29 September 2010

Now Pitching, Wild Thing


While you're eyeballing Aroldis Chapman's supersonic pitches next season, my gaze will fall on Braves rookie Craig Kimbrel. A third-round pick in '08, the 22-year-old Alabaman has bedazzled major league hitters since his September call-up this year.

Kimbrel is Nook Laloosh without the girlfriend. He faced 80 batters in his first 19 relief appearances and walked 14 of them. Eight of them touched him up for hits. And 37 of them struck out. 

He had an 0.47 ERA. That's good, you know.

In Triple-A Gwinnett this year, he walked 35 in 55 innings. And struck out 83. Those minor leaguers managed a hit every other inning off him. What do they know that major leaguers don't?

The Braves are talking about making him a starter, so there's a lot more to the story to be written. In the meantime, enjoy the fireworks.
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27 September 2010

My God, How Did We Get Here?


And so here we are, two series remain in the season and there is just one race. The Padres, Giants and Braves competing for two spots.

What a long, strange trip it's been. (Later note: I wrote this sentence and yesterday's post just before Baseball Prospectus unveiled its new Pecota system designed specifically to eliminate projections like the Matt Wieters over-reach to which I referred. The first sentence of this paragraph is the title of theirs. The Grateful Dead lives.) The Phillies, clearly the cream of the NL, suffered through a broken lineup until September when they caught fire and torched the Braves. Atlanta in turn played like Ted Williams at home (52-23) and Esther Williams (35-46) on the road (credit: Schnitz) to earn their invitation to the Wild Card gala.

In the Central, St. Louis spanked this year's playoff contenders but went all masochist when taking on the league's basement dwellers. (12-6 vs. the Reds; 21-26 against the detritus that comprises the rest of the division.) Surprising Cincinnati rode Joey Votto, a resurgent Scott Rolen and positive contributions from 16 pitchers to capture the Central. Out west, midnight seemed to strike for the improbable Hitless Wonders from San Diego, but now it's morning in SoCal and the Padres are back on the pulpit. The pitching Giants and their teammates, the hitting Midgets, are in the driver's seat after relinquishing three or fewer runs in 21 of 24 September games, yet managing to win just 15 of them.

The final six-pack of contests finds the Braves mercifully finishing at the Ted to school the Fightin' Fish and the second string from Philadelphia. The Pads and Giants tussle with each other to wrap the season, so Atlanta has an edge on the Wild Card.

The beauty of this race is that it approaches reductionist perfection. Win, you're in. Lose, go home. Of course, they could all muddle to the finish line, which would mean settling it in overtime. With these three they should just play until someone scores. That'll keep it at nine innings.
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26 September 2010

Statheads on Crack


Sabermetrics have transformed baseball analysis and helped regular fans like us understand the game differently and better. Computer-fueled statistical analysis has punched holes in old shibboleths and established new, research-supported truths. Often, they tell us that our eyes deceive us.

The stat geeks, spreadsheet-munchers and number nerds responsible for this revolution deserve our appreciation not just for devising new ways to measure things, but to continue to devise better ways. Ten years ago, when seamheads were gestating the concept of dissociating pitching from defense, the results were often best left ignored. They have improved steadily, thanks to MLB's ability to catalog every single pitch, to the point where we could, in broad strokes, predict the decline of Ubaldo Jimenez in the second half of the season.

Sometimes, however, seamheads forget that their work is a journey and not a destination.They are beguiled by half-conceived statistical formulae whose rough edges have yet been smoothed by years of inquiry, testing and polishing. They treat the results as gospel, rather than as suggestions tempered by the adolescent state of the art.

Two years ago, Oriole farmhand Matt Wieters was touted by Baseball Prospectus as the greatest catching prospect since Zeus. (Lightning bolt for an arm, immense two-strike power.) Using their proprietary projection system to examine Wieters' minor league and college careers, it projected him to hit .311/.395/.544 with 31 home runs in 2009 and be worth 60 runs more than a replacement-level catcher. Their system, called PECOTA, compares player performance to similar players of the past and sets upper and lower boundaries on expected future results. What I've listed is the weighted mean -- or most likely -- projected rookie numbers for Wieters.

