Since the Pirates cut him in the off-season, veteran backstop Rod Barajas has been seeking employment. He might want to check the classifieds.
At 250 pounds, Barajas's best production at the plate currently involves the dinner table. He hit just .206/.283/.343 in 104 games last year, but that's probably not what's keeping him from finding MLB work. Barajas has pounded 16+ homers four times and slugged .400+ most of his 13-year career.
The problem with hiring Rod Barajas to be your team's catcher, or back-up catcher, or seventh string catcher, is his catching. Or more accurately, his throwing.
Last season, Rod Barajas threw out six baserunners attempting to steal. The other 93 were successful.
That's right, 15 out of every 16 would-be base stealers . . . did.
No one ever accused Barajas of illegal possession of a firearm when he squatted. Even in his prime, no one confused him with Ivan Rodriguez and his 50% caught stealing percentage, though he has a lifetime 31% caught stealing rate, which is about league-average. And some of the trouble might be an inability of Pirate hurlers to hold runners.
Nonetheless, a six percent throw out rate is historically bad. Worst since 1956. And if you want to blame the Pittsburgh pitchers for throwing slow and sloppy, credit them for two of Barajas's six caught stealings. Twice Pirate pitchers picked off the base runner while Barajas was behind the plate, accruing a CS in his column.
Now if you accept the premise that in the current run-scoring environment a stolen base is worth on average about .3 runs and a caught stealing is worth about .7 runs, then runners gained about 24 runs, or about three wins, by the commission of thievery against Pirate pitchers on those occasions when the big Californian was their battery mate.
If a replacement level backstop nails a third of the runners, they gain, in the aggregate, nothing.
Which means Rod Barajas cost his team three losses compared to a replacement receiver simply on that one aspect of the game. He might be the best handler of pitchers, caller of pitches and framer of strike zones in the long, storied history of baseball. He might sell programs before the game, help the grounds crew pull out the tarp during rain delays and entertain fans between innings. But he's still not overcoming 93 of 99 stolen bases.
Considering he's a jalopy on the basepaths, a nearly automatic out with the bat and of lengthening tooth, it's easy to see why his big league days may have withered.
To console him, he's got the memory of 1000 games behind the plate, 136 lifetime homers, an '01 Diamondbacks World Series ring and $19 million in career earnings.
Thanks for playing Rod and enjoy your consolation prize. Just be careful it doesn't get stolen!
30 January 2013
26 January 2013
Hey! I'm the Manager!
Congratulations to me. Charleston, SC just got a new American League franchise (along with the NL's new entry in Indianapolis) and Swamp Foxes managing partner Mike Veeck has appointed me manager.
The bulk of managerial duties are practiced in the clubhouse, on the plane and in the hotel with the human beings populating the team. I'll be off-loading that element of the job to my chief operating officer Joe V. Uhl.
My forte is applying optimal game strategies, which means understanding the research, analyzing situations, maintaining a season-long time horizon, and knowing what makes the players tick. Joe will be by my side in the dugout for that last part.
What fans of the Swamp Foxes will notice, besides our awesome home uniforms featuring Francis Marion in full Revolutionary War regalia and our well-appointed neo-classical ballpark hard by the harbor in historic downtown, is that our team will operate differently than every other. Consequently, we will win games.
No Closer; More Platoons
First, when we break camp, only 10 pitchers will come north from Florida. Five starters and five relievers should be sufficient, particularly in the early months, as days off reduce the fifth starter to a utility role. Our best reliever is our fireman, ready to douse rallies whenever they occur. Securing the last three outs with a three-run lead, though recorded by the newspaper, will be neither particularly noted in our dugout nor assigned to a particular hurler. Let Joe deal with the fallout.
While I'm at it, I'll staff a couple of bullpen jockeys who can throw two or three frames at a time. That will provide the flexibility to scratch the starter early if he's scuffling.
The happy consequence, of course, is that 15 position players will leave our bench thick with pinch-hitters, defensive specialists and platoon-pairs. The flexibility that gives us will enhance the output at some positions and foil the use of LOOGYs and other pitching abominations.
Employing platoons means a roster soft on stars but packing punch nonetheless. An outfield platoon of Matt Joyce and Drew Stubbs (they aren't teammates, but my GM is working a 10-cents-on-the-dollar deal for each of them) doesn't sound too impressive, but Joyce rocks a 1.032 OPS against righties (versus .639 against southpaws) and Stubbs delivers .831 facing lefties. With six hitters riding my pine every night (loblolly pine: this is Charleston), I can afford to mix and match, yanking Joyce when the LOOGY makes a late-inning appearance.
A Sensible Batting Order
I'm not bestowing top billing to our speedy middle infielder with the whiffle ball bat. The guy who bats first bats most and that's the wrong place for a junebug who couldn't hit a beach ball with a kayak paddle. On-base percentage, not velocity, is paramount in the leadoff position, so my leadoff batter will be someone who gets aboard. Lumbering Jason Giambi (.403 OBP) trumps Zack Cozart (.290) as a leadoff prospect, but Giambi saw the top spot nine times in his 17-year career while Cozart has heard his song first in 101 of his 130 MLB games.
