Seeing the Invisible

Dear friends of Chris Jenkins,

Two weeks ago, your favorite columnist wrote an epistle against new baseball analysis, ruing the demise of the pitching win. A won-lost record should mean something, he intoned.

A week into the season, I come to praise the win-loss record, not to bury it. Tim Lincecum can tell you the value of a pitching win. He quieted the Dodgers on three hits over seven innings in his first start, but failed his team by allowing his catcher to make an error, allowing the game's only run to score.

Joe Blanton's profile is not similarly stained. He surrendered seven runs on 10 hits in 4.3 frames last night but, because his team owned a seven-run lead, he got no decision. Pitching to the score, I guess. Just as Mike Pelfrey did on the other side, retiring six batters before allowing an eighth Phillie score. He must've known the Mets would tie the game. Bruce Jenkins says neither hurler deserves to lose and Bruce is an honorable man.

Last night, Jason Hammel served up two homers and three walks for four runs in five innings to L.A., but since he knew his Rockie teammates would provide him seven runs, earned credit for a win. The Reds' Edinson Volquez did the same for his run of fives against the limp Astros' lineup -- five innings, five hits, five walks and four runs. Bruce Jenkins says a win is valuable and Bruce is an honorable man.

On Tuesday, the Reds' Mike Leake, Washington's Jason Marquis  and the Cards' Kyle McClellan all held their opponents to a pair of runs in six innings. Leake got the win; neither Marquis nor McClellan did. Relief pitching and run support were the difference, but Bruce Jenkins says the win distinguishes Leake's performance from the others' and Bruce is an honorable man.

I'm not sure how Bruce will explain the loss Derek Lowe absorbed for holding the Brewers to one run in six innings. I suspect he'll point out that he shouldn't have allowed any scoring if his offense wasn't going to cross the plate.

Insightful observers like Bruce Jenkins, who remain versed in the measuring techniques of Old Hoss Radbourne's day, see something the rest of us don't. They see how a pitcher can control for his teammates' offensive and defensive abilities, and want to see that ability enshrined in the won-loss record. And since we don't possess Bruce's special talent, maybe we should just accept his assertions on faith.

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Rethinking Ryan Howard

What's a guy got to do to get some love? How about win a couple of home run titles, knock in 136+ each of four years, get aboard safely at a .372 clip, stick his nose into the World Series twice -- winning it once, graduate college and treat fans well?

C'mon, he even loves his mom. Yet many of the analytically-inclined, including my own personal self, denigrate Ryan Howard and predict doom and gloom for the rest of his career.

In a previous post about Phillies misphortune -- (morphing "f" sounds into "ph" while discussing the phranchise in Philly is a requirement in the blogger's handbook) -- I dismissed Howard as a dimming star because he only smacked 31 out last year. Players his size often don't age well into their 30s, so he's sometimes viewed in the past tense at age 31.

But as Phanatic reader Paz points out, Howard was injured last season and not at full strength for much of the year. Still, his .277/.353/.505 performance would be the envy of most first basemen. If he regresses even halfway to his career standard (.280/.372/.573 with 46 home runs) he remains a mighty phorce.

What are the odds of that? I'd say they're close to 100%, barring injuries. Howard has demonstrated that he's that level of talent. He's still young enough to injure baseballs at an alarming rate. His portside inclinations are an added piece of serendipity. Southpaws throw kryptonite at Ryan Howard (.234/.316/.453 versus lefties), so it's fortunate for him that most innings are served up from the starboard side.

 

What remains problematic for the Philly phirst baseman is the increasing odds of infirmity. Particularly in the cases of lumbering behemoths such as him, it's increasingly difficult to prevent the injury bug from snacking as time marches forward. Because he can't compensate with speed, defense or a DH slot, Howard has much less margin for error. If he doesn't stay healthy and regularly turn around fastballs, he's an expensive clubhouse bauble.

All of which is a long way of saying that we dismiss Ryan Howard at our own peril. He's still an elite hitter until proven otherwise. But...hedge your bets on him.
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Ramon Hernandez for MVP

I can't decide whether my MVP of the season so far is Milwaukee backstop Ramon Hernandez, on pace for an .800 BA,. with 162 HR and 486 RBI, or Dodger fireballer Clayton Kershaw, on pace for a 35-0, 0.00 season with 35 walks and 315K in 245 innings.

One thing I know for sure is I wouldn't want to sign that bum Pujols for five cents. He didn't get a hit all season.

Sympathies to Tim Lincecum, 0-35, 0.00 and victimized by catcher errors every time out. Can a guy compete for the Cy Young even if he's winless?

On the flip side, Jonathan Broxton wins the Rabbit's Foot award for leading the league in saves despite a 9.00 ERA.

People complain that the season is too long. Man, it's five months too short for me. Welcome back, bro.

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Let the Games Begin!

Happy Opening Day! (If you don't mind me being redundant.)
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Caveat Phillies

Nothing, it seems, is certain but death, taxes and the Phillies winning the 2011 NL East. The four-time defending NL East champs sport an historic starting rotation and some of the best hitters in the senior circuit. They'll spend the summer feasting on the Nationals, Marlins and Mets and the fall battling baseball's royalty in seven-game bursts.

Except, as the great philosopher Quick Draw McGraw often noted, "now just hold on thar one cotton-pickin' minute, Baba Looey!" The 2012 Phils are threatening to drastically under-perform on one side of the ball, leaving the ascendant Braves ample opportunity to end the run in the city of sibling affection.