What seemed obvious to me at the time, and what you've no doubt realized, is that such expectations for any rookie are patently absurd. They fail the smell test. While we should all be open to revealed truths, we must trust our eyes until the contradictory facts congeal into a proof.

In fact, Wieters showed great promise as a 23-year-old in 2009 with a .288/.340/.412 line and nine home runs in half a season. That's still above average for a receiver, but a far cry from the projection that BP writers defended as if it were the 11th commandment. (Honor they PECOTA projection and have no other conjurings before me.) Wieters has sagged even further from that unwarranted esteem this year to .253/.326/.385 and 11 home runs in full-time duty.

I love Baseball Prospectus enough to pay good money for it and read it everyday. But they treat PECOTA as destiny and use it to project team performance -- via a Monte Carlo simulation of a million permutations -- at the start of each season. Then they update their projections as the season unfolds.

The opening season projections amount to on-screen enlightenment. Often, BP sees things I don't. They correctly projected declines for the Dodgers, White Sox, Tigers and Angels. They're a good guide to the upcoming season.

It's when Dr. Jekyll starts reading his own press releases that he becomes Mr. Hyde. Entering the 2010 campaign, BP projected that the Cardinals had something like an 80% chance of making the playoffs. My reaction then was, how could that possibly be? I understand that the Redbirds were favorites, but no non-Yankee contingent can ever be an 80% lock before a pitch is thrown. Imagine a season in which Albert Pujols and Chris Carpenter are cut down by injuries and you can see that such a projection is patent nonsense. But the BP brain trust wrote as if October in St. Louis was a fait accompli.

Two weeks ago, BP had the Braves as an 89.6% lock to play in mid-October, despite a three-game deficit to the surging Phils and just a two game cushion over San Francisco for the Wild Card. Once again my olfactory nerves shuddered. Atlanta took three pops to the chin from their division rival and fell into a flat-footed tie for the Wild Card with nine or 10 games left. BP was still offering nearly 3-1 that the Braves would take the fourth playoff spot. (Their remaining schedule is weaker than San Diego's and San Francisco's.)

I understand why BP thinks the Braves should be favored, but I doubt Atlanta residents are booking their playoff tickets quite yet. As I write this, Chief Nakahoma's nine is a game back of San Diego in the loss column with six to play, having just lost two of three to execrable Washington. How is it possible for a team to be a 90% lock for the playoffs if a 4-6 stretch puts them on the outside looking in?

Perhaps some day the statxperts at Baseball Prospectus will improve their tools and better project playoff odds. Or (more likely, in my view) predicting the future will continue to fall outside the purview of mere humans, regardless of their statistical acumen. In any case, I'll continue to treat sabermetrics as a toolbox necessary to understanding the game I love, not as perfection itself.

So I'll be watching the games this last week and ignoring the predictions.
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25 September 2010

Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics


Four out of five people -- nearly half! -- are innumerate. It's online, so it must be true.

When I was a reporter, the local county executive of one political stripe was battling over budgetary matters with the rival-dominated legislature. The legislative leader claimed that the rate of increase in the budget had spiked 200%. The number-addled media duly reported it.

The next day, the county executive responded that he had hog-tied spending 25% below inflation. The media, without any effort or ability to analyze the apparent paradox, simply passed that along too.

Of course, the few reporters like me who could count to 11 without removing their footwear knew that they were both spinning absurdly the same information. The county had increased spending in year one by 1% and in year two by 3%. That's a tripling in the rate of increase, which is 200%. Since the cost of living was rising at four percent, the rate of county spending had risen three-quarters of that, or 25% less. As Mark Twain noted, there are three types of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.

In baseball, statistics are like fire: a wonderful servant and terrible master. People facile with statistics can use them to illuminate and enrich. Most people have a weak grip on stats and instead use them, often unknowingly, to obfuscate and confuse.

Two example jumped to mind this week. I'll address the second one in an upcoming post.

