The Standings

One of the great beauties of baseball is that it's so unpredictable. Every year, a team or two that appear moribund make play0ff runs. The Rays and Cards of '08 come to mind. Conversely, some squad that's stacked, tanks. 2008's Detroit and Cleveland are exemplars.

Paradoxically, that makes pre-season projections so much fun. The one below is from Baseball Projection, which uses a system called CHONE (named facetiously for creator Sean Smith) to project the most likely performance from each player in the league, estimate his playing time, and then aggregate all that for each team. It calculates the resulting runs scored versus runs allowed and then uses the Pythagorean formula to project the team's record.

The shortcomings of this method (or any projection made prior to Opening Day) are so transparent as to belie comment. But the projections do give us a guide as to which teams appear stonger or weaker than you might have thought at first glance. Keep in mind that these projections don't include Manny Ramirez's signing or any trades/signings/injuries after February 24.

American
East	W	L		Central	W	L		West	W	L
Yankees	97	65		Indians	90	72		Angels	85	77
Red Sox	96	66		Tigers	85	77		A's	81	81
Rays	89	73		Twins	79	83		Mariners	78	84
Blue Jays	75	87		White Sox	73	89		Rangers	72	90
Orioles	74	88		Royals	72	90
National
East	W	L		Central	W	L		West	W	L
Phillies	87	75		Cubs	88	74		Dodgers	82	80
Braves	86	76		Cardinals	83	79		Padres	80	82
Mets	86	76		Reds	82	80		D-Backs	79	83
Marlins	75	87		Brewers	81	81		Rockies	78	84
Nationals	74	88		Pirates	73	89		Giants	77	85
				Astros	72	90

Remember that these are "average" projections; i.e., there is an equal chance according to this system that each team will win either more or fewer than the number of games listed. So, for example, the Rays may have more upside than the Yanks and Sox, but more downside as well. 89 wins is the midpoint.

I personally believe that the Mets should be a narrow favorite in the NL East and that the Indians and Mariners are vastly overrated by this system. I think the Royals are improving and would bet real American legal tender that they don't have the worst record in baseball. I'm surprised by the lack of respect for the Cubs in a weak NL Central, but not surprised at all by the tossup nature of the NL West.

Take it for what it's worth.

Dodging A Headache

A sufficient number of baseball observers have scratched their heads publicly over Manny Ramirez's rejection of the Dodgers' two-year, $45 million offer, that I'll refrain from piling on.

Scott Boras has always been able to find a bigger sucker when it seemed his client had already pushed the market far beyond his value, so far be it for me to criticize him and his client for demuring at an offer that overstates his value, in my view.

Manny, now another year older, is not going to hit this year or next anywhere near as well as he did for half a season in L.A. It's just a fact of human physiology that he's more likely to get hurt, experience a decline in his skills and become a serious albatross on defense.

What really intrigues me is why the Dodgers even continue to discuss it with him. It's clear that no other club wants to adopt this particular can of worm larvae. Manny would make most sense on an AL club with dreams of contention and a DH need -- the Angels jump to mind -- and none of them has been reported ringing Boras' cell.

Manny's lack of enthusiasm for Spring Training is well-known. He may very well be stalling as much for a few extra vacation weeks as for a bigger contract. But Boras had better be careful lest some new competition enter the baseball labor market.

With Barry Bonds' trial now delayed past the end of the '09 season, any team willing to take on a migraine who can rake now has another option. Bonds probably can't play 150 games, as Manny can, and his personality issues affect clubhouse relationships, while Manny's only sho9rt-circuit management sleep patterns. But a team balking at paying $50 million over two years for Manny might be willing to drop $2 million for one year of Bonds.

I'm not proposing that the Dodgers head that way. Adding Manny, even at 90% of his average performance, would make them the favorite in the weak NL West. But I think they'd be crazy to add one thin dime to their offer.

HI: I Wish I'd Thought of It

I love Jayson Stark. I think he's a really good writer who sees the trees through the forest. He's positive and temperate and loves the game of baseball.

But he deserved this. I highly recommend this article, and Fangraphs in general, for anyone who wants to understand baseball better.

Pudge, Mr Selig Will See You Now

At the risk of belaboring a subject that's seen more labor than Nadya Suleman, I see the commish has summoned a Mr. Rodriguez, two members of his legal posse and none of his cousins to a private tete-a-tete to hash out some steroid -related issues.

Apparently the baseball brain trust is shocked in a Captain Renault sort of way that one of its stars used drugs in an attempt to improve his performance six years ago. Except for the small detail that league offices have been in possession of Mr. Rodriguez's name all this time, it's easy to understand why it's imperative that they question him now.

No doubt the rug in MLB headquarters will be wearing thin this Spring as the other 103 players, whose names have also been known to the Selig Administration, march to and fro under orders to reveal all.

It's a brilliant PR stunt that serves to obscure the fact that baseball currently has the most comprehensive drug testing program of any of the major sports. And that another exciting season is about to start.

Leading Off: #5 In A Series

Who's a better leadoff hitter, Willy Taveras, who batted .251 without power last year and stole 68 bases in 75 attempts, or Jason Giambi, who hit .247 with 32 homers and two steals and runs slower than a stocking?

Well, if you're looking for speed on the basepaths, Taveras is the easy choice. But if you are, the question is, why?

The purpose of a leadoff hitter is to get someone on base in front of the big hitters in the lineup. In that regard, Taveras reached base safely 161 times in 530 trips to the plate last year. The technical term for this is "blecch." To his credit, he turned many of his one-base safeties (singles, walks and HBP) into two-bases, but that hardly atones for a .308 on-base percentage.