You doubt that Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, Roy Oswalt and Cole Hamels will perform anything less than spectacularly? Neither do I, though there's nowhere to go but down with this corps, relative to expectations. It truly is a world class quartet, and if anything goes awry, like someone's ulnar collateral ligament, Joe Blanton is a doozy of a back-up plan.

On the other hand, if Southeastern PA isn't concerned about the lineup, it isn't paying attention. With names like Howard, Utley, Rollins and Victorino, it's easy to become complacent about the Phillies' hitting woes. Take a closer look though, and you'll see how this offense could stink like New Jersey without much going terribly wrong.

First, the team's getting old, with an average age this year over 32. Utley and Rollins missed a chunk of 2010 and Utley is hobbling again even before he's broken a sweat. He is the straw that stirs the drink for the Phillies; hitting for power and average and delivering standout defense at a position where a replacement can be counted on for little more than an occasional  bloop single. By far the team's best player (he was the second most productive hitter last year despite missing 150 plate appearances), Utley's health is a critical concern.

Rollins, not so much. The mis-cast MVP in 2007, Rollins has steadily declined since, losing 200 points of OPS while battling age and injuries. The team leader and spark plug may not have much spark left, and he also plays a position thin in quality replacements.

The third Musketeer is Ryan Howard, who was either slowed by injuries last year or has, at age 31 and 235 pounds, begun his slow descent. Howard slugged 31 home runs, which is ordinarily tremendous, except when that is your signature skill, and you'd been averaging 50-a-year over the past five seasons. If he repeats that, or declines further, the Phillies are going to be a a nuclear plant short in the power department.

Beyond them the news is more worrisome. Dominic Brown has shown no signs that he can replace any part of Jason Werth's game in right field and Carlos Ruiz's chances of repeating his anomalous  .302/.400/.447 season behind the plate are somewhere between slim and none, with the mean listing heavily towards none. Raul Ibanez's utility as a 39-year-old might be in a platoon with John Mayberry, Jr. and/or Ben Francisco. The latter can pop a longball episodically and the former can swipe a base if someone gets on for him, but that's not much production from a corner outfield position.

Placido Polanco at third and the Flyin' Hawaiian in center are both good and reliable players with meaty defensive chops, though if Polanco fails to hit .290 his offensive contribution evaporates. In any case, both are complementary parts, not stars. A Phillie squad left to rely on those two is swimming in shark-infested waters. And with a lineup that still lists portside, the Phils remain vulnerable to southpaws.

Of course, the starters could bail out the offense and Ruben Amaro could flip Joe Blanton for a shiny bauble to offset the woes of Utley or Rollins or whoever. But they may be busy bailing out the bullpen, which could run the gamut from shutdown to incendiary to...Bastardo.

You put it all together and the Phils look less like locks than lox, and there's a team in Atlanta just itching to buy the cream cheese (not Philadelphia brand.)  I've still got the ponies as favorites -- that rotation demands it -- but Charlie Manual will earn the hosannas this season if he can keep the offense on track and the team atop the standings...again.
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Thirty-three Years Behind and Counting

“It won’t be long before we get the first wave of nonsense from stat-crazed dunces claiming there’s nothing to be learned from a batting average, won-loss record or RBI total. Listen, just go back to bed, OK? Strip down to those fourth-day undies, head downstairs (to “your mother’s basement and your mother’s computer,” as Chipper Jones so aptly describes it) and churn out some more crap. For more than a century, .220 meant something. So did .278, .301, .350, an 18-4 record, or 118 RBIs. Now it all means nothing because a bunch of nonathletes are trying to reinvent the game?”
– San Francisco Chronicle columnist Bruce Jenkins

Whenever someone fires off ad hominem attacks it's a sure sign they're out of rhetorical ammunition. What's especially regrettable is how hackneyed is this particular shibboleth about stat guys. I'd like to assume that in order to achieve columnist status at a major newspaper like the San Francisco Chronicle, Bruce Jenkins must occasionally evince some intellect and creativity. It's striking then that he could find no more clever, insightful or florid metaphors to describe seamheads than the old cliches of homelessness, poor hygiene and geekdom.

I haven't read this particular gentleman before, but I'm guessing, from this small sample size, that  crooked politicians, hoodlum basketball players and accountants with green eye-shades also comprise his diatribe repertoire. Oh, and Mother Teresa was good. What novel ideas, and so revealing!

That's besides the point, of course, because what's really so daft about his blog post in particular and the many daily expressions of similar sentiments from around the horsehide universe in general is the way he (and everyone he's representing) uses statistics to complain about the use of statistics. It's as if opponents of capital punishment objected to lethal injection by preferring firing squad.

Clearly, Jenkins doesn't object to using statistics to describe baseball, he objects only to the upgrade that better statistics provide. This is a pretty thinly-veiled plea to stop making a guy think. He's got a tenuous grasp on batting average, won-loss record and RBIs and doesn't want to have to learn something new, even if it's vastly superior. That his understanding of those statistics often mislead him into believing untruths is of no consequence to him as long as they provided ballast for certainty without possibility of contradiction.

"For more than a century," a horse drawn carriage "meant something," until cars came along and improved transportation. The 19th century Bruce Jenkins and his ilk would be lambasting non-equestrians for their insistence on replacing horse power with horsepower, and like the modern-day version, would be on the wrong side of technology, the free market and history. The free market's funny about better ideas: it prefers them.