Generally after that, my best hitters will be at the top of the order and my worst at the bottom, adjusting to alternate lefties and righties when practical.
Bunting and Stealing Judiciously
Sacrificing trades a precious out and the opportunity to post crooked numbers for a skooch better chance at scoring one run. Consequently, we'll employ this strategy when one run wins the game, and only enough otherwise to keep the enemy on its toes. These decisions will also be affected by the batter-pitcher match-up, the fielding alignment and the on-deck batters.
Stealing is an asset when it succeeds but a little bit of death when it fails. We'll limit our attempts strategically, but we'll occasionally send the runner when we shouldn't -- just to confuse Ron Washington and other deep thinkers.
Customized Pitch Counts
Mark Buerhle's on the hill? Let him throw all night. Pedro Martinez starting tonight? Get him out around 100 pitches. History tells us he tires after 90. A 22-year-old coming off TJ surgery? Yank him as soon as he labors. Pitch counts are more blunt instrument than science, so I'll treat them with respect without allowing them to become my master.
Shifts and Other Customized Strategies
Oreos are yummy, but you wouldn't feed them to your dog. Likewise with fielding alignments: you don't defend David Ortiz the same way you defend Ichiro. I'd throw novel defensive arrangements at some enemy batsmen and challenge them to prove us wrong. A beneficial side effect is that it won't behoove a hitter to practice beating a shift until several teams employ it, so if we're first, we're most likely to succeed.
Use the Right Stats
You'll never hear this manager talk about a good RBI guy. He knows that a batter is either a good hitter in a position to knock in runs or a lucky hacker fronted in the lineup by mad table-setters. Ryan Howard didn't knock in 136+ runs a year from '06-'09 because he was a good RBI guy; he knocked in all those runs because he smashed 45+ homers and tallied 300+ total bases behind Jimmy Rollins and Chase Utley.
You also won't hear this manager justify a pitcher-batter match-up based on a handful of previous experiences. If I pinch hit for Juan Pierre against Matt Albers it won't be because of a career .125 batting average against the Indians' righty. Pierre has eight plate appearances against Albers. In fact, Pierre has essentially no lefty-righty splits for his career. The Swamp Foxes' skipper understands about small sample sizes.
I might trot out terms like on-base percentage, OPS, BABIP, range factor and other metrics that matter. The difference between Dusty Baker and me will be that one of us mouths atrophied old statistical shibboleths while the other flexes his muscular quantifiers, not that one uses stats and the other doesn't.
Don't Be Afraid to Innovate
Testing new ideas that don't work gets managers excoriated in the baseball media, providing a palpable disincentive to innovating. I already disdain the baseball ignorati, so I won't be swayed by their recalcitrance to unorthodox methods.
Here are some things I might try:
1. Take a pair of starters who lack stamina and platoon them every fifth day. One guy will pitch the first four or five innings and the other will know he's coming in for the last four or five. It might produce a #1 starter and save the bullpen some action.
2. Platoon position players not by handedness but by day/night or by ballpark or something else that might have an impact. Who knows better than a manager with whom this might work?
3. Give selected players whole series off to go home, see the family, take care of life business and recharge. At the cost of four missed games, they get five days of rest and emotional health. It wouldn't work for everyone -- maybe not even for most players -- but I'll bet there are those who would benefit.
4. (Ironically) practice bunting endlessly. Then employ the bunt for safeties. It forces the opposition to defend yet one more part of the field.
5. Instruct my team to strike out less and hit more home runs. I'm telling you, I'm an innovator.
The bulk of managerial duties are practiced in the clubhouse, on the plane and in the hotel with the human beings populating the team. I'll be off-loading that element of the job to my chief operating officer Joe V. Uhl.
My forte is applying optimal game strategies, which means understanding the research, analyzing situations, maintaining a season-long time horizon, and knowing what makes the players tick. Joe will be by my side in the dugout for that last part.
What fans of the Swamp Foxes will notice, besides our awesome home uniforms featuring Francis Marion in full Revolutionary War regalia and our well-appointed neo-classical ballpark hard by the harbor in historic downtown, is that our team will operate differently than every other. Consequently, we will win games.
No Closer; More Platoons
First, when we break camp, only 10 pitchers will come north from Florida. Five starters and five relievers should be sufficient, particularly in the early months, as days off reduce the fifth starter to a utility role. Our best reliever is our fireman, ready to douse rallies whenever they occur. Securing the last three outs with a three-run lead, though recorded by the newspaper, will be neither particularly noted in our dugout nor assigned to a particular hurler. Let Joe deal with the fallout.
While I'm at it, I'll staff a couple of bullpen jockeys who can throw two or three frames at a time. That will provide the flexibility to scratch the starter early if he's scuffling.
The happy consequence, of course, is that 15 position players will leave our bench thick with pinch-hitters, defensive specialists and platoon-pairs. The flexibility that gives us will enhance the output at some positions and foil the use of LOOGYs and other pitching abominations.
