More Questions Without Answers

Round Two of our foray into the off-season navel-gazing we're compelled to do unless we want to watch the Beef O'Brady Bowl showdown featuring East Cackalacky and Northern Midwest Rustbelt State Tech. Or read a book:

Question: What about Bronson Arroyo?
Which part of consistent, above-average workhorse don't baseball GMs like? Dude's hurled nine consecutive years of 32+ starts (he only made 29 starts and six relief appearances in his first full season) and piled up 27 wins against replacement for his employers. Sure he's 37, but he's twirled more than 404 innings the last two seasons with a nearly 4-1 strikeout-walk ratio and an above-average ERA in Cincinnati's Great American Homer Park.

What's more, the guy's fastball is a change-up, so it's not like his heater will cool with age and cost him effectiveness. Arroyo introduced batters to Uncle Charlie more than anyone else last year, and they responded by with a Mario Mendoza imitation. Arroyo will decline gradually; indeed, he's already begun, and it's been so gradual it's not even discernible yet. If Dan Haren can get a contract after disappointing more people in D.C. than Congress, how does Arroyo not warrant a nibble? 

Other third starters are latching on at $8-$10 million per, so if the 6'4" northpaw is reconciled to two years of that he should find a willing partner before Spring Training.

Question: What are the Orioles doing?
They swapped their closer for a garden-variety second baseman, signed Oakland's closer (are there scarier words than that?) for $15 million over two years and then nixed the deal without explanation. They sent their redundant third baseman (perhaps you've heard of Manny Machado) packing for a hit-challenged outfielder and left themselves the fifth worst AL pitching staff stripped of 40% of their starters.

The Backyard Birds need to acquire some quality arms or they're going to drop from 2012 fluke to 2014 puke. The good news is that Ervin Santana, Ubaldo Jimenez and Matt Garza all remain unclaimed, and the bidding has begun on Japanese sensation Masahiro Tanaka, who authored a 24-0 record with a 1.27 ERA and saved the only Nippon Baseball championship for Rakuten. Get out your checkbook, Peter Angelos.

Question: Is standing pat in Toronto's a strategy or a white flag?
You may remember that this time last year the Blue Jays were bulking up with R.A. Dickey and the cast-offs from Miami, a strategy that worked like a health insurance website. This year, Jays GM Alex Anthopoulos upgraded the sinkhole at catcher and then seemingly took the winter off. As things stand now, the lineup north of the border will look eerily familiar. Will it perform just as badly?

There's a lot of reason to be skeptical about this team. The big thumpers thumped as expected -- 130 homers from five key starters. But Melky Cabrera struggled with health issues, maybe the lack of steroids pulsing through his veins chief among them. The keystone duo of Emilio Bonafacio and Macier Izturis hit literally half as well as a Major Leaguer. And the bench is thinner than Rob Ford's excuses. 

The pitching is great, as long as you're not particular about having a #1 starter. Or a #2. Or much after Dickey and Mark Buehrle, who each took another step towards 40 in the off-season. The relief corps excelled, yet the team ERA rose to fourth worst in the league, and bullpens are notoriously fickle. Double-A, as the GM is known, needs to sneak back into the marketplace for an infielder, an outfielder and an arm, at the very least. Otherwise, the Jays could go down as an historically bad experiment.

Questions To Ask Ourselves

With a flurry of trades and signings now in our wake, a couple of questions should be occurring to us as we contemplate which teams have improved and which are reeling.

Question: What do the Yankees know about Robinson Cano?
Explanation: The Bombers declined to pay Hall of Fame prospect Robby Cano $24 million for 10 years, but they shelled out $22 million for seven years of oft-injured Jacoby Ellsbury, who has produced OPS above league average twice since he began playing regularly in 2008.

The $97 million difference is nothing to sneeze at, even if you have the Yankees' immunity system. But these players are not equivalents. Cano's value to NY since '08 is roughly double Ellsbury's (36 wins against replacement versus 18), and though Cano is a year older and plays a less demanding defensive position, previous history suggests he will last at second base longer than Ellsbury will stay in center. 

So why did the Yankees let Cano walk? Incumbent teams know more about their free agents than anyone else does. They know if he's a jerk in the clubhouse, if he's lazy or stupid or annoying, if he's distracted by a woman or if he'd be lost without his ailing mother. They know what nagging injuries he's been papering over and whether he's losing his mojo in the weight room.