Even after his 32 home runs, Giambi got himself on base 36 more times than Taveras in '08 and consumed fewer outs, giving the batters behind him more opportunities to create runs. Certainly he might clog the bases on occasion, and leading him off would reduce the number of multi-run homers he hits, but it's hard to see how that would offset 36 extra scoring opportunities.

Maybe because he could be better utilized in the middle of the lineup, Giambi isn't the better pick here, but if he's not, it's by a lot smaller margin than you thought when you heard the choices, right? And if not Giambi, then how about Conor Jackson of Arizona, who stole 10 bases, but reached base safely 48 more times than Taveras, consumed fewer outs and hit just 12 home runs? Or Yunel Escobar, a 10-homer guy who got caught in five of his seven steal attempts, but reached safely 41 more times and made fewer outs? Or two or three guys on Taveras' own team, the Rockies, like Ryan Spilborghs, whose .407 on base average came with six dingers in half a year's at-bats?

The point is, we have this imprint in our minds about what a leadoff hitter should look like -- speed without power. But the most important attribute of a leadoff hitter is his ability to get on base, which makes guys like Willy Taveras really poor choices. An outfielder with a .604 OPS should bat eighth -- if anywhere. Taveras, because of his stellar base stealing and defense, may merit a spot in the lineup, but not at the head of it.

The speed myth has been passed down into baseball legend, and it takes some hard thinking to recognize that although we've always done it that way, we can now see empirically that it's wrong.

All ARod On Steroids Radio

As I write this, the local sports talk stations have become the All ARod On Steroids stations, the way my favorite music station played all John Lennon songs the day he died. The difference is, Lennon died that day, and he was the only person to die in that particular event.

In ARod's case, assuming there is a case, his positive test took place six years ago and he was among 103 other Major Leaguers to turn up traces of steroids in their blood. We've known all along that 8-10% of players had tested positive. It was the justification for individual drug testing in the first place.

We're acting now as ifwe believed that only scrubs were involved. If only the Adam Hyzdus and Mike Defelices of the game had boned up, we wouldn't be crediting steroids with improved performance.

Even then, the question has to be asked: so what? Steroids weren't against the rules prior to '03. If ARod juiced before '03 and has tested clean since, what's the problem? The system works, right?

That ARod may have tested positive in the preseason of '03 tells us little about what he did in '02 and before. Let's see if we can detect a chemical boost in his performance from his the record. The .298/.396/.600 line are his 2003 stats.

BA     OBP   SLG  OPS+
.358  .414  .631  160
.300  .350  .496  120
.310  .360  .560  136
.285  .357  .586  134
.316  .420  .606  162
.318  .399  .622  160
.300  .392  .623  158
.298  .396  .600  147
.286  .375  .512  131
.321  .421  .610  173
.290  .392  .523  134
.314  .422  .645  177
.302  .392  .573  150

Well, he definitely dipped in '04 to just 31% better than average, so he must have stopped doping then. And that proves that he was benefiting from performance-enhancement in the four seasons of .600+ slugging averages.

Except he proceeded to win the MVP in '05 and '07, recording the highest slugging average of his career in the latter, after baseball began suspending players for positive drug tests. So there's little evidence of anything in his record.

If talk of steroids gives you the vapors, here's a suggestion. Assume anyone who was any good between 1998 and 2005 was hopped up. Every MVP, every All-Star, every 30-HR hitter, every 200-strikeout pitcher. Now the next time a name comes out, you'll hardly notice.

It's instructive to reflect on that period in the world outside baseball and remember that Americans elected and re-elected a President who did blow and got caught drunk driving in years prior. And there's nothing in the record to suggest his performance got any enhancement.

l

No Chiefs; Too Many Indians

Over the last six years, the most disappointing team in baseball, with the possible exception of the pre-Manny Dodgers, has been the Cleveland Indians. They've managed to under-perform their expectations every year, including 2007 when they won 96 games, the AL Central and a post-season series against the Yankees before blowing a three games to one lead on the Red Sox in the championship series, losing 30-5 in the final three games.

Last year, they were the co-favorites with Detroit in the AL Central, only to face elimination by Memorial Day and trade their best player, CC Sabathia by summer.

This year, the Indians will not disappoint. Low expectations will make sure of that.

The Indians have the following shortcomings in 2009: they have no starting pitching, no relief pitching and no hitting. This may be a problem.

First, the offense. Their man-beast slugger, Travis Hafner, hurt his everything the last two years and has become a shadow of a shell of a chalk outline of his old self. The Tribe's best hitters are their centerfielder and shortstop, the terrific Grady Sizemore and phonetically-challenged Jhonny Peralta. After that, they don't have a single hitter they can count on at the offensive positions of corner infield, outfield and DH.

Unless Ryan Garko finds himself again at first, Andy Marte finally lives up to a portion of his billing at third and ousts newly-acquired Mark Derosa, the evil doctor who created Pronk recharges Hafner's bat and magna-prospect Matt LaPorta usurps leftfield, this is going to continue to be one sickle-celled lineup.

Which could make for an ugly season on the lake, because the cupboard is bare up on the hill. Cliff Lee can only start every fifth game, and even then, things can't go anywhere but down from his phenomenal '08. After that, things fall off the Cliff. Do Carl Pavano, Aaron Laffey, Fausto Carmona (and his 5.2-4.3 K/BB rate) and Jeremy Sowers strike fear in the hearts of White Sox hitters? Um, no.

