Things To Be Thankful For

If your favorite sport is hockey or basketball, I shed a tear for you. Your top professional leagues are turkeys. Baseball fans have much for which to give thanks:

• God's blessing on 90 feet. Not one foot more or less.
• No clock to kill. A team can never win by quitting before the game ends.
• Ever fresh enlightenment. Thank you Bill James, Rob Neyer, Joe Sheehan, Keith Law, Jay Jaffe, Baseball Prospectus, Baseball Analysts, Baseball Think Factory, Baseball Reference and many others. Maybe most of all, the sweet swing of Joe Poz.
• Green waves of grass, dirt diamonds with a bump in the middle like a screw top, stirrup socks, giant scoreboards with real time scores, cityscapes beyond the outfield walls.
• The Designated Hitter. Anything that prevents pitching changes is a good thing.
• St. Louis Cardinals, San Francisco Giants, NY Yankees, Philadelphia Phillies, Boston Red Sox, (St. Louis Cardinals) Chicago White Sox, (Boston Red Sox), Florida Marlins, Anaheim Angels, Arizona Diamondbacks. Nine teams have won the last 11 World Series. 
• Albert Pujols, this generation's Stan Musial. 
• The Hot Stove League. It keeps us warm through the long, cold winter.
• The Green Monster; the Monuments; Eutaw Street, Boog's BBQ and the warehouse; the rightfield pool; ivy; retractable roofs; and other distinct elements that make each stadium unique.
• A three-two count with the bases loaded and two outs in a one-run game.
• The people who bring the games to life for us. Especially Vin Scully, John Sciambi, Jon Miller, Dave Campbell, Bob Uecker, Gary Cohen, Charlie Steiner, Sean McDonough. 
• The sounds: of bat on ball, of ball in mitt. "Whomp!"  Of vendors. "Hat dawg!" Of the crowd.
• We're never more than 150 days from big league games.
• Best of all: sitting in the ballpark, watching the game, with my dad.

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Woe Unto He Who Signs the Best Free-Agent Pitcher

The Yankees have wisely locked up CC Sabathia through 2018 for the GDP of Cote D'ivoire, but woe unto the franchise that wins the C.J. Wilson sweepstakes.

It's a thin market for quality starters this winter, leaving the Rangers' worm-killing ground ball specialist as the prize mound offering. The market appears poised to present the 31-year-old lefty with something like a six-year contract worth in the vicinity of $90 million. This could work out well. The roulette ball could land on 17. Neither is the way to bet.

First, let's review recent large, long-term contracts: CC Sabathia ($161 million), Johan Santana ($137.5 million), Barry Zito ($126 million), Mike Hampton ($121 million), Cliff Lee ($120 million), Kevin Brown ($105 million), Carlos Zambrano ($91.5 million), Mike Mussina ($88.5 million), John Lackey and A.J. Burnett ($82.5 million). Smell anything there?

That's 10 mega-contracts with two successes (Mussina and Sabathia's first contract with NY) and one that remains to be seen (Lee). All but one of the remaining deals face-planted like a drunken klutz. (That Santana has returned just 14.4 wins against replacement over the first four years of his Mets tenure at the cost of $78 million is due entirely to missing 45 starts over the last three years. He's owed at least $55.5 million over the next two years, which will really determine the efficacy of his signing.)

With the exception of Burnett, all the pitchers above had long track records of ace-level performance. Their new teams celebrated their contract negotiating "victory." D'Oh!

C.J. Wilson does not have a long track record of success; indeed, he has just two years as a starter on his resume. He has impressively delivered nearly 10 wins against replacement in those two seasons while toiling 200+ innings. His ERAs of 3.35 and 2.94 are all the more impressive coming in a hitter's park. On the other hand, he delivered up-and-down performances as a reliever in the five seasons prior.

Wilson is also older than most of the pitchers named above. A six-year deal brings him to age 36. Wilson's age worries me less -- what with just 708 career innings -- than the increased uncertainty attendant to each added year of a contract. A $90 million outlay requires 20 wins above replacement to pay off. That's three MVP-level seasons, four or five All Star-level seasons or six very good seasons of work, a taller order than Wilson is likely to measure up to.

There's one more pretty serious demerit on Wilson's balance sheet: the Rangers don't appear particularly eager to sign him to a market deal. Research shows that teams fare better when they re-sign incumbent free agents, presumably because they know more about the labor being offered. That the Rangers are skeptical should signal to other clubs that a similar attitude is in order.

Nolan Ryan and Braindrizzling seem to agree: caveat emptor on C.J. Wilson.

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Taking A Page From MLB

Dear Congress,

You probably haven't paid too much attention to Major League Baseball recently. Denied the opportunity to grandstand on steroid use (oh, the children!), you've been busy with other things, like failing to fix Social Security. And failing to fix Medicaid. And Medicare. And the budget deficit and the debt and every other problem before you.

You might want to check in with the National Pastime again. See, the Republicans and Democrats of baseball -- owners and players -- have been experimenting with a novel formula. They've been cooperating. I mean with each other. They've decided that the good of the game is more important than which side wins in a false dichotomy showdown.

