMPORTANT MATCH FOR EITHER TEAM. The reason this match has received 465 times as much attention as any other is because it's the first one for the only team that counts, according to ESPN. But it's the toughest match for both teams in the group round. That means that as long as they take care of business against weaker opponents Algeria and Slovenia, both side will move on to the next round regardless of the outcome. If all were to go according to form, the US would win two and lose one and advance.

6. Luck is an immense part of the game. Because one goal has so much value, a fluke is often the difference between winning and losing. (See the Hand of God.) But in sabermetric terms, if 10 runs of VORP roughly equals a win of value in baseball, it's more like a two-to-one relationship for goals in soccer.

7. I root for teams that haven't won before. Go Spain.
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11 June 2010

Didn't He Pitch for the Yankees?


Great insight from Jeff Sullivan, MLB Editor at SB Nation...

A few guys have debuted this week. There was Strasburg, of course. There was Jose Tabata with Pittsburgh. There was Brad Lincoln with Pittsburgh. There were probably some other guys, too. And there was Mike Lincoln with Florida.

In any other year - in any other Strasburg and Heywardless year - Mike Stanton might be all the rage. Mike Stanton is 20 years old. He got promoted to the Marlins from AA after slugging .726 over 240 trips to the plate. Mike Stanton is an absolute beast, as promising a power prospect as any we've seen in years, if not decades.

I'm not here to give you any sort of obscure numerical insight on Stanton. He's coming from AA. Not only are the numbers there more limited and harder to find - they also mean a lot less. The competition is worse, the environments are more poorly understood, and the scorekeepers are bad. No, I'm just here to point out what I find to be perhaps the most amazing of Stanton's statistical exploits.

It isn't the 1.167 OPS or the 21 homers he hit in AA Jacksonville. No, it's the 39 homers he hit in single-A Greensboro in 2008, at the tender age of 18.

18. Jason Heyward was in the same league in the same year, and he was also 18. Heyward hit 11 balls out of the park. 18 year old Matt Dominguez hit 18. So did 18 year old Freddie Freeman. Jesus Montero hit 17. Mike Stanton finished with a 13-homer lead over second place Cody Johnson, who was a year older.

When Miguel Cabrera was 18, he played in A-ball. He hit seven homers. Adrian Beltre was one of the best teenage prospects baseball had ever seen, and when he was 18, he hit 26. Albert Pujols only hit 19 after being drafted at 20. And so on and so forth.

When Mike Stanton was 18, he hit 39 home runs.

And he's barely slowed down as he's climbed the ladder. His numbers suffered a little bit upon his first promotion to Jacksonville a year ago, but he very clearly figured things out in 2010, and while I imagine he'll face some obstacles after skipping AAA and jumping straight to the bigs, it's impossible not to get excited. Mike Stanton can't drink, and he's already accomplished some things in the professional ranks that few ever have.

Stephen Strasburg in Washington. Jason Heyward in Atlanta. Mike Stanton in Florida. The NL East is the new center of baseball.

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Muddle of the Order

The great philosopher, my own personal self, once said that the real test of a team is not its best slugger, #1 starter or closer. It's the #7 hitter, the fourth starter and the utility infielder.

That's because every team has a couple of celestial bodies on the roster batting in the middle of the order. The really good teams' Murderers' Rows range up and down the lineup, and can send an average arm to the hill even on the fourth or fifth day.

This wisdom is vindicated by the team that's claimed my rooting interest since 2005, the Washington Gnats. (There is a team in Savannah, GA called the Sand Gnats. That isn't short for Gnationals, though.) DC currently sports the most potent 3-4-5 hitters in baseball.

Check it out:
Ryan Zimmerman   315/.415/.587 25.0 VORP
Adam Dunn   .284/.378/.565 20.7 VORP
Josh Willingham   .283/.429/.524 25.1 VORP

For comparison:
Alex Rodriguez .290/.361/.482 14.6 VORP
Mark Teixeira .226/.341/.391 2.4 VORP
Robinson Cano .376/.419/.616 40.0 VORP

Chase Utley .262/.382/.471 18.1 VORP
Ryan Howard .289/.348/.468 11.3 VORP
Jayson Werth .274/.357/.543 13.4 VORP

Remember that VORP (value over replacement player) measures the offensive contribution of a player at his position, adjusted for home park, relative to a guy available on the free agent wire.

Clearly, the D.C. Comics are not the equal of the World Champs or the runners up. That's because Washington has sent to the plate a pair of gentlemen (Willie Harris and Will Nieves) 100 times each who are batting 24 points shy of Sr. Mendoza. The two have combined to "contribute" minus-12.6 VORP, which means some barbed wire and duct tape off the scrap heap would be worth nearly 13 more runs than these two studmuffins. Add their space-taking to 257 at-bats-worth of third outfielder Nyjer Morgan (.253/.320/.342 -2.5 VORP) and you have the makings of a seriously bad lineup.