And if the starting corps is suspect, the relief troop is under indictment. Though the much-needed addition of Kerry Wood will solidify the ninth inning -- as long as Wood is more oak than balsa -- innings six through eight could be trouble. Now, bullpens are notoriously fickle; who knows, Jensen Lewis, Rafael Perez and Masa Kobayashi could light it up from the pen in '09, but that's not the way to bet.

There's abit of an up-for-grabs quality to the AL Central this year because Chicago and Minnesota weren't really that good and Detroit and Cleveland weren't really that bad last season. The Indians aren't yet a lost cause. But unless someone brings hope and change to the party, their future is looking kinda Dennis Kucinich.

Hmmmm...

Major League Baseball has re-tested Barry Bonds' blood sample from the anonymous testing of 2003 and revealed publicly that it had steroids in it...and they're upset about him cheating?

Michael Phelps put the lives of everyone around him in danger when he drove drunk and they want to prosecute him for smoking weed at a party?

Hmmmm.

The First Robin League

The Hot Stove League is threatening to drag into the First Robin League as major free agents remain on the market. The economic decline has obviously played a role there, but there must be something else at work.

Three of the most notable free agents still available are Adam Dunn, Bobby Abreu and Manny Ramirez. I picked these three particularly because they're all outfielders and, in the case of Manny and Dunn, possess all the grace on land of a penguin. Here are their performance from last year:

Player G R 2B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BA OBP SLG OPS+ HBP GIDP
Ramirez 153 102 36 37 121 3 0 87 124 .332 .430 .601 164 11 17
Dunn----158 79 23 40 100 2 1 122 164 .236 .386 .513 129 7 7
Abreu---156 100 39 20 100 22 11 73 109 .276 .371 .471 120 1 14

(OPS+ is a measure of on base percentage plus slugging average compared to league average. An OPS of 129 is 29% better than league average, which is excellent. An OPS of 164 is MVP territory.)

Manny and agent Scott Boras seem to have painted themselves into a corner, demanding five years and bailout-sized dollars. Ramirez is still a one-man offensive wrecking crew, to be sure, but he's offensive in other ways and young children should avert their eyes when he's afield. The idea of team chemistry is vastly over-rated, but front offices know that bringing him on requires buying Tylenol in bulk. And of course, he's 37 and would be 42 by the end of a five-year deal. Signing him to anything more than two years is sheer folly, and it helps to have a centerfielder who can yell loud enough to wake the leftfielder when the ball is struck his way.

The case of Adam Dunn is an enigma. Ripped by Blue Jays GM JP Ricciardi last season, he is viewed as lackadaisical and inert in the field and has generated little interest around the majors. This is a 28-year-old who has recorded 40 or more home runs and .365 OBP or higher each of the last five seasons. Six-and-a-half foot boppers like Dunn don't tend to age well, but he should continue to provide terror at the plate for the next three years, at least. Bat him after Jose Reyes and David Wright and ahead of Carlos Beltran (or the other way around) and enjoy the basepath merry-go-round.

Apparently some AL clubs would like to sign him to DH but he has rejected moving off left field. That certainly limits his appeal, but there are still plenty of teams that can swallow is defense for 40 HRs and a .386 OBP. For an interesting and spot-on Dunn reckoning, link below to MLB.com.

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20090120&content_id=3750928&vkey=news_ml

Bobby Abreu is neither defensive liability nor slugger, but he's still an impressive offensive asset. Because he seemed to fall off the table following the '05 Home Run Derby, it's easy to assume he's older than 34. This is a guy who batted safely more than 39% of the time for nine straight years until 2006. Whether his decline is age-related, Yankee-related or Bronx-related we'll soon find out if someone else signs him. Unlike Dunn and Manny, Abreu has a howitzer of an arm and thus has some defensive value as a right fielder. A lot of teams can use this guy.

Of course, the other side of the equation may be the sticking point. Dunn made $13 million, Abreu $16 million and Ramirez $19 million last year and they may all be looking for raises to compensate for the 35% decline in their stock portfolios. The market -- yes, even the baseball labor market -- does seem to have contracted this year, as evidenced by Andy Pettite and Jason Varitek's flashy new pay cuts. Dunn, Abreu and Ramirez may need time to accept that before they sign less lucrative deals. Donations in their behalf can be sent in care of my home address.

A Steaming Pile of RBIs: #4 In A Series

Which player had a better year with the stick in 1997?

Joe Carter , 102 RBI
Jim Edmonds, 80 RBI

If you're a baseball writer, or a Phillies fan from Oakland, you'll take Carter's 102 runs driven in because the job of a batter is to knock in runs. Whenever you're in the company of baseball writers, get out the hip waders because you're in a big, steaming pile of buffalo poo.

It's not that Carter was a disaster for the Blue Jays that year. Oh wait, yes it is. In fact, with Carter's excerable .284 on base percentage, the BJs could have saved millions and produced more runs by replacing their aging slugger with whatever detritus was hanging around Triple-A. With just 40 walks and 12 double plays grounded into, Carter consumed 474 precious outs and graded out under AAA replacement level.

So how did he accumulate 102 RBI? Among those many occasions when his teammates filled up the bases for him, he smacked 55 extra base hits. Because RBIs are a team event -- you can't knock in a runner who's not there -- they don't reflect quality as much as opportunity.

