More Fun With Game Write-Ups

More evidence you can't spell "dumb" without "AP."

At the bottom of the wrap-up of a 6-5 Marlins win over the Cardinals, most of which reasonably features Jeff Baker's pinch-hit RBI single with two outs in the ninth and Casey McGehee's game-tying hit following a courageous 11-pitch at-bat, the AP mentions the following:

Mike Dunn (6-4) worked a scoreless eighth and Steve Cishek finished for his 19th save in 21 chances.

It's true that Dunn and Cishek worked a scoreless frame each, relinquishing a single each. It's true that Dunn is credited, according to antiquated rules developed during the Taft Administration, with six wins and four losses on the season, though anyone with even a glancing knowledge of the game recognizes that reliever W-L records are as illuminating as a Ryan Braun quote. It's also true that the flying speed of an African Swallow is roughly 29 mph if it's unladen.

Here's what else is true: Before Dunn entered the game, Sam Dyson hurled two pristine innings, allowing no hits and fanning three batters. He coaxed as many outs as Dunn and Cishek combined and was far more effective doing so. 

And before Dyson, failed starter Jacob Turner entered the game in the fourth inning with runners on, a four-run deficit and the game one safety from breaking wide open. He ended the threat with a strikeout and then pitched a perfect fifth, after which the Marlins plated three runs to tighten the score.

No one has created a phony measurement to describe the contribution Dyson and Turner made to the win, and so the AP appears unable to explain their value. But it was significantly greater than either Dunn's or Cishek's; indeed it's greater than both of theirs combined.

Because we have these utterly worthless and time-worn numbers we can assign to Dunn and Cishek, they can read their names in newspapers across America. The real pitching heroes, Sam Dyson and Jacob Turner, get the consolation prize of a mention in a sad little blog read by few comely and available young women.

Here We Go Again

It's happening again. 

Miguel Cabrera is vying again for the Triple Crown, leading baseball in batting average, RBI and trailing only Chris Davis with 35 home runs. He also leads the AL in on base percentage, OPS and runs scored. The future Hall of Famer is undoubtedly the best hitter in the game now that Prince Albert has succumbed to corporeal ravages.

How unusual is Cabrera's accomplishment? He's only the 16th player in 130 years of ball who matched that particular feat in the first place. Taking five of six MVP categories in two consecutive years has been done once, by Jimmy Foxx in 1932-33. Double-X paced the AL with 58 homers and 169 RBI in 1932, but his meager .364 batting average cost him the medal stand. He claimed the crown in 1933 with 48 HR 158 RBI and a .356 BA, then failed to lead in any of those categories the following year.

(Ted Williams swept to the Triple Crown in 1942, then went to war for three years. A year after his return (picking up a W against the Germans), he repeated his dominance along with the league lead in runs, walks, OBP, slugging and OPS. Give him a non-steroid asterisk.)

Cabrera is in rarefied air and it gets even thinner: He hit for the highest batting average in 2011. That leaves him with three batting titles, two home run titles and two RBI titles over three consecutive years if the current pace continues.

That's not the deja vu part of the story, though. In fact, the story isn't even about Miguel Cabrera. It's about the guy who right now has a better case for American League MVP. Mike Trout.

Again.

Mike Trout doesn't carry Miguel Cabrera's stick. His OPS -- on base percentage plus slugging percentage -- is 121 points lower. He doesn't hit for the average (.331 versus .360), get on base as regularly (.425 versus .464) or hit for the same kind of power (20 HR versus 35). But Trout does everything else better.

Trout is fast and Cabrera is...fast for an Abominable Snowman. Trout makes the highlight reel with his glove. Cabrera makes the highlight reel for discovering third base for the first time. Trout staffs the critical middle pasture. Cabrera defaults to third because Prince Fielder is even more cube-shaped than he is.

Sum the column and you get a big chunk of the game where Trout runs circles around Cabrera. The 26 of 30 steals, the base running advantage (e.g., Cabrera has grounded into 14 double plays to Trout's six), the superior defense and the comparison at the plate to center fielders rather than corner infielders gives Trout an edge. 

This isn't really to propose that Trout should be the MVP over Miggy this year. Immature defensive stats can hardly be determinative even if at season's end, which we're not. The gap between the two -- Baseball Reference has Trout at 6.4 wins against replacement and Cabrera at 6.2 -- is too close to end the discussion. 