First, Ichiro Suzuki reached 200 hits for a record 10th straight year. This is noteworthy, and even somewhat significant, but not terribly so. If it were, it's hard to imagine that the DH-aided Mariners would be on pace to score the fewest runs in a season in 39 years. (Aside: "DH-aided" might be hyperbole. Seattle DHs are swimming underwater as a group in the Mendoza pool. Then again, so are their catchers. Their backstops, second-basemen and shortstops are slugging less than .300. Felix Hernandez deserves the Purple Heart for going 12-12.)

Collecting bunches of hits is always a good thing. To accrue 200, a batter must hit for average (.331 lifetime) and demonstrate durability over a six month regular season (he's averaging 158 games). Achieving that 10 straight years is a testament to consistency, reliability and hitting prowess. It doesn't hurt, of course, that Ichiro has led-off in nearly every game he's played.

Accumulating lots of hits is also a mark of one giant inability: getting on base by free pass. Albert Pujols has tallied 200 hits just once in his all-world career, yet he's batted safely more often than Ichiro in many fewer plate appearances. (They're both completing their 10th MLB season.) The Babe reached that level just three times.

Ichiro is a two-trick pony offensively. He gets hits and steals bases (an average of 38 SB/9 CS per campaign) but is almost a total power outage. For all his hits, he's reached 30 doubles just twice in his career and double-digits in homers twice.

Ichiro is a very extreme example of the hollowness of batting average. At .315 with just 37 extra base hits, Ichiro is 62nd in the majors in value over a replacement level player (VORP), just behind Carlos Ruiz and ahead of Austin Jackson. Failing to walk leaves him just 63rd in MLB in on-base percentage (among players with 300 PA) just behind Kelly Johnson and ahead of Jeff Keppinger. In short, Ichiro needs to bat about .330 to be a great hitter and at least .300 to be a good one.

Ichiro has been a great player mostly because his glove work, his dependability and his basepath prowess complement a sturdy OBP (.376 lifetime) fueled mostly by batting average. There's a certain level of novelty act to his career.  After all, Travis Hafner has a higher lifetime OBP than Ichiro with a bucket-load more power, but no one's bronzing his likeness. It's all the other things that make Ichiro a sublime player.

As the third best lead-off hitter of all time, Ichiro's a lock for the Hall of Fame. (Rickey & Rock both had higher OBP, higher SLG and more net steals; neither was Ichiro's equal in the field.) But he'll be on the low end in the Hall when considering actual value to his team.
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24 September 2010

Mercy Rule in Cy Young Votes


We're coming down to the wire on a couple of races. Doubt has left the building in the American League and is making a token appearance in the NL. The Phils and Reds are in and a more balanced Atlanta squad has a much easier row to hoe than one-dimensional San Diego and San Fransisco. Odds are that the loser in the West gets the autumn off.

As for the seasonal hardware, there's still plenty to be settled. Prince Albert, who has lain mostly dormant lately, pounded two homers last night to re-state his NL MVP case, while CC Sabathia last night wrote his AL Cy Young concession speech.

In my view, Cy has already, with nine games left, gone around the circle calling "duck" and landed on his goose in each league.
First, a definition. The Cy Young Award recognizes each league's best pitcher. Period. There is no award for the pitcher who had the best offense behind him or relief pitching to support him. There is no award for the pitcher whose team won most when he was on the mound. There's no award for the best lifetime narrative. If you want to invent an award for those, go ahead. Bestow the Ron Davis Award, named for the reliever who, in his 1979 rookie campaign, posted a 14-2 record in the Bronx that vastly overstated his performance. His 1.5 K/BB ratio and 10 blown saves lurked in the shadows of an amazing W-L mark that mostly demonstrated his uncanny ability to walk off the mound just before the Yankees took their final lead of the game.

I'm looking for a pitcher who takes the ball every five days and goes deep into the game without giving up a lot of runs. I'm taking into effect context, most notably the ballpark he pitches in and the defense behind him. You can garnish with other considerations, like his own fielding ability and the strength of his competition, but these tend to have minimal impact. 