Employing platoons means a roster soft on stars but packing punch nonetheless. An outfield platoon of Matt Joyce and Drew Stubbs (they aren't teammates, but my GM is working a 10-cents-on-the-dollar deal for each of them) doesn't sound too impressive, but Joyce rocks a 1.032 OPS against righties (versus .639 against southpaws) and Stubbs delivers .831 facing lefties. With six hitters riding my pine every night (loblolly pine: this is Charleston), I can afford to mix and match, yanking Joyce when the LOOGY makes a late-inning appearance.
A Sensible Batting Order
I'm not bestowing top billing to our speedy middle infielder with the whiffle ball bat. The guy who bats first bats most and that's the wrong place for a junebug who couldn't hit a beach ball with a kayak paddle. On-base percentage, not velocity, is paramount in the leadoff position, so my leadoff batter will be someone who gets aboard. Lumbering Jason Giambi (.403 OBP) trumps Zack Cozart (.290) as a leadoff prospect, but Giambi saw the top spot nine times in his 17-year career while Cozart has heard his song first in 101 of his 130 MLB games.
Generally after that, my best hitters will be at the top of the order and my worst at the bottom, adjusting to alternate lefties and righties when practical.
Bunting and Stealing Judiciously
Sacrificing trades a precious out and the opportunity to post crooked numbers for a skooch better chance at scoring one run. Consequently, we'll employ this strategy when one run wins the game, and only enough otherwise to keep the enemy on its toes. These decisions will also be affected by the batter-pitcher match-up, the fielding alignment and the on-deck batters.
Stealing is an asset when it succeeds but a little bit of death when it fails. We'll limit our attempts strategically, but we'll occasionally send the runner when we shouldn't -- just to confuse Ron Washington and other deep thinkers.
Customized Pitch Counts
Mark Buerhle's on the hill? Let him throw all night. Pedro Martinez starting tonight? Get him out around 100 pitches. History tells us he tires after 90. A 22-year-old coming off TJ surgery? Yank him as soon as he labors. Pitch counts are more blunt instrument than science, so I'll treat them with respect without allowing them to become my master.
Shifts and Other Customized Strategies
Oreos are yummy, but you wouldn't feed them to your dog. Likewise with fielding alignments: you don't defend David Ortiz the same way you defend Ichiro. I'd throw novel defensive arrangements at some enemy batsmen and challenge them to prove us wrong. A beneficial side effect is that it won't behoove a hitter to practice beating a shift until several teams employ it, so if we're first, we're most likely to succeed.
Use the Right Stats
You'll never hear this manager talk about a good RBI guy. He knows that a batter is either a good hitter in a position to knock in runs or a lucky hacker fronted in the lineup by mad table-setters. Ryan Howard didn't knock in 136+ runs a year from '06-'09 because he was a good RBI guy; he knocked in all those runs because he smashed 45+ homers and tallied 300+ total bases behind Jimmy Rollins and Chase Utley.
You also won't hear this manager justify a pitcher-batter match-up based on a handful of previous experiences. If I pinch hit for Juan Pierre against Matt Albers it won't be because of a career .125 batting average against the Indians' righty. Pierre has eight plate appearances against Albers. In fact, Pierre has essentially no lefty-righty splits for his career. The Swamp Foxes' skipper understands about small sample sizes.
I might trot out terms like on-base percentage, OPS, BABIP, range factor and other metrics that matter. The difference between Dusty Baker and me will be that one of us mouths atrophied old statistical shibboleths while the other flexes his muscular quantifiers, not that one uses stats and the other doesn't.
Don't Be Afraid to Innovate
Testing new ideas that don't work gets managers excoriated in the baseball media, providing a palpable disincentive to innovating. I already disdain the baseball ignorati, so I won't be swayed by their recalcitrance to unorthodox methods.
Here are some things I might try:
1. Take a pair of starters who lack stamina and platoon them every fifth day. One guy will pitch the first four or five innings and the other will know he's coming in for the last four or five. It might produce a #1 starter and save the bullpen some action.
2. Platoon position players not by handedness but by day/night or by ballpark or something else that might have an impact. Who knows better than a manager with whom this might work?
3. Give selected players whole series off to go home, see the family, take care of life business and recharge. At the cost of four missed games, they get five days of rest and emotional health. It wouldn't work for everyone -- maybe not even for most players -- but I'll bet there are those who would benefit.
4. (Ironically) practice bunting endlessly. Then employ the bunt for safeties. It forces the opposition to defend yet one more part of the field.
5. Instruct my team to strike out less and hit more home runs. I'm telling you, I'm an innovator.
21 January 2013
Earl Weaver, Sabermetrician
Sabermetrics lost its grandfather this week.
Earl Weaver, who died this week at age 82, was in many ways the first sabermetrician. Weaver employed, and later elucidated, strategies now supported by voluminous research from the SABR community.
Weaver didn't know VORP or the run expectancy matrix. He had his own innate vision of the game that transcended its time.
Weaver wove his strategies, a particular human resources style and good players to a .583 winning percentage over 17 years, four pennants and a 1970 World Championship.
More specifically, Weaver was the first -- or the first to enunciate -- the following philosophy: because a team has a small and finite number of outs per game, an out is precious and avoiding outs is the key to success.
These rules were the cornerstone of his managerial career and he won 1400+ games using them:
Earl Weaver's valedictory managerial season came in 1986 -- his first and only losing season. Twenty-six years later, half of today's managers and nearly the entire cadre of reporters covering the game know less about it than he did then.