When the home team waves off its own player it should give the signing team pause. So what do the Yankees know?

Question: What do the Red Sox know about Jacoby Ellsbury?
Explanation: Already sporting a natural center fielder (Curtis Granderson, a free agent himself) and speedsters in the outfield corners (Brett Gardner and Ichiro) the Yanks put $153 million and seven years on the table for Ellsbury, at least three years and $93 million more than they could have spent to keep the Grandy Man. (The Mets pledged $60 million over four years to Granderson.)

By letting Ellsbury go, Boston's already precarious outfield now features Shane Victorino, Daniel Nava and a big question mark currently causing New Englanders to cringe at the answer "Jonny Gomes." Why would a championship-caliber team allow their outfield anchor to walk when the alternative is a giant hole?

It's not like the Red Sox went on a spending spree elsewhere. They forked over $8.25 million to replace Jarrod Saltalamacchia with reliable A.J. Pierzynski and laid out $4.75 for reliever Edward Mujica, raising their 2013 payroll by roughly nothing. (Actually, Baseball-Reference.com projects the Sox' payroll will decline $13 million, an amazing result following a World Series parade.) So what do the Red Sox know?

Question: What does Philadelphia management know....period?
Explanation: Oh man is it going to hurt like a Mighty Mighty Bosstones concert in Philly this coming season. Like a hobo in a Brooks Brothers suit, the Phils will sport the second most expensive NL roster while battling Miami for relegation to Double-A. For $159 million, here's some of what the City of Brotherly Love gets:

Jimmy Rollins, 35 (.2 WAR in 2013) $11 million
Carlos Ruiz, 35 (1.7 WAR) $8.5 million
Chase Utley, 35 (3.5 WAR) $15 million
Jonathan Papelbon, 33 (1.5 WAR) $13 million
Mike Adams, 35 (.3 WAR) $7 million
and of course, Ryan Howard, 34 (.6 WAR) $25 million

That's $80 million for an eight-game edge on the bottom-feeding Astros. GM Ruben Amaro can expect a Valentine's Day card from (Washington GM) Mike Rizzo.

Question: What do the Kansas City Royals think they are?
Explanation: When they traded away the future (Wil Myers) for James Shields, they didn't realize they were relinquishing the present as well. They have Big Game James under contract for one more season following a Shields-infused 86-win campaign that had them in the Wild Card mix until the very end. That gives KC 2014 to make a real run at contention in the hopes that Cleveland was a fluke or Detroit stumbles without its Prince. (Better hope for the fluke...)

So what have the Royals done to prepare? They filled a gaping hole at second by signing Omar Infante to a four-year deal. He replaces replacement-level Chris Getz, adding two-three wins at the keystone. They flipped a below-replacement relief pitcher named Will Smith in the pursuit of happyness with rightfielder Norichika Aoki -- another two-three wins. And they inked lefty starter Jason Vargas -- another two wins -- to a four-year deal that displaces one of the Royals legion of fifth starters. While they lost a win or so by trading right-field defensive specialist David Lough, they strengthened third base by acquiring right-swinging Danny Valencia, who will platoon with southpaw-challenged Mike Moustakis.

That's a string of small but significant under-the-radar moves, but the Royals still lack power (Alex Gordon's 20 dingers paced the club) and starting pitching behind Shields (they'll not get 24 wins again out of Bruce Chen and Jeremy Guthrie). If they have visions of playoff plums dancing in their heads they need to swing at least one more deal. Otherwise they're stuck in the middle lane, unable to turn right into rebuilding or left into contention.

Question: Are the Pirates standing pat because they think they're good enough to repeat or because they realize 2014 won't be their year?
Explanation: If Pittsburgh GM Neil Huntington is honest with himself, he realizes that the patron saint of lost causes had to be smiling down on PNC Park for the Bucs' surprise party to come off so swimmingly in 2013. In 2014, Jeff Locke's not slipping a 3.52 ERA into their drink. Mark Melancon's not doing the 1.39 ERA hustle or the 8.75 K/BB tango, at least not for 71innings. Justin Morneau won't be back for a .370 OBP surprise. Andrew McCutchen can't possibly top last year's party favors. And the team won't outplay their fundamentals by six wins. So if they want to avoid starting a new streak, he'll need to start inviting some different folks to his 2014 party.