This year, without a speck of fanfare, the two side inked a five-year deal that will keep the industry humming like a beehive. Players agreed to be HGH-tested and to play in the All-Star game unless truly injured. The owners agreed to improve safety measures and to further level the playing field among teams. They -- choke -- compromised.

As a constituent of the game, I didn't get everything I want. The HGH testing won't occur during the season. The revenue sharing is still sub-optimal. The extra playoffs violate my religion. But on balance, it's an agreement everyone can live with. No animals were harmed in the creation of this compact. (Well, actually, the gloves are leather...)

There may be crackpots on both sides bellyaching about the deal. Fringe nutcases on the owners side who want to hold out for a salary cap. Left-wing loonies in uniform who believe their bodily fluids are inviolable. But those people have been sufficiently sidelined to achieve five more years of peace and prosperity.

Which brings us back to you, Congress. You've been acting like the NBA, what with the ideologues on both sides ruling the day. See where that's gotten us? Your "super" committee has delivered the equivalent of a lockout and cancellation of all games. 

Maybe you'd like to tinker with the baseball formula. Maybe you'd like to mix together some of the good ideas on one side (pay our bills!) with some of the good ideas on the other (stay out of unnecessary wars!) and find some accommodation that we can all live with.

Well, maybe we can't all live with it. The fringe nutcases and the left-wing loonies will have to be sacrificed, like Manny was. The Tea Party Being the Tea Party. Occupy Sanity. For the non-Mannys among us, five years of peace and prosperity would be a good thing. C'mon Congress, take a page from Commissioner Bud and Executive Director Michael Weiner. 

Less NBA; more MLB!

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Why I Love the BCS

I'm the guy. The one guy in America who loves the BCS. The one guy who thinks it's fair and that it works and that it's better than whatever system you're proposing.

And the evidence is all around you. 

Right now, LSU is undefeated. One of its vanquished, Alabama, sits in second place, awaiting an LSU stumble. The Tigers have yet to defeat #3 Arkansas and #13 Georgia to remain in the title hunt. (This is irrational, of course. The voters have no understanding of the concept of a game-and-a-half lead. LSU should be free to lose one of its games and remain #1, since it would have the same number of losses as its closest competitors, but against a more impressive schedule. But that's a fight for another day.)

In other words, despite slaying every foe that's challenged them, including two top 10 opponents, the Tigers are still in must-win mode. Why? Because the BCS is just a two-team playoff.

Suppose we had an eight-team playoff instead -- as many BCS-haters demand. Where would the intrigue be now? LSU, Alabama, Arkansas, Oregon, Stanford and Boise State would have locked up spots in the playoff. The LSU-Arkansas tussle (and the LSU-Alabama showdown before it) would be irrelevant. Virginia Tech and Oklahoma State wins this weekend would pretty much cement the field. You could attempt to make a desultory case for undefeated Houston (signature win: a four-point home decision over UCLA) ahead of Oregon, but that's at least a four-beer argument. ZZZzzzzz.

The uncertainty and excitement fomented by a two-team playoff based on the whims of voters is vastly more fun. And it trickles down. I can tell you firsthand that the prospect of the home state Clemson Tigers being one ACC win from the Orange Bowl is mouth-watering here in South Cackalacky. (Don't worry: they'll Clemson it up.) I'm sure the possibility of BCS bowl appearances for traditional also-rans like Virginia, Wisconsin, Michigan State, Penn State, Boise State, Stanford and Oklahoma State are thrilling the hometown crowds.

So hooray for the BCS, the ignorant voters, the mis-programmed computers, the lack of head-to-head action. When every regular season game feels like a playoff, you've got the right formula.

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Pirates Get Closer to Playoffs

Think back to the searing excitement of the Dayton play-in games that blast off the NCAA basketball tournament. Remember how you wore out the edge of your seat awaiting the winner of the Northern Southeast Idaho Ag & Tech-Mildred P. McGillicutty game.

Great news! Baseball has just recreated the same heart-stopping sudden death format for its playoffs.

Starting next year, another Wild Card team will be added, so that after 162 games, a one-game tournament will determine who goes on to face a division-winner in the league division series.

The good news is that failing to win a division will have its consequences.

The bad news is that a yet-lesser team gets into the playoffs. The bad news is that the postseason gets yet another day longer. The bad news is that the Yankees and Red Sox become that much more likely to earn a berth every year. The bad news is that a team with a seven-game Wild Card edge can be ousted from contention by a vastly inferior opponent after one game. The bad news is that the more common a postseason berth, the less valued. The bad news is that this makes the baseball playoffs even less interesting and the regular season even less urgent.

The bad news is that on balance, this is bad news.

Halladay Cheer for Clayton Kershaw

D'Oh! The baseball writers have already crowned their NL pitcher of the year, tabbing Clayton Kershaw over Roy Halladay. It's never too late to critique it.

In a nutshell, this is a two-horse race and it's a photo finish. The two men pitched the same number of innings. Halladay relinquished two more earned runs, one run fewer overall. They had similar records, though a 12-1,1.31 second half gave Kershaw the shinier numbers. Halladay walked 54% fewer batters; Kershaw whiffed 13% more. Kerhsaw allowed one less baserunner every two games.

