24 August 2017

The Braves Are in More Trouble Than the Phillies

There's been a lot of chatter in the baseball sphere about the crash of Philadelphia's multi-year rebuild. The Phils have the worst record in the game in 2017, the year their youth movement was supposed to bear fruit. It's the fifth straight season they have fielded a sub-.500 team.

It may be that the front office overestimated the talent of their rebuilding core, or they poorly developed them. It could be that the core has struggled in unity as prelude to a system-wide breakout. Perhaps we'll find out next season. This squad is fat with potential.

Home of the Braves
The Braves teardown began one year later, and with the new ballpark in the suburbs opening this season, there was hope the team would be ready to shine. Atlanta has taken a different road than Philadelphia, attempting to weave veterans in with the graduating Minor Leaguers as they look to improve.

As a result, the Braves have bounced back quicker. They stand today 10 games clear of the Phils after finishing three behind last season.

However...
And certainly the Braves seem to have some better assets. Freddie Freeman is a certified star in this game. Had he not missed a month of play he would be part of the NL MVP discussion. Ender Inciarte is a superb center fielder who can hit a little and Mike Foltynewicz shows a great deal of promise on the mound. Freeman and Inciarte are superior to anyone the Phils can run out daily.

Yet, the Braves' rebuild, masked by veteran talent, is in much worse shape. Nick Markakis has delivered as advertised on his three year deal, and Matt Kemp and Brandon Phillips have returned from the dead with solid contributions. The backstop pairing of Flowers and Suzuki has been a revelation. R.A. Dickey is eating innings and while Bartolo Colon was a bust, they jettisoned him early to limit the damage.

All over 30, those guys are supposed to be a bridge to the good times, not their main source. The youngsters were supposed to start toddling without help by now. Instead, #1 pick Dansby Swanson, Julio Teheran and several of the younger pitchers have stepped back this year, and no one from the farm has burst on the scene Judgelike.

In short, there's nothing to dream on here.

It's been a long summer in Philadelphia, much longer than in brand new Sun Trust Park. But the return to contention may take a lot longer in Marietta.

20 August 2017

What Is It With Braves' Backstops?

Before the 2015 season, catcher A.J. Pierzynski inked a cheap two-year deal with the rebuilding Atlanta Braves to provide some stability for the juvenile pitching staff and a veteran's perspective for the rest of the roster's youths.

At 38, little was expected of Pierzynski, whose sub-replacement level performance the previous season had yielded no other offers for work.

And then, Pierzynski proceeded to author the best age 38 season behind the plate in history.  Worth two-and-a half wins with the bat, it was the third best season in Pierzynski's 19-year career. 

Fast forward two years as the rebuild continues in Georgia. Braves brass signed Bartolo Colon, R.A. Dickey and paired journeyman catchers Tyler Flowers and Kurt Suzuki to shore up the roster until the cavalry comes -- or matures.


Prior to this season, the two backstops had produced one above average season with the bat in their combined 18 campaigns.

But the Atlanta traffic seems to have inspired Flowers and Suzuki. The former is producing 135 points of OPS above his career average and handling a pitching staff -- including knuckleballer Dickey -- with aplomb. The latter is slugging .500, far and away his career best.

Combined, the duo has smacked 22 home runs and knocked home 73 runners, earning four-and-a-half wins between them. The tandem ranks as the best in baseball.

Enjoy it while you can, Braves. The year after Pierzynski's record-setting season, he hit .219 with two homers and cost the team more than a win. Flowers and Suzuki are too young for that kind of crash, but don't be surprised if they return to normal.

18 August 2017

Scooter and the Babe

Reds utility man Scooter Gennett has had himself quite the season.

In this, his fifth year in the Bigs, Gennett has already set career bests in home runs and RBIs and will likely reach new heights for a full season in batting average, OBP, SLG, OPS, etc.

He also did some record-breaking with a four-home run, 10-RBI day in June.

But nothing will compare with earlier this week, when he hit his 20th home run and came in for mop-up pitching duty in a 15-5 loss to the Cubs. 

In doing so, Gennett became only the second player in MLB history to hit his 20th home run in a game in which he pitched.

The other player to do so also had a nickname.

Babe.

Put that on your resume.


16 August 2017

A New Group of Greatests



ESPN is mining old ground this week with its look at the top black athletes of all time. Not withstanding our bemusement at how utterly bereft of ideas they must be to spend five minutes on this subject -- I wonder if there will be any basketball players or boxers on the list -- it brings to mind their top 100 list of athletes of the 20th century.