Instead, the Pirates made 1B Garret Jones (.289 OBP) walk the plank, watched Morneau jump ship,  brought back on board SS Clint Barmes's invisible bat (.211/.249/.309) and SP Charlie Morton's inconsistent quality (two years below-3.84 ERA, two years above-6.14 ERA), and welcomed hurler Edinson Volquez (4.94 ERA since 2009) to serve as fifth mate. That's a whole lot of Nobody McNobodywicz, and it leaves Pittsburgh, at 85 wins of quality, steering an even more middle course than Kansas City. 

The Buccos may say "Aaaargh" to big name free agents, but they need to bid "Ahoy" to some improvements or it's going to look ugly as an eye-patch. The roster cries out for a league-average starter and an outfield bat; a lefty platoon-mate for Gaby Sanchez (200 points worse OPS against righties) would even be parrot-on-the-shoulder. Absent that, don't say you weren't warned.

The Wild Wild (AL) West

Like the proverbial rearrangement of deck chairs on the Titanic, it's not clear that after all the dust has settled in the wake of GDP-sized signings and multi-team swaps that anything much has changed in the AL West. 

The Texas Rangers, in effect swapped Nelson Cruz and Ian Kinsler for Prince Fielder and Shin-soo Choo in order to free up this year's model, Jurickson Profar, to play second base. If nothing else, the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle fit better now. Fielder is an upgrade on Cruz, especially the Cruz who got himself docked for a third of the season. Choo fills Cruz's spot in the outfield and fills the bases in Kinsler's place, while 21-year-old Profar provides the Rangers an opportunity to sport enviable youth in the middle infield alongside 25-year-old Elvis Andrus.

Texas still has the issue of perennial late-season wilting, which might be a function of Dallas heat, but until Fielder eats his way out of stardom the dealing keeps them around the top of the division.

The Seattle Mariners signed the best keystoner in the game and continue to wave American legal tender at free agents in a futile attempt to acquire enough hitting to keep King Felix above .500. As of now, their lock on the cellar (Houston not withstanding) remains uncontested as Cano pushes them five wins closer to mediocrity. If Cano is simply the opening salvo in their free agent push, that seven-year deal might pay off starting in years two or three. Seattle is said to have one of baseball's best farms.

The Los Angeheim Angels will attempt once again to parlay a trio of superstars into something better than third place. They'll need the real Josh Hamilton and Albert Pujols to stand up in support of Mike Trout's to-scale imitation of Willie Mays. They have spent the off-season flipping a statuesque corner outfielder (Mark Trumbo) for a pair of promising starting pitchers and swapping center speedster Peter Bourjos for hot cornerman David Friese. That leaves the Halos secure at the corner but one short in the outfield, all of which is window-dressing unless Hamilton and Pujols move away from the kryptonite.

The Houston Astros are also allowed to play in this division as they claw their way back from the Minors. The Spacemen inked one average player (pitcher Scott Feldman) and traded for another (outfielder Dexter Fowler) who will instantly become the team's two stars. Wait 'til three years ago!

Finally there is the Oakland A's, the Soviet Union of this era. They remain a riddle wrapped in an enigma whose best hitter (Josh Donaldson) knocked in 35 runs in his career prior to 2013. Their best pitcher was an overweight 40-year-old (Bartolo Colon) coming off a steroid conviction. Their best player was a center fielder who notched his career year at age 33 (Coco Crisp) in the worst-hitting park he's ever called home. Their 2013 payroll, third lowest in the league, is projected to rise three whopping percent in 2014. Divesting themselves of Colon and their closer (Grant Balfour, 2.56 ERA, 38 saves) and retaining just seven players beyond arbitration helps keep the cost down, though the head-scratcher signing of perpetual puzzle Scott Kazmir (11% worse than average since 2005) to a two-year, $22 million bank breaker offsets some of that.

In any case, the A's will once again project to 83 wins before again leapfrogging Texas for the division title at year's end. Because that's what the Wild Wild AL West does.

A Conspiracy of Willful Amnesia

It was a rainy day in Charleston so I settled in to watch some footballs. With three games left in the NFL's regular season there were several near-elimination contests whose outcomes really mattered. For sure Fox and CBS would show the Dallas-Green Bay showdown whose loser would be in deep playoff purgatory or the Miami-New England contest critical to the Dolphins ' playoff push.