Of course, not withstanding His Royal Highness, The Rookie of the Year, King Stephen Onestart, the Nats' problem is much more a matter of defense than offense. For starters, Adam Dunn's defense is offense. More to the point, with a bullpen like that, it's not a save, it's a miracle. The aforementioned Washington Stimulus Package, (as many fans for his first game as for the next two nights combined, which were two of the best crowds there this year) 14 Ks into his career, is already 11 times as valuable as closer Matt Capps, and two wins better than failed starter Jason Marquis. 

If you're wondering how even the Almighty Stephen manages that in seven innings, he got help. Marquis and his 20.52 ERA managed to be worth one-and-a-half wins less than a replacement pitcher in just three starts comprising eight-and-a-third innings. That's Tony Hayward bad, and certainly nothing you'll find on the Yankee or Phillie rosters, or on the roster of any first division team.

To complete the record, let's see the seventh best-hitting regular on each team:

Curtis Granderson (NYY) .254/.338/.451  6.8 VORP
Carlos Ruiz (PHI)  .287/.417/.375  8.2 VORP
Adam Kennedy (WAS)  .243/.325/.338 3.6 VORP

So next time you wonder why a team that sports some big wood and live arms can't break .500, remember that you're not looking in the right place.
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06 June 2010

One Loss Yields Five Winners

What would Armando Gallaraga be to baseball history without Jim Joyce?  Like a pebble dropped in a lake whose ripples never reach much beyond the moment.

The missed call on Gallaraga's Imperfect Game paints a new portrait of the artist. (Oh, c'mon. How do you work Ulysses or Dubliners into a baseball post?) He's the next Harvey Haddix, or even Don Larsen, whose fame outstrips his accomplishment. Gallaraga and Joyce have entered Baseball Immortality in a way that neither would have had the young Tiger simply earned the early season's third perfect game.

What's more notable to me is the incredible grace of the four people involved. Upon seeing the replay, Joyce admitted his mistake, sought out Gallaraga, apologized, and then relayed his regret to the media. That, my friends, is a man.

The aggrieved himself could be forgiven for being just a little bitter, but he was the opposite, sweet. He didn't just accept the apology, but found no room in his heart for resentment or lamentation. He acknowledged Joyce's remorse and admired his apology.

Up stepped to the plate Detroit's manager, Jim Leyland, who charged out of the dugout and vehemently argued the call on the field. But after the game, Leyland could not have been more gracious, defending Joyce's professionalism and character, and casting a vote of confidence for Major League umps in general.

Finally, despite intense pressure to overturn the result, Bud Selig demonstrated perspective and good judgment by leaving the situation alone. The commish, and probably the others as well, recognized that the sport's annals would treat Gallaraga's feat more sympathetically without intrusion by the Suits. (This is the same balanced approach he applied to Barry Bonds' assault on Hank Aaron's home run record. History will decide for itself who is the all-time home run king.)

Perhaps, all those involved understand (or read!) what I noted in a previous post: that perfect games are stuffed like a Thanksgiving turkey with luck. Suppose instead of E-ump, the story had been E-3 on that final ground ball. Good-bye perfect game, and there would be no argument. Suppose Austin Jackson hadn't channeled Willie Mays two batters earlier. One-hitter; zero debate. As the cliche goes, a no-hitter is just a lucky four-hitter.

For some, this episode has incited discussions on reviving replay, or replacing umps with technology, or demanding uniformity among umpires. These debates are all efforts to eliminate luck from the arbitration of in-game results, and they have their merits -- I support more use of replay and higher quality refereeing -- but they afford the illusion that the game is fair. Like life, baseball is a stew of talent, determination and goodly helpings of serendipity. Each game, each season, each career is steeped in this solution to the point where no winner, champion or Hall of Famer should ever forget that but for the Kismet Fairy they would not be where they are.

So to recap: The winners in this whole sad scenario are:
1. Jim Joyce
2. Armando Gallaraga
3. Jim Leyland
4. Bud Selig
5. Armando Gallaraga's legacy.

Oh, and all of baseball fandom. So that's six. Maybe that headline needs to be updated.
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03 June 2010

Where Are All The Geese?


Holy whifferoni, Batman, what is going on here? Is the Steroid Era officially dead and buried or have we stepped into the Wayback Machine? Consider this:

110 years of Major League Baseball -- 18 perfect games.
One-quarter of the 2010 season -- three perfect games, including one that went 28 outs.