If you're reading this blog, you already know the specifics about those stats, but here's a thumbnail sketch. First, all three mean something, just not very much. RBIs are a team event. Win-loss record is a function of many things having nothing to do with pitching ability. One man's .250 batting average can be far more valuable than another man's .300 batting average. Smart people doing real research have discovered shortcomings in these measurements and proposed vast upgrades to quantify the same thing. These new creations are objectively superior: they correlate more highly with individual performance, better predict future events, more fully describe a body of work. There really isn't any room for debate on those points.

Here's another interesting development: Bruce Jenkins stated his case in a blog. On a website. Using a computer. These were all upgrades from the world as it existed when he began his journalism career, and yet he seems to have embraced that change. Perhaps that embrace was reluctant but required by his desire to continue collecting a paycheck.

It would advance the craft of sports journalism if his employers at the Chronicle demanded the same willingness to change and grow from his baseball coverage. They should not accept from him, nor any other writer on their staff, a level of ignorance about the game that he has not just revealed, but flaunted. They certainly would not allow their White House correspondent to continue discussing the latest developments involving President Taft. They wouldn't allow their health reporter to refuse to discuss arthroscopy because cutting people open worked perfectly well for decades. Why is this retrograde attitude tolerated on the sports pages?

Bruce Jenkins has done a marvelous service to the baseball world. He has given full-throat to the many voices of unreason -- the scared, the hidebound, the illogical -- and accidentally shined a light on their shortcomings. There has already been significant blowback in the blogosphere, and I hope it all works out for the reformation of sports journalism. Because ultimately, Bruce Jenkins' tirade against sabermetrics isn't about baseball, or statistics, or even Bruce Jenkins; it's about the narrow, sclerotic minds that control much of sports journalism today.

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Past Performance May Not Be Indicative of Future Returns

Imagine if you could tease out from a player's performance the skill-wheat from the luck-chaff and make a more nuanced prediction of his future results. The imagination is not so very boggled here; we have many tools in the sabermetric toolkit that help us do this. On the hitting side we have, first and foremost, BABIP, now so widespread in its use that it has its own Wikipedia entry.

Pitching performance is dependent on a larger array of variables, and so requires a more robust distillation. Seamheads around the world have been nose-to-the-grindstone on that, to the point that many of the rough edges (on pitching stats, not on noses) have been smoothed. There exist several calculations that are independent of defense, BABIP and other noise.

Last year, Baseball Prospectus put its SABR light ray to use on the obverse proposition: rather than strip out the obfuscations, why not focus on the core elements of a pitcher's work. Pitchers can control their their walks and strikeouts, their home runs allowed, and the ratio of ground balls to fly balls allowed, so why not simply measure those things to understand their core skill sets? After developing the statistic, called SIERA (skill-interactive ERA), they tested its predictive ability and found that it was indeed superior to other measuring tools.

In other words, if you see a pitcher who went 20-8, 2.97 last year, you probably assume he pitched spectacularly. In fact, what you're seeing is a pitcher with spectacular results. The correlation is imperfect. If that hurler benefited from great defense and run-scoring support, fabulous relief pitching, an unusually low BABIP, unsustainable success with runners in scoring position and a good home pitching park, you could conclude that fortune has smiled upon him and may be looking elsewhere next season -- what we commonly call regressing to the mean. Conversely, if he served up a lot of strikeouts, limited his walks and HBPs, and kept the ball in the park and on the ground, he's got the requisite core skills to repeat, rinse and shine.

As soon as SIERA was introduced last year, I thought how interesting it would be to examine the 2010 pitchers whose SIERAs varied dramatically from their actual ERAs and then observe their 2011 performances. BP has provided just that list, so I present to you the hurlers whose performance will be worth noting this year. (Of course, these predictive tools have enormous Fantasy Baseball value, and in fact, BP has become more of a Fantasy Baseball site.)

Just one note of caution: Judging a player on a single season can be like judging a city's climate by one day. The weather in Fargo might be nicer than in Miami on a given day, but not over the long haul. So seamheads ordinarily use a rolling three-year average when measuring player performance and BP is doing that with the gentlemen listed below.

The four unlucky moundsmen capable of dramatic rebounds in 2011 are Josh Beckett, Brandon Morrow, Aaron Harang and Dan Haren. Beckett, slowed to 128 innings by a balky back, went a miserable 6-6, 5.78 for the Red Sox. But SIERA saw his performance more generously and believes he's more like a 3.84 ERA starter, which is among the league's elite. If he's healthy, expect his ERA to be as well.

Morrow, a rookie for Toronto last year, shoves strikes down batters' throats for a sterling 3.15 SIERA. An out-of-kilter .344 BABIP pushed his ERA to 4.45, but the SIERA suggests he could be a star in 2011. Aaron Harang's SIERA of 4.44 was 88 points better than his actual ERA in Cincinnati in 2010. Now toiling in a pitching-compliant Petco Park in San Diego, his actual ERA could plummet. The same for Haren, who spent half of last year in Arizona's hitter-haven park.

The four sons of serendipity in 2010 who might be best avoided in your fantasy draft are Brian Duensing, RA Dickey, Livan Hernandez and John Garland. Hernandez is a walking cautionary tale. Knuckleballers like Dickey are often immune to the Laws of Sabermetrics, so he might not belong on this list. Garland is a flyball pitcher, but at Petco that wasn't a demerit. He's employed by the Dodgers this season and he'll lose baseballs if he keeps his pitches up. Duensing, who pitched half in relief and half in the rotation for the Twins, had a 2.62 ERA with 4.22 skills. His inability to miss bats may come back to haunt him.

Over the years, SIERA, like all baseball metrics, will be whittled and honed as more information is revealed and more smart people contribute to its improvement. It'll be interesting to see how well it identifies the outliers in its first year.

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crAP!