I can't fault anyone for giving Kershaw the trophy, though I would have selected Halladay. Chavez Ravine is a Cy Young machine, and Kershaw gets to pitch regularly against the weenie bats of San Francisco and San Diego. On the other hand, the 23-year-old southpaw went mano-a-mano with Tim Lincecum four times and beat him 2-1 in three of them -- and 1-0 once.

Halladay greetings might include a BABIP reference, with Kershaw's an unusually low .274. (Halladay's was a more typical .305.) But the .274 mark is par for the course with Kershaw, and can't be chalked up just to chance.

So take your pick. A majority of the BBWAA picked Kershaw; I'd pick Halladay; but either way, you've got a worthy winner.

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Least Valuable Player Is A Dunn Deal

In the midst of the discussion of MLB's best, a brief respite is in order to consider the worst player in the game in 2011.

In one sense, it's a short discussion. Hanging on the noose of a four-year, $56 million contract, the White Sox had no choice but to continue playing Adam Dunn in the hope that he could rediscover some semblance of the player who boomed 38 or more big flies and posted .850+ OPS in each of the past seven seasons. 

Evidently, Dunn was hiding better than they thought. Despite batting .159 with 11 home runs, Dunn continued to collect plate appearances -- 496 in all. He cost the Sox 22 runs at the plate compared to a replacement player, and despite DHing most of the season, subtracted another couple of runs in the field. His .159/.292/.277 reflects only one positive accomplishment -- the ability to coax 75 walks. Alas, the guy runs like molasses going uphill.

Dunn was beyond awful, of course, and shockingly so, but much of his wretchedness lies in his continued presence in the batting order.

For pure, unadulterated stinkbomb, there's Tampa first-sacker Dan Johnson. In 90 plate appearances, Johnson accumulated seven singles, six walks, two home runs and a double, and got himself plunked once (woo-hoo!). He made 74 outs. His slash stats are not for the eyes of young children or those with pacemakers: .119/.187/.202, costing the Rays nearly 10 runs in parts of just 31 games.

In the world of "what-have-you-done-for-me-lately," Johnson will go down as a . . . hero. Johnson's last at-bat erased a season of wanton dreadfulness. Down 7-6 in the ninth inning of Game 162, Johnson crashed a two-out, two-strike pitch from NYY reliever Corey Wade into the foul pole to keep Tampa's season alive. They won in the 12th to slip into the playoffs.

Rays fans will recall Johnson fondly, but in a very real sense, he was the worst player in the majors this year.

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NL MVP: Like Pizza for Thanksgiving

I have two words for you on the NL MVP race: context matters. 

If it didn't, the 2011 resumes of Matt Kemp and Ryan Braun would be nearly indistinguishable. Consider them side by side:

Braun: .332/.397/.597, 33 homers and 33 of 39 steals. 

Kemp: .324/.399/.586, 39 homers and 40 of 51 steals.

Now consider the context:

1. Braun plays in a neutral park for hitting. Kemp plays in a ravine.
2. Braun is cocooned in the batting order in front of the #3 MVP candidate, Prince Fielder (.981 OPS) and slugger Corey Hart (.868 OPS), and behind Rickie Weeks  (.818). Kemp swims alone in a vast ocean. There's not another .800 OPS wearing blue, and besides Andre Ethier, no one's even close.

In context, Kemp was a slightly better offensive force in 2011. That might not be enough for some voters to compensate for Braun's role as best player on a division-winning team. But here are two more words:

Defense matters.

Here's two more:

A lot.

Matt Kemp is a good fielder in the most critical outfield position, centerfield. Ryan Braun is not just a butcher, but a baker and candlestick maker in left field -- or wherever the Brews attempt to hide him. He reminds me of a woman on my co-ed softball team named Judy K. We called her Special K and played her behind the right fielder in an attempt to make her invisible. It wasn't necessary -- whenever the ball flew her way she vacated the space.

So Matt Kemp and Ryan Braun were both timed at 10 seconds in their leg of the 4x100-meter dash, but Kemp had to cover an extra five meters into a headwind and never drops the baton. It's kind of a chasm. Baseball Reference, which is actually pretty kind to Braun defensively, says Kemp was worth 10 wins compared to a replacement player; Braun was worth 7.7 wins. Two-point-three wins is a huge difference -- just ask the Braves and Red Sox. It surpasses the entire value of the Cubs' Carlos Pena, who pounded 28 jacks and had an .819 OPS.

Matt Kemp is the NL MVP regardless of how middling was the team around him or that he led the NL in RBIs. Braun, Fielder, Jose Reyes and Troy Tulowitzki all merit consideration -- in the same way that pizza merits consideration on Thanksgiving. It's a delicious choice generally speaking, but not in this case.
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Fifty Million Cheese Steaks

The stathead universe is all atwitter (in some cases literally) over Ruben Amaro's latest contract monstrosity. The Phillies GM has thrown 50 million cheese steaks at Jonathan Papelbon for four years of closing. 

Clearly, this kind of fiscal frivolity is a sign of the apocalypse. No relief pitcher is "worth" $50 million for pitching 60 innings-a-year, even 60 high leverage innings. Moreover, there is no more fickle bird than the closer. The Phillies know this all too well, having spotted Brad Lidge $38 million for three years during a stellar 2008 season only to watch him disassemble in '09 and '10. Over the contract's three years, Lidge rewarded the Phillies with a 1-11, 5.08 RA and 59 saves in 124 innings, with four trips to the DL as a special bonus.