In the NL, the Cy Young Award clearly needs a Halladay. The Phillies' right-hander leads the circuit in innings pitched, strikeouts, fewest walks per game, K/BB ratio, complete games, shutouts and quality starts. His home office is Armageddon for pitchers, yet he's yielded just 2.76 runs (not just earned runs) per game, fourth in the league and just a quarter run per nine behind league leader Josh Johnson.The only knock against Halladay is that he can be taken deep -- 24 homers off him this year -- but that's picking at nits, particularly off a guy who does everything else well. 

In short, Roy Halladay is the best pitcher in the NL this year by the length of KRod's rap sheet. Johnson, Adam Wainwright, Tim Hudson, Chris Carpenter, Cole Hamels, Brett Meyers, Johan Santana and Ubaldo Jimenez (remember him?) all deserve recognition for fine 2010 campaigns. But they're all racing for the lower box on the podium. 

In the Junior Circuit, the choice is stark. CC Sabathia has compiled a lot of wins pitching for the best team in baseball. Felix Hernandez has a .500 record for a team that scores less often than my high school friends (me included). Hernandez has pitched more innings than Sabathia and relinquished fewer hits, fewer home runs and fewer walks. He has more strikeouts and a better K/BB ratio. His ERA is a run lower.

In fact, the 24-year-old Venezuelan has so out-performed Carsten Charles this year, you might be wondering whether it's the wrong comparison. You might be thinking that Jon Lester, David Price and Jered Weaver are the more apt competitors for the award. Ah, you are wise grasshopper, but you are not a baseball writer. Sabathia's gaudy 20-7 record is like a shiny bauble to the baseball writers and they will compare it favorably to the 12-12 mark that the Ms have dangled around the neck of King Felix.

Before dismissing Sabathia, let's acknowledge that Yankee Stadium is a breeding ground for home runs and run scoring. The effect, however, is smaller than it appears because the Bombers are so loaded offensively. And while Safeco is a run suppressant, the difference is not nearly enough to balance the scales between Felix and CC.

Lester and Price both deserve notice for their accomplishments this season, but neither is the equal of the Seattle righty and both are being considered, again, mostly because of tasty W-L records. Weaver is an under-heralded annual aspirant to Cy's mantle, but Hernandez is a big hill to climb. In fact, King Felix is their superior in basically every category that matters (K/BB excepted).

Clay Bucholz, Cliff Lee and Brian Duensing have all authored masterful 2010 half-seasons. Had any of these pitched a full season (Bucholz because of injuries, Lee because of trade and Duensing because he pitched from the pen until July) they might now be a contender.

Many things can happen in the last nine games of the 2010 season. Carlos Gonzalez could homer twice a day and propel the Rockies into the playoffs on his MVP wings. The Red Sox could sweep the Yankees and plow into the playoffs ahead of NY. The Mets could decide not to fire Jerry Manuel and not to rue their Jason Bay signing. But many things can't happen. The Pirates cannot win out and end their sub-.500 streak. Prince Fielder cannot earn a Gold Glove. And Roy Halladay and Felix Hernandez are out of opportunities to relinquish their unassailable claims on the Cy Young Awards.
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My Day At Spitball Stadium


I went to a Major League game at the Ballpark last week. The home nine was taking on the team in dark uniforms for first place in the North. It was quite a tilt.

The opposition's lead-off hitter, facing a 3-1 count, tried to cop a walk by ducking away from a slider on the inside edge. The wily veteran had nothing on the experienced arbiter that day, who called strike two.

He squared on the next delivery and laid a roller along the third base line, which the hot cornerman could only watch roll to a stop. He really exploited the defense. Man on first.

The next batsman smacked a one-hopper to the shortstop who flipped to second. The base runner came barreling in six feet from the bag, cleats exposed. He reached back his hand in a token effort to suggest that second base was his intended destination while he upended the sprawling keystoner, disrupting the relay to first. A hustling team player, he saved the hated opposition an out.

Next up, the dangerous #3 hitter. An inside curve ball bounced beside the plate and skidded into the dugout while the batter insisted to the umpire that he'd been struck. His manager, a cagey baseball man, surreptitiously scuffed the ball against his shoe and raced onto the field with the marked ball aloft. The ump, over-ruled by the evidence, awarded the hitter first base.