Earl Weaver, who died this week at age 82, was in many ways the first sabermetrician. Weaver employed, and later elucidated, strategies now supported by voluminous research from the SABR community.
Weaver didn't know VORP or the run expectancy matrix. He had his own innate vision of the game that transcended its time.
Weaver wove his strategies, a particular human resources style and good players to a .583 winning percentage over 17 years, four pennants and a 1970 World Championship.
More specifically, Weaver was the first -- or the first to enunciate -- the following philosophy: because a team has a small and finite number of outs per game, an out is precious and avoiding outs is the key to success.
These rules were the cornerstone of his managerial career and he won 1400+ games using them:
- A home run is the fastest way to score a run.
- Obvious corollary: get players who hit home runs.
- If you play for one run, that's all you'll get.
- Obvious corollary: don't play for one run unless that's all you need.
- Conserve your 27 outs at all costs.
- Obvious corollary: on-base percentage is more important than batting average. (Put another way, walks are very important.)
- Defense matters.
Earl Weaver's valedictory managerial season came in 1986 -- his first and only losing season. Twenty-six years later, half of today's managers and nearly the entire cadre of reporters covering the game know less about it than he did then.
20 January 2013
Hey, They Listened to Me!
Last installment of the Look Back trilogy on posts during the 2012 baseball season that either left the yard or whiffed.
This June 26 post suggesting the Mets should eject their most powerful booster rocket engendered some indignant emails. Ha! Take that indignant emailers! Not only was it right, the Mets took the advice and traded R.A. Dickey while his value was high.
Where the post went wrong was in suggesting that Dickey couldn't possibly keep up his first half heroics. Technically speaking, that was true: everything about R.A. Dickey is an impossibility, and yet the 38-year-old fireballing Scroogie artist manages to astonish us anew every fifth day. Only now he'll do it for Toronto while the Mets develop C Travis d’Arnaud, and RHP Noah Syndergaard.
This report of the Phillies' death as contender was not exaggerated. Nor was it premature. The core of the team in 2012 was crippled, two of the triumvirate of pitchers expected to provide ballast came up short and the franchise is left betwixt and between -- neither a contender nor a rebuilder.
This fact was underscored by the assertion in the aforementioned post that the Phils had to make a run at a pennant in 2013 given the boatload of investments in their expensive and aging core. That was followed five months later with this post, which flambe'd GM Ruben Amaro for signing another aging veteran when he should be punting the season.
Ding this blog for being inconsistent and the Phillies for being in no-man's land. Their only hope is that Howard, Utley, Rollins, Polanco, Young and Halladay have one last burst in them, like a Phoenix, or a bag of microwave popcorn.
Finally, on a romp through the Majors at around the three-quarter pole of the season came three notable assertions that rang the distant echoes of Meat Loaf. Two out of three ain't bad.
First the losing proposition: that Mike Trout and Andrew McCutcheon seemed MVP locks, not withstanding complete collapses. Well, McCutcheon and his locks collapsed nearly completely in the second half while his Pirates skittered into the record books on the futility side. Trout continued to amaze, as did the baseball writers who picked the wrong guy -- by a country mile -- for the award.
On the other hand, the same post suggested the Dodgers should find a new home for Hanley Ramirez after a .330/.392/.549 performance and good behavior in 23 games following his trade from Miami. Put this way:
Now if the Dodgers are smart, they'll flip Hanley's re-motivated self to another club while his value remains spiked and let his next sulk come at someone else's expense.
Ah, but they held on in the vain hope that he could help them slip into the playoffs. Instead, a .268/.305/.375 September drained most of his trade value and for the second time in five years an uninterested "Ramirez" will plague the Dodger roster at high cost.
Carl Crawford, however, did listen, just from the other end of the country. Attempting to play through the lost Red Sox season with a torn left (throwing) elbow tendon, Crawford finally heeded the same post, which urged him to bag the season and accede to Tommy John surgery the next day. Nearly the next day . . . Crawford was packaged up with Adrian Gonzalez, Josh Beckett and Nick Punto to the Dodgers, whereupon he went straight into the operating room. With eight months to heal, Crawford is expected to be ready for Opening Day.
We all will be. See you there with a new batch of provocations, some of which will even be right.
This June 26 post suggesting the Mets should eject their most powerful booster rocket engendered some indignant emails. Ha! Take that indignant emailers! Not only was it right, the Mets took the advice and traded R.A. Dickey while his value was high.
Where the post went wrong was in suggesting that Dickey couldn't possibly keep up his first half heroics. Technically speaking, that was true: everything about R.A. Dickey is an impossibility, and yet the 38-year-old fireballing Scroogie artist manages to astonish us anew every fifth day. Only now he'll do it for Toronto while the Mets develop C Travis d’Arnaud, and RHP Noah Syndergaard.
This report of the Phillies' death as contender was not exaggerated. Nor was it premature. The core of the team in 2012 was crippled, two of the triumvirate of pitchers expected to provide ballast came up short and the franchise is left betwixt and between -- neither a contender nor a rebuilder.