Yes, it's time for another installment of crAP! where we bust on those Fantasy Sports Gurus, the Associated Press. It's not that the good folks at AP play Fantasy, it's that their coverage of sports is based on a fantasy.

Two items from Saturday's paper for the guffaw-impaired:

Item One: "The Rangers and Canadiens, fighting for playoff positioning, staged a post-season-like show at Madison Square Garden." 

If these two clubs, or any hockey teams in any hockey league, are concerned with playoff positioning, they are, to be perfectly blunt, morons. They might be, but I suspect this is simply a matter of transference by the good journalists of the AP, who have managed not to notice the signature 30-year trend in the NHL.

The correlation in the NHL between playoff seeding and results in the playoffs, particularly in the first round or two, is roughly equal to the correlation with a coach's horoscope. The lowest ranked playoff team -- often a sorry squad that wins less than it doesn't -- has defeated the top-ranked team a third of the time since the '79 expansion. The gap in playoff performance between sixth and seventh seeds, which Montreal and New York currently occupy, is the difference between Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen.

More likely, the Garden rocked for a late-season tilt against a traditional rival, after a string of contests versus the likes of Ottawa, Florida and Nashville.

Item two: "It was a key win in Milwaukee's playoff push, pulling the Bucks within a game of Charlotte and the final playoff spot in the East."

Here's a little unsolicited advice for Bucks brass, which I suspect they don't need: Throw your remaining games. The reward for capturing that last playoff slot with a .412 winning percentage is playoff carnage at the hands of Chicago or Boston, winning percentage .700+. The reward for finishing ninth is a ball in the lottery for the number one, two or three draft pick and an opportunity to improve next season. Any "playoff push" by Milwaukee is more likely a lottery dive by Charlotte.

Just two more data points in the argument that sports journalism has nothing to do with the actual reality of sports.

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And He Could Run A Fast Break

When you reminisce on the career of Kenny Lofton, you probably remember a fleet-footed mainstay of the powerhouse mid-90s Indians who bounced among nine teams in his last six years. But an accidental stumbling onto Lofton's stat sheet reminded me what a very valuable player he was.

Lofton was drafted by the Astros out of Arizona, where he was a star baseball and basketball player, backing up Steve Kerr on a Wildcat hoops team that reached the Final Four. In fact, Lofton is one of only two people (Tim Stoddard, the other) to play in a Final Four in college and a World Series professionally.

The YouTube video that would chronicle Kenny Lofton's defensive gems would speaks for itself, and feature the gravity-defying leap that robbed BJ Surhoff of a third-row dinger at the Jake in '96. The defensive metrics validate the view that Lofton, particularly in the Cleveland two-thirds of his career, was a superior defender in the one critical outfield position.

That's the icing on the cake though. The layered chocolate goodness that was his offensive contribution may have been severely under-rated. Lofton was probably one of the 10 or 15 best leadoff hitters of all-time, sporting a .372 OBP with 622 steals at an 80% rate. (A sabermetric review rates his 1994 performance the sixth best leadoff season since 1960. Remember, the 1994 season ended in August, with 50 games yet to play.) He led the league in steals five times and swiped 32 of 37 bases at age 39. It's no surprise that Lofton came around to score at least 90 times for 11 consecutive seasons.

Kenny Lofton never hit for power; reaching 15 homers in a season just once. But research shows that table setters who get on base, swipe bags and burn around the bases have an intangible value that has yet to be fully captured by the seamheads and their whiz-bang tools. Being a strong up-the-middle defender further enhances his value, though it might be difficult to capture as it whizzes around the basebpaths.

Lofton spent six years of his baseball dotage as a vagabond, seemingly dragging the baggage of post-season heart break with him. His '99 Tribe squad blew a 2-0 best-of-five lead to Baltimore; his '02 Giants succumbed to the Angels in the World Series despite a 5-0 eighth inning advantage in a potential clinching Game 6, his '04 Yankees famously coughed up a 3-0 ALCS series lead on Boston, and his '07 swan song in Cleveland was three straight ALCS losses to the Red Sox to fritter away a 3-1 series lead. 

On the other hand, playing from 2002-2007 for the White Sox, Giants, Pirates, Cubs, Yankees, Phillies, Dodgers, Rangers and Indians, but never for more than 136 games, Lofton at least helped his clubs earn post-season berths. The itinerant second act to his career masked his continuing value, even as his prowess with the leather waned. In his final half season with Texas, he hit .303/.380/.438 and appropriated 21 of 25 bases before finally being shipped back to Ohio.

Lofton's not a Hall of Famer; he wasn't the best player on any of his teams or at his position; and he wasn't the best lead-off hitter any time during his career (thanks a lot, Rickey Henderson and Tim Raines.) But as a stellar center-fielder who wreaked havoc from the top of the order, he was an awfully useful player.

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Catching Hell

Among the reasons that the decade's two best baseball teams have combined for 15 playoff spots and three World Series titles has been their strength behind the dish. As we leave the aughts and start the teens, suddenly the reverse is true. The Red Sox have two bad options at catcher while the Yankees' only bad option is now no option at all.

For years, Jorge Posada struggled to reach the mean defensively while lighting up opposing pitchers like a left fielder. His .275/.377/.479 bonafides with the bat are 23% better than the average player who is spared the need to squat all game. After injury struggles and obvious decline the last three years, Yankee brass has advisedly banished Posada to DH in the hope that fresh legs will keep his bat vital. 

