APpalling!

No, seriously, the Associated Press was not invented as fodder for discerning sports bloggers. But if someone hangs a curve with the bases loaded, you don't refuse to bust it out of the park just because the pitcher is an inept dope. Sure, after a few lollipops it might be time to find stiffer competition, but let's shoot fish in a barrel once again for some quick laughs.

AP report: Carlos Beltran's sacrifice fly started a four-run rally in the seventh inning and the Mets held on for a 4-2 victory over the Reds.

Memo to the AP intern who wrote this dreck: a sacrifice fly, by definition, cannot start a rally. Someone had to be on third in order for the ordinary fly ball out to mean anything. This is like saying that Gettysburg started the Civil War.

Jose Reyes was on third, as a matter of fact, the result of consecutive singles by him and Justin Turner. To say Reyes "started" the rally would be vastly fairer, but still not entirely accurate. 

Following Beltran's out, David Wright singled, Daniel Murphy doubled in two runs and Jason Bay plated Murphy with a safety.

So, Dissociated Press, your hero, Carlos Beltran, had the distinction among the first six batters in the inning to make the only out. He contributed negatively to the proceedings. Absent his contribution, the Mets would have scored the same runs in exactly the same order but would have had a better chance to score a fifth run with Bay on base and one less out.

Braindrizling report: Daniel Murphy doubled in two runs during a four-run rally in the seventh inning and R.A. Dickey and four relievers stymied the powerful Cincinnati lineup in a 4-2 victory.

But wait, there's more!

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In the box score right next to the Mets-Reds writeup:

Aaron Harang outpitched Cliff Lee, Chris Denorfia stole home and San Diego beat the Phillies for the first time in more than a year.

This is what social scientists call TBU -- true but useless. Your grandmother outpitched CLiff Lee last night. Lee surrendered five runs on 10 hits in four innings in another July meltdown.

Harang, who earned top billing in the AP account, didn't even earn a quality start. He gave up four runs on eight hits and two walks in six innings and really deserves none of the credit for the win. (Relievers Chad Qualls, Mike Adams and Heath Bell did their usual stellar job strangling the Phils over the final three frames.)

On the other hand, Denorfia raced to the plate with an unassisted run on a play that hadn't been successfully executed by a Padre in SIX YEARS. But the AP chose to feature Aaron Harang and his game ERA of 6.00. Really, with all the unemployed journalists, can't AP find someone who can think?

There is a common thread here. Carlos Beltran was credited with an RBI. Aaron Harang got credit for a win. Being stuck in a statistical 1955 means that the Associated Press can't tell an accurate story because it's focused on old fogey stats that we've known for years distort reality. And since the Associated Press is a cooperative, owned by its member news operations across the country, this ignorance is a reflection of the entire state of sports journalism today.

Braindrizzling report: Chris Denorfia stole home and the Padres pounded Cliff Lee for 10 hits in four innings as San Diego defeated the Phillies for the first time in more than a year.

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Quick Hits

Mike Adams update: Follow-up on the lanky righty who throttled the NL over the previous three years, whiffing 192 in 169 innings, allowing just a .180 batting average and an ERA of 1.81.

Believe it or not, NL batters have slipped out of the frying pan against the Padres' set-up man and into the fire. The league has managed just .146/.159/.240 against him this year. His 1.20 ERA is spit-shined by a 5-1 strikeout-walk ratio. He hasn't surrendered a hit since July 6.

No wonder everyone wants him in a deadline deal.

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No one wants Dan Uggla, the stubby Atlanta keystoner signed to a hefty long-term deal at season's start. In return, Uggla has thumped .195/.269/.387, and there's no injury to blame.

There is, however, an historically wretched .206 BABIP. It's unlikely that a BABIP that bad, this deep into the season, is just a sneeze. Uggla must be doing something wrong. There is evidence he is hacking uncharacteristically, which could mean he's making bad contact.

Nevertheless, if we were to bequeath him an average BABIP of .300, that only hikes his batting average up to .227.  That's swimming with his head above the Mendoza level, but still not much to look at. Uggla's defense is offensive too, so thank goodness for his 18 home runs. The stalwart power is keeping him in positive VORP (value over replacement player.)

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Coming In Second Like Kissing Your Girlfriend

The first-place Red Sox and Phillies won today. 

The second place Yankees and Braves lost.

These two statements are:

a) closely related

b) bad news for the NY and Atlanta clubs

c) suggestive of who will square off in the World Series

The correct answer is: d) none of the above.