Papelbon has been the second or third best closer in the majors over the last five years (16-16, 1.88 RA and 184 saves in 268 innings, plus a sterling 5.3 K/BB ratio). He's 31, the same age at which Lidge began his figurative journey south, but a different kind of pitcher who can withstand losing a tick or two on his fastball without heinous damage.

The larger point is that the Phils are all in for 2012 and maybe 2013. There's no point in crashing one of baseball's all-time great starting staffs on the shoals of Antonio Bastardo closing. (Man, that name is the gift that keeps on giving.) Inasmuch as every team over-values closers, the market has been set around where the Phils paid, so if they want a great closer, that's what it takes.

Could someone else -- say the A's -- produce a nearly-equal closer out of smoke for a-tenth of the price? Sure, but the Phils don't want the best value. They want the best player. They want a World Championship. That's why they eschewed a $44 million deal with Ryan Madson, the incumbent Philadelphia closer.

That's what separates the big revenue teams from the small ones. Small revenue teams set a spending limit and recognize that there's an opportunity cost to each acquisition. Teams like NYY, Boston and Philly pay what it costs to assemble the best club. And that's what Rueben Amaro is trying to do.

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AL MVP: Pay No Attention to Runs Scored and RBIs

One of the meaty questions entering the 2011 season was how much of his 2010 slugging value Jose Bautista could maintain. The 31-year-old Dominican went from '02 Hyundai to '11 Lexus in his seventh Major League season, pacing the majors with 54 home runs and leaving the Blue Jays to wonder whether a bucket of bolts or a racing car would return for the following year.

Bautista answered that by losing 11 home runs, 21 RBIs . . . and playing even better. He again led the circuit with 43 dingers, raised his batting average 45 points to .305, reached safely a Bondsian 44.7% of the time and terrified the opposition into a league-leading 24 intentional walks. His MLB-tops 1.055 OPS was impressive even for a right-fielder, but Bautista also spotted up at his natural position -- third base -- for 25 games.

Some will cluck at the Blue Jays' win total and Bautista's relatively subdued R and RBI totals (105 and 103), but all three depend on teammates. Bautista knocked himself in more times than anyone else, and he contributed no less to his team's pitching efforts (Toronto was 25th in the majors) than any other everyday player on the MVP ballot. Baseball Reference says Joey Bats provided 8.1 offensive wins, decent defense, and some lineup flexibility because of his aptitude at two positions.

The only real knock against Bautista is that he committed all his mayhem in the first half, tapping out just 12 home runs and a .442 SLG in the final 81 games.

Bautista's top competitor with the bat is Miguel Cabrera. Miggy led the league in hitting (.344) and OBP (.448), and posted a second-best OPS of 1.033, but had all the mobility of a beanbag chair on the bases and at the least-important defensive position. Tie goes to the good-glove third baseman, and it's not even a tie. Baseball Reference says Cabrera's within half a win of offensive value to Bautista, but drops another win behind when considering defense.

Boston's Jacoby Ellsbury is also worth mentioning. After an injury-riddled 2010 and deep concerns about his centerfield defense, the 27-year-old Oregonian nearly doubled his career totals in doubles and RBI and smashed 32 home runs, 12 more than in his previous four years combined. His .321/.376/.552 can't hold a candle to the above-mentioned, but at his position, Ellsbury was nearly as irreplaceable. Nevertheless, even accounting for his position and his refined glovework (much better routes on flyballs), Ellsbury is an honorable mention candidate.

(Ironically, Ellsbury's best season by far came at the price of his greatest gift. After swiping 136 bases in 3+ seasons and failing just 24 times, an 85% success rate, his steals total dropped in 2011 to 39 at a 72% rate.)

Two other candidates will be named by the ignorenti. Curtis Granderson posted gaudy runs scored and RBI totals thanks to a stacked Yankee lineup, and his team won the division. He plays a fair center field too. But at .262/.364/.552, the Grandy Man might not even be the MVP of his team (that honor might belong to Robby Cano).

Then there's the elephant in the room: Justin Verlander. I've already paid homage to the AL King of the Hill, but pitchers have their own award and comparing them to everyday players is an apples-to-giraffes enterprise. That explains why the seamheads can't get their stories straight on the Bautista-Verlander matchup: Baseball Reference says it's a tossup; Baseball Prospectus rates Bautista more than two wins better. 

There's another player who merits mention, even though he's not an MVP candidate. The World Series brought Mike Napoli into national focus, but he smacked the ball around all season.  In just 113 games, the C/1B/DH/ pounded 25 doubles and 30 homers, batted .320 and posted a 1.045 OPS. He presented himself at the plate just 432 times, but still managed to accrue six wins of value. He accomplished all this pillowed in the comfort of the Rangers' lineup and The Ballpark in Arlington, so take it all with a grain of salt, but a full season of that would have inserted him into the MVP discussion.

Bottom line: give the Cy to Verlander and the MVP to Bautista and all's right with the American League.

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Royals Win First of the Year

The Kansas City Royals and San Francisco Giants consummated a trade this week in which, not withstanding the relocation of a minor leaguer, each relinquished and received the exact same thing. But the Royals won the trade.

