The Illogic of Justin Verlander

I took a course in logic when I was in college. It was in the philosophy department. I was good at it because it was basically the rules of arithmetic. The concepts seemed intuitive to me, but it was Swahili to many of my classmates.

They couldn't understand that "nothing is good" is not the same as "not everything is good." They couldn't understand that if every Saturday we wash the car, and we've washed the car, that doesn't necessarily mean it's Saturday. They couldn't understand that a sample size of one does not constitute a scientific proof. They couldn't understand that just because every time A happens, so does B, that does not mean that A causes B.

These were smart people. Consequently, I conclude that most people are failures at logic. (This may be illogical.) This explains much of what I hear on sports talk radio, and that's before anyone calls in.

I heard an intelligent and respected sports talk radio host assert that Justin Verlander is the AL MVP because the Tigers are 20-8 when he's on the mound and .500 when he's not, thus, he's the reason they will win their division.

Did you count the flaws in logic there? I found five on a quick fly-by. All told, this reasoning is utter nonsense, yet I'll bet that neither the host nor anyone else involved in the broadcast is even vaguely aware that what he said makes no sense. Because most liberal arts majors don't learn how to think in college, reporters are generally ill-equipped to deal with questions of logic like this one. Let's examine it.

First, let's stipulate that Justin Verlander is a certified stud. He's led the league in innings and strikeouts twice and his ERA is 23% better than average over his six-year career, during which time he's 102-57, 3.55. This year, he's the leading Cy Young candidate, 19-5, 2.28 with 212 strikeouts, fewer baserunners than innings and a K/BB ratio nearing five. Yowzah. Certainly, he's helped the Tigers amass a winning record.

But Verlander isn't even the most valuable Tiger. That would be catcher Alex Avila, who plays everyday at a key position, hits like a left fielder (.304/.397/.529), handles the backstop well and has added 5.5 wins to the club. Miguel Cabrera (.965 OPS), Jhonny Peralta (.863 OPS at short), Victor Martinez (.815) and Brennan Boesch (.799) have added all-star quality batting lines. The rest of the lineup has also furnished some runs, so that Detroit has the fifth best offense in the American League. Justin Verlander hasn't contributed a wink to that.

Detroit pitching is another story, ranking 10th of 14 AL mound staffs. No other Tiger starter has delivered even an average performance this year, yet the next three members of the rotation sport a 33-24 record. In other words, the Tigers are a very good hitting club with lousy pitching. If they had a few good starters, they'd be challenging for the league's best record. When they do put their one outstanding pitcher on the hill, the results are, well, outstanding.

So let's review the logical flaws:

1. The Tigers are 20-8 when he's on the mound, therefore he's great. But as we've seen, much of any pitcher's record is a function of the hitting (and fielding) behind him.

2. The team is only .500 when everyone else pitches, so Verlander must be the main reason the Tigers win. As we've seen, Max Scherzer, Rick Porcello and Brad Penney have a combined .578 winning percentage. In fact, most of the problem is the record of fifth starter Phil Coke (2-8) and the relief corps.

3. The Tigers succeed when Verlander pitches, therefore he's the reason for their success. It happens that there is a great deal of truth here, but correlation is not causation. Lots of bad pitchers have good records.

4. Because Verlander is the difference between a .500 team and a division winner, he's more valuable than other players whose contributions don't alter the standings. Even ignoring that the premise is false, and that the Tigers would still lead their division right now with a .500 record, the conclusion makes no sense. Does the speaker suggest that if Verlander were 28-0 with a zero ERA and 400 strikeouts but the Tigers were otherwise winless he'd be less of an MVP candidate?

5. The same conclusion fails another logical test. If the same Detroit contingent played in the AL East, where a 71-59 record would leave them battling for third place, would the same Verlander performance be less valuable? 

The same host dismissed Jose Bautista's candidacy because Joey Bats' Blue Jay pitching teammates rank in the bottom third of baseball. Bautista leads all of baseball in home runs, on base percentage, slugging, OPS, True Average, Value Over Replacement Player (at the position that features the best hitters) and Wins Against Replacement, all (except homers) by wide margins. Because he takes the field every day, Bautista ranks 82% more valuable to his team than Justin Verlander. That doesn't even account for the credible case you could make that if Toronto had an AL Central schedule while Michigan had to face NY, Boston and Tampa 18 times each, their records might be reversed.

The old saying about never arguing with a fool applies to illogical people, as Adlai Stevenson pointed out. There is no way to explain to a logically-deficient person that they're making no sense because they lack the tools to comprehend it. It's like advertising a great TV picture on TV. So reporters, talk show hosts and others with soapboxes from which to opine about baseball but without the requisite logic skills will continue to make these kinds of statements. And there's not much the rest of us can do about it but try to become a majority.

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Catching Up

As if to put a fine point on my post about the San Francisco Giants, they lost a weekend series to the Astros. The Astros. With all due respect to the denizens of our fourth largest city, that is a minor league team. 

Having dispersed whatever bargaining chips they could (Michael Bourne, Hunter Pence, Jeff Keppinger) for prospects, the Astros are down to four Major League players: first baseman Carlos Lee and three pitchers, Wandy Rodriguez, Bud Norris and closer Mark Melancon. Lee is 35 and Rodriguez is 32 and will be again residing in Panama and the Dominican respectively the next time this team is relevant.

Houston is on pace to lose 107 games, but probably aren't even that good, since some of the wins they've banked are attributable to the play of the now-jettisoned trio named above. For the World Champs to succumb to this sorry squad suggests something is really rotten by the Bay. It's not too late for the Giants to regain their footing, but it's going to take a resurgence from Aubrey Huff, Cody Ross and Andres Torres, the parts that injected the critical offense last year but who have this year simply been offensive.

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The losingest franchise in baseball history is the first team to reach 81 wins this year and guarantee itself at least a .500 season. Here's what else the Phillies have achieved:

Over the last six years, the first team to 81 wins has ascended to the World Series five times and brought home the trophy three times. My first reaction was surprise at how well a team's record correlated with playoff success. But of course, that's not it at all. We're not talking about final records here, just records over the first 130 or 140 games.

What that statistic says, unless it's simply a quirk, is that the best team over the course of the season, regardless of their final record, is most likely to win playoff series. It gives further lie to the old saw about entering the playoffs on a tear. In fact, it's better to have the best three-quarters of the season and then coast the rest of the way. Align your rotation, rest your nicked-up regulars and don't worry about your final record or even the minuscule home field advantage.

The Red Sox and Yankees already know this, which is why you will not see a fight to the finish in the AL East. Whoever wins the division, c'est la vie. Both teams have bigger fish to fry.