Living in Charleston, SC, the Braves are my "hometown" team. I hear their broadcasters regularly scoreboard-watch Phillie games and remind listeners of the growing or narrowing gap between Philadelphia and Atlanta. I'm guessing they do the same on the other three team broadcasts.

Anyone paying attention realizes, however, that the Braves aren't chasing the Phils and the Yankees aren't chasing the Red Sox. The point of the regular season is to make the playoffs, period. The penalty for not winning the division -- ostensibly playing a more difficult opponent and losing the tiny home field Game 7 advantage -- is a mere flea bite compared to considerations like getting players healthy and the pitching rotation lined up. 

In that respect, the Yankees, now six games clear of the fading Rays, are in the same cruise mode as their hated rivals. Atlanta has a five game cushion on their Wild Card competition, which is currently led by Arizona, but the Dbacks, Cards, Brewers, et. al. would be tilting at Wild Card windmills. While the frontrunners want to continue to play well for the remaining 60 games and punch their playoff tickets, the managers of all four clubs have to begin considering how they can position their teams for best results in the post-season.

There are significant distinctions between the 162-game schedule and three seven-game playoff series. Roster depth that can carry a team to a division title is nearly irrelevant in short series. Deep pitching rotations that are critical to the daily grind of the long spring and summer play no role in the fall. A team that thrives in summer's dog days might wilt in the frigid nights of October, and vice versa. (This is why more playoff teams is an increasingly bad idea: it makes the World Series more of a lottery and reduces the odds that the best teams will play for the title.)

Terry Francona, Charlie Manuel, Joe Girardi and Freddi Gonzalez would all be well-advised to begin cultivating a plan to ensure that their best players are rested and healthy come October, and that they know who suffers most from playing in the kinds of adverse conditions that torment post-season games. The same can be said for Ron Washington and Bruce Bochy, for there's no one in the two league's western divisions capable of mounting a charge at Texas or San Francisco. Having re-crowned six of last year's incumbents, that leaves the two Central Division battles to play out over the last 40% of the season. Let's hope those, at least, go down to the wire.

Unrelated: read about baseball's nerd among men.

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What's It Thome? It Depends When I Looked

A major milestone is coming to the land of high socks as Jim Thome approaches his 600th lifetime launched ball. Somewhere a sculptor has begun his bronze carving for the gentleman from Peoria. There will be few abstentions when his Cooperstown candidacy comes up. And yet, Jim Thome is a conundrum. I would argue that he is simultaneously overrated and underrated by baseball cognoscenti.

James Howard Thome was the fifth youngest player in the majors when he first went yard in the waning hours of the 1991 season. Today, at 40, he is the fifth oldest. In between, he's pounded 596 homers, many of them the jaw-dropping variety. He's slugged 40+ homers six times and 30-39 another six. He's scored 100+ runs eight times and knocked in 100+ nine times. Thanks to 1705 walks -- ninth all-time -- he's cracked the .400 on-base level 10 times in his career. His .280/.403/.557 is 47% better than average and was worth 74 wins against a replacement (WARP) in his career. 

That's some first-ballot jelly to spread at Cooperstown in five or six years. And yet, it's only part of the story. Thome came up as a decent third baseman, switching to first at age 26 and to full-time DH at 35. So 189 of his homers have come while he wasn't donning leather at all -- at least on the field. He was a mediocre first baseman and while he authors no defensive demerits as a DH, he limits his manager's options and may be forcing a lesser hitter into the lineup because he can't fill a defensive position.

Contemporaneously, Thome's exploits have been mostly under-appreciated. He's batted under .270 nine times in his career and played for some awful clubs. He's earned a top-5 MVP vote just once, the year after he led the AL with an impressive 1.122 OPS. (That was 2002 and he was literally twice as good a hitter as the average batsman that season. Miguel Tejada, Alfonso Soriano, Garret Anderson and Torii Hunter all finished ahead of him in the vote despite OPS at least 140 points lower. Tejada won the award because his Oakland team swept their division, even though Alex Rodriguez, who played the same position better, had a higher OBP and SLG, more homers, RBI, runs scored, steals and everything else positive you could measure.)

Now in its gloaming, Thome's career has jumped the shark. Suddenly, in the era of sabermetrics, we're drooling over his 13 .900+ OPS seasons (that's a pretty tasty .400+ on base and .500+ slugging), six of them in the thin air of 1.000+. While turning 40 last year, he still racked up a 1.039 OPS season in 340 plate appearances. But here comes a dirty little secret about OPS.