KC sent centerfielder Melky Cabrera to the Bay for fireballer Jonathan Sanchez. Both players enter their walk years. Each will be easily replaced by the club that sent him packing -- Cabrera by a ripe prospect and Sanchez by a stacked rotation. Each has mad skills but frustrated managers.

Cabrera, at 27, comes off his best year thanks mostly to a .305 batting average. Sanchez, 29 comes off another confounding season in which his high heat was too high nearly as often as it was too hot. Each has been a below average performer most of his career, but has shown one season's flash of excellence.

Here's the difference: hitters tend to be what they are, only more so as they reach their late 20s/early 30s. With pitchers, the career arc is so much less predictable. Sanchez is more likely to flame out than Cabrera, but he's also more likely to find himself and hurl KC up the ladder to mediocrity. Which would you rather have: a fourth outfielder (on a team of fourth outfielders) who's two clicks above replacement level or a pitcher who's equally likely to be tossed mid-season as to mow down batters Cy Young-style?

That's not to say that SF GM Brian Sabean shouldn't have made the deal. He got something of non-zero value for an expendable part. But his KC counterpart, Dayton Moore, lived up to his surname.

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In the Land of Ver, the Three-Armed Man is Runner-up

It will come as no surprise to you, nor even to the nation's baseball writers association, that Justin Verlander was the best pitcher in the American League this year.

Verlander pitched more innings, won more games, had a better winning percentage, threw more quality starts, had a lower ERA, struck out more batters, had a better K/BB ratio, allowed a lower WHIP, produced a higher VORP & WARP, contributed more good sound bites and helped more little old ladies across the street than any other Junior Circuit hurler. According to Baseball Reference, Verlander was worth 30% more to the Tigers (8.6 wins against replacement) than the league's next best pitcher (Jered Weaver) was to the Angels (6.6 WARP).

The baseball writers could not have an easier choice unless Michele Bachmann squares off against my cat for president. (Tater in '12!)

This yawning chasm is no affront to Weaver. A marvelous performer with an 82-47, 3.31 lifetime line for the Halos, Weaver delivered 58% better results than league average this year, accumulating an 18-8, 2.41 line. He whiffed three-and-a-half times as many batters as he walked, and held opponents to seven hits per game. 

It's just that in the land of Ver, that's the warm-up act. The Tiger righty went 25-4, 2.40, whiffed nearly four-and-a-half times as many batters as he walked and held opponents to six hits per game. He delivered 70% better results than league average.

So let's get this one out of the way first, because the AL Cy Young vote is more old-style Libyan than new style. The result is entirely predictable and the winner will get between 99% and 100% of the vote.

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If A Series Goes Extras and the TV is Off . . .

The 2011 World Series was one for the ages. 

At least that's what everyone tells me. Most of the drama happened after my bedtime.

That's probably why I was such a humbugger when it ended. When I hit the sack after the 7th inning of Game Six, the Rangers were up 7-4. I never saw the tying fireworks. Or the overtime heroics. Or the winning homer. Never heard Joe Buck's call for the ages.

Hearing about it later is no substitute. I didn't experience the drama. I went to work the next day rested, instead.

Absent that one night, STL-TEX isn't even noteworthy, much less among the great ones. 1960: Maz's home run. 1967: Gibson over the Red Sox, 1968: Lolich and the Tigers beat Gibson. 1975: Fisk's home run not enough. 1979: We Are Family comes back from 3-1. 1986: the Mets storm back. 1991: A 10-inning, 1-0 Game Seven caps the greatest World Series of all time. 2001: D-backs dramatically foil NY's 9/11 victory. (The great ones of the first 55 years escape my worldview.) Since so many of us didn't see the Game Six pyrotechnics, it really didn't feel all that special. Wait, sounds like humbugging again.

On the other hand, no manager has produced the post-Series drama Tony LaRussa uncorked this year. Good for him. His ticket to Cooperstown has 2016 written on it.

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On the Ep Swing

Dear, dear benighted Cub fans. Your ship has indeed come in. But don't expect the riches to disembark just yet.

Newly-hired team president Theo Epstein and his minions are the real deal. Freed from the shackles of penury, Jed Hoyer will provide a bonanza to Chicago. Whoever is hired, the new manager will share the winning philosophy that the Epstein team plants at Wrigley. Brains, patience and money are a potent combination and they are in abundance on the North side.

The challenge facing them, besides 29 other teams intent on success at their expense, is the current  team composition. Epstein takes over a franchise laden with useless baggage that can't be thrown overboard -- at least not at a dear cost. Previous owners and management signed outrageous deals with cartoon characters whose actual baseball value is nil or less.

Take Alfonso Soriano. Please. The previous Cub administration took one look at his speed and power, and his one good year in Washington (.277/.351/.560 with 41 of 58 steals and improved outfield defense) and bestowed upon him an eight-year $133 million contract that he wasn't worth even if paid in Monopoly money. That deal has $54 million left as Soriano enters his baseball dotage. He hasn't been a factor on the basepaths in three years, plays the outfield as if he's searching for a lost contact lens and has a .308 on-base percentage over the last three seasons. For their $57 million, the Cubs have gotten two wins over a replacement player total since 2009. And they're in for worse.