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Just six of the 16 NL teams have winning records this year. Part of that is the AL's 131-121 inter-league advantage. Part is the hegemony of Philly, Atlanta and Milwaukee, all playing .590+ baseball. That every team within five games of .500 is below -- Washington, NY and Cincinnati -- is another piece of the puzzle.

Then there's one more piece. There should be one more team around .500. The Padres have outscored opponents this year ... and have won 12 fewer games than they've lost. Often that's a sign that your relief pitching is wanting, but Heath Bell is money and Mike Adams -- before he was traded -- was gold bullion.

Another explanation is a poor record in close games. San Diego has dropped 10 of 14 games in extra frames and 26 of 43 one-run games, while posting a winning record (14-13) in blowouts. A lack of depth could could be the culprit, as could a lack of professionalism. Padre batters turn into Madres in "late and close" situations, posting a putrid .228/.316/.304 line, while Padre hurlers are least effective (though still above average)in tie games.

Look for things to even out the rest of the way, particularly as minor league journeyman Jesus Guzman gets more starts at third. In his first 150 at bats this year he's smacked .333/.375/.547 and is already third on the team in home runs. 

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The race for the NL MVP seems locked up in my mind, with Matt Kemp lapping the field. Shortstops Jose Reyes and Troy Tulowitzki have been outstanding, but Reyes hasn't been on the field enough and Tulo's combination of average  and power -- .371 OBP, 25 HR and 34 D, pales compared to Kemp's (.393 with 28 homers) in a tougher park. Ryan Braun, .398 with 24 HR, also combines power and average, but a butcher in left field needs to make up a lot of ground against an average center fielder.

The numbers seem even more definitive in the AL, but I'm not totally convinced. Toronto third baseman/right fielder Jose Bautista has been all-world this season at the plate, .316/.457/.639. with 35 home runs. But the numbers rankle me a bit.

First, Bautista did much of his damage in April and May, blasting 20 of his homers. In the last three months, he's hitting .280 with 15 home runs. Moreover, much of his value has come on walks. Since May, he's got more walks than hits.

Walks are important and under-rated in baseball, but they have diminishing returns. When your top slugger walks all the time, he's not slugging. It leaves other, less accomplished, hitters to drive him in. I don't begrudge Bautista his Bondsian OBP, but it doesn't seem quite as valuable as it otherwise might.

All this would be irrelevant if Curtis Granderson, Jacoby Ellsbury and Adrain Gonzalez weren't killing it. The Grandy Man roams center, gets on base and hits moonshots at nearly Joey Bats' rate. He also runs like the wind, as does Ellsbury, whose 22 HR, 33 steals and stellar center field play warrant MVP attention. Gonzalez, .343/.403/.538, was an early threat, but he's hit two homers in six weeks and plays the least important defensive position.

All this is the long way of saying that Bautista and his remarkable 1.096 OPS remains the runaway leader, but I felt a lot more positive about him two months ago.

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A Foundation of Hypocrisy

There's been a Hurricane of discussion about cheating in college athletics following a report, complete with documentation, that the entire city of Coral Gables has been consorting with a professional scumbag and violating NCAA rules -- not to mention the bounds of good taste -- for most of the last decade. 

These allegations are not shocking; they are inevitable. Major Division 1 sports programs make seven- and eight-figure profits on their men's football and basketball teams, not to mention the millions in alumni support that follows. In addition, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of lackeys, hangers-on wannabes and of course TV networks with opportunities to participate in the monetary orgy by spreading their largess advantageously.

That there has been massive cheating recently in revenue sports, that there is now and that there will be in the future is as mundane as old slippers. We'd better not hear any self-righteousness from any other BCS-level sports program. Their time will come.

Sports talk radio has been abuzz with solutions for the NCAA to implement, but they are all about rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The NCAA is the problem. 

The simple, underlying truth is this: The entire structure of the student-athlete industrial complex in men's basketball and football is built on a foundation of hypocrisy. Division 1 men's football and basketball programs are not extracurricular activities; they are for-profit minor-league sports arms of their universities. Their sole purpose is to fund other activities at their schools and to drum up alumni support. As long as the NCAA -- or anyone else -- attempts to regulate revenue sports as if they are merely part of the fabric of the schools for which they raise money, they will continue to fail utterly.

In case you doubt that revenue sports are simply for-profit minor league sports franchises whose purpose is to generate profits for their sponsoring institutions -- does anyone still? -- ask yourself these questions: Why are college football and basketball coaches the highest paid state employees in most states? How do college-age athletes who can hardly read, but who make quarterbacks weep, get into some of the great universities in our country? Why do football and basketball seasons overlap into Christmas break, final exams week and even beyond the academic year? If football and basketball players aren't employees of their teams, why can't they hold jobs while they are undergraduates? (They are often the students most in need of paying jobs.)

Like someone in psychotherapy, the first step to change for the NCAA is to admit the problem. The very instant universities acknowledge that they are running for-profit minor league sports franchises their issues go away. The players can work as minor league athletes without falsifying transcripts, attending phony classes, paying stand-ins to take tests or generally acting like the scholars they aren't. The exchange of money will move above the table, draining it of its corruptive abilities. Boosters and other human annoyances will be free to throw around their coercions with reckless abandon and no once will care.

Some complain that under a more honest system, the richest schools will pay the highest wages and get all the best players. Pish. The richest schools already pay the highest wages and get all the best players. The payments are either under the table or in non-monetary form: peak athletic instruction, pipelines to professional sports rosters, TV exposure, bowl game travel, top quality training facilities, shiny new stadiums and arenas, etc. 

Others bemoan the demise of the student athlete. But nothing about this system prevents schools from providing college scholarships as part of the package. Nothing prevents them from agreeing to limit practices to non-class hours. 

The bottom line is that the current system doesn't work because it's a gigantic, steaming pungent pile of lies. Admitting the truth would make all of the corruption disappear. Poof! In revenue sports, as in most of the rest of life, honesty is the best policy.

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What, No Shutout?

Righthander Matt Cain pumps mid-90s heat, slider, change-up and a 12-6 Charlie to ERAs of 2.89, 3.14 and 2.86 the last three years.  Fat lot of good it's doing him.

Cain pitches in San Francisco, in front of the worst offense in the National League, and as a result he's only 10-9 this year and was only 13-11 last year. Through 26 starts in 2011, feckless Giant swingers have provided him with two runs or fewer in 12, three runs in five more, and more than three just nine times. 

For context, the Red Sox average more than five runs per. In his 27 lifetime starts, Ivan Nova's run support has topped two runs 23 times. In other words, Cain is absolutely snakebit, which is a good description of a Giants team that falls farther behind the Diamondback in the standings.