Great strategy...if you have a replacement. Whether Francisco Cervelli and his .343/.340 in 423 MLB at-bats was a legitimate contender is now moot for two months thanks to a busted left foot. Even when he returns, his resume includes a league leading number of errors last year in half a season and and 14% caught stealing rate. That leaves Joe Girardi one step closer to donning the gear himself, or sending out Yogi, given the alternatives.

Yankee fans may believe Jesus is their savior. The #4 prospect in baseball, Jesus Montero, stood tall in Triple-A last year (.289/.553/.517) before he could legally drink a beer. Scouts say the bat plays at the next level but he moves behind the plate like George Wendt. The franchise may be better served seasoning him in Scranton before Carl Crawford steals four bases and his pride the first time the Sox come to town.

Brian Cashman alertly signed the worn nub of Russell Martin during the off-season for just such a circumstance. Martin was a firecracker out of the gate as a 23-year-old Dodger rookie in '06, earning two All-Star berths and a centerfold in Hot Backstop magazine. But his knees absorbed 449 games of wear over the next three years, causing his power and defensive prowess to disintegrate. Spottier duty in the Bronx might lead to a revival, or he might just have used up all his mojo.

The Red Sox begin the year already in this predicament. The departure of Victor Martinez, combined with the retention of Jason Varitek, but not his baseball skills, leaves Boston with two choices, both lousy. Either they suit up 38-year-old Tek, who's been roughly replacement level for three years, or they give former prospect Jarrod Saltalamacchia an opportunity to show Varitek what replacement level's really all about. In 800+ games, Salty has won membership in the Third String Catcher union, but not much else. His 82 OPS+ (i.e., he hits 18% worse than average; striking out 30% of the time will do that to a fella) belies a below-average defensive skill set.

The pickle in which NY and Boston find themselves is not particularly novel. Absent Atlanta and Minnesota, most teams punt the backstop position to a defender who is even odds to hit his weight. It's just the contrast that's so vivid. Between 2001-2005, Boston's receiver posted an OPS over .850 four times, made two All-Star teams and starred in his own version of True Grit. From 2000-2007, his New York counterpart made a Hall of Fame case, smacking 183 homers and tripping .920 on the OPS meter three times. 

To see their teams struggle to fill the void, even in their presence, is disorienting. Maybe it's a sign the torch is being passed. Fans in Baltimore and Toronto, two teams set at catcher, can only hope.

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Intriguing Teams of 2011, Part 2

It's not every year that people write off a team projected to win 91 games and sport a 71% chance of reaching the playoffs. With the Yankees, whose usual playoff odds are in the Ghaddafi election win realm, a mere seven out of ten seems like a brewing disaster.

No doubt, the coupling of Boston's winter signings and trades with the retirement of Andy Pettitte, leaves New York playing second fiddle to the Red Sox in the 2011 AL Beast. Unless they reprise their 2010 injury explosion, the Red Sox have few weaknesses, while the Yankees have a severely depleted starting pitching staff after Misters Sabathia and Hughes. Banking on AJ Burnett, Sergio Mitre, Ivan Nova and their ilk sounds an awful lot like giving mortgages to people without money and expecting them to make the payments. The results could be similar.

On the other hand, let's not forget that the entire Yankee infield has a VIP pass to Cooperstown. It's all the rage these days to dismiss Derek Jeter as a career that's passed, but great players have a knack for rebounding from bad performances with renewed dedication. That's not to say that Jeter can escape the ravages of age -- he's unlikely to ever again be an adequate shortstop afield -- but don't be surprised if he bounces back with the bat  and hits near .300, which would alone qualify him among the two or three best-hitting shortstops in the league. In addition, a deep outfield and well-stocked bench mean Big Apple fans will continue to enjoy the league's most potent lineup.

New Yorkers are exfoliating themselves over the rotation, and again, there is some cause for concern. But how many teams can trot out five reliable arms? If two of the menagerie of pitchers on the spring roster can coax league average performance out of their arms to complement Sabathia and Hughes, the bats and bullpen can make it work. It's easy to disregard the off-season bullpen moves and the yawning margin of error afforded to starters by Mariano Rivera and Rafael Soriano; nonetheless, they're real and relevant.

Of course, all this ignores the elephant in the room, or rather, approaching the room at a pachyderm's pace. Come trade deadline the Yankees will, with near certainty, provide cost relief to some non-contender or three by removing the burden of paying their ace, and/or star backstop, and/or slugging outfielder. The franchise's revenue and tradition advantages will be exploited to keep the Yankees in the race, regardless of the flailings of the #s3-5 starters.

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The Final Standings, As of Feb. 27

I present without prejudice the projected MLB standings from Baseball Prospectus. Remember that these projections are based on a million simulations of the season using their individual player projections.

         Team                             Win %          W             L          Div       WC     Playoffs

