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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Move Along...There's No Story Here

If you're a reporter, or a blogger, you love a good storyline. The Casey Anthony trial is a great story, even though it's a tragedy wrapped in an abomination. The voting for the 2011 MLB All-Star game doesn't leave much to discuss. For that we can thank the fans.

Ever since MLB decided to allow Chicago-style voting on the Internet, whereby horsehide aficionados like myself could vote 25 times online with each email address we could co-opt (I stop at three), the elections have gotten ... better. That's right, fraud becomes All-Star voting.

The truth is, ever since fans could vote, fraud has been an essential part of the package. Fans received their ballots by the bushel basket at the ballpark and were urged to punch out the chad for the hometown heroes, even if the Mudville nine were channeling Mario Mendoza.

The 1957 edition of the fan vote channeled a Libyan presidential election. The Cincinnati Enquirer printed ballots allowing Queen City fans to elect seven Reds on the starting team, alongside Stan Musial. Left out were bench-warmers named Mays, Banks, Matthews, Campanella, Snider, Clemente, Ashburn and ultimate league MVP, Hank Aaron. (The commish voided two of the selections in favor of Aaron and Mays and then retired the fan vote for the next 12 years.)

In 2011, continuing a recent trend, the cream has generally risen to the top. This year, the performance fairy has shined on the entire NL squad. In the AL, only Josh Hamilton and Derek Jeter are debatable  choices. Even then, Hamilton is probably the best player at his position, but he's been hurt most of the season. Jeter's Hall of Fame career is waning, but the fans want to see him. Asdrubal Cabrera, 25, will have his chances in future years.

The flipside mistake is an All-Star vote based on just 13 weeks or excellence, and fans have been careful not to fall into that trap. Jose Bautista and his 54 homerun season didn't start the Mid-Summer Classic last year because there was no reason to believe he was one of the three best outfielders in the league. This year, flashing similar stats, he's the leading vote-getter. The baseball public could teach the general electorate a thing or two.

The Internet ballot stuffing has actually benefited the game by allowing more thoughtful, non-partisan observers to overwhelm the hometown hooey. The results are teams that largely reflect the best of the baseball each year. Where that notion flags is more likely the result of the antiquated rule requiring each team to be represented, the reputational bias of players and blatant demonstrations of unwarranted loyalty by the manager.

So yipee for the fans, and look, I got a blog out of it anyway.
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Buck'ed Up

I don't mean to pick on Derek Jeter, particularly in a vulnerable moment for him. The guy's rehabbing in god-forsaken Trenton in the twilight of his career and on the verge of a milestone hit. In his absence, the Yankees have won 14 of 17, the team's stand-in leadoff hitters have posted a .400 on base average and his replacement at short, Eduardo Nunez, has batted .300.

I've made pretty clear that Jeter is one of the five or six greatest shortstops of all time, just not the superhero his supporters make him out to be. His reputation for unparalleled leadership, Gold Glove fielding and "clutch" play are chimerical notions assembled out of wisps of wind by delusional admirers. One of his signature career plays never even happened -- the one where he supposedly dove into the stands to make a catch on a foul ball and then came out bloody and dazed.

If you're wondering why people like me bang on Jeter, allow me to provide you with two words: Joe Buck. Buck worships at the Jeter shrine and rambles incoherently on national television with paeans to the Yankee captain. Today was another embarrassing case in point.

During an insightful discussion started by Tim McCarver about how players age, Buck allowed that Jeter has ebbed at bat and in the field, but would be the guy he'd want fielding the ball with the bases loaded in the ninth inning of Game 7 of the World Series ... here's the fun part ... if it was hit right to him.

If you don't understand why this comment is a dereliction of common sense, I'm not sure any explanation matters, but let's take one perfunctory stab. Buck asserts that even though he's lost some of his baseball skills at age 37, Jeter is still "clutch."  In those categories in which we can quantify things, Buck has been forced to acknowledge that Jeter is listing towards below average. But in an arena in which he can continue to delude himself without factual contradiction, Buck has decided to call Jeter "the best." The best at what? At something every Double-A shortstop does routinely.

This is the kind of nonsense that sends baseball fans who actually care about facts into paroxysms of disbelief. Someone at Fox ought to clue Joe Buck in: these kinds of statements don't polish Derek Jeter's reputation; they stain yours.

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Labor Pains

In every dispute between Major League baseball players and owners before 1994, it was a simple case of good and evil. The owners seemed intent on exploiting their unique monopoly with a plantation mentality towards players. Players, led by union chief Marvin Miller, simply wanted to be paid what the owners deemed they were worth.

By 1994, players had achieved a competitive labor market system over the rotting corpses of old ownerships. The remaining Lords of the Realm attempted to roll back some of those gains, locking the players out and cancelling the World Series. In that case, the owners were merely 90% wrong, the players 70% so. That they managed to share 160% of blame tells you everything you need to know about that dispute, which ended in the nearly complete dissolution of the owners' position ... yet again.