After all, making the post-season tournament is all that matters. As anyone who's followed the NFL even casually knows all too well, any team can hoist the trophy once they qualify for the tournament. Last year, the 10-6 Baltimore Ravens played three games, two on the road, on their way to Super Bowl victory. The year before, the 9-7 NY Giants ran the same gauntlet. In 2010, the 10-6 Green Bay Packers slipped in on a Wild Card and swept three road games en route to the championship. And so on.

In other words, every player, coach, GM, owner, writer, broadcaster and fan knows that seeding is irrelevant. Home field confers as much advantage as the return from injury of a flanker. A first-round bye guarantees passage into the second round -- and nothing more.

So what game did I see? That riveting Seattle-Giants affair, a Seahawk whitewashing that had utterly no relevance in the standings. Seattle had already clinched. New Jersey was already eliminated. Why on Earth would Fox show this desultory affair? It's not like I live in the Pacific Northwest or the teeming metropolis.

Then, adding insult to injury, the announcers on the Seahawks-Giants fiasco mentioned the high drama taking place in Miami. With their playoff hopes hanging by a thread, the Dolphins led New England by four points with Tom Brady poised a few yards from the end zone as the final seconds ticked down. And my television continued to show a meaningless 23-0 egg-laying.

You'd never know of my contest's irrelevance from the network description. According to them, Seattle was battling to maintain their home field playoff edge. The Seahawks, they said, were in a dogfight with New Orleans for that coveted one-seed and needed to defeat today's foe.

The next day, a national sports talk show asked its four hyperbolic panelists if Miami gained more than New England lost. This tripe was presented as a matter of opinion, as if New England's playoff seeding were as momentous as Miami's uphill climb into the postseason.

There are only two possibilities here: everyone involved in the game is lying through their teeth or there is a conspiracy of willful amnesia. The constant talk of seeding as if it correlates with playoff success requires that all the analysts, observers and fans squeeze their eyes shut so tight that they momentarily forget that most of these games don't matter. 

We see this in sports all the time. The talk about NBA playoff seeding is so totally laughable it goes beyond amnesia to schizophrenia. Fans of the sport are so paralyzed by grief for any drama in the season that they remain stuck in its first stage -- denial. College pigskin fans work themselves into a lather every season fretting about multiple-undefeated-team scenarios that never pan out. And, of course, all sports fans invoke "momentum" as if it's a guarantor of future events rather than a description of the past.

Wake up everyone, so on a rainy day I can watch a game that has some meaning.

Adam Dunn's Nose Runs and His Feet Smell

If you want a bust in Cooperstown, either dominate the game for six or seven years, or compete at a high level for 20. You might call these the Sandy Koufax and Don Sutton methods, respectively.

But this isn't about the Hall of Fame at all. It's about Adam Dunn.
 
One method of determining with numerical analysis whether a contender is Hall-worthy is to measure his peak value -- the value he added to his team over some arbitrary number of his best years. In his six transcendent seasons, Koufax posted 46.6 wins against replacement. That's all the more astonishing because his total career value is only 53.2 WAR.

That's because the six seasons in which his performance looked like this -- 25-5, 1.88 -- followed six seasons that looked like this -- 11-11, 4.48. His career was a deep valley bordering a high mountain.

Wait til you hear about Adam Dunn.

Sutton, on the other hand, was more like a mesa, a high, flat plain. His peak six seasons only produced 31 wins against replacement for the Dodgers but his career mark of 68.7 outshines Koufax's. Sutton's best season, 1972 (19-9, 2.08), didn't look extraordinarily different from a below average season, say 1982 (13-8, 3.00).

Which brings us, mercifully, to Adam Dunn. The Big Donkey will see himself in Cooperstown only after purchasing admittance and looking in the bathroom mirror. What makes him special is his peak and career value.

Dunn is one of the very few players in baseball history whose peak value is higher than his career value. Dunn's top seven seasons (that's the number chosen for peak value by the respected JAWS system, developed by and named for former Baseball Prospectus writer Jay Jaffe) produced 16.5 wins. In his salad days, Dunn's batting average hovered around .250, he walked 100+ times and he socked 38 or more homers eight times. That was enough to overcome the face plant he did in the field. 