Now, if you're 25, that was a lifetime ago. But I've spent most of my life in the 20th century and can't believe we're already more than a sixth of the way through the next one. So it astonishes me to consider again who wouldn't have made that list in 2000.

Before I lead you on a stroll down that list, a few definitions:
  • Let's take a global view. Plenty of great athletes worth mentioning aren't American.
  • That said, there are some sports you and I know nothing about. Sorry, world's greatest cricketers, badminton players and rugby athletes.
  • This list is speciesist. No non-humans.
  • Discounting athletes whose greatness was recognized before 2000. That eliminates Shaq, Brett Favre and Barry Bonds.
Now the list:

Michael Phelps -- Very possibly the greatest Olympic athlete of all time, and certainly the greatest swimmer of all time. 
Usain Bolt -- Also could make a claim to greatest Olympic athlete of all time, and certainly the greatest sprinter of all time. 
Tiger Woods -- Even though his career fell off a cliff, he's still one of the three greatest golfers of all time.
LeBron James -- the debate is whether he's the equal of Michael Jordan. Let's say he's not. Then he's the second greatest basketball player ever.
Tom Brady -- greatness plus longevity could make him the top quarterback of all time.
Serena Williams -- the best women's tennis player ever. The greatest tennis player relative to her competition ever.
Roger Federer -- the greatest tennis player in history.
Floyd Mayweather -- is he the best pound-for-pound boxer in history? Certainly in the discussion.
Lance Armstrong -- I don't know what you do with this guy -- probably eliminate him. But if you include him, then he's the greatest cyclist of all time.

Wow. What a list. Nine athletes who are on their sports' Mt. Rushmores. And it's not even complete. How about these down-ballot nominees:

Steph Curry, Kobe Bryant and Tim Duncan
Peyton Manning and LaDanian Tomlinson
Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera and Albert Pujols
Rafael Nadal
Sidney Crosby and Jaromir Jagr
Lionel Messi, Ronaldo and Zinedine Zidane
Katie Ledecky -- maybe the greatest female swimmer ever
Allyson Felix -- maybe the greatest female sprinter ever

Who am I neglecting?


14 August 2017

Okay, So I Might Have Been Wrong

If you're over a certain age, you remember the nation coming to a halt during the World Series.



It was the best team from the National League battling the best team from the American League for the championship.


Willie Mays against Mickey Mantle.

Bob Gibson and Carl Yastzremski.

The Big Red Machine versus the Bronx Bombers.

Teams that didn't know each other squaring off not just for team supremacy but for league bragging rights. The DH league versus the pure league. The senior circuit against the upstarts. Natural grass or (God help us) turf.

Baseball was the national pastime then. Even as football was eclipsing it in popularity, it maintained an exalted place on the sports map.

It's just a different time now.
  • Baseball is a sport of regional interest more than national interest, so millions of Americans don't watch if their team is not involved. 
  • Eliminating most league distinctions has reduced league partisanship that once fed World Series interest. 
  • Inter-league play and movement of players through free agency have sapped the Series of its fascination. 
  • Multiple divisions and Wild Cards have drawn out the post-season into a month of games and added a randomness to the final match-up, which sometimes leads to mediocre teams playing for the title.
  • Playoffs have pushed the Series so late into the Fall that the weather is often unacceptable for baseball.
For the most part, these are unfortunate side effects of necessary changes. But it means the World Series will never again hold the nation in thrall.

So, How I Was Wrong
This was not my starting point when I bemoaned the addition of a third division in each league and the introduction of the Wild Card. I wanted the best teams in the World Series. Fewer playoff slots don't yield fewer races; they yield races that have more urgency.

The truth though is that baseball has found that sweet spot. The current set-up offers half the fan bases a rooting interest while also keeping the bar reasonably high for entrance into the tournament. And it disadvantages the weaker teams that sneak in.

This year's AL Wild Card race has turned into a seven-team mud-wrestling tournament. With 45 games to go, half the league is within 2.5 games of a ticket to October. Without the Wild Card, Houston, Washington and Los Angeles would be galloping away with pennant dreams, leaving Boston, Cleveland and New York in the one playoff race.

I'm coming to appreciate 10 playoff spots, even as I'm offended by teams like the '03 Marlins and (especially) the '06 Cardinals dogpiling in the end. I would like to see the team with the league's best record afforded a greater advantage in their series against the surviving Wild Card -- like all the games at home. There is something objectionable about a team with 87 wins riding a couple of favorable bounces to four victories out of seven against an opponent 15 games better during the season.