What was the difference between 1994 and all the other labor-management dustups? It's simple, really. The free market -- one in which information flows freely and buyers have choices -- is a magical concoction that has made Westerners the richest, freest people the planet has ever hosted. But the free market is not perfect. It particularly unravels around the edges, where millionaires and billionaires decide each other's salaries in the board rooms of public corporations, and where those bereft are commended to their own wiles without the information or the choices that advantage the rest of us.

Professional sports are a unique set of businesses. Teams compete against each other in the most direct way, so that miniscule differences in quality are  printed in the paper each morning for all to appreciate. The leagues are closed cabals in which fierce competitors are also collaborators. In basketball and baseball, the labor market is the product. Finally, whole regions of the country identify with these businesses in ways that CVS or McDonalds or even Ford must view wistfully.

In other words, sports are different. For the reasons above and several others you can probably discern, they need a different kind of labor model, still based on the free market, but with some significant controls that limit company risk and enhance return on investment.

Are you listening NBA players? You face two technicals from the owners and a flagrant foul from the fans unless you wise up and make some hefty concessions in contract negotiations. Your situation is not MLB's and it's not the NFL's.

For one thing, NBA teams have opened their red-stained books. Thousands of people fill arenas in Cleveland and Sacramento and Atlanta and elsewhere dressed as empty seats. At the same time, teams routinely skirt the cap rules designed to constrain salaries and provide a level of parity. Like baseball, the NBA is becoming a league of elephants and mice.
 

The players are uniquely positioned to accommodate the league's demand for a harder cap and lower salaries, because they actually need to make less money. A study by the Toronto Star in 2008 found that 60% of NBA players are bankrupt five years after retirement, despite an average annual salary of $5.36 million. Unlike the brutes of the gridiron, cagers don't sacrifice their bodies  or suffer truncated careers. Hoopsters don't need more money because they can't handle what they have.

Witness the perfect storm for owners: they're losing money and are willing to sacrifice the season while players are addicted to every penny they get. It's an imbalance not just in the balance sheet, but in the balance of power. And not for nothing, it also means that fans will side with the struggling franchises over the bling-bedecked players.

Want to keep the golden goose alive, ballers? Give the owners most of what they demand and laugh all the way to the bank. You might have to sell one of your cars, but you're going to lose it anyway in the Chapter 9 filing.

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When Mediocrity Is Heaven

What do the following have in common: Lucas Duda, Josh Thole, Jason Pridie, Ruben Tejada, Willie Harris?

a. You've never heard of them.

b. They were in the Mets' starting lineup today.

c. They are borderline minor leaguers.

d. All of the above.

With three-fifths of an already shaky lineup's best players (David Wright, Jason Bay, Ike Davis) nursing injuries, this bevy of backups (combined Value Over Replacement Player equal to one quarter of Jose Reyes') has already accumulated 624 plate appearances.

Predictably, this motley crew, anchored by Reyes, Carlos Beltran and Angel Pagan, smoked Alexi Ogando and the Texas Rangers 14-5 today. (That would be the formerly invincible Alexi Ogando.) In many ways, it has been a microcosm of the season in Queens.

During a year in which all five of their best hitters have spent time on the DL, and their best starter since Tom Seaver has been out all year, Terry Collins' roster has managed to flirt with .500 through half the schedule. The Miracle Mets? That's 2011.

The rotation features such lights as Dillon Gee, Jonathan Niese and regression king R.A. Dickey. And the bench, well, you don't have a bench once Jason Pridie is starting. But the emergency back-up bench -- e.g. Brad Emaus, Mike Nickeas and Chin Lung Hu (I'm not making up these names) -- could win a game of hide and seek against Major League pitchers without hiding.

There's no single bullet; this collection of mutts has gotten it done -- about half the time, anyway -- with equal parts hitting and pitching, though their defense lags. That they're middle of the pack at the plate and slightly below that on the mound is a tribute to ...something. Other than MVP candidate Reyes (.334/.380/.506 26 steals), a resurgent Beltran (.273/.368/.474) and young Davis (.302/.383/.543), who may be done for the year, there isn't a "wow" in the bunch. None of the non-stars has more than four home runs, or six steals or a .350 on base average, except Ronny Paulino, whose .319 batting average in 95 at bats is offset by just four extra base hits. 

On the hill, it's all B-plusses, and no As. Everyone in the rotation but ace Mike Pelfrey has pitched to an ERA under 4.00, but no one has been lights out. The same with the relief corps: with the exception of the conflagration that is DJ Carrasco, everyone with 17+ innings has an ERA under 3.80. AT the same time, there isn't a sandman in the bunch.