This fact was underscored by the assertion in the aforementioned post that the Phils had to make a run at a pennant in 2013 given the boatload of investments in their expensive and aging core. That was followed five months later with this post, which flambe'd GM Ruben Amaro for signing another aging veteran when he should be punting the season.
Ding this blog for being inconsistent and the Phillies for being in no-man's land. Their only hope is that Howard, Utley, Rollins, Polanco, Young and Halladay have one last burst in them, like a Phoenix, or a bag of microwave popcorn.
Finally, on a romp through the Majors at around the three-quarter pole of the season came three notable assertions that rang the distant echoes of Meat Loaf. Two out of three ain't bad.
First the losing proposition: that Mike Trout and Andrew McCutcheon seemed MVP locks, not withstanding complete collapses. Well, McCutcheon and his locks collapsed nearly completely in the second half while his Pirates skittered into the record books on the futility side. Trout continued to amaze, as did the baseball writers who picked the wrong guy -- by a country mile -- for the award.
On the other hand, the same post suggested the Dodgers should find a new home for Hanley Ramirez after a .330/.392/.549 performance and good behavior in 23 games following his trade from Miami. Put this way:
Now if the Dodgers are smart, they'll flip Hanley's re-motivated self to another club while his value remains spiked and let his next sulk come at someone else's expense.
Ah, but they held on in the vain hope that he could help them slip into the playoffs. Instead, a .268/.305/.375 September drained most of his trade value and for the second time in five years an uninterested "Ramirez" will plague the Dodger roster at high cost.
Carl Crawford, however, did listen, just from the other end of the country. Attempting to play through the lost Red Sox season with a torn left (throwing) elbow tendon, Crawford finally heeded the same post, which urged him to bag the season and accede to Tommy John surgery the next day. Nearly the next day . . . Crawford was packaged up with Adrian Gonzalez, Josh Beckett and Nick Punto to the Dodgers, whereupon he went straight into the operating room. With eight months to heal, Crawford is expected to be ready for Opening Day.
We all will be. See you there with a new batch of provocations, some of which will even be right.
17 January 2013
More Looks In the Rearview
Yes, it's true: this blog signed off on a new five-year, $11 million contract for Brewer backstop Jonathan Lucroy in a March 31 post. We're cruising back through 2012 to see where we braindrizzled and where we were just brain dead.
With respect to Lucroy: that commitment was for a second-year player with a .313 on base percentage and middling power. How'd that abomination work out?
It made the Brewers look like geniuses. Lucroy hit .320/.368/.513 in 96 games before succumbing to a broken wrist. He produced three wins against replacement and excellent defense in less than two-thirds of a season for just $500K. And there's the potential for four more years of goodness on the cheap.
As that post made clear, you'll be seeing more of those kinds of contracts -- in which young players sign away their first few years of arbitration and even a year or two of free agency in return for guaranteed multi-million dollar paydays during their pre-arb years. The reason is that there are diminishing marginal returns to the Lucroy family on the next $8 million he may be leaving on the table, while the first $11 million will set his family for life.
Meanwhile, teams will save money (and keep their young stars for an extra year or two) on average, even if the occasional signing goes belly-up.
April was a good month for the prognostimeter too. It predicted the Cardinals had already replaced Albert Pujols by moving Lance Berkman from rightfield to first base and signing Carlos Beltran to slot in for Berkman. It didn't quite work out that way, even though Beltran pounded 32 home runs en route to a .269/.346/.495 ledger that recouped all three batting wins against replacement lost with Prince Albert. And the Cards went a round deep into the playoffs
Berkman succumbed to his every-other-year injury pattern and played just 32 games, so it was second-year pro Allen Craig who punched up three wins of offense in his place, mostly at first base but also in 60 games of spot duty in the outer pastures. That ensemble fared fine absent Albert, and Beltran cost the Busch clan $26 mil over two years, or roughly $700 skajillion less than Pujols.
Al of which leads nicely into another prediction: that Rangers management desperately wanted an excuse not to sign Josh Hamilton for the $25 mil/year he was preparing to demand into the next decade. Here's an excerpt:
What Daniels no doubt knows is that while Hamilton is a great player and a heart-warming tale of redemption, he's also a 31-year-old with an emergency room loyalty card. Despite his .313/.370/.556 stick and defensive prowess in a key position, this is not a man to whom you give a golden parachute.
The post suggested Hamilton would find some opportunity to injure himself, as he is wont to do. Instead, he avoided Aaron Burr all season and played in 148 games,* adding four-and-a-half wins of stardom. His hall pass out of Dallas was the late season brain fart/heart failure that earned him the enmity of Texas fans as the team stumbled out of first place in the season's final two weeks and then off the playoff map in one embarrassing effort. No more dilemma for Nolan Ryan.
*Rangers fans would argue that he actually played about 144. He was physically present for 148.
How much Anaheim's five-year/$123 million bet on the injury-plagued star will come back to bite them in the butt remains to be seen. But it made the day of Rangers brass, for sure.
Is this just going to be a recapitulation of all the top Braindrizzling hits of 2012? No, and we can thank the Baltimore Orioles for that.