Okay, hypothetical Oakland resident, I hear your objections: 1. You can knock in a runner who's not there with a home run. 2. RBIs show that you come through in the clutch.

Let me pause briefly on item #2 and simply say we've returned to the big pile of buffalo poo. Sabermetric studies comparing players of roughly equal production (on base plus slugging) but wildly differing RBI totals have found that RBI opportunities account for nearly the entire explanation and RBI efficiency explains somewhere between nothing and a negligible amount.

As for the self-made RBI -- the dinger -- even an anti-social, contrarian stathead geek will acknowledge that a home run is the double-fudge brownie ice cream, the Anne Hathaway, the royal flush, of every at bat. But we have other ways to account for it without subjecting the analysis of individual players to the bias of their teammates' success or failure. That's why my cat is named Tater, not Ribbie.

(As for Jim Edmonds, his .368/.500 performance added roughly four wins to the Angels even before accounting for the yawning chasm between his defense in the toughest outfield position versus Carter's weak glovework in the easiest. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Edmonds was twice the player Joe Carter was that year.)

The moral of the story is that we value RBIs because we count them, and we count RBIs mainly because we grew up counting them. But we grew up watching black and white TVs, listening to vinyl records and believing that we could feed the poor by taxing the rich into oblivion. It's time to update our understanding of the game.

How Many Rings: #3 In A Series

In his 13-year career as a utility infielder, Luis Sojo hit a rancid 29% below league average. Playing mostly in the Bronx, he averaged 198 generally futile at-bats a year while filling in ably in the field at 2B, SS and 3B.

But if Sojo decided to flash his World Series rings, he'd look like Richie Havens. His right hand would sport a ring for each finger.

So, was Sojo a great player? Was he superior to Ty Cobb, who never won a championship?

Put that way, it seems idiotic, yet this line of reasoning is regularly used (in all sports) to aggrandize or demean players whose career performance should otherwise speak for themselves. In baseball even more than in other sports, the rhetorical question "how many rings does he have?' is asinine. Team championships in an individual player's curriculum vitae may very well be the most overblown concept in sports.

No batter can occupy more than one of nine positions in the batting order. A shortstop can't contribute behind the plate, at the infield corners or in the outfield. A starting pitcher sits on the bench four out of every five days. A closer takes a siesta for eight-ninths of the contests he enters, and if he enters half of them over a season, that's a lot. In short, attributing a team's performance to one player is like predicting a hurricane because the air is warm.

For a long time, people credited Derek Jeter with having some special skill that led the Yankees to four World Series wins in five years. I'll tell you what special skill he had -- being on the Yankees! Having the good fortune to play alongside the best players is an excellent formula for winning. Since 2004, the quality of the players on the Yankees has declined and the results have been predictable. Jeter hasn't lost any hidden skill because he didn't have one in the first place.

The flip side of that is Mike Mussina. A great competitor for the Orioles, Moose joined the Yanks in '01, after their fourth title in five years. They never won another in his seven years of stellar pitching for NY. Did he bring negative mojo with him to the Bronx, or did the parade of defensively-challenged, over-the-hill sluggers and noodle-armed pitchers off career years stymie their aspirations?

I hope baseball writers with Hall of Fame votes, whose ranks now include a handful of more analytical Internet correspondents, will keep this in mind when weighing the relative merits of nominees. Whether a player's teams won or lost is of little relevance to his personal merit as a Major Leaguer. Either that or Luis Sojo deserves some consideration.

Choke On This: #2 In A Series

In 2002, Barry Bonds won his fifth MVP award with one of the greatest batting years of all time. He hit .370/.582/.799, earned a record 198 walks and smashed 46 home runs. He even stole 9 of 11 bases while leading the Giants to the World Series.

In a six game series, Bonds hit a paltry .125/.364/.188 with no home runs or RBIs. He made an error in the field. His team lost four of the six games. Is that because he's not clutch? Did he succumb to pressure? Did he fail to -- I love this one -- step up?

But wait. That wasn't his World Series; this stretch of games came at the end of April. Even in what might have been the greatest batting year of all time, Bonds had some stretches when he didn't hit real well. Sometimes you're the windshield; sometimes you're the bug.

No one would accuse Bonds of choking just because he endured a six-game skid in April. But shift that week to mid-October and all of a sudden we feel empowered to ascribe all kinds of personal characteristics to the batter. I suspect there are players who crack in the limelight, but we can't tell that by a couple of bad playoff rounds.

Early in Bonds' career, critics did brand him a choker. He hit .196 in his first four playoff series, all of which his team lost. That talk evaporated when he cracked eight home runs, walked 35 times and knocked in 18 runs in his next four series, leading the Giants to the World Series in '02. Apparently he started to catch his breath.

Some radical number crunchers argue the idea of clutch is complete hokum because all MLB players have excelled in key situations through all their years of playing ball. This strikes me as almost equally fatuous as the prevailing wisdom. With the chips on the line -- really on the line -- how can it not be possible that some athletes focus better while others lose their nerve? How can human psychology be a factor in every other endeavor in life except baseball?

Reggie Jackson and Alex Rodriguez are the exemplars of the theory of clutch. Reggie's attention seemed to ebb and flow during the long season, but come October he really did appear to dig in. Conversely, ARod doesn't just have a history of gagging, it's apparent that he's trying too hard. Ever since he signed the big contract with the Rangers, he's clearly been trying to please everyone. So far only Madonna is satisfied.