On-base Plus Slugging stands tall against midgets like ordinary triple-crown stats, but we treat it as if it's Manute Bol. It overrates "three true outcomes" players who slug homers, walk or whiff, and little else. It shortchanges singles hitters, speedsters and leadoff men. Thome took 90+ free passes 12 times in his career, but who wants that lummox clogging up the basepaths? He's fanned 2,437 times in his career, and though a K is only a few electrons worse than a 6-3, a small fraction multiplied by more than two-thousand is no longer bupkis. Thome not only was no threat to steal (19 of 39 in 21 seasons), he slowed the parade behind him. And as I mentioned, his four losses against replacement in career defensive value understates the cost to his teams.

It's all picking of nits: Jim Thome is a Hall of Famer. It's virtually impossible to smack 600 homers and get on base nearly 4,000 times without being enshrined, not withstanding the ingestion of certain metabolic agents. But depending on when you were observing him, you probably either failed to notice his greatness, or got carried away with it.
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One Less Stat to Not Understand

Today, one of the premier sabermetric websites, Baseball Prospectus, ditched one of its signature stats, saying it wasn't doing the job. Luddites will, of course, crow about this, but they should be eating crow instead.

What BP is doing is exactly what the hidebound can't abide: moving forward to improve the state of the art. The BP crew spent a year-and-a-half tweaking SIERA, the ERA predicting tool, until they finally decided that it was not a significant improvement over other tools already in use.

SIERA attempted to measure how much of a pitcher's ERA was his pitching and how much were non- repeatable factors outside his control, strip out the noise and then project what the pitcher would do going forward without luck's finger on the scale. There are already simpler statistics that strip out fielding and fluctuations in BABIP from a pitcher's work. And there are already a plethora of sabermetric crystal balls that perform marginally better than an educated person's estimate. So BP is leaving in the starter and consigning SIERA to the eternal bullpen.

Learning is not linear. We gain knowledge in fits and starts, by trial and -- yes -- error. Another seamhead mixing up a new statistical brew will sprinkle SIERA concepts into his cauldron and we'll all benefit collectively.

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It's Not About Us

Congratulations to the women's soccer team from Japan, who played with a nation's heavy hearts and won a tournament on sheer emotion. The Japanese side wasn't a top 5 contender, but they swept three of the favorites, including the home team and defending champs.

This is the stuff of legends -- and certainly of made-for-TV movies. In the final game, the Japanese women overcame two seemingly insurmountable deficits with slivers of time remaining before prevailing on penalty kicks. Their heart and pluck were extraordinary. What a story.

Of course, some in the self-obsessed U.S. believe the story is that the American team lost. Get over yourselves. The 1980 Olympic hockey tournament wasn't about the Soviet Union or Finland; it was about the American amateurs who were an almost exact parallel for the Japanese women's soccer team.

Today is a great day in a beleaguered nation that could use some great days. Horray for them.

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Save Him For Later

After treating their manager like the ugly sister of the girl they really wanted to date, the Washington Nationals have won the hand of star manager Davey Johnson. Good for them. Today, Johnson lost them a chance to win a game by employing a sliver of conventional wisdom that is neither.

Tied 8-8 in the bottom of the ninth, Johnson overlooked closer Drew Storen in favor of rookie Ryan Mattheus and his 15 innings of experience. The Braves promptly scored the winning run.

Brave announcers took it as a given that Storen would be held back for -- let's say it together -- a save situation. Isn't it clear to a smart tactician like Johnson that that makes no sense? If you can't use your closer with the game on the line in the bottom of the ninth, what's he for?

Now, Mattheus appears to be no stiff. Even giving up the run, his ERA stands at 1.72, albeit in a career covering 47 outs. And Storen was no guarantee. But "saving" your closer so he can add to his stats, at the expense of a win, is such a dumb move that even the least savvy manager should know better.

If giving up a run right now costs you the game, your best reliever should be on the mound. How hard is that to comprehend?

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Was It As Good For You As It Was For Me?

Baseball is a crazy game. The Mets traded an All-Star closer for a pair of future insurance salesmen and still had to pay $5 million. Nonetheless, the subtraction amounts to addition.

Milwaukee demonstrated that they are all-in this year by snatching K-Rod as their set-up man. Teaming with closer John Axford, who's converted 20 straight saves, he completes an impressive end-game tandem. Brewer starters -- are you listening Zack Greinke, Shawn Marcum and Yovanni Gallardo? -- who make it through seven frames will leave their starts in good hands.

Milwaukee GM Doug Melvin won't feel any compunction about preventing K-Rod from reaching the 55 game finishes that would vest him for an insane $17.5 million option. Mets GM Sandy Alderson, meanwhile, gets a pail-load of credit for auditioning his judgment-impaired reliever and then shipping him off for a couple of farmhands with little pedigree. The salary relief will save some of the Wilpons' money for the costly Jose Reyes re-up and draft signings necessary to rebuild the organization. It's not like the Mets were going to compete for a playoff spot this year.