1	Boston Red Sox	.575	93.5	68.5	56.7%	25.3%	82.0%
2	New York Yankees	.566	91.4	70.6	36.4%	34.5%	70.8%
3	Tampa Bay Rays	.521	83.3	78.7	4.8%	12.7%	17.5%
4	Baltimore Orioles	.502	80.3	81.7	1.9%	6.3%	8.2%
5	Toronto Blue Jays	.469	74.3	87.7	0.2%	0.8%	1.0%
Rnk	American League Central	Expected Win Pct	Sim Win	Sim Loss	Div Pct	WC Pct	Playoff Pct
1	Minnesota Twins	.512	83.8	78.2	33.5%	4.0%	37.5%
2	Detroit Tigers	.510	83.9	78.1	33.0%	4.2%	37.2%
3	Chicago White Sox	.508	83.6	78.4	30.4%	4.5%	34.8%
4	Cleveland Indians	.459	74.6	87.4	2.9%	0.5%	3.3%
5	Kansas City Royals	.424	68.6	93.4	0.3%	0.1%	0.4%
Rnk	American League West	Expected Win Pct	Sim Win	Sim Loss	Div Pct	WC Pct	Playoff Pct
1	Texas Rangers	.522	85.6	76.4	54.1%	2.9%	57.0%
2	Oakland Athletics	.513	83.2	78.8	36.2%	3.3%	39.5%
3	Los Angeles Angels	.477	77.2	84.8	9.0%	1.1%	10.1%
4	Seattle Mariners	.430	69.0	93.0	0.7%	0.1%	0.7%
Rnk	National League East	Expected Win Pct	Sim Win	Sim Loss	Div Pct	WC Pct	Playoff Pct
1	Philadelphia Phillies	.561	91.3	70.7	57.9%	13.1%	71.0%
2	Atlanta Braves	.536	87.0	75.0	26.1%	15.8%	41.8%
3	Florida Marlins	.519	83.9	78.1	12.9%	10.0%	22.9%
4	New York Mets	.493	78.8	83.2	3.1%	3.1%	6.1%
5	Washington Nationals	.435	69.3	92.7	0.1%	0.0%	0.1%
Rnk	National League Central	Expected Win Pct	Sim Win	Sim Loss	Div Pct	WC Pct	Playoff Pct
1	St. Louis Cardinals	.522	85.8	76.2	37.9%	6.0%	43.8%
2	Milwaukee Brewers	.524	85.2	76.8	32.6%	6.3%	38.9%
3	Cincinnati Reds	.503	82.4	79.6	18.7%	4.3%	23.0%
4	Chicago Cubs	.492	80.1	81.9	10.1%	2.9%	13.0%
5	Pittsburgh Pirates	.439	71.5	90.5	0.7%	0.1%	0.8%
6	Houston Astros	.420	67.5	94.5	0.1%	0.0%	0.2%
Rnk	National League West	Expected Win Pct	Sim Win	Sim Loss	Div Pct	WC Pct	Playoff Pct
1	San Francisco Giants	.557	90.4	71.6	55.0%	11.7%	66.8%
2	Los Angeles Dodgers	.537	87.3	74.7	28.7%	14.5%	43.2%
3	Colorado Rockies	.516	83.1	78.9	11.7%	8.3%	20.0%
4	San Diego Padres	.492	79.2	82.8	3.9%	3.4%	7.3%
5	Arizona Diamondbacks	.461	73.6	88.4	0.7%	0.5%	1.1%

What you see here is that the Phillies, Red Sox, Giants and Rangers are all pegged at better than even odds to win their divisions. Including the Giants on that list surprises me.

The NL Central was pre-elbow implosion for Adam Wainwright; the updated projection leaves the Cards and Brewers in a statistical dead heat as co-favorites for the division, with Cincinnati a close third.

The Twins, Tigers and White Sox appear roughly equally likely to capture the AL Central (and then get obliterated in the ALDS), while the one-dimensional A's and Padres both score out around the .500 mark.

Finally, some good news projected for all you Baltimorons: BP can't decide whether you're mean projected winning total is just above or just below 81, but in any case, your favorite nine would cease to be the doormat of the division, much less the league.

Take all this for what's it's worth: slightly more than nothing. Statistical projections can't predict freak injuries or breakout seasons like Jose Bautista's 2010 power surge. Relief pitchers are notoriously unfathomable from one year to the next. Rookies are tough to project because of the apples-oranges comparisons to previous work. Mid-season trades muck around with pre-season prognostications. Finally, normal human psychology can play a big role in a team's 162-game performance (think a floundering squad just giving up, or a young group exploding out of the gate and feeding off that confidence.)

All that is what makes the game so much fun.

Still, food for thought...

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Intriguing Teams of 2011, Part I

Teams that throw bombs on fourth-and-one are exciting, no matter whether they win or lose. That's this year's Milwaukee Brewers, who bet the farm -- literally -- on the 2011 and possibly 2012 seasons.

With Prince Fielder's impending free agency looming next year, GM Doug Melvin decided to swing for the fences now. Cashing in their minor league talent, Milwaukee brought in former Cy Young winner Zack Greinke and former Toronto ace Shaun Marcum to join Yovanni Gallardo and lefty Randy Wolf in a suddenly rejuvenated stating rotation.

They'll need it, because pitching was the soft white underbelly of 2010's 77-85 squad. The Brews combined the second best hitting in baseball with the fourth worst pitching last year. That's a volatile stew. Now the ingredients seem more complimentary.

In fact, it's better than it looks. Marcum sported a shiny 3.64 ERA last year just a year removed from TJ surgery and facing the Red Sox, Rays or Yankees and their DH-fueled lineups every other start. Greinke, coming off his All-World 2009 season didn't get a run of support from Royal teammates until approximately Flag Day. Not only are both likely to be improvements over last year's rotation fillers, they're likely to be improvements over themselves.

On the other hand, nothing's changed in the bullpen except the departure of 103-year-old Trevor Hoffman and his 5.86 ERA, and the seasoning of John Ashton and Kameron Loe. In the fickle world of relief pitching, Milwaukee's pen could swing anywhere from pale ale to stout.

There are some concerns, though. Five players -- Ryan Braun, OF; Rickie Weeks, 2B; Prince Fielder, 1B; Corey Hart, OF; and Casey McGehee, 3B comprised almost the entirety of the offense last year, with 140 of the team's 182 home runs. The rest of the lineup was so invisible that pitcher Gallardo, in 73 plate appearances, was the seventh most productive hitter on the team, after part-time senior citizen, Jim Edmonds. An injury and an off-year in that bunch could tumble the whole deck of cards.