I guess that makes me a clutch Agnostic. I believe there are rare instances of players who are eager (or anxious) to have the game or season in their hands, but performance alone -- particularly over a handful of games or at bats -- provides very little evidence of it, and is almost always a function of something else.

By the way, on the subject of clutch, which of these players is the guy you want in October?

Player A .309/.377/.469, 16 SB/4 CS
Player B .316/.387/.458, 22 SB/6 CS

They look like almost exactly the same player, don't they? It's because they are. Player A is Derek Jeter in 123 games of postseason play. Player B is Derek Jeter in 1,985 games of his 14 year career. If you can see "clutch" in there, you have better eyesight than I have.

The Ascendancy of Luck: #1 In A Series

It's a new year, time to reconsider the old and start afresh. In that vein, today begins a wintertime series of discourses on common baseball misconceptions currently in the possession of most baseball fans and media.

You can probably guess some of the subject matter. RBIs are not king. Speed is not the top quality for a leadoff hitter. Most of what you think is "clutch" is just luck or timing. Analyzing playoff series game-by-game is a fool's errand. Players don't win championships; teams do. Managers hardly matter. Pitching wins are such a weak barometer of pitching quality that we should cease tracking them. Et cetera, et cetera (which is not pronounced eck-setera.)

Today, maybe the single most important concept: the ascendancy of luck.

Luck is ubiquitous, significant and often determinative. This is true not just in sports. Luck is the reason both George W. Bush and Barak Obama attained the presidency. Imagine how their scenarios might have changed had the weather in Florida or the overall economy been different on election day. Luck gave a marginal talent like Tom Brokaw the opportunity to reach the top of TV news while far better journalists and broadcasters toiled elsewhere for far less money. Fitness guru Jim Fixx lost his life to bad luck. Good luck has kept the rest of us alive.

Luck is a factor on every play of every baseball game. A gust of wind, a bad hop, a fortuitous carom, a close call, an aggressive fan, a freak injury, a quarter-of-an-inch when bat meets ball: any one of these can affect the outcome. If you want to find an over-performing team, find one that wins a pile of one-run games. The pundits will say they're "clutch," but they're generally lucky. The proof is, those teams have lesser records the following year. Conversely, teams that lose close contests in bunches over a season tend to improve their performance the next season.

That's not to say that skill, hard work, practice and dedication are irrelevant; they are so important that no matter how many times I bat against Johan Santana, I will never homer off him. (However, I'm quite likely to run home.) In the Major Leagues, where every player and every team is magnificently skilled and focused, the five percent of the game that luck inhabits can make all the difference in the world.

Branch Rickey said luck is the residue of design. This is nonsense perpetrated by lucky people. Rickey himself had the massive good fortune to be born white and rich in America. Certainly people who work hard and smart exploit the good breaks and overcome the bad ones better than those who don't. But no measure of ability or commitment could have catapulted Jackie Robinson's father to Branch Rickey's career.

In the course of a baseball season, serendipity visits every player in one form or another. One hitter's bloops drop in, while another's line drives get caught. These natural vicissitudes add up to what the seamheads call BABIP -- batting average on balls in play. (In other words, not counting strikeouts, walks, HBP and home runs.) Some of BABIP is skill -- how hard you hit the ball and how fast you run can affect it -- but BABIP fluctuates as much as 100 points after accounting for those things.

That 100 points is primarily luck. The same is true for pitchers. In 1999, after his amazing seven-year run, Greg Maddux surrendered 39 more hits than innings and his ERA spiked 50%. Asked what happened, Maddux shrugged that the balls being hit off him were just falling in and that it would even out. Sure enough, in 2000 Maddux threw 30 more innings and relinquished 33 fewer hits as his ERA dropped 57 points. One reason Maddux was so transcendent is that he intuitively understood the hidden skills of pitching.

On average, luck evens out. On average, the wind blows 10 mph. But sometimes it's a hurricane and sometimes the air is still. Most players live in the fat part of the bell curve, but a handful spend a whole season shacking up with Lady Luck while another handful endure her year-long enmity. Total it up and you can see how a player who bats .280 with 20 home runs one year is the same one who bats .250 with 14 or .310 with 26 the next, or a pitcher with a 4.00 ERA one year is the same as one with a 3.40 or 4.60 the next. In fact, these are rather conservative examples.

Now multiply that by team. Whole clubs have enjoyed a heaping teaspoon of nature's smiles that lead to victories in the close games and hot runs through the gauntlet to the World Series. The players, coaches, media and fans can be forgiven for seeking ex post facto reasons for their success -- "chemistry," commitment, team effort -- when a simpler but less morally uplifting explanation is obvious. As King Charlemagne is given to say in Pippin, "It's smarter to be lucky than it's lucky to be smart."

The Persistence of Memory

Last week I examined how Tim Raines' generalist abilities and shadow skills have doomed him -- perhaps unfairly -- in our esteem and in Hall of Fame voting.

Today the flip side: Jim Rice.

As with Raines, I make no claim as to whether Rice should be a HOFer. We certainly remember him as a fearsome slugger who dominated baseball offensively for the better part of 12 years. Four times in his career he batted over .300, slugged 39 or more home runs and drove in at least 114. He finished in the top five in MVP voting six times. At the time, we thought that was the definition of a great player.

Today, our lens is more finely focused. We realize the value of walks, of OBP over batting average, of defense, of context and of double plays (in the negative.) And all of those elements line up against Jim Rice.