In summary, Rodriguez gains a pennant race but loses the big payday; the Mets save a pile of cash at no cost, and if one of the minor leaguers grows up to be a major leaguer, so much the better. The Brew Crew adds a win or two to the second-half ledger, which might be just enough to slip into the post-season.

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Mid-Summer Review

Greetings and salutations from the halfway point. That's what we call the All-Star break, which of course, is the point at which teams have played 56% of their games.

At this juncture, the Seattle Mariners are within four games of even and just 6.5 games behind division-leading Texas. And they have as much chance of making the playoffs as PacMan Jones has of winning Sportsman of the Year.

There are more bats in the average church belfry than on the Mariner roster. It's a moral victory in Seattle that the M's have out-homered Jose Bautista. But it's close. The Mariners have not managed to out-homer the combination of Joey Bats and any one of 37 other players, including such sluggers as Mark Trumbo and Asdrubal Cabrera.

Similarly, the Pirates are one game back and yet so far away from contention in the NL Central this year. Pittsburgh fans can celebrate the team's ascent to respectability, but unless that's the peak they aspire to, Pirate brass will balk at flipping emerging talent for veteran rentals in a likely fruitless effort to cash in a year early. Better to leave Milwaukee, St. Louis and Cincinnati to squabble over the division this year; the Bucs are priming the pump for a sustained run at contention with four youthful regulars hitting at above average rates, four solid young starters and a stud relief corps. Seven of the 12 regulars are 28 or under and the entire pitching staff is 30 or less.

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With 70 games to play, we can reasonably count out Baltimore, Toronto, Kansas City, San Diego, the Dodgers, Houston and the Cubs. Except for the Blue Jays, these teams are all insurmountably bad and far behind. The Blue Jays are the latter only, but the teams they are chasing are numerous (three, to be exact) and baseball's best.

I've generously left Washington, the Mets, Florida and Oakland off the morgue's cadaver list because these teams' fans may still harbor some remnant of hope for the season. Indeed, the Mets and Nats can feel good about their present state, but Philly and Atlanta will not be caught by the likes of them. The Marlins and A's may be better than their records, but they're 14 and 11 games behind, respectively.

All the teams listed above should consider moving any veterans of value whose contracts expire this year for some nubile talent.

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We've had a whopper of a career milestone reached in the most dramatic way during the first half. There remain some interesting career inchpebbles in the second half. Alex Rodriguez stands sixth on the career home run chart, just four dingers behind Ken Griffey Jr. for fifth. If his knee cooperates, ARod will play again this year and snake his way up the career leaderboard for runs (17th; 50 more moves him to 12th), RBIs (11th; 40 more gets him to eighth) and total bases (14th; 100 more moves him to 12th) as well.

With 58 more hits, Derek Jeter reaches the top 20 in hits and the top 15 in singles. He's 24th in runs scored but can crack the top 20 in a stretch.

On the mound, Mariano Rivera needs 20 saves to become the all-time saves champ, but that's about it. With a dearth of Hall of Fame pitchers plying their trade this year, the smoldering remains of Javier Vazquez is the active leader in strikeouts, and he's 35th on the career list. 44-year-old Tim Wakefield is next, in 57th. Wakefield also leads active pitchers in wins with 198 -- 111th all-time.

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First half awards time. Adrian Gonzalez is demonstrating in spades that the switch from offense-hating Petco to hit-happy Fenway swamps the the move to the harder league. He's accumulated a sparkling .352/.412/.589 slash line, leading the league in hits, doubles, total bases, batting average and RBIs. He's also an A+ defender. So the first half AL MVP goes to ... Jose Bautista.

Amazingly, Bautista makes Gonzalez look like Tinkerbell. At .332/.468/.702, Toronto's masher paces the circuit in on base percentage, slugging percentage, OPS, home runs, walks and intentional walks. Even if his defense could best be described as "feet bolted to the right field turf" he'd be the MVP. (For the record, he's a fine defender who even fills in at third.)

Jose Reyes has a case for first half NL MVP, but Matt Kemp has a better one. Kemp is hitting .317/.403/.591 with home base in Dodger Stadium and surrounded by Frank McCourt's hitless wonders. He leads the league in VORP (value over replacement player), which doesn't account for fielding, and in WARP (wins against replacement player), which does.