Soriano is emblematic of the Cubs' problem. Only two of their 2011 starters took more walks than Ironside. Their team on-base percentage was a meager .314, despite playing in the (hitter-) friendly confines. For $39 million, the Cubs got .262/.323/.418 out of their outfield trio of Soriano, Marlon Byrd and Kosuke Fukudome. (They swapped Fuku to Cleveland for a pair of farmhands in July.) The new management team may preach patience at the plate, but 36-year-olds who earn 27 free passes in 500 at-bats aren't suddenly morphing into Jason Giambi.

For another $32+ million, Ryan Dempster and Carlos Zambrano delivered a combined ERA 20% worse than league average, plus a combined TTA (temper tantrums per annum) of 4.0. (No thanks to Dempster on that one.)

The Cubs are stuck with all of the above-mentioned, except Fuku, and will either lose their best player, Aramis Ramirez, to free agency, or empty the bank to keep him. First-baseman Carlos Pena's contract has also expired, conveniently paving the way for a big free agent signing splash. Epstein starts the Hot Stove season with a $93 million payroll before half the roster is filled. And without Fukudome, Ramirez and Pena, only two of the 11 remaining batters with 100 plate appearances had OBPs above .325, and none is above .350.

So the OBP problem will not be solved overnight. The flotsam and jetsam will take at least a year to clear out. Unless Big Z stands for Zoloft, he's going to continue to plague the clubhouse. And no matter the skipper, an organizational transformation takes more than one year. The immediate forecast is bleak, but have no doubt, the ship of state finally has a working navigation system and a captain and crew who know which way to steer.
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Bollocks to Moneyball

Upon his retirement, Tony LaRussa, a successful innovator and sure-fire Hall of Famer, "ridiculed 'Moneyball' and its emphasis on statistics over human scouting and observation" according to the Associated Press.

Critics have smiled on Moneyball, the movie, but LaRussa has described why I was uneasy about the book and have no plans to see the film.

Moneyball, the book, cast statheads as cowboys and scouts as Indians (feather, not dot or Cleveland varieties). The analogy is apt because the relationships are far more messy and complicated. Scouts, like seamheads, are necessary but insufficient for the proper functioning of a Major League baseball franchise.

The real debate was never between stats and scouts, it was between useful stats and misleading stats. That's why the St. Louis Cardinals employ number-crunchers, just as every MLB team does, to help reveal some of the game's hidden insights. Over the years, new analysis has exploded long-held myths, including Larussa's signature creation, the folly of saving your best reliever for ninth-inning mop-up when you could employ him to put out fires in other innings. Maybe that's why LaRussa is sore.

Or maybe he's sick of the false dichotomy. LaRussa knows better than Bill James' personal guru how Matt Holliday feels today or whether Chris Carpenter can go on short rest or if John Jay can be relied on to drop a bunt. Team number crunchers have a better handle on the general efficacy of a bunt in a given situation.

In fact, LaRussa has been most renowned for his pitching match-ups, a strategy fully infused with both scouting and stats. The guy with the binoculars on LaRussa's left shoulder whispers that the opposing batter hates the high heat thrown by the righty in the pen. The SABR dude on his right shoulder notes that the batter has a .650 OPS against southpaws in day games. LaRussa's particular genius was to be open to surprising information, synthesize it and act on it.

Moneyball correctly cast Billy Beane and his band of mavericks as explorers who had found new worlds and were benefiting from the small competitive advantages they conveyed. There is absolutely no question that statistical research can unlock mysteries and disprove old customs in the game, though those advantages are becoming more nuanced and less impactful as the practice has become widespread. Likewise, there's no doubt that observation can reveal nuances unnoticed by the statistics. But unlike stats, observation can be corrupted by human psychology -- things like confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance -- that has no power over the null hypothesis or a two-tailed test.

Here's a World Series example of the two at work: Mid-year, this blog noted the amazing performance of young Ranger starter Alexi Ogando, who twirled a 9-3, 2.92 line with a .591 OPS-against. Spectacular, but with a .241 BABIP and some other component statistics pointing the wrong way, I suggested a decline was in order. Furthermore, Ogando had reached his professional career high for innings by July. The Rangers  noted this, not to mention his 4-5, 4.48 performance in the second half, and downgraded him to the pen, where innings aren't so readily available.

A statmonger could guess that Ogando was gassed. I'm betting that keen observers like LaRussa and his staff could see it. In any case, the Cards feasted on Ogando for 14 baserunners and four runs in only seven outs. (To be fair, he was great in 9.2 innings of AL playoff service.)

The bottom line is that teams fare best when statisticians and scouts respect and rely on each other for confirmation of what they believe they've found. It's time to forget the false dichotomy perpetrated by Moneyball and just accept stats and scouts for what they are. 

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Cardinal Sins

A riveting World Series, no doubt. So why does it seem like such an anti-climax?

The postseason certainly didn't determine the best team in baseball: the Cards were outplayed over 162 games by three other teams in the National League alone, and by another five (you could argue six or seven in the superior AL) on the other side of the standings. What they won was the playoff lottery, where eight good teams start almost completely from scratch (the best teams do get a minuscule home field edge, until the championship) playing a tournament that rewards them for different strengths than the regular season through which they qualified.