In his six worst seasons, Dunn has been an albatross, most notably in 2011, when he batted .159 with 11 homers in 496 plate appearances that made women and children weep. He cost the White Sox three wins that year compared to a Triple-A DH/left-fielder.

Adam Dunn is no stranger to nose-run/feet-smell kinds of results. Five times in his career (2004, 2005, 2008, 2010, 2012) Dunn has compiled more extra base hits than singles. As of last year, only five players in baseball history with 1000+ plate appearances had more extra base hits than singles for their career, including Dunn. Sadly, he fell of the list in 2013 by banging just 49 of his 115 hits for multiple bases. (Giancarlo Stanton also exited the august group, which means the list is down to three.)

Here's another Escher drawing of Dunn's career: in 2011, Dunn walked more often than he hit safely. (In 2008 he walked exactly as often.) In the last 40 years, that has been accomplished just 23 times (minimum 450 plate appearances), most notably by Barry Bonds, six times between '01 and '07. 

Here's one that very possibly stands alone in the annals of the game. In 2009, the giant righty slugged 38 home runs for the Washington Nationals, got on base just under 40% of the time, produced an OPS 44% above league average and added four wins of value at the plate. And produced below-replacement value overall. How hard is that? He stole no bases, needed a triple to advance from first to second, and displayed all the defensive range of a cactus. For his career, Adam Dunn has cost his teams 28 wins in the field, despite DHing the last three years.

We'll not see quite the likes of Adam Dunn again. This is a ballplayer who made the All-Star team one year while batting .204 (yet nonetheless producing an above-average on base percentage). He  slammed 206 homers over five years and never finished in the top 25 in MVP voting. He racked up 58 extra base hits in 2002 but only 75 RBI. He's walked, fanned or homered -- in other words did not put the ball in play -- more than half the time in his nearly 8,000 career plate appearances.

Funn with Dunn. Enjoy it while you can.

See, I Told You So

Here in Charleston, SC, we attend to hurricane forecasts as if our lives depend on them -- because they do. About every three years a big gust rattles our cages and about every 50 years a Biblical-style storm levels everything in its path along the coast, much like Albert Pujols' contract.

So when the National Hurricane Center in Boulder, CO pronounces an active hurricane season upcoming, non-perishables fly out of supermarkets and plywood sales spike. What folks in these parts don't seem to notice is how utterly, thoroughly, completely and consistently their forecasts are wildly off the mark. Even mid-season, when the Hurricane Center updates its prediction, it nonetheless manages to swing and miss like Adam Dunn facing R.A. Dickey. People here would be well-advised to act upon the opposite of the forecast.

So much for experts. The same could be said about the people who cover, follow and even sometimes work in baseball: they're so often misinformed that any third-rate blogger from a minor league city can feast on the carcass of their predictions. As Father Time rolls out the tarp on 2013 it's a good time to look back and see how often a little Braindrizzling out-guessed the experts.

Let's start with last December, when the Mariners signed Jason Bay and Philadelphia inked Michael Young to contracts. We offered a big raspberry to both teams for aging without grace. Here's the Bay post, which suggested his signing was redundant on a team that already couldn't hit. Sure enough, in a platoon designed to hide his deficiencies, Bay batted .204.

Young hit much better, as was expected, but he was still 36. His third base defense was so putrid he graded out below replacement. The post suggested the creaky Phils would finish fourth in the East. They obliged.

The same month, Braindrizzling exploited its last opportunity to pile on Jeff Francoeur, scratching the metaphorical head about the Royals' continued employment of potential that never was. Francoeur posted a .238 on base percentage en route to employment in another field.

A week before Christmas, a bewildering trade between Tampa and Kansas City sent #2 starter James Shields and swingman Wade Davis to the Royals for a grab bag of Minor Leaguers including phenom Wil Myers.  We called it the "Gift of the Magi" trade because the developing team sacrificed the future for a present that didn't exist while the contenders relinquished a current asset for a future star right when the division seemed theirs for the taking. That's not quite how it worked out.

Shields was his usual brilliant self (13-9, 3.15 and leading the league in innings pitched) and helped KC come closer than ever to contention. (Davis, not so much.) Still, KC finished third in the division, six games out of the Wild Card. And now Shields gets expensive in '14 in his last season before free agency.