Roy Halladay is my first half NL Cy Young, even though Jair Jurrjens has given up half a run less per game. Halladay has pitched 30 more innings and has triple the strikeout/walk ratio. Jurrjens' BABIP-against is a luck-flecked .256. Cole Hamels, Cliff Lee and Clayton Kershaw earn honorable mention.

AL Cy is also a two-man race: Jered Weaver and Justin Verlander. If you squint, you can see an iota more consistency in Weaver's performance, so I tilt his way, but Verlander is a perfectly defensible choice. Honorable mention to Josh Beckett.

Ninety games is dearly insufficient for an informed Rookie of the Year vote, especially since some rookie phenoms start the season on the farm. There are a lot of good candidates, but Braves closer Craig Kimbrel is mowing down the NL competition. Kimbrel has shattered the rookie record for saves by the break with 28 (of 33). His high heat has sent 70 batters back muttering in just 46 innings and the best hitters in the world are batting .179 against him. Beat that, Bastardo.

Rangers starter Alexi Ogando, about whom I opined a few posts ago, has performed admirably in the first half and is the leader in the clubhouse for AL Rookie of the Year. But as I mentioned in that piece, he's already in uncharted workload territory. If he falters in the second half, Angels first sacker Mark Trumbo might take the prize with 30 home runs.

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When the NL and AL were different leagues, with different rules, different league presidents, different umpiring styles, different playing surfaces and attitudes towards race, the All-Star game was a clash of titans. It was the only time all year we could see Mike Schmidt take his cuts against Jim Palmer or Tom Seaver face George Brett.

Today, the NL and AL are little more than conferences in a league. They're separated by the DH but connected by 300 interleague contests and free agency that moves players between them regularly. A whole team has switched sides and another is rumored to be on the way. Naturally, the Mid-Summer Classic feels more like an oldie. There's no going back, and the fact that the site of one World Series game might hinge on the result doesn't change that.

So I'll enjoy the game for what it is -- an exhibition filled with future Hall of Famers -- and try not to fret about what it's not.
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Third Best of All Time, Without Additives

In a career that has vacillated between unexamined hero worship and unwarranted criticism, it's fitting that Derek Jeter faces a duality of opinion on the precipice of a major career milestone. On the one hand, his supporters are primed to celebrate his 3,000th hit. On the other hand, coming off his worst year and now in the midst of his first season of below-average work, the Yankee captain is facing bric-a-bats for his election by the fans to the All-Star game and a newly signed $51 million contract that seemed overly-exuberant even when it was inked.

This duality is being reflected in the constant refrain I've been hearing in the sports gabbing universe: is Derek Jeter over-rated or under-rated. The answer is very clear: yes.

Discussions of this type, of course, are logarithmically complicated because they involve two variables: 1. how good is the player? and 2. how good do "people" think he is? Question one can be answered with a fair degree of specificity in baseball, but question two is trickier.

Derek Jeter, though, seems to stoke the passions of his followers and the nay-sayers. It's somewhat easier to discern how Jeter is "rated" by the sporting public because opinions have been so publicly and vividly pronounced. Consequently, our understanding of his career could use a good application of logic. Let's examine the great, the not-so-great and the mythological.

Great
Derek Jeter is a .312/.383/.449 hitter from the shortstop position over a 16-year career (so far). If that's all you know, you can cast your Hall of Fame vote for him. Add to that truly terrific baserunning, both in stolen base success (80% of 417 attempts) and in the more subtle aspects, like tagging up and going first to third. (Of all the legends that have surfaced about Jeter, it's ironic that few people have recognized what an outstanding baserunner he has been -- the best I've ever seen.)

Jeter's plays hard all the time and his head always seems to be in the game. He is unfazed by big games (because every game the Yankees play is a big game) and big situations (like the 146 games of playoffs he's had the good fortune to participate in.) For what it's worth, he appears to be a gentleman and a good teammate, and he's untainted by scandal despite playing in a town and an era most associated with intemperate behavior.

Not so great

There's not much here. Though he's not a slugger, Jeter has enough power to keep pitchers honest, with 236 lifetime jimmies. He's a legitimate shortstop, but has always had below-average range. Early in his career, when he moved better laterally, he made a lot of errors (24 in 2000; 22 in his rookie year). More recently, he hasn't booted what he hasn't gotten to. But Jeter isn't the stone-handed statue that his critics have claimed.

Mythology

This is where Jeter's admirers skid off the tracks and cloud reality with extraneous noise. They have imbued him with super-hero abilities that fail the smell test -- not to mention objective evaluation. This can best be seen by the accolades accorded him for years as a marvelous fielder -- the avatar of the jump throw -- until defensive measurements become sufficiently refined to refute that bit of legend. 