The unintended consequence of this expanded playoff system is a serious dilution of the once-sacrosanct 162-game schedule. With two excellent months out of seven, St. Louis qualified for the tournament and then survived it. Conversely, six months of dominance in New York, Philadelphia, Milwaukee and Dallas disappeared in puffs of playoff series smoke.

Given the current structure of baseball finances combined with the current playoff format, the World Series offers us three options, two of them unsatisfying:

1. Teams with considerable financial advantages buy the best players and march to the dogpile. Blecch.

2. Uninspiring outfits that stand atop the lowest division pile, or squeak in as Wild Card after-thoughts, put it together for three weeks and wear the crown. Blecch.

3. Franchises struggling with conflicting financial priorities like everyone else produce deserving squads that rise to the top and claim the championship. Yay.

For the second time in five years, Tony LaRussa's group planted its flag in option two and left an empty feeling in the rest of us. Only twice in those five years (Phils and Giants) has MLB finished its long half-year ride with a champion that could claim a)superiority and b)accomplishment unstained by a playing field tilting in its favor.

That's not to say we didn't learn some things in this series. We learned that Ron Washington, is a wonderful guy and excellent motivator who enjoys the respect of his players. We also learned that the in-game decision-making required in a World Series are beyond his capability, at least as currently constituted. Wash left a series of gaffes on the field that could have cost his team. He played his MVP at 50% effectiveness (.241/.258/.414 with limited mobility on the bases and in the field), which simply wasn't sufficient. He batted his best hitter seventh (Mike Napoli, .375/.500/.813), costing him at-bats during the series. He generally failed to take advantage of Lance Berkman's extreme platoon splits (1.010 OPS vs. righties; .744 vs. lefties), and he underutilized super-reliever Mike Adams, who'd treated MLB hitters of both leagues like his playthings over the past two years prior to the World Series. 

Washington's mismanagement rose to the fore in Games Six and Seven (or maybe that's when I noticed them.) As I've already documented, the pivotal moment in Game Six passed him by without notice because it arrived in the fifth inning. The rest of that evening's heroics could have thus been avoided. He left Nelson Cruz in the field in the ninth and was rewarded with Cruz's imitation of a wounded stork on the dramatic Freese "triple" that tied the score. In Game 7 he left Matt Harrison in well after his ineffectiveness had been duly demonstrated, though it's not as if his relievers acquitted themselves any better. 

In all, defense and relief pitching -- the most unheralded parts of the game -- carried the Cardinals to victory. Hail to them, but woe is our game, particularly if they add yet more less-deserving teams to the playoff stew.

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Waiting for Godot to Bat

Game Six and Ron Washington succumbed to closer fever, albeit in another form.

In the top of the fifth, Wash sent starter Colby Lewis to the plate with a bat in his hand. Lewis's middling pitching performance (three runs due to ragged defense on two hits in four innings) had been enough to secure a 4-3 lead when his turn in the order came up.

At that point, with two days' rest and no more than one game remaining, Wash eschewed a pinch hitter, saving him for a key situation. The problem is, he was looking at the key situation.

It was only the fifth inning, but the bases were loaded with two outs in a one-run game. Lewis, who bunted into a double play his first time up, gave the Rangers virtually no chance of extending their lead. Possible pinch hitter, Yorvit Torrealba, hit .273/.306/.399 this year, vastly improving the odds of Texas busting the game open. The moment Ron Washington planned to wait for was staring him in the face and he missed it.

Of course, hitting for the pitcher would  end Colby Lewis's night prematurely and force Washington to seek bullpen help. So? The pen would never be in better shape. After two days off, only tomorrow's starter, Matt Harrison, would be unavailable.

As I write this, it's still 4-3 in the middle innings. But if the Cardinals go ahead, Washington's decision is going to loom very large. He passed up a chance to put the game out of reach in favor of another inning or two from a starter whose performance was easily fungible.

Why "the closer effect?" Because managers are so hidebound about using their closers only in the ninth, they blow opportunities to shut down the opposition when the game is actually on the line. Though not the same, this mistake was analogous and could conceivably cost the Rangers the championship.
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Thank You Joe Torre

Even if it had never rained yesterday, and St. Louis had suddenly baked to 70 degrees, the commissioner made the right move to postpone Game Six of the World Series.

Adding a day to the season is not the worst case scenario; it's a minor inconvenience. The worst case scenario is playing a potential deciding game of the championship in weather more befitting penguins than Cardinals. (Or maybe that's "Penguins," since it's one Pittsburgh team that does occasionally play for titles.)

Once a game starts, postponing it is a major disruption. First, some of the game gets played in miserable conditions. Second, it has to be delayed for an hour or two before it gets called, leaving fans in attendance stuck waiting and fans watching on TV scratching their heads. Resuming the game means it doesn't end until the gloaming, if at all. Temperatures have not generally been known to pick such an occasion to spring back to the comfort zone.

Calling the game hours in advance gave everyone a chance to move on with their lives for one day. On Thursday, we'll return to putting the world on hold so we can attend to our holy ritual. Thank you Joe Torre and Bud Selig.

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Winning Game Eight Won't Help

Here we go again. With the Cardinals' win in Game One and then Game Three of the World Series, reporters universally rolled out their time-honored and utterly fatuous analysis of how game wins affect Series victory.