The trade did work out for the Rays though. Myers was all that and a box of Oreos, earning Rookie of the Year honors with his .293/.354/.478 body of work. His mid-season promotion coincided with Tampa Bay's lurch into the Wild Card. Myers helped solidify a lower-middle tier offense while he pitching starts were divided nearly equally among six quality hurlers even without Big Game James. The lesson: if Rays GM Andrew Friedman does something mystifying, assume he's up to something.

Seattle GM Jack Zdurencik gets no such benefits of the doubt. He signed 41-year-old Raul Ibanez to complement Jason Bay in an inconceivable outfield platoon and lit up this blog post, which called the combination a punch line. Ibanez defied the hourglass for awhile, hitting .267 with 24 home runs in the first half while butchering left field. With Seattle hopelessly out of contention, Zdurencik failed to cash in his new asset for some farm help and watched Ibanez turn into a pumpkin (.203, five homers) in the second half.

On New Year's Eve, Braindrizzling picked a fight with the venerable Bill James, godfather of Sabermetrics. Bill had it coming for projecting Josh Hamilton would play 147 games and hit .289/.356/.540 with 35 home runs. We called that "exceedingly generous" which was an exceedingly generous description. Hamilton managed to stay upright for 151 games, but that wasn't necessarily good news as he slumped to .250/.307/.432 and 21 homers.

Outfoxing Bill James is just dumb luck; outsmarting the Royals, Mariners and Phillies, well, that's like shooting fish in a barrel. We'll examine the success rate of in-season prognostications in a subsequent post.

The Curious Case of Andruw Jones

What do you think of these two players and their annual performance:



Player A - .267/.345/.505, 31 HR, 28 D, 93 RBI, 9 Gold Gloves, 5.3 WAR, all for one team
Player B - .214/.314/.420, 15 HR, 13 D, 44 RBI 1 Gold Glove, 0.8 WAR for five different teams

The first guy is a borderline Hall of Famer. The second guy is a scrub.

You're never alone with a schizophrenic. Both players are Andruw Jones.

The first Andruw Jones is under 30. Jones entered the Majors with the Braves in 1996 at the age of 19. By 21 he hitting .271, pounding 31 homers and establishing himself as the premier defensive centerfielder in the game. At age 28 he slammed 51 bombs and finished second in the MVP balloting.

Then, in 2007, a terrible thing happened to the Curacao Kid. He turned 30. And with his 20s went his skills. Down like a sack of potatoes.

He slumped to .222/.311/.413 and 26 jacks in his final year in Atlanta. The Dodgers took a two-year, $36 million flyer on him and he rewarded them by batting .158 with three homers in 238 plate appearances. He even lost his defensive chops. L.A. released him and ate $18 million in salary.

The following four years he bounced from Texas to the White Sox to the Yankees, never again an asset in the field, never batting .250 even in a platoon. He continued to hit for power and even improved his walk rate, but by age 35 he was kaput as a Major Leaguer. This past season he took his waning skills to Japan where he delivered a solid performance that's nonetheless unlikely to resuscitate his MLB career.

What's particularly curious is that an examination of Jones in 2006 would have projected a few more peak-variety seasons, a long, slow decline and a Hall of Fame case. Great glove men in premium positions equipped with generous foot speed tend to age supremely well. They tend to be in great shape to begin with, as opposed to, say, lumbering first basemen.They can remain defensive assets by moving to easier positions -- corner outfield in Andruw's case. Their running ability ebbs more gradually than their swing.

None of that protected Andruw Jones. Some have attributed his cliff dive to added weight, others to injuries. Four franchises had the opportunity to diagnose and repair his ballplaying abilities and none unlocked the secret. Jones long ago cashed in his Cooperstown card. His notable membership now will be in the Hall of Head Scratchers.

Roy Hallafame?

By hanging up his cleats at the age of 36, Roy Halladay has set in motion a good, old-fashioned brouhaha over his Cooperstown credentials.

Halladay is credited with winning just 203 games, rarely enough to secure a bust in the august Hall. Bill James established the inadequacy of measuring pitcher wins in 1979, when Jimmy Carter was president, but word hasn't yet reached everyone just 34 years later. Communication is instantaneous in 2013, but only if received.