But something else has changed that makes that objection nearly moot: the playoffs are no longer an extension of the season; they are a separate event. As we've seen, teams alter their make-up specifically for the post-season. The attributes of a great regular season team don't apply in the tournament -- and every team knows that going in.

It's a New Era
In Seattle right now, and Anaheim, and the Metroplex, the Twin Cities, Tampa Bay and western Missouri, people can still get excited about their nine despite 115 games of abject mediocrity and a 15-game deficit in their division.


And there's something to be said for that. 

Let's just hope the best teams survive the gauntlet and square off come Halloween.

12 August 2017

What You're Not Hearing About Colin Kaepernick

Colin Kaepernick hoped to spark discussion when he kneeled during the National Anthem last NFL season. Boy did he succeed.

Of course, the discussion isn't the one he had hoped to launch, and he's being blackballed from the game for his actions.

In a game that restores rapists, wife-beaters, dog torturers and accessories to murder after a few games' suspension, it's puzzling on one hand why Kaepernick would seem to be the third rail of quarterbacks in the minds of NFL coaches and owners.

On the other hand, I could have told Kaepernick at the time that messing with the flag and the Star Spangled Banner is the express train to outrage and misunderstanding.

Many Americans are irrational and obsessive about those symbols of freedom -- even beyond the actual freedom itself.

Think about it. People who express disappointment in the U.S. are often criticized for denying that America is the greatest country, and encouraged to leave if they don't like it. This is said without a hint of irony.

Criticizing American society isn't unpatriotic; it's the very hallmark of patriotism. What's unpatriotic is denouncing people for expressing their opinion.

(Many Americans also fail to understand that we did not invent democracy -- we were 2,500 years late on that -- and we're not the only country on Earth with freedom of speech, religion and assembly. There are literally dozens of other nations enjoying these rights. And if you consider the measures of what you might call happiness, or a functioning system, measures like the murder rate, suicide rate, infant mortality, income inequality, illiteracy, academic performance, chronic disease rates, and so on, the U.S. performs quite poorly compared to most industrialized countries.)

Colin Kaepernick hoped to bring attention to the vexing spurt of unarmed black men being gunned down by police.  

Surely all citizens can find a way to agree that police have a very tough job and deserve our appreciation, and also that they shouldn't be killing unarmed people, and that when they do, they ought to be prosecuted.

At the same time, Kaepernick chose the wrong venue for his protest, guaranteed to incite misinterpretation. 

Look at the reaction of veterans groups, who conflated Kaepernick's actions with failure to appreciate their sacrifices.  

So now he is paying a hefty price. It's hard for me to blame the owner of a billion-dollar asset dependent on a ticket-buying public for declining to risk that asset by championing (or tolerating) an unpopular cause.

Considering Kapernick's diminished value, it's not surprising that he is unemployed. If only he could play as well as ... Greg Hardy.

06 August 2017

Another Way This is a New Era in Baseball

The Houston Astros are the runaway best team in the American League this year. They clinched their division in February* behind the league's best hitting, top three baserunning, sixth best pitching and middle of the pack defense.

*Caution:  may be slightly hyperbolic.

Their avalanche of offense has six regulars sporting WAR of 2.0 or more, best in the majors by far.

Yet when Houston brass tinkered around the edges at the trade deadline, landing just left-handed bullpen piece Francisco Liriano, many 'Stros' fans were disappointed. Staff ace Dallas Keuchel spoke for many of them.


"I'm not going to lie. Disappointment is a little bit of an understatement."

What's going on here? We would never have heard this 10 years ago or probably not even five. Fans of the team with the best record and a 14-game division lead would be psyched about the approaching playoffs.

But at some point, teams realized that Billy Beane was right: "My shit doesn't work in the playoffs." And now we have a new game.

Front offices unbound from the old playoff traditions started recognizing that some of the elements of success during the marathon regular season -- a deep rotation and a solid closer -- were the wrong concoction for the sprint of the post-season. Once they determined that the key to playoff success is three aces and a stacked, two-handed bullpen, they started turning the non-waiver trade deadline into Relieverfest.


You may have noticed that the flow of everyday players during this year's dealmaking was a trickle. J.D. Martinez was the only significant hitter (unless you're counting Lucas Duda) to change hands. But a flurry of flamethrowers, both in the rotation and the pen, changed uniforms, many at high cost.

After the Yankees nabbed Sonny Gray, the Dodgers picked up Yu Darvish and the Cubs swapped for Jose Quintana, the parade of bullpen moves took off. Tommy Kahnle and David Robertson headed to the Bronx. Ryan Madson, Sean Doolittle and Brandon Kitzler joined Washington. Milwaukee added Anthony Swarzack and Cleveland claimed Joe Smith. Addison Reed joined the Red Sox and Justin Wilson, the Cubs. And so on.