Moreover, while the lineup produced was very Gouda at the plate, it was Swiss Cheese in the field, ranking 29th in the majors. The replacement of Carlos Gomez in center and Alcides Escobar at short with Lorenzo Cain and Yuniesky Betancourt threatens an even stinkier result. This might drive Wisconsin lawmakers to leave the state, but the whiff-happy new pitching staff relies less on its fielders than its predecessors.

In a year when the Reds appear to be poster children for regression, the Cardinals have brought the circus to town and the Astros keep forgetting to fire Ed Wade, the NL Central may be begging for some adult supervision. The Brewers appear poised to provide it. If they don't, it could be a long decade in Wisconsin.

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The Kila Monster

The sabermetric cognoscenti are all agog about something called Kila Ka’aihue, a towering Hawaiian first-baseman/DH for the Kansas City Royals. It could be that he's the closest thing to gush-worthy in KC or it could be that they've tired of waiting for Matt Wieters, the Oriole catcher whose projected rookie batting average looked like a Dean's List GPA.

Baseball Prospectus's projection algorithm rates him the eighth best hitter in the AL in 2011 with a .262/.387/.473 line bolstered by 95 walks and 25 home runs. BP equates Kila with Ryan Howard both at the plate and in the field. They both sport nifty projected "true averages" of .302 (Kila on base more, Howard more power) and sub-nifty fielding projections.

Ka'aihue (pronounced: Good God, even if I knew how to pronounce it, I wouldn't know how to write it), sipped a cup'a Joe with the big club in '08 and retired his rookie status last year with 208 plate appearances. In that time, he did little to light the fires of conjecture, authoring a .224/.314/.398 resume with nine home runs.

These projections are based on the past three years and historic comparisons to those with similar experiences. Kila showed some Triple-A mettle, slugging .285/.424/.521 in 1,110 plate appearances from '08 to '10. There's no guarantee that will translate to the majors, or even to Kansas City, but it's not like there's no correlation between AAA performance and MLB performance. Add in that Kila's turns 27 this year and will be given regular playing time by a franchise not currently in danger of missing a playoff appearance because of one bad personnel decision.

Still, a .302 true average -- a kind of catch-all batting metric put in batting average form -- sounds like a best-case scenario. The Royals and Kila fantasy owners nationwide should be happy if he hits well enough to justify his at-bats and show some future promise. And that sounds like a lot more reasonable expectation. In any case, he'll be someone to keep an eye on in 2011. Maybe we'll even learn how to say his name.

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Not Swinging the Wood

When Brandon Wood shuffles into Angels camp this month, his teammates should have one question: "Why did you bring your gear?" Wood will likely be the very last crumb at the bottom of the MLB cereal box.

Brandon Wood is a right-handed third baseman and occasional shortstop who hits likes a right-handed sofa salesman and occasional beer-leaguer. Selected in the first round of the '03 draft out of Scottsdale, AZ, Wood enters his age 26 season having compiled the kind of hitting resume that made Mario Mendoza famous. 

This is an exaggeration, of course. Wood makes Mendoza look like Honus Wagner.

Take last season, for example. Please. Wood came to the plate 243 times, an indictment of either skipper Mike Scoscia or the Angels' farm system. He delivered six walks and 33 hits, six of them of the extra base variety. He fanned 71 times. His .146/.174/.208 batting line scores out to a 5 OPS+, meaning that Brandon Wood is one-20th the quality of an average MLB hitter, or slightly better than the assistant equipment manager. His -2.0 WARP suggests that Anaheim could have won two more games had they just replaced those 243 at bats with a decent-hitting pitcher.

None of this should have been a shock to Angel fans. In 236 plate appearance during his three previous seasons, Wood stroked a sizzling .191/.220/.312 with seven walks and 73 whiffs, for an OPS+ of 39. 

The Mets' Rey Ordonez can find common cause with Wood, though Ordonez did manage a lifetime .246 batting average. But Ordonez won three Gold Gloves at shortstop. Wood is generally considered roughly an average third baseman and a nearly adequate shortstop if used sparingly.

No problem then, if he continues to suck wind with his back to the catcher. One more season of unmitigated fecklessness will render Brandon Wood's defensive ability utterly irrelevant ... except back in that beer league.

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What Mozeliak Knows

Q. How much is your best player worth to your team if he's hurt all season?

A. Not zero. That wouldn't be so bad. He's worth zero minus whatever you're paying him.

There, in a nutshell, may be the reason the St. Louis Cardinals prefer to have $300 million over the next 10 years than to have the best baseball player in the universe.

In a world where Alex Rodriguez can command $27.5 million/year and Derek Jeter can even extract $18 million/year, Albert Pujols should be able to wrangle a $30 million per diem. Jeter's OPS could fall asleep in the left pants pocket of Pujols' OPS without causing a bulge.

In his first 10 seasons, Prince Albert has added roughly 92 wins to his St. Louis teams. At nine wins a season, Pujols is worth roughly $45 million/year. Moreover, for a borderline playoff franchise like St. Louis, the eight or nine marginal wins positively swells with import. A .500 Cards team without Albert is a  90-win Central division champ with him, adding attendance during the season, revenue from playoff games, spiked merchandise purchases and similar future expenditures.

Yet Cardinal management reportedly offered $25 million for eight years, far below Albert's marginal value, assuming he continues his Superman imitation.