First and second, one out. Our hurler was born on a day, but it wasn't yesterday. He worked over the newly-supplied ball meticulously while the next batter took his warm-up swings. Hidden between his ring and middle fingers was a tiny emery board, which he applied to the ball in order to destabilize its path to the plate.

Sure enough, his next three pitches fluttered home in thoroughly frustrating patters, sending the burly cleanup hitter to an early seat back in the dugout. He always has something up his sleeve to keep hitters off-balance! A crucial second out to douse the rally.

The inning ended without incident and our side got its licks.

The first offering from the visiting club's ace made a beeline for our speedy table-setter as he began his swing. He spun out of the way as the ball caromed off him, shaking his aching hand something fierce. He jogged to first while the replays showed the ball had, in fact, ricocheted off his bat. What a great actor! Those are the kinds of intangibles that make him an All Star.

Our number two hitter worked the count to 3-1. A slider fizzed wide of the strike zone, but the catcher had set up wider yet and framed the pitch a few inches lean. "Strike two!" bellowed the flummoxed umpire. It's sublime receiving skills like that that make our backstop one of the best in the game.

With the count full and the runner alight, the lefty-swinger pulled a two hopper to second. The second-baseman scooped the ball and backhanded it towards the bag in one motion, allowing the shortstop to slide his foot across second base, catch the ball six feet into the baseline and rifle a twin-killer to first in the nick of time. It's tough to avoid the double play when Timkers and Evers are out there in middle infield.

Our best man with the stick stepped to the plate and worked the count full before taking a fastball knee high. As the man in blue contemplated whether the pitch had cleared his kneecap, he began trotting to first. That evident confidence convinced the ump to let him go.

That brought up our slugging clean-up hitter. He dug in in the right hand batter's box while the hurler straddled the rubber and looked in for a sign. The runner took his lead as the first baseman awaited a pick-off throw. The outfielders played deep and around to left. The stadium lights twinkled and the...hey, what's that? The first baseman pulled the oldest trick in the book, tagging our runner with the ball hidden in his glove. We were all so deflated as he led his team trotting off the field. End of inning.

It continued in that manner for eight innings. Our crafty closer, who has beguiled the media with winked half-admissions about a Vaseline-aided knuckler -- the wascally wabbit! -- fired BBs past the first two batters and then faced that barrel-chested all-or-nothing pinch hitter who's been dogged by allegations of chemical use. Our fireman bewildered him with a diving slider and an infuriating change-up before leaving a 96-mph two-seamer up in the zone. The masher plastered it into the upper deck in right for the lead.

Cheater! User! The run shouldn't even count! He's bulking up illegally. He should be banned from the Hall of Fame, no matter how many games he's won for this team. It's a blight on the game. It's ruining tradition.

The home uniforms succumbed in the ninth and we dropped to second place. Our manager should protest the game. We can't have cheating in baseball.
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13 September 2010

Hair, The Comedy


News item: White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf wants Manny Ramirez to trim his flowing dreads.  Chicago has a hair length policy. The team believes that trimmed locks look more "professional."

Isn't that rich? They traded for Manny Ramirez, a guy who tanked on two different teams and they're concerned that his hair looks unprofessional. They employ a manager whose mouth is directly connected to his thoughts without any intervention from his brain, and they're worried about the length of their second baseman's sideburns.

Perhaps Reindsdork was gazing upon the profound complexities of his navel when his general manager voluntarily executed a trade for Manny Ramirez and his trademark hairstyle. Perhaps he was so awed by Ramirez's ability to singe a 95-mph fastball that he failed to notice the player's flowing braids. In any event, the team welcomed Ramirez to the roster. Reinsdorf's next outreach to Ramirez ought to be something in the area of shut the hell up.

The White Sox trail the first place Twins by six games. You want to talk about cutting something, Jerry Reinsdorf? Trim that!
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12 September 2010

Scoring Without A Hit


If you ever wonder why this blog bangs on mainstream sports media, here's an example.

ESPN is a multi-billion-dollar entity that ostensibly hires the most expert sports analysts. They have access to the best information. I'm guessing that somewhere at the Worldwide Leader lay Bill James' Baseball Abstracts dating back to 1979.