The reason is obvious: Scott Cousins. The Marlins' utility outfielder broke Buster Posey's leg in a home plate collision earlier this season, robbing the Giants of a goodly portion of their offense. Besides Posey and Pablo Sandoval (.308/.350/.512), the Giant lineup rattles in a paper cup. Their three top-paid regulars sport OBPs of .274 .284. and .298. Trade deadline coup Carlos Beltran went directly to the DL without passing GO, contributing exactly three extra base hits to his team, or the same number as pitcher Madison Bumgarner.

Speaking of Bumgarner, he's continued tearing up NL batters this year as part of the manly rotation the includes Cain, Tim Lincecum, Walter Johnson posing as Ryan Vogelsong, and Jonathan Sanchez. Alas, Bumgarner's 3.49 ERA and 4-1 K-BB ratio are not getting the job done with this sorry batting order. With sub-three run support in 11 of his 25 starts this season, his 7-11 record is hardly surprising. Nor is Tim Lincecum's 2.53 ERA and 10 Ks per game. The Freak sports an 11-10 record thanks to two-or-fewer runs of support in 12 of his 26 starts.

Giant brass can lament the parade of DL visits visited upon them, but it's not like much quality has been lost to injury beyond Posey and Kung Fu Panda's lost six weeks early in the season. Moreover, the franchise made a conscious decision not to seek a replacement for their broken backstop and the result has been a pair of backups vying to become the dictionary definition for offensive futility (225/.300/.352 from Eli Whiteside and .216/.286/.294 from backup Chris Stewart.)

The Big'uns recently snapped a record streak of 21 solo homers over five weeks, which was surprising only in that they had mustered that many big flies in 30 games. The team is on pace to finish 2011 without a single 20-HR hitter. Or 30 doubles. Or 20 steals. Or two wins above replacement, other than Sandoval.

The bottom line is that the World Champs have managed to under-score their competition despite the second best pitching in baseball and one of the best mound corps in Major League history. An amazing starting staff bolstered by a solid relief corps starring Brian Wilson (3.19 ERA), Sergio Romo (1.67) and Ramon Ramirez (2.89) should be lapping the feckless NL West. Instead, they've shifted into reverse and are now breathing Diamondback exhaust. If Tim Lincecum isn't in the playoffs this year, he and his pitching mates will know exactly whom to blame.
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Who Are These D-backs and What Are They Doing To Our World Champs?

Stop the season right now and roll this around on your tongue: the NL West champion Arizona Diamondbacks.

Say what?

The Diamondwho? Can you name a single player on this squad? If Fox were to feature their game on a telecast (ha!), how would they promote the desert denizens? "Matt Kemp and the Dodgers face, uh, Chris Young and the Dbacks? in a desultory NL West showdown..."

The Snakes are the quintessential mystery/riddle/enigma outfitted in a uni. They've charged to 66 wins and a two game lead over the Giants by barely outscoring their opponents. They have the league's third best scoring offense without a star player -- or even many above-average hitters. Despite four decent starters and two reliable closers, their pitching has surrendered the fourth most runs in the league.

Not withstanding their best player -- outfielder Justin Upton -- there isn't a single player on the team with a .360 OBP or a .450 SLG. For context, a mediocre outfielder hits .340/.440. Upton is also the only player with more than 18 homers or more than 60 RBI. Their second best offensive threat has been third baseman Ryan Roberts -- (me either) -- who, at 30, has amassed 862 at bats while kicking around three organizations over six years. Roberts has stitched together a little of everything -- 51 walks, 15 taters, 14 steals -- for an offensive performance that's 17% above average.

And then, that's pretty much it. Others have contributed singular skills, like outfielder Gerardo Parra's seven of eight steals, Kelly Johnson's 18 bombs from the keystone and Brandon Allen's trio of homers in 29 at bats, but each is accompanied by debilitating deficiencies, like Johnson's .291 OBP.

Even the Amazing Kreskin must wonder how, playing in the balljack-friendly Bank One Ballpark, this motley crew can outscore all but two teams and rank sixth in the league in offensive VORP. 

At the same time, former Yankee first-rounder Ian Kennedy fronts a starting rotation that seems to be performing admirably, particularly in that park. Kennedy (15-3, 3.16); Daniel Hudson (11-8, 3.83); rookie Josh Collmenter (7-7, 3.48) and lefty Joe Saunders (8-9, 3.76) all sport ERAs that beat league average even without factoring in the neighborhood. 

Closer J.J. Putz is keeping runners off base (WHIP = 1.04) and in the park (.8 HR per 9 innings) while whiffing his share of batters (8.1 per nine). His go-to guy, rotund David Hernandez, boasts a 2.89 ERA, 5.6 hits per nine and a shiny 10.4 Ks per nine. (An abundance of walks is all that separates him from greatness.) An assortment of good, bad and indifferent populate the rest of the pen. All told, the pitching checks out sixth best in the NL in VORP, which takes the BoB into account.

So the sixth best offense and the sixth best defense produces the fourth best record in the National League. But the talent level doesn't support the results. I wouldn't bet against San Francisco's all-world rotation passing the D-backs in the last 40 games. Until then, the no-name Slitherers are making life difficult by the Bay and polishing manager Kirk Gibson's bonafides. If they win the division, we may have trouble believing what we just saw.

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Miracle on 161st Street

They entered the season with only three reliable starting pitchers, one of whom would miss much of the 2011 campaign. Their star shortstop and catcher are getting creaky. Their roster includes more retreads than a used car lot. The dessicated remains of Andruw Jones and Eric Chavez actually get playing time, despite 3.7 wins above replacement combined over the last four years. Their superstar cornerman is dinged and running from the MLB law. Their huge free agent reliever walked six batters a game before pulling up lame. All 700 pounds of Bartolo Freakin' Colon has 18 starts for them already this year.

They play in the toughest division in baseball and they didn't make a single trade deadline deal for the first time since the Paleolithic Era.* So the Yankees are toast, right?

Kudos to Joe Girardi, Brian Cashman and team management in the Bronx. Two-thirds of the way through a lost season they're tied for the best record in the American League with a starting rotation right out of 2001. They've managed to spin Colon, Freddy Garcia and Ivan Nova into gold. They stuck with David Robertson out of the pen and he's rewarded them with a 1.44 ERA, no home runs allowed and 14 strikeouts per nine. Somehow this squad ranks second in the circuit in ERA ... and that's their weakness.