The Orioles aren't this good, we've seen it all before, they've been lucky, their 15 minutes are up, yadda, yadda, yadda. That was the refrain from this space -- and nearly every other -- that noted Baltimore's youth, inexperience, lack of stars, run differential, actual performance and track record. But none of that could compensate for the life-sized rabbit's foot carried around by Buck Showalter all season.
We're wishing the Baltimores good luck in 2013 but not betting that way.
A week later, the same prediction about the 24-16 Indians in this imagined conversation. Cleveland rode a 4.79 ERA and no 20-HR hitters to 94 losses and a new manager in 2013. Sorry Tito, but if the Choo-less Tribe runs out to 24 wins in its first 40 games I'll dust off the same blog post.
Stay tuned next time when we sing that sweet ditty from last June 26, "Trade R.A. Dickey Now!"
With respect to Lucroy: that commitment was for a second-year player with a .313 on base percentage and middling power. How'd that abomination work out?
It made the Brewers look like geniuses. Lucroy hit .320/.368/.513 in 96 games before succumbing to a broken wrist. He produced three wins against replacement and excellent defense in less than two-thirds of a season for just $500K. And there's the potential for four more years of goodness on the cheap.
As that post made clear, you'll be seeing more of those kinds of contracts -- in which young players sign away their first few years of arbitration and even a year or two of free agency in return for guaranteed multi-million dollar paydays during their pre-arb years. The reason is that there are diminishing marginal returns to the Lucroy family on the next $8 million he may be leaving on the table, while the first $11 million will set his family for life.
Meanwhile, teams will save money (and keep their young stars for an extra year or two) on average, even if the occasional signing goes belly-up.
April was a good month for the prognostimeter too. It predicted the Cardinals had already replaced Albert Pujols by moving Lance Berkman from rightfield to first base and signing Carlos Beltran to slot in for Berkman. It didn't quite work out that way, even though Beltran pounded 32 home runs en route to a .269/.346/.495 ledger that recouped all three batting wins against replacement lost with Prince Albert. And the Cards went a round deep into the playoffs
Berkman succumbed to his every-other-year injury pattern and played just 32 games, so it was second-year pro Allen Craig who punched up three wins of offense in his place, mostly at first base but also in 60 games of spot duty in the outer pastures. That ensemble fared fine absent Albert, and Beltran cost the Busch clan $26 mil over two years, or roughly $700 skajillion less than Pujols.
Al of which leads nicely into another prediction: that Rangers management desperately wanted an excuse not to sign Josh Hamilton for the $25 mil/year he was preparing to demand into the next decade. Here's an excerpt:
What Daniels no doubt knows is that while Hamilton is a great player and a heart-warming tale of redemption, he's also a 31-year-old with an emergency room loyalty card. Despite his .313/.370/.556 stick and defensive prowess in a key position, this is not a man to whom you give a golden parachute.
The post suggested Hamilton would find some opportunity to injure himself, as he is wont to do. Instead, he avoided Aaron Burr all season and played in 148 games,* adding four-and-a-half wins of stardom. His hall pass out of Dallas was the late season brain fart/heart failure that earned him the enmity of Texas fans as the team stumbled out of first place in the season's final two weeks and then off the playoff map in one embarrassing effort. No more dilemma for Nolan Ryan.
*Rangers fans would argue that he actually played about 144. He was physically present for 148.
How much Anaheim's five-year/$123 million bet on the injury-plagued star will come back to bite them in the butt remains to be seen. But it made the day of Rangers brass, for sure.
Is this just going to be a recapitulation of all the top Braindrizzling hits of 2012? No, and we can thank the Baltimore Orioles for that.
The Orioles aren't this good, we've seen it all before, they've been lucky, their 15 minutes are up, yadda, yadda, yadda. That was the refrain from this space -- and nearly every other -- that noted Baltimore's youth, inexperience, lack of stars, run differential, actual performance and track record. But none of that could compensate for the life-sized rabbit's foot carried around by Buck Showalter all season.
We're wishing the Baltimores good luck in 2013 but not betting that way.
A week later, the same prediction about the 24-16 Indians in this imagined conversation. Cleveland rode a 4.79 ERA and no 20-HR hitters to 94 losses and a new manager in 2013. Sorry Tito, but if the Choo-less Tribe runs out to 24 wins in its first 40 games I'll dust off the same blog post.
Stay tuned next time when we sing that sweet ditty from last June 26, "Trade R.A. Dickey Now!"
New Rules For Today's Sports
New Rule: A woman you have never met, by definition, is not your girlfriend.
Evidently this rule was not already in force in Indiana or Hawai'i.
New Rule: Lying, cheating, harassing, slandering and litigating for 15 years is not ameliorated in the slightest by an admission after conviction.
This rule remains in force but evidently at least one person and his well-paid advisers believe it can be circumvented.
New Rule: Writing a silly book hectoring your former employer is not the best revenge. Living well, by bringing a pennant to Cleveland, is.
Evidently you can get a job as a leader of men without knowing this rule.
New Rule: A top-ranked college basketball team that defeats the #2, #3, #4 and #5 teams and then drops a league road contest to #16 is still the #1 team in the land.
Part B of New Rule: Even if it is Duke.
This rule does not seem to have widespread support.