Should we dial up the local looney bin for GM John Mozeliak? Nah, hold the phone. 

When teams balk at inking their own stars, it's worth considering what they know. Mozeliak may be seeing something in Pujols that concerns him, perhaps on the training table. His star has suffered in the past with a balky back, something to be especially concerned about as he ages. 

Mozeliak may also know more about Albert's true chronology than the rest of the league. If his age is understated by a mere two years, Pujols hits age 40 in the seventh year of the deal. The odds of breaking down increase logarithmically in ordinary humans at about age 38.

There's another consideration that has little to do with the player himself. If Mozeliak is realistic about the current squad, he may conclude that his stars-and-scrubs franchise with limited resources won't be able to afford a decent supporting cast after betting the farm on one player. Even a winning bet hamstrings the franchise; a losing bet consigns St. Louis to 10 years of paying the vigorish and watching Houston pass in the standings.

Research shows that free agents re-signed by their incumbent team fare significantly better on average than those lured away. It's worth assuming that management of the home team has good reason for re-upping or bypassing the player in question.

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Happy V.D.

Pitchers and catchers report on Valentine's Day. Either Kennesaw Mountain Landis is a romantic or God is a baseball fan. 

I'm going with the Almighty. Someone get Him a box of chocolates and a catchers mitt.

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The Bonfire of the Inanities

I love the novels of Tom Wolfe. They're unsparing in their insights of modern, nonsensical American life and filled with characters plucked off the streets of Real Life, U.S.A. 

But among the common threads in Wolfe's three novels -- The Bonfire of the Vanities, A Man In Full, I Am Charlotte Simmons -- there is this: he weaves stories out of the minutest details of his characters' lives for 800 pages and then, realizing he is only halfway through the narrative, ties up the story in a neat bow over the last six pages, as if his editor is sitting in his office with a fat check, glancing conspicuously at her watch and drumming her fingers against the desk.

I thought of this while glancing through the sports section today. I noticed that, for some reason, they're still conducting an NBA season. I love basketball and the athleticism of NBA players is frankly beyond my conception, but it's very clear that all the necessary questions have been answered halfway through the season. At this point, they're really playing to decide which mediocre outfits with utterly no hope of making any noise in the playoffs slip into the post-season.

Take a look at the standings. There are three tiers of teams in the NBA: the elite, the mediocre and the godawful. The elite have been established -- Boston, Miami, Orlando, San Antonio, Lakers, Dallas and Atlanta -- and they comprise the complete list of teams with even a one-in-a-thousand chance of winning the championship. The dreadful long ago eliminated themselves and the middle dozen or so either soon will, or will be allowed into the playoffs only as fodder for the teams that matter in a first round that could be eliminated without consequence.

If they ended the season now, the NBA could start its playoffs with all the right teams. It might turn out that some sub-.500 squad now seeded 10th could catch either fire or a string of home games against the Clevelands and the New Jerseys, and snag that last playoff spot. And that today's seventh seed could stage a lottery pick rally, but honestly, what difference would it make?  A home game or two before being eliminated by Lebron or Kobe won't change the overall flavor of such a franchise's season.

Instead, there is the faux drama of seeding, as if it matters whether Boston plays Miami in the third round, or Miami plays Boston. In the meantime, the NBA season drags on and on and on, and then they start eleven rounds of playoffs that take two months and don't end until baseball's picking its All-Star team. It's a ruinous formula and it augurs poorly for baseball's playoff expansion plans.

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Cy-onara

In five years, baseball writers will have the opportunity to consider Billy Wagner's Hall of Fame credentials. My guess is they will find him wanting, particularly having tossed just 900 innings in his 15-year career.

Take a look, though, at his swan song. Has anyone ever exited the game on such an upswing? 

In 69 innings, Billy Wagner allowed just 38 hits while fanning 104. That's domination. His K-rate was second in the NL. His 104/22 strikeout-walk ratio was second in the league. His 7-2, 1.43 with 37 saves was nothing to sneeze at either. He was worth 27 runs -- in just 69 innings! -- to the Braves.

Wagner called it a career at 38. The only practitioner of the twirling arts whom I can remember posting such an incredible valedictory season is Sandy Koufax (27-9, 1.73; 317 K in 323 innings, worth about 100 runs), but his departure, at 30, was transparently premature.

The closer is an over-rated position, but relief masters like Wagner can tilt the contest their team's way. The Braves made a lot of good moves in the off-season, but losing Wagner will be a blow.

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The Stupor Bowl

Quick note on the Stupor Bowl:

I haven't the foggiest idea who will win or what the score will be of Sunday's game. I do know one thing: whatever the analysts say is going to happen, won't.

The guys who can explain dime packages and bubble screens, and who can remember in minute detail third quarter plays from the NFC title game 17 years ago, all own crystal balls made of lead. 

This is particularly true because they've failed to notice that the past isn't prologue. Each week is different. The best rushing team in the league gets held to 47 yards by the 28th best run defense. The quarterback who's passed 223 times without an interception gets picked off twice by a second-string cornerback. And so on.

When the experts tell you that Troy Polamalu or James Starks is the key to the game, or that the contest turns on how Pittsburgh's offensive line protects their quarterback, or on Aaron Rodgers' completion percentage on third down, just giggle. They're predicting the past.

Here's my prediction. Some guy I never heard of will make a key play. An unexpected turnover will loom large. Someone will do something he doesn't ordinarily do -- fumble, get sacked, commit pass interference. Most importantly, the game won't follow form.

None of this is suggested by what's happened before. But that's the point. We're talking about the future.

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