At bat, it's no surprise that the Bombers are a juggernaut. They're second in scoring in the majors with 5.38 runs per game, led by three starters with .500+ SLG (and ARod is close). Derek Jeter at short and Russ Martin behind the plate are rebounding from awful starts, and  keeping Jorge Posada away from lefties (he's hitting .103 against them) short-circuits the only black hole in the home half of the inning. Absent Posada versus southpaws, every one of their hitters ranks above replacement value, which is a fancy way of saying their bench is solid too, They've even swiped 120 of 156 bases as a squad, a superb 77% rate.

To top it off, the Bronx brass refused to succumb to deadline deal extortion and instead let a flaccid trade market go untouched. The Yankees may have locked up the most productive trade deadline week by demonstrating disciplined restraint. Without sacrificing either of their catching uber-prospects, they got Soriano back from the DL last week and will welcome back Alex Rodriguez next week, Bud willing.

I'd still be a tad concerned, were I other than a Yankee-antagonist, about the pitchers they'll run out after Sabathia come playoff time. Garcia, Colon and Nova could turn into pumpkins any day now. But with Robertson, Rivera and perhaps Soriano locking up the late innings and a lineup that could scare Chuck Norris, they will once again be a force to be reckoned with once the post-season arrives.

*May be slight exaggeration.
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Tripleheader of Yuks

Did you hear the one about the unwritten rule? Man, I love that joke!

The Tigers and Angels staged an impromptu amateur night at Comerica this weekend. Apparently, a Cy Young match-up of Jered Weaver and Justin Verlander and the playoff possibilities underlying the contest were insufficient to stir the passions of the opposing teams. So after Magglio Ordonez paused at the plate to see if his tater would stay fair, Weaver launched into the old "disrespect" chestnut.

"I had a lot of respect for those guys, but then they stand at the plate and do something like that. I felt disrespected by that."

Ho! That one never fails to crack me up. Weaver could have really gone for the big yuks by stamping his feet and whining, "quit making fun of me!"

Verlander could never had come up with that whopper. After all, he didn't allow any homers. Poor schmuck!

Well, the only thing funnier than a great comedy classic is the comic rejoinder. Here's that master of timing, Carlos Guillen: "Magglio has 14 years in the major leagues. You don't tell him to run."

Whoo-hoo! It's the old 14-year rule! If preening at the plate makes you a jerk, putting in 14 years of Major League service exempts you! Think of all the great things Tim Wakefield can do!

Following Ordonez, Guillen homered, showboating on his way around the bases. Let's let the Associated Press pick up the thread from there (with some edits for space): "Guillen flipped his bat, posed at the plate and skipped a few steps sideways, prompting Weaver to yell at him before Guillen rounded the bases. Sensing trouble was coming, plate umpire Hunter Wendelstedt warned both benches. But Weaver threw the next pitch near (Alex) Avila's head and was quickly ejected along with Los Angeles manager Mike Scioscia."

Isn't that great? Weaver showed those stupid Tigers what respect is all about -- by throwing a baseball 90 mph at the head of a guy who hadn't bothered anyone. Why hasn't Chris Rock thought of this whopper?!

Not to be outdone, Justin Verlander staged this oldie-but-goodie when Erick Aybar attempted to bunt for a hit leading off the eighth. The big cat fireballer had a no-hitter at the time. "I know it was only 3-0, so I can understand there are arguments on both sides, but as a pitcher, we call that bush league."

I know! I hate it when the other team tries to get a hit! Imagine if they did that all the time.


Isn't it time we eliminated this sort of disrespect and subterfuge from baseball? No more high-fiving after a dinger. No more fist-pumping after a good play. No more cheering. No more expressions of excitement of any kind, That's disrespectful.


And no more of that bush league stuff. No more stolen bases, pickoff attempts, throwing behind the runner or other fakery. In fact, no more twisty pitches. Everything has to be straight, so batters know what's coming.


No only will that improve the game, it will add a jolt of excitement into the game. Thank you Jered Weaver, Carlos Guillen and Justin Verlander for showing us what a great game baseball truly could be. I hope you all have 14-year careers.
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APpalling!

No, seriously, the Associated Press was not invented as fodder for discerning sports bloggers. But if someone hangs a curve with the bases loaded, you don't refuse to bust it out of the park just because the pitcher is an inept dope. Sure, after a few lollipops it might be time to find stiffer competition, but let's shoot fish in a barrel once again for some quick laughs.

AP report: Carlos Beltran's sacrifice fly started a four-run rally in the seventh inning and the Mets held on for a 4-2 victory over the Reds.

Memo to the AP intern who wrote this dreck: a sacrifice fly, by definition, cannot start a rally. Someone had to be on third in order for the ordinary fly ball out to mean anything. This is like saying that Gettysburg started the Civil War.

Jose Reyes was on third, as a matter of fact, the result of consecutive singles by him and Justin Turner. To say Reyes "started" the rally would be vastly fairer, but still not entirely accurate. 

Following Beltran's out, David Wright singled, Daniel Murphy doubled in two runs and Jason Bay plated Murphy with a safety.

So, Dissociated Press, your hero, Carlos Beltran, had the distinction among the first six batters in the inning to make the only out. He contributed negatively to the proceedings. Absent his contribution, the Mets would have scored the same runs in exactly the same order but would have had a better chance to score a fifth run with Bay on base and one less out.

Braindrizling report: Daniel Murphy doubled in two runs during a four-run rally in the seventh inning and R.A. Dickey and four relievers stymied the powerful Cincinnati lineup in a 4-2 victory.

But wait, there's more!

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In the box score right next to the Mets-Reds writeup:

Aaron Harang outpitched Cliff Lee, Chris Denorfia stole home and San Diego beat the Phillies for the first time in more than a year.

This is what social scientists call TBU -- true but useless. Your grandmother outpitched CLiff Lee last night. Lee surrendered five runs on 10 hits in four innings in another July meltdown.

Harang, who earned top billing in the AP account, didn't even earn a quality start. He gave up four runs on eight hits and two walks in six innings and really deserves none of the credit for the win. (Relievers Chad Qualls, Mike Adams and Heath Bell did their usual stellar job strangling the Phils over the final three frames.)

On the other hand, Denorfia raced to the plate with an unassisted run on a play that hadn't been successfully executed by a Padre in SIX YEARS. But the AP chose to feature Aaron Harang and his game ERA of 6.00. Really, with all the unemployed journalists, can't AP find someone who can think?

There is a common thread here. Carlos Beltran was credited with an RBI. Aaron Harang got credit for a win. Being stuck in a statistical 1955 means that the Associated Press can't tell an accurate story because it's focused on old fogey stats that we've known for years distort reality. And since the Associated Press is a cooperative, owned by its member news operations across the country, this ignorance is a reflection of the entire state of sports journalism today.