Let's take them in order. Rice didn't walk. He earned 60 free passes just once in his career, so despite his .298 BA he had a non-HOF .352 OBP. He was never much of a fielder, despite the long-standing New England rationalization that he had a special knack for predicting Green Monster caroms. Myriad retrospective defensive statistics, about which I am admitedly dubious, all agree that Rice was a liability in left field.

Left field, of course, is where many of history's best hitters roamed, and against whom Rice must be measured. It is also the least important defensive position on the field (as opposed to the DH, who is not on the field defensively) because neither range nor an arm are particularly relevant. Rice's competition for the Hall, besides Raines, includes Musial, Bonds, Ted and Billy Williams, Simmons, Henderson, Shoeless Joe, Yaz, Stargell and Kiner.

Jim Rice also played in a hitter's park his whole career. Fenway increases offense by 8% versus today's MLB stadiums, and it was likely higher in Rice's day. Then, when you factor in the 315 twin killings he grounded into, it effectively drops his OBP to .339 and his slugging percentage below .500.

What you have, after all that, is a mighty hitter for sure, but one who doesn't avoid outs, has no speed (58 steals and 34 CS is a net negative) and hurts you defensively. Moreover, his talent ebbed quickly, with his last good year at age 33. Suddenly he's much less Hall-worthy.

For fun, I compared Rice to Raines. Note that Raines played most of his career in Montreal's concrete cavern.

Player	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS+	H	HR	RS	RBI	SB
Tim Raines	.294	.385	.425	123	2605	170	1571	980	808
Jim Rice	.298	.352	.502	128	2452	382	1249	1451	58

OPS+ is on-base plus slugging relative to the rest of the league. A 100 OPS+ is exactly average. At 128, Rice was 28% better than the average hitter.

You can decide for yourself whether Jim Rice deserves a bust in Cooperstown. It appears, given his near-miss last year, that he's headed in. It also appears that regardless, he is diminished by perspective, in much the way Tim Raines' stature is enhanced.

A Big Unit in The Emerald City

Randy Johnson signed yesterday with the last-place San Francisco Giants saying he thinks the team can win the NLWest. You think he's crazy? You're only half right.

The team may be munchkins at the plate, but they are Goliaths on the mound. Teaming with Cy Young incumbent Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain and good-looking youngster Jonathan Sanchez, the Big Unit rounds out an impressive starting staff. With the bullpen upgrade Brian Sabean made by acquiring lefty Jeremy Affeldt and venerable righty Bob Howry to team with closer Brian Wilson, this team could have fun, fun, fun.

'Til daddy takes their t-ball away. The Giants' outfield of Randy Winn, Aaron Rowand and Fred Lewis blasted a combined total of 32 home runs, and they are the team's strength. The signing of 33-year-old Edgar Renteria at short to team with 37-year-old Ray Durham at second smacks of a win now strategy without a whole lot of now. This is a team whose HR leader last year was its catcher, Benjie Molina, with 16. There's more pop in a bowl of Rice Krispies.

The window of opportunity has been left open in San Francisco's division, especially without a Manny sighting in LA. If Sabean can ink a bopper or two -- especially to staff an infield corner -- fans could again be dialing up Telephone Company Field in October. Hey, maybe Barry Bonds is available...

Stirrings in the Cellar

The Pittsburgh Pirates failed to sign any significant free agents this off-season, nearly guaranteeing themselves yet a record 17th consecutive losing season.

Good for them. They're finally on the right track towards success. If anyone doubts this, may I present the Tampa Bay Rays.

Remember 2000, when the Devil Rays cashed in their draft chips for sluggers Jose Canseco, Fred McGriff and Vinny Castillo three years beyond their expiration dates? Calling that the "Hit Show" was a typo: they left out an "S." Remember 2003, when the same desperate outfit relinquished a useful cog in their youth movement -- Randy Winn -- for a manager? A manager! Billy Beane must have peed his pants over that one.

The erstwhile Devil, now Rays, learned their lessons the hard way and turned a six-pack of first picks into the talented core that skipped to the World Series last season. And that is what you call a blueprint.

It's a blueprint that president Frank Coonelly and GM Neil Huntington have demonstrated they will follow carefully in the Steel City. The trades during the 2008 campaign of Xavier Nady's career year, Damaso Marte and Jason Bay for a boatload of youngsters is the right idea not withstanding questions about the quality of the haul. During the offseason they dangled aging shortstop Jack Wilson to the rest of MLB, recognizing that his halcyon days, such as they were, will not coincide with the franchise's. When no one appeared desperate enough to offer attractive prospects for him, the Pirates put him back in their pocket for in-season discussions with a contender that loses its shortstop and is willing to pony up what Pittsburgh needs.

The team now has an intriguing roster of young (and inexpensive) pitchers -- Snell, Duke, Gorzellany, Maholm -- and players -- Ryan Doumit, the LaRoches, Freddy Sanchez and Jose Tabata that is at least two years and two sluggers away from contention, a country mile closer than they've been all century.

Peter Angelos, of all people, is learning this lesson as well. After dabbling in the decrepit sluggers market (Miguel Tejada, Javy Lopez, Rafael Palmeiro and Sammy Sosa) with disastrous results three years ago, the Orioles reversed field last year and dropped the Human Insurance Premium Inflator, Erik Bedard, on Seattle for mega-prospect Adam (not Pac Man) Jones and a package of minor league hurlers.

The Orioles' pitch for Mark Teixeira last week was based on the presumption that he'll be productive long after Jones, Ryan Freel and some minor league call-ups ripen. Baltimore is at once farther along and farther from contention than Pittsburgh because they play in the AL Beast. They will need to cultivate the farm and enter the Big Boy auction each year, making sure to get the right parts -- as Teixeira would have been -- in tandem with the development of their prospects. More than anything, the O's need pitching, pitching and more pitching.