Still, we're on pace for familiar arguments and, I suspect, a familiar conclusion when the votes are counted.

Again.

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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Lee-ving Up To Expectations

We thought history might be made by the muscled-up Phillies rotation this year. They lassoed Cliff Lee in the off-season after pinching Roy Oswalt from the crumbling Astros before the trade deadline last year. Combined with Roy Halladay and Cole Hamels, yowzah. Joe Blanton, a #2 starter in pitching-rich Oakland, lost his tenuous fifth starter grasp in Philly.

So, as NYC mayor Ed Koch used to ask, "How'm I doin'?"

Here's how they've done: Oswalt has scuffled when he's been healthy, Joe Blanton has missed most of the season, Cliff Lee got raked for six homers and a 4.91 ERA in July and rookie Vance Worley has been pressed into 104 innings of duty.

The result: as advertised.

Lee's strapped it on in August -- 5-0, 0.45. Halladay's the leading Cy Young candidate. (16-5, 2.49, 7 complete games, 7.5K/BB ratio.) Hamels paces the league in baserunner stinginess with a .98 WHIP. (13-7, 2.63.) Worley's been a revelation. (10-1, 2.85.)

Even with Oswalt's mediocrity, (7-8, 3.80) and Blanton's struggles (1-2, 5.50) the starting staff has an ERA of 2.92, 34% better than league average. Despite Citizens Bank, the ballpark that hitters patronize for high rates, the Phils lead MLB in runs allowed. 

Consider this domination: Halladay is the best pitcher in the NL, Cliff Lee is the best #2 starter. Cole Hamels is the best #3 starter. You can argue about Oswalt, though when healthy he's superior to any #4. And no #5 has been Vance Worley's equal.

How does their mound corps compare historically? How about the great Dodger staffs of the '60s? The best of them, the '65 World Series winners featuring Koufax and Drysdale posted an ERA 26% better than the league in offense-dampening Chavez Ravine. The 104-win Braves of Maddux, Glavine, Smoltz and Avery in 1993? The same 34% above average as the '11 Phils, but in an offense-neutral home field. When you're playing in that sandbox, you're bringing a really big pail.

Come the playoffs, it's an inner ring of hell for opponents. Because Halladay and Lee are horses, Charlie Manuel will never have to write anyone else's name after Hamels. With the Giants gone, the Phils lap the rest of the playoff field - in either league -- when it comes to starting rotations.

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How On Earth Did Buzz Capra Win the ERA Crown?

If the sabermetric movement could be condensed into one sentence it would be this: We have better ways to analyze the performance of players and teams, and better ways to predict their future value, than the traditional statistics.

New research demonstrates how nearly useless one year of batting average and ERA are in revealing a player's actual ability. Bill Petti of Beyond the Box Score looked at every player year in baseball history to determine how well one year's number correlate with the following year's. In other words, if Braves rookie first baseman Freddie Freeman hits .291/.352/.461 this year, what are the odds that he's roughly a .291/.352/.461 hitter, and not a .261/.312/.398 hitter getting good breaks or a .325/.398/.517 hitter getting bad ones?

The answer is that batting average correlates pretty poorly from year to year, largely because BABIP, which is a key component of batting average, correlates even worse from year to year. On base percentage, which combines batting average and walk rate, correlates about 50% better year-to-year than batting average because walk rate doesn't change much year-to-year. Slugging and OPS are about the same as OBP when it comes to year-to-year consistency.

In other words, Freddie may or may not be a .291 hitter, but whatever he hits, add about 60 points to get his on-base percentage and about 170 points to get his slugging percentage. (A .354 BABIP and a 3-1 K/BB rate suggest regression next year, though he's just a rookie, so natural improvement may  offset some of that decline.)


What correlates well year to year? Contact rate, patience metrics, strikeout rate and walks are the best. For what it's worth, line drive rate is the worst. Here's the whole chart:

.	Hitter Metric	Year to Year Correlation
.	Contact %	0.90
.	SwStr %	0.89
.	Swing %	0.84
.	K%	0.84
.	Z-Swing %	0.83
.	O-Contact %	0.81
.	Z-Contact %	0.80
.	BB%	0.78
.	BUH	0.77
.	GB/FB	0.77
.	GB%	0.76
.	O-Swing %	0.75
.	ISO	0.73
.	HR/FB	0.73
.	FB%	0.73
.	SLG	0.63
.	OPS	0.63
.	OBP	0.62
.	wOBA	0.61
.	IFH	0.59
.	IFFB%	0.56
.	F-Strike %	0.56
.	Zone %	0.52
.	IFH%	0.44
.	Batting Average	0.41
.	BABIP	0.35
.	BUH%	0.24
.	LD%	0.22

It's worth repeating what Petti says in the article, that ERA has about the same correlation as batting average, which is why seamheads are working to derive fielding-independent statistics for pitchers. As it turns out, even in their relative infancy, those measures have a much better year-to-year correlation than ERA.