Braindrizzling report: Chris Denorfia stole home and the Padres pounded Cliff Lee for 10 hits in four innings as San Diego defeated the Phillies for the first time in more than a year.

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Quick Hits

Mike Adams update: Follow-up on the lanky righty who throttled the NL over the previous three years, whiffing 192 in 169 innings, allowing just a .180 batting average and an ERA of 1.81.

Believe it or not, NL batters have slipped out of the frying pan against the Padres' set-up man and into the fire. The league has managed just .146/.159/.240 against him this year. His 1.20 ERA is spit-shined by a 5-1 strikeout-walk ratio. He hasn't surrendered a hit since July 6.

No wonder everyone wants him in a deadline deal.

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No one wants Dan Uggla, the stubby Atlanta keystoner signed to a hefty long-term deal at season's start. In return, Uggla has thumped .195/.269/.387, and there's no injury to blame.

There is, however, an historically wretched .206 BABIP. It's unlikely that a BABIP that bad, this deep into the season, is just a sneeze. Uggla must be doing something wrong. There is evidence he is hacking uncharacteristically, which could mean he's making bad contact.

Nevertheless, if we were to bequeath him an average BABIP of .300, that only hikes his batting average up to .227.  That's swimming with his head above the Mendoza level, but still not much to look at. Uggla's defense is offensive too, so thank goodness for his 18 home runs. The stalwart power is keeping him in positive VORP (value over replacement player.)

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Coming In Second Like Kissing Your Girlfriend

The first-place Red Sox and Phillies won today. 

The second place Yankees and Braves lost.

These two statements are:

a) closely related

b) bad news for the NY and Atlanta clubs

c) suggestive of who will square off in the World Series

The correct answer is: d) none of the above.

Living in Charleston, SC, the Braves are my "hometown" team. I hear their broadcasters regularly scoreboard-watch Phillie games and remind listeners of the growing or narrowing gap between Philadelphia and Atlanta. I'm guessing they do the same on the other three team broadcasts.

Anyone paying attention realizes, however, that the Braves aren't chasing the Phils and the Yankees aren't chasing the Red Sox. The point of the regular season is to make the playoffs, period. The penalty for not winning the division -- ostensibly playing a more difficult opponent and losing the tiny home field Game 7 advantage -- is a mere flea bite compared to considerations like getting players healthy and the pitching rotation lined up. 

In that respect, the Yankees, now six games clear of the fading Rays, are in the same cruise mode as their hated rivals. Atlanta has a five game cushion on their Wild Card competition, which is currently led by Arizona, but the Dbacks, Cards, Brewers, et. al. would be tilting at Wild Card windmills. While the frontrunners want to continue to play well for the remaining 60 games and punch their playoff tickets, the managers of all four clubs have to begin considering how they can position their teams for best results in the post-season.

There are significant distinctions between the 162-game schedule and three seven-game playoff series. Roster depth that can carry a team to a division title is nearly irrelevant in short series. Deep pitching rotations that are critical to the daily grind of the long spring and summer play no role in the fall. A team that thrives in summer's dog days might wilt in the frigid nights of October, and vice versa. (This is why more playoff teams is an increasingly bad idea: it makes the World Series more of a lottery and reduces the odds that the best teams will play for the title.)

Terry Francona, Charlie Manuel, Joe Girardi and Freddi Gonzalez would all be well-advised to begin cultivating a plan to ensure that their best players are rested and healthy come October, and that they know who suffers most from playing in the kinds of adverse conditions that torment post-season games. The same can be said for Ron Washington and Bruce Bochy, for there's no one in the two league's western divisions capable of mounting a charge at Texas or San Francisco. Having re-crowned six of last year's incumbents, that leaves the two Central Division battles to play out over the last 40% of the season. Let's hope those, at least, go down to the wire.

Unrelated: read about baseball's nerd among men.

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What's It Thome? It Depends When I Looked

A major milestone is coming to the land of high socks as Jim Thome approaches his 600th lifetime launched ball. Somewhere a sculptor has begun his bronze carving for the gentleman from Peoria. There will be few abstentions when his Cooperstown candidacy comes up. And yet, Jim Thome is a conundrum. I would argue that he is simultaneously overrated and underrated by baseball cognoscenti.

James Howard Thome was the fifth youngest player in the majors when he first went yard in the waning hours of the 1991 season. Today, at 40, he is the fifth oldest. In between, he's pounded 596 homers, many of them the jaw-dropping variety. He's slugged 40+ homers six times and 30-39 another six. He's scored 100+ runs eight times and knocked in 100+ nine times. Thanks to 1705 walks -- ninth all-time -- he's cracked the .400 on-base level 10 times in his career. His .280/.403/.557 is 47% better than average and was worth 74 wins against a replacement (WARP) in his career. 

That's some first-ballot jelly to spread at Cooperstown in five or six years. And yet, it's only part of the story. Thome came up as a decent third baseman, switching to first at age 26 and to full-time DH at 35. So 189 of his homers have come while he wasn't donning leather at all -- at least on the field. He was a mediocre first baseman and while he authors no defensive demerits as a DH, he limits his manager's options and may be forcing a lesser hitter into the lineup because he can't fill a defensive position.

Contemporaneously, Thome's exploits have been mostly under-appreciated. He's batted under .270 nine times in his career and played for some awful clubs. He's earned a top-5 MVP vote just once, the year after he led the AL with an impressive 1.122 OPS. (That was 2002 and he was literally twice as good a hitter as the average batsman that season. Miguel Tejada, Alfonso Soriano, Garret Anderson and Torii Hunter all finished ahead of him in the vote despite OPS at least 140 points lower. Tejada won the award because his Oakland team swept their division, even though Alex Rodriguez, who played the same position better, had a higher OBP and SLG, more homers, RBI, runs scored, steals and everything else positive you could measure.)

Now in its gloaming, Thome's career has jumped the shark. Suddenly, in the era of sabermetrics, we're drooling over his 13 .900+ OPS seasons (that's a pretty tasty .400+ on base and .500+ slugging), six of them in the thin air of 1.000+. While turning 40 last year, he still racked up a 1.039 OPS season in 340 plate appearances. But here comes a dirty little secret about OPS.

On-base Plus Slugging stands tall against midgets like ordinary triple-crown stats, but we treat it as if it's Manute Bol. It overrates "three true outcomes" players who slug homers, walk or whiff, and little else. It shortchanges singles hitters, speedsters and leadoff men. Thome took 90+ free passes 12 times in his career, but who wants that lummox clogging up the basepaths? He's fanned 2,437 times in his career, and though a K is only a few electrons worse than a 6-3, a small fraction multiplied by more than two-thousand is no longer bupkis. Thome not only was no threat to steal (19 of 39 in 21 seasons), he slowed the parade behind him. And as I mentioned, his four losses against replacement in career defensive value understates the cost to his teams.