New Rule: Anyone demonstrating sufficiently dim wits to assert that winning four of four Super Bowls is superior to winning four of six should be banned from the radio airwaves until they can credibly explain how leading a team to six championship games is a lesser accomplishment than leading a team to four.
The people who would have to enforce this rule are equally dimwitted.
New Rule: The rule requiring the L.A. Lakers to make the NBA playoffs is hereby repealed.
This rule is supported in 49 of 50 states but is unlikely to be enforced. Again.
New Rule: The NHL will have a labor dispute that eliminates all games before January every year.
This rule is evidently already in force.
13 January 2013
Flipping Melky Cabrera for Jonathan Sanchez Was a Stroke of Genius . . . and Other Horror Stories
Gather 'round the campfire boys and girls to hear the grisly fate of Uncle Braindrizzling's ghoulish 2012 definitive assertions. Actually, we're going to harken to the waning days of 2011 to examine what went right and what went terribly, terribly wrong.
For example, the goblins visited this post on November 8, 2011 in which the team of monkeys that staff Braindrizzling typewriters suggested that the Royals were more likely than the Giants to benefit from the swap of Melky Cabrera for Jonathan Sanchez.
That would be the .346/.390/.516 Melk Man who staffed the San Francisco outfield and came within a Commissioner's decree of winning the batting title. Baseball-Reference says Cabrera was worth four wins against a replacement outfielder during his 113 games for the World Champs.
In contrast, Sanchez could not have been worth less to the Royals had he spontaneously combusted during spring training. In fact, in retrospect, that would have been a relief. Instead, he delivered 15 undead starts in which he walked 7.4 batters per nine innings, served up a homer-and-a-half per nine and accomplished 1-6, 7.76 worth of damage before KC shipped his growing hindquarters out the door, at a cost of $5.6 million.
TKO: Giants.
Of course the elephant in the room is a failed drug test. Cabrera was caught juicing 2/3rds of the way through the season and benched for the remainder and throughout the playoffs. So the monkeys can be forgiven for claiming that the trade was a nothing-for-nothing deal more likely to benefit the Royals. It just didn't turn out that way.
In any case, the monkeys redeemed themselves in this November 24 post in which they penned the opinion that whoever inked a deal with primo pitching free agent CJ Wilson would rue the day. Day rued, at least so far. The Los Angeles Dodgers of Los Angeles forked over $75 million over five years and got below average production from the 31-year-old lefty. Fanning fewer than twice as many batters as he walked, Wilson's ERA ballooned a full point despite moving to the non-DH league and an offense-dampening ballpark.
Likewise, this December 9 post suggested the Cardinals were better off without Albert Pujols raiding the treasury. As it turned out, Pujols continued a four-year trend of decline to a lifetime low OPS of .859, a lifetime low 30 homers and a lifetime low 3.6 wins against replacement. By contrast, as the post suggested, Allen Craig picked up much of the slack, with an .876 OPS, 22 homers and three-quarters of Pujols' value for four percent of the price.
The split decisions continued with the assertion on Christmas Eve that the Oakland A's were running on an endless treadmill in the wake of trading hurlers Trevor Cahill and Gio Gonzalez for low-cost prospects. It said here that Billy Beane's methods guaranteed the A's were the team of the future . . . and always would be.
Ninety-four wins and a division crown later, Billy got the last laugh. But it's worth noting that his pitching rotation featured four lightly-heralded rookies, a 28-year-old journeyman and half a season of a jacked-up Bartolo Colon. How this crew competed, much less rallied into the playoffs, is a mystery being guarded by Judge Crater and the crew of the Mary Celeste.
It's no mystery how the Detroit Tigers snuck into the playoffs: the Chicago White Sox nose-dived to end the season. Despite the mega-signing of Prince Fielder to a star-studded squad, disdain was hurled from here at the iron-gloved mess taking the field in Detroit.
The Tigers played in the World Series, sure, but they needed a 15-7 finish to win just 88 games in a competence-challenged AL Central -- the worst total of any playoff-bound team. Cabrera won the Triple Crown and Fielder poured on a .940 OPS, but the infield defense was every bit the train wreck described in that January post. The team finished five wins below replacement-level defensively.
One more prognostication worth mentioning from the first quarter, before adjourning for more marshmallow-toasting in subsequent posts: Nostradamus paid a visit in late February and shocked the cognoscenti with the bold prediction that Seattle would, absent any hitting, pitching or defense, suck the hairy moose knuckles. Talk about sticking your neck out!
Now go to bed, kiddies. Next we examine what witch's potions we were drinking when we approved of Milwaukee's $11 million deal with catcher Jonathan Lucroy.
09 January 2013
Hall Aflame
At the risk of driving over an old road: I understand how baseball writers can deny steroid users Bonds and Clemens first-ballot Hall of Fame status.
But how do they justify slamming the door in the faces of Jeff Bagwell, Craig Biggio, Tim Raines, Curt Schilling and Edgar Martinez?
And Mike Piazza? If the greatest hitting catcher of all time isn't a Hall of Famer, then Bowie Kuhn really does belong.