The myth says Derek Jeter is Mr. Clutch, the ultimate leader, the great Yankee champion with five rings. The mythology is compounded by confirmation bias. Jeterheads believe something about their beloved and screen out any data that doesn't vindicate their view.

Jeter has played a year's worth of games in the playoffs and his numbers are basically a reflection of his regular season work. He's been on base a skooch less but slugged 20 homers. Most of his playoff at-bats have come during his best seasons, so the overall OPS advantage is about what we'd expect, not withstanding that the pitching is theoretically stronger during the post-season. He made a heads-up flip throw to the plate in a playoff game 10 years ago that would have been forgotten by day's end had Jeremy Giambi slid. And he presided over the worst playoff collapse in 100 years of baseball history against the Red Sox in 2005. Do you see "clutch" play or "leadership" in that equation?

The Yankees won the World Series when Jeter was a rookie in 1996. Did he lead the team then? Wasn't leadership the reason Joe Torre will be enshrined in Cooperstown? Doesn't having the spectacular good fortune to play beside  David Cone, Paul O'Neil, Scott Brosius, Roger Clemens, Wade Boggs, Bernie Williams, Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera, Robinson Cano, Mark Texeira, Alex Rodriguez and players of their ilk count for anything? (Luis Soto also has five rings.)

In the end, Derek Jeter is an all-time great shortstop. Minka Kelly's boyfriend is in the next group after Honus Wagner and Alex Rodriguez (if you consider him a SS; it should be noted that he was forced to move to third because there was nowhere for Jeter to go), along with Cal Ripken and Arky Vaughn. Jeter has by far the highest offensive career value (wins against replacement player) after the top two, though Ripken, Vaughn and most of the other top shortstops add anywhere from an edge to a lusty helping of value afield.

I said before that Jeter was the fifth or sixth best shortstop of all time, but that assessment was five years old. He's the third best ever, no artificial ingredients added.

I'll leave poor Derek alone now. I promise.

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Saved!

Matt Albers got a pretty cheap win for the Red Sox last night. After Jon Lester no-hit the Blue Jays and collected five strikeouts in four innings, he came out with a strained lat. Albers took credit for the win by pitching just two innings of one-hit ball. 

Franklin Morales pitched an uneventful seventh and Daniel Bard worked around a single in the eighth. No statistical credit for them. Then, with a 3-0 lead, Jonathan Papelbon nailed down his 18th save in 19 tries.

At least that's what the record says. In fact, Papelbon recorded two outs before allowing a single, a home run, a walk and two more singles. If you're wondering how eight total bases didn't tie the game, let's talk about Darnell McDonald and Jason Varitek.

With Edwin Encarnacion on second and JP Arencibia on first, Papelbon served up a single to left by Blue Jay shortstop John McDonald. McDonald's Red Sock namesake fired a beebee to the plate, which was being blocked by Tek's left leg. Varitek tagged Encarnacion to end the game. Papelbon got credit for that out and for "saving" the game.

In order to "earn" that save, here is the closer's body of work: three outs, one of which resulted from a great defensive play, two runs, four hits and a walk. The Blue Jays batted .667/.714/.833 against him.

This is why sabermetricians don't care about saves. It's why managing to the stat makes utterly no sense. (Actually, it makes utterly no sense to manage to any statistic.) It's why, baseball Neanderthals who claim to dismiss statistics actually don't; they just rely on the wrong ones.

But it's all right. Eventually, they'll all be saved.

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They're Playing His Vogelsong

Giants' manager Bruce Bochy has exercised his All-Star prerogative to add Giant starter Ryan Vogelsong to the game's pitching roster. At 6-1, 2.13, Vogelsong looks like a solid choice. But dig a little deeper and it seems Bochy might be looking silly by year's end.

Certainly no one, not even his optimistic manager, could have predicted success for the 34-year-old righty coming into the season. His 10-22, 5.38 record over parts of six major league seasons wrapped around a three-year stint in Japan rarely correlates to stardom. Vogelsong seems to have tightened his command and sharpened his fastball, but other factors weigh more heavily in his success.

First, the 6'4" Pennsylvanian has shared the mound with serendipity. His BABIP-against is an unsustainable .256 and a fifth of the runs against him have been deemed unearned. Account for those factors and Vogelsong's SIERA -- the ERA his pitching actually deserves -- is 3.68. That's quite a spread.

Add to that more shouts of "regression!" from the peanut gallery. He pitches in a low-offense ballpark that has jumped on the Vogelsong bandwagon with both feet. His ERA is 2.4 runs higher outside of Telephone Company Field. His last two starts also suggest the shark repellent may be wearing off. In those two turns, he's lasted just 11.2 innings, surrendering nine runs and eight walks while fanning 11.