It's all picking of nits: Jim Thome is a Hall of Famer. It's virtually impossible to smack 600 homers and get on base nearly 4,000 times without being enshrined, not withstanding the ingestion of certain metabolic agents. But depending on when you were observing him, you probably either failed to notice his greatness, or got carried away with it.
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One Less Stat to Not Understand

Today, one of the premier sabermetric websites, Baseball Prospectus, ditched one of its signature stats, saying it wasn't doing the job. Luddites will, of course, crow about this, but they should be eating crow instead.

What BP is doing is exactly what the hidebound can't abide: moving forward to improve the state of the art. The BP crew spent a year-and-a-half tweaking SIERA, the ERA predicting tool, until they finally decided that it was not a significant improvement over other tools already in use.

SIERA attempted to measure how much of a pitcher's ERA was his pitching and how much were non- repeatable factors outside his control, strip out the noise and then project what the pitcher would do going forward without luck's finger on the scale. There are already simpler statistics that strip out fielding and fluctuations in BABIP from a pitcher's work. And there are already a plethora of sabermetric crystal balls that perform marginally better than an educated person's estimate. So BP is leaving in the starter and consigning SIERA to the eternal bullpen.

Learning is not linear. We gain knowledge in fits and starts, by trial and -- yes -- error. Another seamhead mixing up a new statistical brew will sprinkle SIERA concepts into his cauldron and we'll all benefit collectively.

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It's Not About Us

Congratulations to the women's soccer team from Japan, who played with a nation's heavy hearts and won a tournament on sheer emotion. The Japanese side wasn't a top 5 contender, but they swept three of the favorites, including the home team and defending champs.

This is the stuff of legends -- and certainly of made-for-TV movies. In the final game, the Japanese women overcame two seemingly insurmountable deficits with slivers of time remaining before prevailing on penalty kicks. Their heart and pluck were extraordinary. What a story.

Of course, some in the self-obsessed U.S. believe the story is that the American team lost. Get over yourselves. The 1980 Olympic hockey tournament wasn't about the Soviet Union or Finland; it was about the American amateurs who were an almost exact parallel for the Japanese women's soccer team.

Today is a great day in a beleaguered nation that could use some great days. Horray for them.

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Save Him For Later

After treating their manager like the ugly sister of the girl they really wanted to date, the Washington Nationals have won the hand of star manager Davey Johnson. Good for them. Today, Johnson lost them a chance to win a game by employing a sliver of conventional wisdom that is neither.

Tied 8-8 in the bottom of the ninth, Johnson overlooked closer Drew Storen in favor of rookie Ryan Mattheus and his 15 innings of experience. The Braves promptly scored the winning run.

Brave announcers took it as a given that Storen would be held back for -- let's say it together -- a save situation. Isn't it clear to a smart tactician like Johnson that that makes no sense? If you can't use your closer with the game on the line in the bottom of the ninth, what's he for?

Now, Mattheus appears to be no stiff. Even giving up the run, his ERA stands at 1.72, albeit in a career covering 47 outs. And Storen was no guarantee. But "saving" your closer so he can add to his stats, at the expense of a win, is such a dumb move that even the least savvy manager should know better.

If giving up a run right now costs you the game, your best reliever should be on the mound. How hard is that to comprehend?

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Was It As Good For You As It Was For Me?

Baseball is a crazy game. The Mets traded an All-Star closer for a pair of future insurance salesmen and still had to pay $5 million. Nonetheless, the subtraction amounts to addition.

Milwaukee demonstrated that they are all-in this year by snatching K-Rod as their set-up man. Teaming with closer John Axford, who's converted 20 straight saves, he completes an impressive end-game tandem. Brewer starters -- are you listening Zack Greinke, Shawn Marcum and Yovanni Gallardo? -- who make it through seven frames will leave their starts in good hands.

Milwaukee GM Doug Melvin won't feel any compunction about preventing K-Rod from reaching the 55 game finishes that would vest him for an insane $17.5 million option. Mets GM Sandy Alderson, meanwhile, gets a pail-load of credit for auditioning his judgment-impaired reliever and then shipping him off for a couple of farmhands with little pedigree. The salary relief will save some of the Wilpons' money for the costly Jose Reyes re-up and draft signings necessary to rebuild the organization. It's not like the Mets were going to compete for a playoff spot this year.

In summary, Rodriguez gains a pennant race but loses the big payday; the Mets save a pile of cash at no cost, and if one of the minor leaguers grows up to be a major leaguer, so much the better. The Brew Crew adds a win or two to the second-half ledger, which might be just enough to slip into the post-season.

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Mid-Summer Review

Greetings and salutations from the halfway point. That's what we call the All-Star break, which of course, is the point at which teams have played 56% of their games.

At this juncture, the Seattle Mariners are within four games of even and just 6.5 games behind division-leading Texas. And they have as much chance of making the playoffs as PacMan Jones has of winning Sportsman of the Year.

There are more bats in the average church belfry than on the Mariner roster. It's a moral victory in Seattle that the M's have out-homered Jose Bautista. But it's close. The Mariners have not managed to out-homer the combination of Joey Bats and any one of 37 other players, including such sluggers as Mark Trumbo and Asdrubal Cabrera.

Similarly, the Pirates are one game back and yet so far away from contention in the NL Central this year. Pittsburgh fans can celebrate the team's ascent to respectability, but unless that's the peak they aspire to, Pirate brass will balk at flipping emerging talent for veteran rentals in a likely fruitless effort to cash in a year early. Better to leave Milwaukee, St. Louis and Cincinnati to squabble over the division this year; the Bucs are priming the pump for a sustained run at contention with four youthful regulars hitting at above average rates, four solid young starters and a stud relief corps. Seven of the 12 regulars are 28 or under and the entire pitching staff is 30 or less.

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With 70 games to play, we can reasonably count out Baltimore, Toronto, Kansas City, San Diego, the Dodgers, Houston and the Cubs. Except for the Blue Jays, these teams are all insurmountably bad and far behind. The Blue Jays are the latter only, but the teams they are chasing are numerous (three, to be exact) and baseball's best.

I've generously left Washington, the Mets, Florida and Oakland off the morgue's cadaver list because these teams' fans may still harbor some remnant of hope for the season. Indeed, the Mets and Nats can feel good about their present state, but Philly and Atlanta will not be caught by the likes of them. The Marlins and A's may be better than their records, but they're 14 and 11 games behind, respectively.