Why are teams suddenly figuring it out? One part of the answer is obvious: there are no longer any Major League franchises operating on the outmoded principles of the 1970s. Every club has a stable of analysts crunching the numbers like Bill James in Boston, Keith Woolner in Cleveland and Oakland's Billy Beane. While baseball reporters still hang their hats on misleading stats like RBIs and pitching wins, every team in baseball understands the superiority of VORP (value over replacement player) EQA (a hitter's value expressed in a single number that looks like a batting average, but taking into account his on-base ability, base runing and power) and other more subtle and revealing measurements. The inefficiencies in the baseball marketplace that Oakland cherry-picked for a decade are now smaller and more difficult to exploit, because everyone is doing the same thing, at least to some degree.

GMs don't have the luxury that columnists and broadcasters have to be 30 years behind the state of the art, because the results of their stupidity are published in the sports section daily. The columnist versions of Dave Littlefield -- he of no clue -- are voting members of the BBWAA enjoying job security and devoted followings.

Time To Be A Left Inside Grouch

Let's do a little thought experiment, you and I.

Let's suppose we decide to create a sports league, say the N43MSA -- the National 43-Man Squamish Association. We're going to place franchises in all the major US markets plus a few stragglers like Charleston SC, Bridgeport CT and Niskayuna NY. Hey, it's our league.

Now let's suppose that we determine that the franchises will draft high school and college Frullipers, but that all post-graduate players will be free agents, on sale to the highest bidders. Some teams will draft and develop talent well and consequently win more matches than those that don't.

Let's further suppose that the franchise representing the largest city buys up the top player at each position. It can do this because of its market size, media attention, vast financial resources, the glamour of the city, plethora of Fortune 500 companies that will pay the highest amount for the most luxury boxes, and its tradition dating back to the greats like Draja Druvnik and Snookums Schnitzer Johansen.

This team has, in effect, the first pick among left inside grouches, right inside grouches, shallow brooders, wicket men, offensive niblings, quarter-frummerts, full-frummerts, overblats, underblats, back-up finks, and dummies. If the team happens to be a little soft at the deep brooder position, or the All-Star half-frummert is coming off a serious sternocleidamastoid injury, well, the team can always go out and buy another one.

Now, I'd like you to purchase a competing franchise in Baltimore or Toronto or Tampa. Or maybe you'd like one in Minneapolis or Kansas City, whattaya say, huh? Well then, how about just being a fan of one of those sides, attending the Flutney a couple of times a year for seven Ogres of exciting action -- or eight if it rains? If you can't commit to that, wouldn't you like to catch a few snivels on the tube and keep tabs on the N43MSA standings?

Don't tell me you're one of those sore losers, sniveling that the Mudville 43 haven't had to so much as utter a dirty limerick this season. Have you got your lily liver all knotted up because the underblat they wrested away from Charleston with cash broke the single-season Woomik record? Don't cry to me about competitive imbalance; they didn't even make the playoffs last year, or in '93 either.

Would you root for this team or would you wonder what the point is? Would their march into the playoffs and through to the championship strike you as drama or a virtual fait accompli? Wouldn't being a fan of this team be like pulling for North Carolina against Prarie View in the first round of the NCAA basketball tournament?

That's the end of our little thought experiment. Fortunately, this would never happen in the real world of professional sports.

Didn't You Used To Be Roger Clemens?

If you want to know what scandal has cost Roger Clemens, all you have to do is look at Greg Maddux’s retirement.

Maddux hung it up at exactly the right time last month, before a run of mediocrity started tarnishing his spectacular resume.

It would belabor the point to recap Maddux’s career here beyond marveling at the run of seasons from 1992-98 when he surrendered just slightly more than half as many runs as the average NL hurler. Seventeen straight seasons of 15 or more wins and 18 Gold Gloves may or may not be what they’re cracked up to be, but they’re the most ever.

More to the point, Maddux is being lionized as the greatest and winningest pitcher of his generation. Before we discovered that Roger Clemens was dabbling in Mindy McCready, that was supposed to be his career epitaph. Batters were frustrated by Maddux, but intimidated and awed by Clemens, who retained the heat into his 40s. With more career traction and better stuff, it looked as if Clemens had pulled away from Maddux for good.

What’s the conventional narrative now? It’s the morality play of the tortoise and the hare, with Clemens in the role of rabbit. Suddenly not possessing raw power is a virtue for Maddux. Winning with without high heat makes Maddux more commendable. It’s as if chicks now dig the changeup.

Of course, that narrative was always hooey. Maddux may weigh 175 pounds and wear glasses, but he threw plenty hard and notched nearly 3400 strikeouts. Moreover, he was a great natural athlete who demonstrated his raw ability at the plate and with the glove.

It’s not as if Clemens just rolled God’s gifts out onto the field and chalked up the victories. His heat was the by-product of an intense physical fitness regimen and equally intense mental preparation and focus. He was the greatest pitcher of his generation…until his derriere became back page fodder and the rest of him became MLB’s persona non grata.

I guess that’s comeuppance for the personal and professional skullduggery that Clemens seemed to have engaged in. We’re chalking one up for the good guy. So let that be a lesson to us all. Roger Clemens will still be remembered as a great pitcher, but he gave away a significant mantle to Greg Maddux – best of his era.