Contrast this with the Unlucky Mariner, Doug Fister. The 27-year-old northpaw is a miserable 3-9 in front of Seattle's wet newspaper offense. In the nine starts in which Fister has relinquished two or fewer runs, he's a mere 2-2. In the five games in which the opposition has scored four or five runs (only one of those starts lasted less than seven frames) he's 0-5. That's what happens in front of teammates who "hit" .226/.294/.336. (The starting lineup features one above-average hitter - first baseman Justin Smoak. Three starters are below 50% of average.)

Fister's 3-1 K-BB ratio, low home run rate (.45 HRs per nine innings) and sustainable BABIP (.290) all testify to the veracity of his 3.02 ERA. Repeating that won't get him to .500 with a lineup full of glove-first second-basemen, but it should look a lot better.

In other words, a second-half-only All-Star team is a lot more likely to include Doug Fister than Ryan Vogelsong. The 3-9 pitcher has out-performed the 6-1 pitcher; we're just not trained to notice it.

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Who's Better: Ted Williams or Johnny Damon?

Yesterday, Johnny Damon passed Ted Williams on the all-time hit list. Wrap your head around that.

Here's another Johnny Damon fact: he's on pace to play in 140+ games for a 16th consecutive year. The other guys on that list: Frank Robinson, Hank Aaron, Pete Rose. That's the list. If Damon can do it again next year, he'll be the whole list.

Johnny Damon's a swell player. Fifteen seasons of .287/.354/.436, 392 steals at an 80% clip and a cool haircut (or lack of one) is worth writing home about even if you have a noodle arm in the outfield. He's not Ted Williams swell, though, or Frank Robinson swell or Hank Aaron swell or Pete Rose swell. 
But he's flying in their rarefied air these days. That's got to be a nice feeling.

That and the $107 million he's made in his career.

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Move Along...There's No Story Here

If you're a reporter, or a blogger, you love a good storyline. The Casey Anthony trial is a great story, even though it's a tragedy wrapped in an abomination. The voting for the 2011 MLB All-Star game doesn't leave much to discuss. For that we can thank the fans.

Ever since MLB decided to allow Chicago-style voting on the Internet, whereby horsehide aficionados like myself could vote 25 times online with each email address we could co-opt (I stop at three), the elections have gotten ... better. That's right, fraud becomes All-Star voting.

The truth is, ever since fans could vote, fraud has been an essential part of the package. Fans received their ballots by the bushel basket at the ballpark and were urged to punch out the chad for the hometown heroes, even if the Mudville nine were channeling Mario Mendoza.

The 1957 edition of the fan vote channeled a Libyan presidential election. The Cincinnati Enquirer printed ballots allowing Queen City fans to elect seven Reds on the starting team, alongside Stan Musial. Left out were bench-warmers named Mays, Banks, Matthews, Campanella, Snider, Clemente, Ashburn and ultimate league MVP, Hank Aaron. (The commish voided two of the selections in favor of Aaron and Mays and then retired the fan vote for the next 12 years.)

In 2011, continuing a recent trend, the cream has generally risen to the top. This year, the performance fairy has shined on the entire NL squad. In the AL, only Josh Hamilton and Derek Jeter are debatable  choices. Even then, Hamilton is probably the best player at his position, but he's been hurt most of the season. Jeter's Hall of Fame career is waning, but the fans want to see him. Asdrubal Cabrera, 25, will have his chances in future years.

The flipside mistake is an All-Star vote based on just 13 weeks or excellence, and fans have been careful not to fall into that trap. Jose Bautista and his 54 homerun season didn't start the Mid-Summer Classic last year because there was no reason to believe he was one of the three best outfielders in the league. This year, flashing similar stats, he's the leading vote-getter. The baseball public could teach the general electorate a thing or two.

The Internet ballot stuffing has actually benefited the game by allowing more thoughtful, non-partisan observers to overwhelm the hometown hooey. The results are teams that largely reflect the best of the baseball each year. Where that notion flags is more likely the result of the antiquated rule requiring each team to be represented, the reputational bias of players and blatant demonstrations of unwarranted loyalty by the manager.

So yipee for the fans, and look, I got a blog out of it anyway.
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Buck'ed Up

I don't mean to pick on Derek Jeter, particularly in a vulnerable moment for him. The guy's rehabbing in god-forsaken Trenton in the twilight of his career and on the verge of a milestone hit. In his absence, the Yankees have won 14 of 17, the team's stand-in leadoff hitters have posted a .400 on base average and his replacement at short, Eduardo Nunez, has batted .300.