Just for grins, let's recap the career that two of every five writers dismissed. In 15 seasons (plus a cup-a-Joe) he hit .308/.377/.545, the highest OPS for any catcher in history. He belted 427 homers, the most all-time by a guy who primarily caught. That's despite playing all but five games of his career in bomb shelters -- Dodger Stadium, Shea Stadium, Petco and whatever they call that monstrosity in Oakland.
He hit 43% above average, which is to say twice as well as an average backstop. He hit .300+ for eight straight seasons and finished in the top 10 of MVP voting seven times. With the lumber, he is the superior of everyone in the history of the planet who has ever squatted behind the plate.
By no accounts was Piazza an asset defensively. Baseball-Reference.com rates his career about replacement level in the field. But that hardly offsets his 63 wins above replacement at the plate. The average HOF catcher is at about 49 wins above replacement.
There has been some sniffing among the voting writers that links Piazza with steroids. Any journalist relying on innuendo to besmirch one of the greatest careers in the annals of the sport deserves to be fired, much less have his BBWAA card burned. Since when is innuendo a credible source?
The writers whiffed this year and the result is a HOF ceremony in August that will induct three men long dead before a crowd of dozens and a flood of empty Cooperstown hotel rooms. Bu Selig has got to be cringing.
The baseball writers have managed the impossible. They've made Gary Bettman look good.
05 January 2013
BABIP Regressors: Pitchers to Watch
If you're in the market to sign a starting pitcher, it would be helpful to know what performance to expect from the various options. Unfortunately, while there are plenty of rear view mirrors, only Mr. Peabody & Sherman can tell you what lies ahead, and their time machine stopped working in 1971.
Nonetheless, we gaze into the past and salt our observations with what it all portends. Which brings us to pitcher BABIP.
Research over the years since Voros McCracken elucidated the theory that pitchers don't control the results once a ball is put in play has uncovered a grain of truth in his finding. While some pitchers can maintain a lower BABIP over their entire career, it's still true that large variations from their own established levels can often be attributed to a smiling deity. Because deities are fickle, this element of a player's performance tends not to repeat itself over time.
All of which is a long way of saying that some pitchers appeared to be particularly lucky or unlucky in 2012 and may be expected to deliver more or less of the goods in 2013.
Let's take a look:
League average BABIP is about .298. That is, batters hit just under .300 when they aren't striking out, homering, walking or getting dinged by pitches. In 2011, Braves lefty Mike Minor suffered through a season of .350 BABIP, so while he pitched solidly, his ERA of 4.14 belied it.
In 2012, the league adjusted to Minor and his performance wasn't nearly as strong. But his ERA held steady (4.12) thanks to a .256 BABIP. Nothing in his underlying performance, or in the defense behind him, suggested such a change. That means Atlanta should hold the reins on expectations for the 25-year-old Vanderbilt man.
If Minor inspires warning flags, the regression sirens have to be blaring around Kyle Lohse. Over the last two years, Lohse is 30-11, 3.10, following a 10-year career of 88-98, 4.50. It's likely that Lohse has figured something out, but BABIPs of .269 and .262, compared to a lifetime BABIP right around league average, hasn't hurt. The music eventually stops, and 2013 is as good a time as any. Add to that his age-34 season and Lohse is in for major regression.
Jeremy Hellickson enjoyed a .262 BABIP last season, but is he in for regression? Hellickson's three-year career in St. Petersburg has been a study in confounding the numbers. Over 403 innings, Hellickson has a career BABIP of .244, which suggests that he might be doing something special (or playing behind a special defense) that's tamping down opponent batting average. Either that or the dude has been abidingly lucky and is going to crash in 2013. Hellickson has a lifetime ERA 0f 3.06, but the statheads suggest he's more like a .450 ERA pitcher. We'll see.
Then there's Gio Gonzalez, who entered MLB in 2008 with Oakland. Here is the arc of Gio's career, expressed in ERA:
2008 - 7.68
2009 - 5.65
2010 - 3.23
2011 - 3.12
2012 - 2.89
So the fact that batted balls fell safely at just a .267 clip last year doesn't dull his prospects much. Gonzalez has a lifetime BABIP of just .286; perhaps in part because his two home parks, Oakland and Washington, are BABIP dampers; so if he regresses even to his 2011 performance, he's still a star in 2013.
Max Scherzer had a terrific 2012, going 16-7, 3.74 with 231 strikeouts. That last figure helped dull the impact of a .333 BABIP. That's fortunate, because it's likely that a chunk of Scherzer's BABIP lies at the feet of immobile infielders who will be back with the Tigers, barring a major surprise, in 2013.
It's just the opposite for Nathan Eovaldi, the young Marlin righty who relies on his defense more than average. His .316 BABIP in L.A. and Miami was particularly harmful to his stat line, a painful 4-13, 4.30 that overstates his struggles. Given his youth, Eovaldi is headed for what will look like a breakout in 2013.
One last interesting case -- in nearly every respect -- is R.A. Dickey. Kuncklers have a history of outfoxing the whole BABIP system, but Dickey has maintained nearly identical BABIPs around .275 since returning with the scroogie in 2010. It's quite possible that Dickey as not been particularly lucky, just particularly adept, and that his run of extraordinary performances could continue.
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