It explains how Red Sock Bill Mueller could lead the league in hitting in 2003 (.326) after batting .260 the year before and before hitting .283 the year after. And how Buzz Capra could lead the league in ERA for the Braves in 1974 (2.28) the year after sporting a 3.86 ERA and before posting a 4.25. (Capra started just 61 games in his seven-year career and, other than that one season, was a below-replacement level pitcher.)

All this can get ridiculously complicated, but even if you don't understand the underlying methodology you can appreciate the information. If you read that Jair Jurrjens has a 2.96 ERA so far this year, but a 3.96 FIP, that means he's been a 3.96 ERA pitcher with great fielding, relief support and/or luck and can be expected to tail off the rest of the way. (Of course, in Jurrjens' particular case, he's laid up, so no regression for him right now.)

This is useful data to general managers, fantasy owners, baseball obsessives and fans, in that order, and that is the order in which it has been embraced.
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Trading Away A Division Title

The Los Angeles Angels -- or the Anaheim Angels, but not both -- have been nipping at the heels of the Texas Rangers for the last American League playoff spot. Currently they are 3.5 games shy of the division crown. Think they miss Mike Napoli now?

During the off-season, the Angels flipped their slugging backstop, along with fourth outfielder Juan Rivera, to Toronto for outfielder Vernon Wells. At the time I inveighed against the deal from the L.A. perspective, but I didn't know the half of it. Back then, the focus was on Wells' $126 million/seven-year contract, which was choking Toronto like a hippo in a snake. 

The Blue Jays were giddy simply to remove the last three years of Wells from their throat. That they got something useful in return was like winning a three-way parlay. That they got better players than Wells and shed payroll must have left even Blue Jays GM Alex Anthopoulos scratching his head. Here's what Fox Sports' Ken Rosenthal aptly said about the deal at the time: “Most teams try to get younger, cheaper and better. The Angels got older, more expensive and possibly worse.”

Then Anthopoulos added insult and more injury to L.A. by using Napoli as a chip to improve his bullpen, sending Napoli to the Angels' arch-nemesis in Dallas for reliever Frank Francisco. And now the Rangers are riding Napoli's bat to beat the Angels for the division.

For his $18 million, Wells is hitting .221/.256/.398 and proving that he's no longer, at 32, a center fielder with the glove or an outfielder with the bat. At the same time, the catchers replacing Napoli (Jeff Mathis and rookie Hank Conger), are hitting at about a Double-A level, costing the team three runs relative to a replacement player. (Mathis has consumed more than half the plate appearances from the catching position and contributed .177/.227/.256 with more strikeouts than total bases.)

For his part, Napoli has delivered .289/.386/.572 and added nearly four wins to the Rangers while spending about half his time at first base and DH. Did you catch that? Napoli is plus four wins and his replacements on the Angels are minus a fraction. That's more than the difference between the two clubs' positions.

It's not that simple, of course. For one thing, the Angels didn't like Napoli's defense and didn't see a place for him at first or DH. They thought they had Kendry Morales at first base. Though he's hurt, Rookie of the Year candidate Mark Trumbo has filled in ably (.256/.296/.480) while Bobby Abreu has been the definition of adequacy (.252/.356/.355) at DH.

For another thing, Texas still could use the right-handed yumminess provided by Francisco, who's served as closer in Toronto this year. That takes back half a win or so on the Napoli deal.

But there's still this: $18 million for a fourth outfielder. The Angels will still owe Wells another $36 million of Arte Moreno's money over the next two years as his skills further decline.

All in all, the Wells deal was every bit the disaster for the Angels that any sentient fan could have predicted. At the very least, it's likely going to cost L.A. a playoff spot this year, and with a mound triumverate of Dan Haren, Jered Weaver and Ervin Santana, they would have been a dangerous draw.

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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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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.

____________________________________________________________________________________

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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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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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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