The shortage of wins are a symptom of a different problem facing Halladay's Hall candidacy. He pitched sporadically for four years until age 25 and threw only 62 innings because of shoulder woes at age 36. In between, he had only 11 years to make his case. That he got close enough to incite debate is a testament to how dominant Roy Halladay was.

Over a 10 year period (2002-2011) the gangly right-hander was the best moundsman in the game. He led the Majors four times in innings pitched, seven times in complete games, twice in wins and five times in K/BB ratio. His .697 winning percentage, for what it's worth, paced the Majors, and his 2.97 ERA trumped league average by a whopping 48%. He captured a Cy Young on merit in each league and finished in the top five of voting seven times.

The obvious comparison for anyone making a short career case for a pitcher is Sandy Koufax. Koufax was far more dominant over his best six years but nowhere near as dominant over 10.

The difference is that Koufax retired at the height of his powers. We mentally extrapolate his career and wonder how long he could have continued frustrating hitters. No need to wonder about Roy Halladay: he was done. His career denouement  of 4-5, 6.82 with more walks and home runs allowed in 62 innings than in all of 2011's 233 frames followed his worst season in a decade. Together, they speak to the trajectory of Halladay's pitching skills. At 37 next season, even a bounce-back wouldn't likely last more than a season or two.

And so, Roy Halladay's final wins against replacement tally comes up 42nd all-time among pitchers, squarely borderline in a Hall of Fame currently comprising 70 hurlers. Were he electing to retire with the same accomplishments at age 34, or coming off another stellar season, we could reasonably grant him three or four more seasons of respectability sufficient to inflate his career numbers to middling Hall of Fame territory. That, unfortunately, is not the case.

A Hall vote for Halladay five years hence would certainly be defensible. But without any reasonable expectation that he could bolster his resume, he appears to come up short.

Hall Monitor: The Veterans Committee Hates Credibility

The Veteran's Committee voted three managers into Baseball's Hall of Fame this week. They passed on the man who made all three rich --  Marvin Miller.

The managers, Bobby Cox, Joe Torre and Tony LaRussa, skippered eight World Champs and led their teams to more than 7,500 victories. Voters like wins and like to attribute them to individuals.

Marvin Miller skippered the players' union out of the Dark Ages and into the Modern Era when players have rights and earn their fair share of skyrocketing revenues. Since he took over the union and won the right to free agency, average salaries have leaped roughly 4,000 percent. Voters liked the Dark Ages and don't like high player salaries.

The three managers captained their teams to 37 losing seasons combined. Voters aren't real interested in inconvenient facts. 

Marvin Miller never seemed to lose a single battle with Baseball's establishment. In fact, the main criticism against him is that he won too much power for his constituents. Voters don't like it when guys who aren't as smart as they are make a lot more money.

Tony LaRussa is credited with some innovations that have affected the game long-term, such as the ninth-inning specialist, the LOOGY (left-handed, one-out guy) and the good-hitting pitcher batting eighth. Voters like innovation. Cox and Torre, despite their years of managerial success, are not known for any strategic innovations and are not likely to have long-term impact on the game. Voters like innovation but they like wins better. Wins are easy to count.

Marvin Miller's hot brand is stamped on every Major League game, every Major League team, every Major League player, every Major League front office and every baseball fan literally every single day. His impact is ubiquitous every day and will last as long as Major League Baseball does. Voters who are writers are upset that their own union has no teeth. Voters who were players think they earned their millions on their own.

Miller's critics argue that he went too far and corrupted the game with money. They preferred when owners kept their millions and treated players like indentured servants. How're those same people enjoying the endless pitching changes that are Tony LaRussa's legacy?

Joe Torre had a losing record until he inherited Bernie Williams, Derek Jeter, Tino Martinez, Wade Boggs, Tim Raines, Andy Pettitte, Kenny Rogers, Jimmy Key, Paul O'Neil, John Wetteland, Mariano Rivera, Roger Clemens, David Cone, Jorge Posada, David Wells, Jason Giambi, Alfonso Soriano, Mike Mussina, El Duque, Johnny Damon, Chien-Ming Wang and Alex Rodriguez. Does anyone really know how much of Joe Torre's managerial success resulted from great managing and how much from historically great talent?