Yes we know, the Game One winner ends the season in a dogpile most of the time. Ditto for the Game Three victor. As you already know if you visit this space, the winner of any game in the Series more often takes home the title.

The simple truth is that teams that win the World Series win most of the games. Duh. If the eventual champs sweep, they win every game. (Duh 2.) If they need six games to secure the title, they still win two-thirds of the contests. (Still duh.)

So yeah, the winner of Game Anything wins most of the time. Consider this: the Game Seven victor takes the Commissioner's Trophy 100% of the time. The statement is so patently obvious that analysts refrain from mentioning it for fear of looking like morons. But they appear unable to exercise similar self-control (actually, it's similar insight they lack) with the other games.

Why didn't we hear this about Game Two? Because the Rangers tied the Series, so there didn't seem to be an advantage.

Here's the point: this is a wholly retrospective analysis, not predictive in the least. That the Cardinals won Game Three doesn't suggest they'll win the Series; teams that won the Series in previous years generally won Game Three. And Four and Five and Six.

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World Series Scouts and Stats

I hope the fundamentalist seamheads have been watching the playoffs and World Series. The results have been the perfect elixir for SABR  arrogance. At the same time, every game watched by ordinary fans further burnishes sabermetric credentials.

For one thing, several of the series have been almost entirely determined by defense. One could make a good case -- to which I would subscribe -- that the key difference in the NLCS was defensive. The Brewers were sloppy and sluggish in the field; the Cardinals were crisp. Although little of that was captured in the ordinary defensive statistics, not much more could be with the newest wave of defensive measurements, which really require large samples to mean anything.

In the World Series, the winner of each one-run game was the superior defensive squad. In Game One, Albert Pujols and Chris Carpenter took hits away from Ranger batters while Nelson Cruz slid in exactly the worst way and allowed the winning hit to drop. By dropping to the ground legs first he put his glove the longest distance from the ball and failed to catch it. Had he dived, or perhaps even just reached down, he would have at least reached the ball.

In Game Two, the double play combo of Ian Kinsler and Elvis Andrus slickly quenched a couple of Cardinal rallies before the Rangers finally put their own shrimp on the barbie, with help from Prince Albert's mild mishandling of an outfield throw. Pujols was charged with an error hours after the game's conclusion, but only because it could be understood retrospectively to have aided in the winning run scoring one batter later. It's doubtful that an error would have been charged in a regular season game. Likewise, there is no sabermetric measurement of how the play unfolded, with Elvis Andrus scooting to second on a single that put Ian Kinsler on third with none out and set the stage for a couple of flies to right winning the game.

Much has been made of Tony LaRussa's endless machinations in these games, simultaneously crediting him with genius and blaming him for losses. In fact, LaRussa deserves neither, though he's a lot closer to the former. Specifically, many are wondering why he replaced closer Jason Motte in the ninth inning of Game 2 with antediluvian reliever Arthur Rhodes. The LOOGY Rhodes came in to face lefty Josh Hamilton who swatted the game-tying sac fly. Rhodes came out in favor of Lance Lynn, who "allowed" Michael Young's game winning flyout.

Without going into the details of the move, which seemed perfectly justified to me, judging a managerial decision by its outcome is folly. If we knew the outcomes of our decisions in advance, we'd always make the right one, except perhaps if we're Lindsay Lohan. Instead, it's the skipper's job to improve the odds of his team winning, not to certainty, and often, not even to 50%. It's easy to forget that with second and third and no one out, the average run expectancy is . . . two runs.  (That is, sometimes the pitcher will lock down, sometimes he'll limit the opposition to one run, sometimes both runners will score and sometimes more runners will get on base and add to the total that inning. On average, the offense plated 1.8926 runners in 2011.) So LaRussa was facing long odds no matter what he did in that situation. Whatever the stats say about how Jason Motte, Arthur Rhodes and Lance Lynn have performed in the past, LaRussa is paid to know more than we do about how they might perform in that moment.

Ron Washington faced the same Game One critique for ordering a free pass to Nick Punto with a runner in scoring position and two outs, in order to bring the pitcher to the plate. Punto is a .249/.325/.327 lifetime hitter unlikely to plate Lance Berkman from second, so the walk could be seen as "wasting" Chris Carpenter's at bat. (Carp fanned fecklessly for the third out.) Again, Wash is paid to know his players, and the opposition's too. Perhaps Punto's .292/.388/.421 this year gave Washington sufficient pause to sacrifice the free out that Carpenter would have represented in the next inning.

One thing a seamhead could tell you is why Nelson Cruz crushed Tiger pitching and can't buy a hit in the Series. Cruz is a fastball hitter; turning around Justin Verlander's 100 mph offering is like kicking puppies for him. But St. Louis starters mix it up more, which is less to Cruz's liking. The Cardinals also seem to have a feel for Josh Hamilton's groin (groan!); he's clearly been unable to chase pitches away, particularly in hockey weather, so that has been where Cardinal hurlers been going with him.

We'll see if things change after a day of rest and and a trip south to Texas. The bottom line so far has been a clear indication of why teams need scouts and stats and why managers and general managers have to know the strengths and weaknesses of both.

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