All the teams listed above should consider moving any veterans of value whose contracts expire this year for some nubile talent.

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We've had a whopper of a career milestone reached in the most dramatic way during the first half. There remain some interesting career inchpebbles in the second half. Alex Rodriguez stands sixth on the career home run chart, just four dingers behind Ken Griffey Jr. for fifth. If his knee cooperates, ARod will play again this year and snake his way up the career leaderboard for runs (17th; 50 more moves him to 12th), RBIs (11th; 40 more gets him to eighth) and total bases (14th; 100 more moves him to 12th) as well.

With 58 more hits, Derek Jeter reaches the top 20 in hits and the top 15 in singles. He's 24th in runs scored but can crack the top 20 in a stretch.

On the mound, Mariano Rivera needs 20 saves to become the all-time saves champ, but that's about it. With a dearth of Hall of Fame pitchers plying their trade this year, the smoldering remains of Javier Vazquez is the active leader in strikeouts, and he's 35th on the career list. 44-year-old Tim Wakefield is next, in 57th. Wakefield also leads active pitchers in wins with 198 -- 111th all-time.

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First half awards time. Adrian Gonzalez is demonstrating in spades that the switch from offense-hating Petco to hit-happy Fenway swamps the the move to the harder league. He's accumulated a sparkling .352/.412/.589 slash line, leading the league in hits, doubles, total bases, batting average and RBIs. He's also an A+ defender. So the first half AL MVP goes to ... Jose Bautista.

Amazingly, Bautista makes Gonzalez look like Tinkerbell. At .332/.468/.702, Toronto's masher paces the circuit in on base percentage, slugging percentage, OPS, home runs, walks and intentional walks. Even if his defense could best be described as "feet bolted to the right field turf" he'd be the MVP. (For the record, he's a fine defender who even fills in at third.)

Jose Reyes has a case for first half NL MVP, but Matt Kemp has a better one. Kemp is hitting .317/.403/.591 with home base in Dodger Stadium and surrounded by Frank McCourt's hitless wonders. He leads the league in VORP (value over replacement player), which doesn't account for fielding, and in WARP (wins against replacement player), which does.

Roy Halladay is my first half NL Cy Young, even though Jair Jurrjens has given up half a run less per game. Halladay has pitched 30 more innings and has triple the strikeout/walk ratio. Jurrjens' BABIP-against is a luck-flecked .256. Cole Hamels, Cliff Lee and Clayton Kershaw earn honorable mention.

AL Cy is also a two-man race: Jered Weaver and Justin Verlander. If you squint, you can see an iota more consistency in Weaver's performance, so I tilt his way, but Verlander is a perfectly defensible choice. Honorable mention to Josh Beckett.

Ninety games is dearly insufficient for an informed Rookie of the Year vote, especially since some rookie phenoms start the season on the farm. There are a lot of good candidates, but Braves closer Craig Kimbrel is mowing down the NL competition. Kimbrel has shattered the rookie record for saves by the break with 28 (of 33). His high heat has sent 70 batters back muttering in just 46 innings and the best hitters in the world are batting .179 against him. Beat that, Bastardo.

Rangers starter Alexi Ogando, about whom I opined a few posts ago, has performed admirably in the first half and is the leader in the clubhouse for AL Rookie of the Year. But as I mentioned in that piece, he's already in uncharted workload territory. If he falters in the second half, Angels first sacker Mark Trumbo might take the prize with 30 home runs.

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When the NL and AL were different leagues, with different rules, different league presidents, different umpiring styles, different playing surfaces and attitudes towards race, the All-Star game was a clash of titans. It was the only time all year we could see Mike Schmidt take his cuts against Jim Palmer or Tom Seaver face George Brett.

Today, the NL and AL are little more than conferences in a league. They're separated by the DH but connected by 300 interleague contests and free agency that moves players between them regularly. A whole team has switched sides and another is rumored to be on the way. Naturally, the Mid-Summer Classic feels more like an oldie. There's no going back, and the fact that the site of one World Series game might hinge on the result doesn't change that.

So I'll enjoy the game for what it is -- an exhibition filled with future Hall of Famers -- and try not to fret about what it's not.
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Third Best of All Time, Without Additives

In a career that has vacillated between unexamined hero worship and unwarranted criticism, it's fitting that Derek Jeter faces a duality of opinion on the precipice of a major career milestone. On the one hand, his supporters are primed to celebrate his 3,000th hit. On the other hand, coming off his worst year and now in the midst of his first season of below-average work, the Yankee captain is facing bric-a-bats for his election by the fans to the All-Star game and a newly signed $51 million contract that seemed overly-exuberant even when it was inked.

This duality is being reflected in the constant refrain I've been hearing in the sports gabbing universe: is Derek Jeter over-rated or under-rated. The answer is very clear: yes.

Discussions of this type, of course, are logarithmically complicated because they involve two variables: 1. how good is the player? and 2. how good do "people" think he is? Question one can be answered with a fair degree of specificity in baseball, but question two is trickier.

Derek Jeter, though, seems to stoke the passions of his followers and the nay-sayers. It's somewhat easier to discern how Jeter is "rated" by the sporting public because opinions have been so publicly and vividly pronounced. Consequently, our understanding of his career could use a good application of logic. Let's examine the great, the not-so-great and the mythological.

Great
Derek Jeter is a .312/.383/.449 hitter from the shortstop position over a 16-year career (so far). If that's all you know, you can cast your Hall of Fame vote for him. Add to that truly terrific baserunning, both in stolen base success (80% of 417 attempts) and in the more subtle aspects, like tagging up and going first to third. (Of all the legends that have surfaced about Jeter, it's ironic that few people have recognized what an outstanding baserunner he has been -- the best I've ever seen.)

Jeter's plays hard all the time and his head always seems to be in the game. He is unfazed by big games (because every game the Yankees play is a big game) and big situations (like the 146 games of playoffs he's had the good fortune to participate in.) For what it's worth, he appears to be a gentleman and a good teammate, and he's untainted by scandal despite playing in a town and an era most associated with intemperate behavior.

Not so great

There's not much here. Though he's not a slugger, Jeter has enough power to keep pitchers honest, with 236 lifetime jimmies. He's a legitimate shortstop, but has always had below-average range. Early in his career, when he moved better laterally, he made a lot of errors (24 in 2000; 22 in his rookie year). More recently, he hasn't booted what he hasn't gotten to. But Jeter isn't the stone-handed statue that his critics have claimed.

Mythology

This is where Jeter's admirers skid off the tracks and cloud reality with extraneous noise. They have imbued him with super-hero abilities that fail the smell test -- not to mention objective evaluation. This can best be seen by the accolades accorded him for years as a marvelous fielder -- the avatar of the jump throw -- until defensive measurements become sufficiently refined to refute that bit of legend. 