Between "Rock" and a Hard Place

The new Hall of Fame ballot includes the greatest leadoff hitter of all time -- Rickey Henderson -- who is already being fitted for a bust in Cooperstown.

It also includes arguably the second-greatest leadoff hitter of all time -- Tim Raines -- who has a Palin 2012's chance of being elected. (That is, less than none.)

I don't know if Raines is a HOFer, in part because no one knows what the criteria are, and in greater part because back in the days when we were valuing the wrong things, Raines never cracked our fame consciousness. When we look back on his career, we don't remember a guy who was dominant.

The numbers, however, beg to differ. They tell a now-familiar tale of a player whose performance was exactly matched to our blind spots.

Consider: Tim Raines never hit 20 home runs or knocked in even 80. He won one Gold Glove and never finished higher than fifth in the MVP voting. During the period of his career when he played fulltime, 1982-1995, his teams made two playoff appearances and won no pennants. He stole a lot of bases, but rarely as many as Henderson at the same time. Despite leading off for two decades, he's nowhere near 3,000 hits. That's not the stuff of HOFers.

Raines suffers because the HOF wants specialists at the top of their craft, not brilliant generalists. It wants 500-HR sluggers who took smaller leads than Norm Coleman. It wants leather-flashers who charmed the Gold Glove voters. It wants boppers lucky enough to come to the plate regularly with runners on base to drive in. Or at least that's what BBWAA voters want.

Consider the rest of Raines' CV: He hit double-digit homers seven times, mostly before the offensive era began. He posted 12 seasons of on-base prowess over .380. He racked up 400 more walks than strikeouts. The most efficient base stealer of all time, he swiped an amazing 85% of the 954 bags he chased. Despite playing in a lousy hitters' park, he finished in the top 10 in on-base percentage seven times, runs scored nine times and overall offensive performance six times. He was an excellent left fielder and a passable center fielder, right fielder and second baseman. Baseball Prospectus rates him the sixth best right fielder of all time, but even if he's the ninth or 10th or 11th best, that's still a jaunty stroll into the Hall.

My point is not that Tim Raines is a HOFer, but that failing the smell test is a poor barometer because our sense of smell is so much better -- and different -- now. Let's educate ourselves that HRs, RBIs and BA are only part of the equation when OBP, SLG, and advanced stats like EQA and VORP tell us so much more.

The Bad Old Days

I have opined in the past that the so-called Golden Era of baseball, the 1950s, was actually the worst period in baseball history. One city monopolized the AL pennant and dominated the NL pennant and the World Series. If you were a fan of any AL squad other than the Yankees, who appeared in 14 of the 16 World Series in that period, you spent a decade and a half banging your head against the wall. Ditto for the NL, at half that rate.

Some of the advantages the Yankees had then, persist -- money, market size, glamour of NYC, tradition. It's natural that they exploit them in order to collect the best players and win championships. Good for them.

Bad for baseball.

Sports is a zero sum proposition. As long as one franchise uses its edge at every level to win all the time, other franchises must, by definition, stumble. Some of them will act on the premise that they can't compete and wallow in futility. That is bad for them, their fans and the league.

Two quick case studies: After 35 years as a fan of the Kansas City Royals, I switched allegiances a few years ago. It became obvious to me that the Royals' ownership had chosen profit over occasional competitiveness, and that there was no hope of my team succeeding on the field. I'm not a fair weather fan, but neither am I an idiot.

Last year, while the Tampa Bay Rays won 100 games, their attendance lagged. That's standard procedure after years of futility. In 2009, fans will flock to the Trop. That binge and purge mentality, and the attendance fluctuations that accompany it, can be avoided, as long as the team is generally competitive. That's not possible if one franchise, endowed beyond all others, attracts an All-Star squad roster and dashes everyone else's hopes.

All of which brings us to the current state of affairs. Let's face it: the Yankees have not dominated baseball the last four years; they didn't even make the playoffs in '08. The signings of CC Sabathia and AJ Burnett (can't they find anyone with a first name?) are not going to change that without other conditions also changing, like the emergence of Hughes, Kennedy or some other prospect, rebound seasons from Cabrera or Cano, or the signing of even more big impact free agents like Mark Teixeira.

What's troubling is that when other teams are facing recessionary restrictions, layoffs and renewed budget consciousness, the Yankees are accepting public money, raising ticket prices and pursuing almost all of the high-priced free agents simultaneously. If this means a new era of Yankee domination, Kansas City Royals fans are not going to meander to other teams (the Nationals in my case; maybe I am an idiot) but to other activities.

The effect on a team like Toronto is even worse. The Blue Jays could have fancied themselves a player in '09, given their strong performance in '08. But with three powerful in-division competitors, a weak Canadian dollar and the resources of the Yankees, it's understandable why they have become passive. It's now dubious whether a large monetary investment in players could yield much return. How can they compete with a rival that outbid the field by $40 million for Sabathia's services?

So you'll understand why I hope Sabathia's weight and workload start wearing him down and Burnett's inconsistency remains his one constant. You'll understand why I'm rooting for Teixeira to sign with one of his non-contending pursuers and why I want the jettisoned Bobby Abreu to have another season like his 1999-2002 stretch where he hit for power and average, walked like a mall rat, stole bases and excelled in the field, all for someone else.

It's why I hope the Yankees overpaid for so little that they're hamstrung financially in their efforts to offset their mistakes. The problem is, they never are. It's baseball fans who are hamstrung, and that's the shame of it.