More than that, the pitchers seem to be winning this year. Just last night, Johan Santana hurled seven shutout innings. And the Mets lost. 

Derek Lowe and Kyle Kendrick went 15 frames between them in the Braves-Phils tilt and relinquished just two runs.

And the Dodgers and Dbacks dragged their bats through 24 innings of futility over two days, pushing a total of two runners across the plate. In the second contest, Arizona starter Edwin Jackson pitched a complete-game three-hit shutout and three relievers blanked the Dodgers for four further innings...before losing on a single with two outs in the 14th. Six L.A. hurlers -- only one of whom I've ever heard of -- de-fanged the Snakes for 14 frames on eight hits and one walk.

It would be offensive, except there hasn't been any offense. ARod's stepped on the mound more often than some teams have stepped on the plate. Ubaldo Jimenez is a nice pitcher, but an 0.78 ERA after 11 starts tells you something is up. The guy pitches in Denver. There's been an awful lot of goose eggs laid this year. Where are all the geese?

The numbers vindicate this impression. The AL has posted a .331/.408 OPS this year. Check out the previous five:

09 -- .336/.428
08 -- .336/.420
07 -- .338/.423
06 -- .339/.437
05 -- .330/.424

(OPS is down, but not as dramatically in the NL. Being consistently bad, pitchers' batting provides ballast.)

The last time AL bats were so impotent? 1993 -- .337/.408. Evan Longoria was in third grade that year. Starlin Castro was in diapers.

I don't offer any ex-post facto explanations. The explosions have died down at the same time the game seems to have rid itself of steroids, if not other enhancers. Correlation isn't causation, but you can't have the latter without the former. Maybe teams are getting a better handle on pitcher health, or understanding better how to manage workloads. Maybe it's just one of those momentary fluctuations, or a seasonal thing that will heat up with the weather. 

Whatever it is, there's been an awful lot of not hitting this year. I can hear the distant echo, "Bring back the 60's, man!"
b

Once Upon A Time: The Ken Grifffey Story


Two months late, the Ancient Mariner has retired, one of the six greatest center fielders of all-time, the fifth most prolific homer run hitter of all time and a first-ballot Hall of Famer. Baseball fans were remembering Griffey today for his power, speed, arm, smile and for popularizing the southbound cap on a northbound head.

The narrative also includes this odd touch: Griffey is the first slugger of his era to retire without a hint of steroid scandal clinging to his hung-up uniform. It's apt then that he puts away the cleats after the kind of long, steady decline that used to characterize all the greats, including the two most recent giants ahead of him on the center fielder list -- Willie and Mickey.

Looking back on Junior's career, it's easy to forget that 630 home runs and a .284 BA are pale shadows of what we expected of him in the late '90s. Back then, visions of unprecedented greatness danced in our heads.

Remember the furor over the packaging of Junior to his hometown Reds for what seemed like a pile of seaweed -- Brett Tomko, Mike Cameron, Antonio Perez and Jake Meyer?  Since the trade, Cameron alone has been more than three times as valuable as Junior...and he's still accumulating value.

In fact, when we consider the spectacular career of Ken Griffey, Jr., we're really talking about his first stint with the Mariners -- which comprises the first half of his career -- and nothing else. I divided his career into its first 12 years, 1989-2000, which includes his first campaign with the Reds, and the second 11 seasons, 2001-2010. Behold the following:

In the first half of his career, Junior smoked 438 home runs. He was the fastest player ever to 200, 250, 300, 350 and 400 dingers. In the second act, he coaxed 192 out of the park.

In the first half of his career, he slugged .500+ nine times and .600+ five times. In the second half, he slugged .500 four times and never came close to .600.

First half -- .380 on base percentage seven times. 
Second half -- none.

First half -- .300 batting average seven times.
Second half -- once.

First half -- 100 RBI seasons eight times.
Second half -- none

First half -- 100 run seasons six times.
Second half -- none

First half -- 173 SB.
Second half -- 11 SB

First half -- 10 Gold Gloves.
Second half -- none
During his first 12 seasons, the Kid was 66.4 wins better than a replacement player. By the age of 30 he had already made his Hall of Fame case and won a conviction. That's fortunate, because he earned just 8.1 more wins against a replacement player in the second half of his career.

None of this diminishes Griffey's accomplishments; in fact, it's partly the result of his prowess astonishingly early in his life. In the four years when his contemporaries were taking Sociology 101 and challenging Cal-Irvine for the Big West title, Junior was winning hearts and minds in the Pacific Northwest, hitting .300 three times and creaming 87 taters in the Bigs. 

So here's to Ken Griffey, Jr., an all-time great. Just not in this millenium.
b