And yet, they manage to produce logic like this from Steve Berthiume, who I'm told hosts a baseball show. He is dubious about Tampa Bay's post-season chances.

As the postseason draws near...there are also pressing reasons not to believe in the Rays. They don't hit very much. Yes, they've scored 57 runs in their past 10 games, but Tampa Bay is 23rd in the majors in batting average and 25th in hits.

These are facts. The Rays are 23rd in BA and 25th in hits. This is also a fact: Pluto's equatorial diameter is 2,274 km. But that doesn't make it a planet.

Being 23rd in the majors in batting average and 25th in hits doesn't make Tampa a bad hitting team. Bill James demonstrated that batting average and hits are only weakly associated with run scoring 31 years ago. How can an ostensible expert not be aware of new information in his field that dates back to the Carter Administration?

In fact, the Rays are third in the majors in runs scored, which is the only relevant measure of offense. The Rays score by some combination of walking, getting hit by pitches, hitting for power, stealing bases effectively and avoiding double plays. (Teams can also score by stringing their hits together and hitting well with runners on, but those two are mostly a matter of chance and don't tend to be repeatable.) 

It could hardly be less relevant how many hits the Rays have accumulated. Kansas City is third in the majors in hits and fourth worst in runs scored. Does Steve Berthiume believe the Royals are a good hitting team?

I don't mean to pick on this particular reporter or network. Not understanding these distinctions makes them incompetent in my view, but they are representative of the vast majority. And that's why this blog bangs on mainstream sports media.
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Like Kissing Someone Else's Sister


How many times have you heard this season that the Yankees and Rays are battling for first place in the AL East. They are doing no such thing.

It doesn't make a nose hair's worth of difference whether the Yanks win the division and the Rays take the wild card or vice versa. As the team in the Bronx demonstrated a decade ago, they shake the Etch-A-Sketch after the season and start all over.

For practical purposes, one team will draw Texas and the other Minnesota. We still today don't know which team the AL East champ will play. Does it really matter? A World Series appearance requires victory in two playoff series, regardless of the opponent.

The division winner gets an extra home game, while the Wild Card squad has an added road challenge in the unlikely event that the series goes the distance. (Most series end before game seven.) It changes the odds of winning the series by about two percentage points.

That's more than a bucket of warm spit, but a whole lot less than getting your team healthy and your rotation set. In fact, if the teams are tied on the last day of the season, both managers would be well-advised (and don't worry, they both are) to sacrifice the division and send a scrub to the mound so the rotation is correctly rotated for the playoffs.

Ask the '06 Tigers, the '05 Astros, the '04 Red Sox, '03 Marlins, '02 Giants, '00 Mets and the '97 Marlins about conquering their division. Each of them leapfrogged the team that outpaced them in the regular season to reach the World Series. They know that coming in second is like kissing someone else's sister...if the Wild Card's involved.
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06 September 2010

On Second Thought


A common form of rationalization is to reach a conclusion that feels good and then find the facts that support it. This is part of cognitive dissonance, which I've described before as the most insistent psychological artifact affecting humans. Without cognitive dissonance, the reconciliations necessary to support our religious and political beliefs would explode our brains (or at least leave us in a state of constant disquiet.)

However, loyal dedication to the truth, rather than to particular points of view, forces us to acknowledge the weaknesses in our arguments and the power of contradictory viewpoints. Which brings us to Ryan Ludwick.

The St. Louis Cardinals trade deadline dispatch of Ludwick, roundabout, to the San Diego Padres for middling starter Jake Westbrook has reasonably earned the opprobrium of this blog. In yesterday's post, I noted the Cards' offensive sputtering since Ludwick's departure. It seemed like a sound argument.

Deeper examination blurs the picture a bit. Ludwick has stunk up the joint (.194/.237/.250 in the last 10 games) since his departure, and so have the Padres, now on a 10-game skid. His replacement in St. Louis, rookie Jon Jay, has similarly struggled in that period, but was considered a worthy and less expensive replacement at.327/.379/.480 for the year. It can't credibly be said that dealing Ludwick has harmed the Cards and aided the Pads; indeed, the Giants seem to have been the primary beneficiaries of the trade.