The myth says Derek Jeter is Mr. Clutch, the ultimate leader, the great Yankee champion with five rings. The mythology is compounded by confirmation bias. Jeterheads believe something about their beloved and screen out any data that doesn't vindicate their view.

Jeter has played a year's worth of games in the playoffs and his numbers are basically a reflection of his regular season work. He's been on base a skooch less but slugged 20 homers. Most of his playoff at-bats have come during his best seasons, so the overall OPS advantage is about what we'd expect, not withstanding that the pitching is theoretically stronger during the post-season. He made a heads-up flip throw to the plate in a playoff game 10 years ago that would have been forgotten by day's end had Jeremy Giambi slid. And he presided over the worst playoff collapse in 100 years of baseball history against the Red Sox in 2005. Do you see "clutch" play or "leadership" in that equation?

The Yankees won the World Series when Jeter was a rookie in 1996. Did he lead the team then? Wasn't leadership the reason Joe Torre will be enshrined in Cooperstown? Doesn't having the spectacular good fortune to play beside  David Cone, Paul O'Neil, Scott Brosius, Roger Clemens, Wade Boggs, Bernie Williams, Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera, Robinson Cano, Mark Texeira, Alex Rodriguez and players of their ilk count for anything? (Luis Soto also has five rings.)

In the end, Derek Jeter is an all-time great shortstop. Minka Kelly's boyfriend is in the next group after Honus Wagner and Alex Rodriguez (if you consider him a SS; it should be noted that he was forced to move to third because there was nowhere for Jeter to go), along with Cal Ripken and Arky Vaughn. Jeter has by far the highest offensive career value (wins against replacement player) after the top two, though Ripken, Vaughn and most of the other top shortstops add anywhere from an edge to a lusty helping of value afield.

I said before that Jeter was the fifth or sixth best shortstop of all time, but that assessment was five years old. He's the third best ever, no artificial ingredients added.

I'll leave poor Derek alone now. I promise.

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Saved!

Matt Albers got a pretty cheap win for the Red Sox last night. After Jon Lester no-hit the Blue Jays and collected five strikeouts in four innings, he came out with a strained lat. Albers took credit for the win by pitching just two innings of one-hit ball. 

Franklin Morales pitched an uneventful seventh and Daniel Bard worked around a single in the eighth. No statistical credit for them. Then, with a 3-0 lead, Jonathan Papelbon nailed down his 18th save in 19 tries.

At least that's what the record says. In fact, Papelbon recorded two outs before allowing a single, a home run, a walk and two more singles. If you're wondering how eight total bases didn't tie the game, let's talk about Darnell McDonald and Jason Varitek.

With Edwin Encarnacion on second and JP Arencibia on first, Papelbon served up a single to left by Blue Jay shortstop John McDonald. McDonald's Red Sock namesake fired a beebee to the plate, which was being blocked by Tek's left leg. Varitek tagged Encarnacion to end the game. Papelbon got credit for that out and for "saving" the game.

In order to "earn" that save, here is the closer's body of work: three outs, one of which resulted from a great defensive play, two runs, four hits and a walk. The Blue Jays batted .667/.714/.833 against him.

This is why sabermetricians don't care about saves. It's why managing to the stat makes utterly no sense. (Actually, it makes utterly no sense to manage to any statistic.) It's why, baseball Neanderthals who claim to dismiss statistics actually don't; they just rely on the wrong ones.

But it's all right. Eventually, they'll all be saved.

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They're Playing His Vogelsong

Giants' manager Bruce Bochy has exercised his All-Star prerogative to add Giant starter Ryan Vogelsong to the game's pitching roster. At 6-1, 2.13, Vogelsong looks like a solid choice. But dig a little deeper and it seems Bochy might be looking silly by year's end.

Certainly no one, not even his optimistic manager, could have predicted success for the 34-year-old righty coming into the season. His 10-22, 5.38 record over parts of six major league seasons wrapped around a three-year stint in Japan rarely correlates to stardom. Vogelsong seems to have tightened his command and sharpened his fastball, but other factors weigh more heavily in his success.

First, the 6'4" Pennsylvanian has shared the mound with serendipity. His BABIP-against is an unsustainable .256 and a fifth of the runs against him have been deemed unearned. Account for those factors and Vogelsong's SIERA -- the ERA his pitching actually deserves -- is 3.68. That's quite a spread.

Add to that more shouts of "regression!" from the peanut gallery. He pitches in a low-offense ballpark that has jumped on the Vogelsong bandwagon with both feet. His ERA is 2.4 runs higher outside of Telephone Company Field. His last two starts also suggest the shark repellent may be wearing off. In those two turns, he's lasted just 11.2 innings, surrendering nine runs and eight walks while fanning 11.

Contrast this with the Unlucky Mariner, Doug Fister. The 27-year-old northpaw is a miserable 3-9 in front of Seattle's wet newspaper offense. In the nine starts in which Fister has relinquished two or fewer runs, he's a mere 2-2. In the five games in which the opposition has scored four or five runs (only one of those starts lasted less than seven frames) he's 0-5. That's what happens in front of teammates who "hit" .226/.294/.336. (The starting lineup features one above-average hitter - first baseman Justin Smoak. Three starters are below 50% of average.)

Fister's 3-1 K-BB ratio, low home run rate (.45 HRs per nine innings) and sustainable BABIP (.290) all testify to the veracity of his 3.02 ERA. Repeating that won't get him to .500 with a lineup full of glove-first second-basemen, but it should look a lot better.

In other words, a second-half-only All-Star team is a lot more likely to include Doug Fister than Ryan Vogelsong. The 3-9 pitcher has out-performed the 6-1 pitcher; we're just not trained to notice it.

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Who's Better: Ted Williams or Johnny Damon?

Yesterday, Johnny Damon passed Ted Williams on the all-time hit list. Wrap your head around that.

Here's another Johnny Damon fact: he's on pace to play in 140+ games for a 16th consecutive year. The other guys on that list: Frank Robinson, Hank Aaron, Pete Rose. That's the list. If Damon can do it again next year, he'll be the whole list.

Johnny Damon's a swell player. Fifteen seasons of .287/.354/.436, 392 steals at an 80% clip and a cool haircut (or lack of one) is worth writing home about even if you have a noodle arm in the outfield. He's not Ted Williams swell, though, or Frank Robinson swell or Hank Aaron swell or Pete Rose swell. 
But he's flying in their rarefied air these days. That's got to be a nice feeling.

That and the $107 million he's made in his career.

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