I've made pretty clear that Jeter is one of the five or six greatest shortstops of all time, just not the superhero his supporters make him out to be. His reputation for unparalleled leadership, Gold Glove fielding and "clutch" play are chimerical notions assembled out of wisps of wind by delusional admirers. One of his signature career plays never even happened -- the one where he supposedly dove into the stands to make a catch on a foul ball and then came out bloody and dazed.

If you're wondering why people like me bang on Jeter, allow me to provide you with two words: Joe Buck. Buck worships at the Jeter shrine and rambles incoherently on national television with paeans to the Yankee captain. Today was another embarrassing case in point.

During an insightful discussion started by Tim McCarver about how players age, Buck allowed that Jeter has ebbed at bat and in the field, but would be the guy he'd want fielding the ball with the bases loaded in the ninth inning of Game 7 of the World Series ... here's the fun part ... if it was hit right to him.

If you don't understand why this comment is a dereliction of common sense, I'm not sure any explanation matters, but let's take one perfunctory stab. Buck asserts that even though he's lost some of his baseball skills at age 37, Jeter is still "clutch."  In those categories in which we can quantify things, Buck has been forced to acknowledge that Jeter is listing towards below average. But in an arena in which he can continue to delude himself without factual contradiction, Buck has decided to call Jeter "the best." The best at what? At something every Double-A shortstop does routinely.

This is the kind of nonsense that sends baseball fans who actually care about facts into paroxysms of disbelief. Someone at Fox ought to clue Joe Buck in: these kinds of statements don't polish Derek Jeter's reputation; they stain yours.

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Labor Pains

In every dispute between Major League baseball players and owners before 1994, it was a simple case of good and evil. The owners seemed intent on exploiting their unique monopoly with a plantation mentality towards players. Players, led by union chief Marvin Miller, simply wanted to be paid what the owners deemed they were worth.

By 1994, players had achieved a competitive labor market system over the rotting corpses of old ownerships. The remaining Lords of the Realm attempted to roll back some of those gains, locking the players out and cancelling the World Series. In that case, the owners were merely 90% wrong, the players 70% so. That they managed to share 160% of blame tells you everything you need to know about that dispute, which ended in the nearly complete dissolution of the owners' position ... yet again.

What was the difference between 1994 and all the other labor-management dustups? It's simple, really. The free market -- one in which information flows freely and buyers have choices -- is a magical concoction that has made Westerners the richest, freest people the planet has ever hosted. But the free market is not perfect. It particularly unravels around the edges, where millionaires and billionaires decide each other's salaries in the board rooms of public corporations, and where those bereft are commended to their own wiles without the information or the choices that advantage the rest of us.

Professional sports are a unique set of businesses. Teams compete against each other in the most direct way, so that miniscule differences in quality are  printed in the paper each morning for all to appreciate. The leagues are closed cabals in which fierce competitors are also collaborators. In basketball and baseball, the labor market is the product. Finally, whole regions of the country identify with these businesses in ways that CVS or McDonalds or even Ford must view wistfully.

In other words, sports are different. For the reasons above and several others you can probably discern, they need a different kind of labor model, still based on the free market, but with some significant controls that limit company risk and enhance return on investment.

Are you listening NBA players? You face two technicals from the owners and a flagrant foul from the fans unless you wise up and make some hefty concessions in contract negotiations. Your situation is not MLB's and it's not the NFL's.

For one thing, NBA teams have opened their red-stained books. Thousands of people fill arenas in Cleveland and Sacramento and Atlanta and elsewhere dressed as empty seats. At the same time, teams routinely skirt the cap rules designed to constrain salaries and provide a level of parity. Like baseball, the NBA is becoming a league of elephants and mice.
 

The players are uniquely positioned to accommodate the league's demand for a harder cap and lower salaries, because they actually need to make less money. A study by the Toronto Star in 2008 found that 60% of NBA players are bankrupt five years after retirement, despite an average annual salary of $5.36 million. Unlike the brutes of the gridiron, cagers don't sacrifice their bodies  or suffer truncated careers. Hoopsters don't need more money because they can't handle what they have.

Witness the perfect storm for owners: they're losing money and are willing to sacrifice the season while players are addicted to every penny they get. It's an imbalance not just in the balance sheet, but in the balance of power. And not for nothing, it also means that fans will side with the struggling franchises over the bling-bedecked players.

Want to keep the golden goose alive, ballers? Give the owners most of what they demand and laugh all the way to the bank. You might have to sell one of your cars, but you're going to lose it anyway in the Chapter 9 filing.

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