Today, there are two parts to the baseball campaign: the regular season and the post-season. A team's first goal is punch its ticket to the post-season. Once there, the fourth and fifth starters lose their relevance as the best pitchers take all the starts. Meanwhile, as managers aim for every 1% advantage in short series, bullpens pitch an average of nearly four of the nine innings per game.

Don Larsen would have come out after the sixth.

The trend began slowly with the 2001 Diamondbacks, who rode Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling to the title. But it really took off after the 2015 Royals won the World Series behind a mediocre starting staff and a trio of bb-throwers out of the pen.

Combine the two and you get today's situation, which appears to be only the front end of an increasing trend.

This may be the new normal. The best teams win their divisions with five starters of diminishing quality and a recognizable bullpen while targeting a couple of aces and bevy of relievers stashed during the season on weaker teams. And if that's the formula, the Houston Astros may find themselves, after bowing out in the playoffs, quoting Mr. Beane.

05 August 2017

Mike Trout is Being Ridiculous Again

Remember Mike Trout? He was the runaway AL MVP until he tore ligaments in his thumb in May. At the time he was hitting .337/.461/.742 with 10 of 11 steals.

He's been back for three weeks and he's doing it again. It appears that the injury has sapped his power, as his slugging has dropped 100 points. He's now down to a desultory .368/.476/.646. He's only crushed five home runs in his 18 games back.

Trout is now back up to third in the American League in Wins Against Replacement, behind the Mutt and Jeff duo of Jose Altuve and Aaron Judge.* Altuve hit .485 in July, while Judge has cooled off since the All-Star break, as he inevitably had to.

*That's Fangraphs' WAR calculation. Trout is 9th according to Baseball Reference, 6th among everyday players. B-R also has Andrelton Simmons second, half a run ahead of Judge.

At this point, the MVP race is among Fangraphs' top three. Putting aside irrelevant considerations, like whether Judge reaches a milestone number of home runs, or how their teams perform around them, or whether one should vote for a player who misses a quarter of the season, it will be interesting to see if Trout can catch Altuve and Judge in WAR.

Fangraphs' projections suggest all three will finish the season with about 7.2 WAR. That means Trout will have contributed as much to his team in 120 games as Judge and Altuve contributed in 160. It takes the otherworldly comparison against Mike Trout to steal the shine from Aaron Judge's amazing debut and Jose Altuve's spectacular career arc.

Whoever is most valuable this season, Mike Trout is best. That race isn't close.

04 August 2017

A Tale of Two Hitters

 Consider these two players:

The first guy is a beast. He hits .328/.420/.617, averaging 41 doubles and 40 homers over 11 years. He walks 25 times more per year than he fans. He averages 7.9 WAR a season and earns 10 top 5 MVP finishes.

His club pays him $9.5 million/year.

The next guy costs $22.7 million/year. He hits .262/.320/.464, averaging 25 doubles and 27 homers over six years. He whiffs 26 times more each season than he walks and averages 2.3 WAR. He never earns a top 15 MVP finish.

Now the reveal.

Player one is the St. Louis Cardinals' Albert Pujols.

Player two is the Anaheim Angels' Albert Pujols.

And the gap is wider than that. The Angels owe Pujols another $114 million for ages 38-41, even though he has already slipped to well below average at the bat and albatross status afield. He's cost them a win against replacement this season.

Teams have learned to stop offering these kinds of deals to superstars. Pujols was already in decline at age 31 when Arte Moreno signed him, and the backloading of the contract was understood at the time to be lost money.  

Today we can recognize this as one of the worst contracts in baseball history. At the time it seemed, perhaps, extravagant, but Pujols was the best player in the game.

Bryce Harper and Mike Trout will still be approaching their primes when they sign their next big deals, so each could get buried in a pile of Benjamins. But you won't see age 40 seasons included in those contracts, or probably in any long-term contracts in the foreseeable future.

Pujols -- and Miguel Cabrera -- have taught front offices a lesson.

03 August 2017

A Game That Was Just Waco

Dallas Keuchel faced off against Austin Pruitt last night in an AL tilt between Tampa and the hometown Astros.

It was the sixth time in baseball history that the two starting pitchers' names represented cities in the state in which the game was played.

Three of those games involved pitchers named Dennis (Martinez, Leonard and Eckersley) squaring off in Boston. 

The Rays blanked Houston, handing Keuchel his first loss of the season. Score one for the state capital. 

Keep Austin Weird! And pitching well.