In his first nine years of managing, Bobby Cox's teams won six more games than they lost before he inherited Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, John Smoltz, Chipper and Andruw Jones, et. al. There's somewhat more evidence of his aptitude inasmuch as the general manager who brought those players to the team was the very same Bobby Cox. In addition, many fewer of Cox's charges than Torre's arrived with pedigrees already established. Nonetheless, can we really be sure that Hall of Fame team leadership was the key to sustained excellence in Fulton County?

One cannot credibly dispute that Marvin Miller is the greatest sports union chief of all time. One can credibly dispute the aptitude of almost any manager, particularly Joe Torre and Bobby Cox, whose skippering brilliance just happened to coincide with the accumulation of Hall of Fame players. 

The Veterans Committee doesn't like credibility.

Fister Bump for Washington

While Democrats and Republicans in the legislative and executive branches continue their largely successful effort to promote the merits of a Chinese-style dictatorship, there is one man, at least, in the District of Columbia who has demonstrated the ability to deal effectively with adversaries.

Nationals GM Mike Rizzo didn't even need his ATM card to wrangle #2-level starter Doug Fister from the Tigers for a trio of farmhands whom the experts say are more likely roster-filler than prospects. 

It seems to be an artifact of positional glut that teams with one too many (name your position, in this case starting pitcher) often fail to demand equal value in trade. They seem to be settling for the value that the redundant player represented for them, rather than the value he would bring to his new team. The Tigers, flush with the Verlanders and Scherzers of the world, found themselves with six healthy starters and five starter slots.

Perhaps Detroit knows something about Fister that none of the rest of us does and was willing to flip him and the $20 million or so he'll command in his last two years of arbitration for some spare parts. (Or perhaps GM Dave Dombrowski needed to unload 20 big stacks in order to sign closer Joe Nathan.) But one would think the rest of Major League Baseball could use 200 innings of top-shelf righthandedness to complement whatever currently constitutes their rotation. It boggles the mind that no one else offered a real package for Fister. Instead, Washington adds to its embarrassment of mound riches -- Strasburg, Gonzalez, Zimmermann, Detwiler and now Fister. Yowzah.

You may be wondering what all the fuss is about. For a guy standing six-foot-eight, Fister has largely hidden from view of the average fan these past three years. In 2011, his Seattle teammates saddled him with a 3-12 record despite an ERA 13% better than league average and a nearly 3-1 K/BB rate. The W-L record improved to 8-1 after a mid-season trade to Detroit, which Fister followed in 2012 by rocking a 3.7-1 K/BB rate, battling injuries and continuing to pitch well in Justin Verlander's shadow. This past year, he again topped 200 innings of good command, kept his ERA 15% below league average and trailed in Max Scherzer's wake.

The result is that Doug Fister is a top 20 hurler and now he goes to the weaker league without a DH, where he has dominated batters to the tune of a 2.04 ERA. Hope you enjoyed your playoff run, Braves!

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The woeful Twins, they of 96 losses fully earned in 2013, have at least begun moving in the right direction. Of course, that's hard not to do when your team's primary attributes are lousy hitting and abysmal pitching. 

Said by the cognoscenti to possess MLB's best farm, including a pair of pitchers due for The Show in the next 500 days, the team went shopping for a pair of league-average innings eaters to bolster the studs when they arrive. GM Terry Ryan landed Ricky Nolasco for 4/$60 Million, about the going rate, and then headed to the discount rack for Phil Hughes, 3/$24 Million. 

Before you gack up breakfast over a 4-14, 5.19 choker coaxing 24 million guaranteed, consider this:  As a flyball righty, Phil Hughes was uniquely qualified to suck in Yankee Stadium, where the rightfield fences beckon, and to succeed at spacious Target Field. Looking deeper at the peripherals, Hughes delivered in his misery-plagued 2013 a nearly identical performance to his All-Star 2010 season when he "won" 18 games. If a handful fewer balls had fallen in for hits last season, he'd be his own twin.

And now he is a Twin. And Minnesota can expect the league-average results Hughes was providing to the Yankees while fans were bamboozled by his W-L record. But those league-average results, worth $15 million-a-year to ink Ricky Nolasco, will cost the franchise just $8 million-a-year on Hughes, thanks to that 4-14, 5.19. 

The Twins could still use, well, just about anything but a catcher. Signing a pair of ordinary pitchers with digestible contracts is necessary but insufficient. But as the Buddha said, even a thousand mile journey begins with a single step.