It was still a Cardinal error in the long run, particularly considering how very meager was their return. But it's not fair to say that the absence of Ludwick is what sunk St. Louis's playoff hopes.

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An example of how W-L records skew our understanding of the game:
On a Braves broadcast today, the in-studio hosts mentioned that Roy Oswalt would lead the rival Phillies against Florida the next day. An unnamed host mentioned that Oswalt has been lights-out since coming east, after "struggling" in Houston.

No doubt, the Phils struck gold when they traded for the venerable righty. He's averaged nearly seven innings in his seven starts as a Phillie, limiting opponents to an exemplary 2.08 ERA with eight punchouts per nine.

Before the trade, though, Oswalt was no slouch. His 6 1/2 innings per start were likely diminished by the need for pinch hitters. A 3.63 RA in front of worse defense obscured a superior K/BB ratio and pure strikeout rate. The patina of failure that coated Oswalt during his Astro tenure was all about a 6-12 record that was largely the fault of his feckless mates.

In fact, Oswalt's performance since joining the pennant fray was almost entirely predictable given his long track record and the line he'd authored in the first half of the season. Six and twelve sounds like failure, and it is, but not Roy Oswalt's.
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04 September 2010

Voices In My Head


I watched Aroldis Chapman pitch for the first time today, he of the already-renowned 104 mph heater. 

Dude can bring it, but he was all over the place with his arm angle and with his pitches. His landing position varied pitch-to-pitch. His repertoire is limited to two pitches, which while devastating, aren't sufficient for a starter.

In short, let's all calm down about him just yet. His upside is way up, but for now, he's raw. 

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The Cardinals are a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. How can a team with Adam Wainwright, Chris Carpenter and Jaime Garcia, all with ERAs under 3.00, lose seven of nine to the three worst teams in the NL? Since sweeping the Reds in mid-August St. Louis is 6-14 and free-falling out of the playoff race.

Of course, their offense has been the main culprit. They have just two reliable hitters, Pujols and Holliday, and Prince Albert went 18 hitless at-bats before today's harmless single in a loss to the Reds. 

This is the price the usually sagacious Redbirds are paying for shipping off Ryan Ludwick in a July 31 trade that netted fungible veteran starter Jake Westbrook. I don't think it's a coincidence that their travails began right about the time that Ludwick packed up his .832 OPS for San Diego.

The Cards have scored 22 runs in 10 of their last 11 games, not including an 11-10 loss to Washington a week ago. They haven't helped themselves afield. Twelve of the 59 runs they've relinquished in their last 11 games have not accrued to their pitchers' ERAs. In today's game, four of the five runs against Adam Wainwright were "unearned" and that doesn't account for the sixth Red tally, set up when a fly ball bounced off Matt Holliday's leg and into the stands for a double. (The great Dick Stockton noted that pinch-hitting first-baseman Yonder Alonso had "legged out" a double.)

The Reds' eight game lead with fewer than 30 left is nearly insurmountable, and the Cards have a team stack to climb over for the wild card. More than ever, I think they'll rue their trade deadline move.

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Much was made of the leaked report showing that several bad teams have been pocketing their luxury tax money rather than spending it on players. Much of the controversy is based on the common confusion between cause and effect.

Poor performance and low payroll are highly correlated because both ends are cause and effect. Obviously, refusing to spend on players can drain a team of talent. Equally true, lousy play keeps salaries down. More true, the more young players, the more payroll stays real low.

The discussion is most absurd when it comes to the franchise in Pittsburgh. The Pirates are young and not very accomplished, so naturally their payroll is low. Signing a couple of high-priced free agents (as if they even could) to help the team win 78 games and block the advancement of prospects is not only useless, it's counter-productive. Most free agents, who must already have six years in the majors, are on the downsides of their careers by the end of their free agent contracts, which would coincide with the Pirates' prospects, if all goes according to plan, reaching baseball maturity. 

Pittsburgh management has a plan -- procure lots of young talent, draft well and often, build an international development system and be patient. None of that requires as much cash as one Mark Teixeira contract. Regardless of whether they execute it well, it's the right plan. The size of their payroll is irrelevant. 
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