Add to that the supposed distraction of Fred Wilpon's financial and intellectual bankruptcy, and it would be understandable if New Yorkers gave the team a pass this year. Instead, through all the disappointments and dyspepsia, the orange and blue are hanging on. 

The Mets won't contend this year, nor in the foreseeable future if they let Reyes go. Still, they've represented the outer boroughs with a lot of scraps and a loosening grip on Mr. Madoff's ill-gotten wealth. In Flushing these days, that passes for a victory.

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Baltimore Chops & Texas Leaguers

Giants phenom Madison Bumgarner entered last night's game against the resurgent Twins with a 3.21 ERA. He left with a 4.06 ERA. Giving up eight runs in a third of an inning will do that to you. But it could have been worse. His reliever quashed a two-on, one out rally.

An average Game Score for a pitcher is about 50. Bumgarner's latest episode earned a 2.

The 21-year-old's previous worst outing in 2011 was a five-run, five-inning performance in his second start. He's surrendered two runs or fewer eight times this season. He won't be over 4.00 for long.

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The Phils' Cliff Lee and Cards Kyle Lohse squared off against each other Wednesday night and held each other's teams in check on three runs and 13 hits in 17 frames of work. They walked one and struck out three between them.

Think about that: 17 mostly impressive innings (all the runs scored against Lohse on a pair of dingers in the fourth) and only three whiffs. You know how often you see that? Never.

The reason is BABIP. Pitchers who don't fan batters are relying on balls being hit into gloves. That requires a gumbo of good defense and lucky placement. Lee's shutout withstood five line drives (75% of liners are hits, often for extra bases) and 17 grounders (skid through roughly 35% of the time, but mostly for singles). He induced just three pop-ups (almost always outs). In other words, Lee was either very lucky to surrender just two doubles and four singles, or he had some special sauce that resulted in the kinds of weakly-hit grounders and flies that return batters to their dugouts.

Lohse's case is as odd as his pronunciation. He didn't walk or strike out a single Phillie in eight innings. (It's only the 23rd time in 23 years that a pitcher has gone eight innings without a walk or strikeout.) Nary a double or triple passed his way either. But two of the 16 fly balls against him left the park, and that's why he lost. Lohse got two thirds of his pitches over the plate, but he wasn't fooling anyone. That's a bad combination for a righty facing Ryan Howard.

Lohse also out-performed his pitching profile, which would produce on average 13 safeties, rather than the seven he surrendered. Clearly, some nifty leather-working saved him, as the Cardinal defense turned three double plays behind him.

The bottom line is that in the long run, BABIP will float to the surface. That's why you don't see successful pitchers failing to get a even a single strike three.

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From baseball-reference.com: 

Jack McKeon first managed the Royals in 1973. He had some great players during his time, like John Mayberry, Hal McRae, Lou Pinella and Paul Splitorff. Regarding those players:

• John Mayberry's son is now a big-leaguer
• Lou Piniella retired as a player, became a manager, and retired as a manager
• Ed Kirkpatrick and Paul Splittorff are deceased
• Hal McRae retired as a player, his son retired as a player, and McRae retired as a manager

McKeon? He's still managing 25-year-olds.

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This one's just a question. With the College World Series down to its final four (three SEC teams, including the hometown defending champion 'Cocks) did the city of Omaha really build a $130-million  baseball stadium for just two weeks a year? The Triple-A Omaha Royals have their own park, as does the University of Nebraska-Omaha.

Someone please tell me I Googled a sham site. I wasn't aware anyone outside of South Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi was that dumb.

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Offending the Gods of Causation

Jim Riggleman has fallen into the same rabbit hole that every baseball reporter's been peering up from for a century. He mistakenly believes that managers matter and that anyone cares who doffs the cap in Washington's dugout this year.

Riggleman took his ball and went home today saying he was too old to be disrespected after Nationals' brass refused to pick up his $600,000 option for 2012 prematurely. Dear (GM) Mike Rizzo: I am not too old to be disrespected for $600K a year, a generous per diem and free tickets to 18 Phillies games. I'll come to DC to skipper your ship. Your pal, Waldo.

The reason Riggleman expects the franchise would commit to spending 600 large for something it might not want is elusive, unless he knows in his heart that he'll need a big ninth inning rally to win another term at the helm. He seems to be in the middle of a fourth inning rally with the Nats on an 11-1 streak to .500, but it could be long-forgotten by September.

Of course, crediting the manager for his team's spasm of success violently offends the gods of correlation and causation. The inconvenient fact about managers is that they have precious little control over team performance. If you want to judge a manager by his team's W-L record, then Robert E. Lee was an under .500 leader whose team finished last during his four years with the Richmond Confederates.

I was reminded of all this not by Riggleman's snit, but by reaction to Jack McKeon's temporary care-taking in Miami. Following each of the three games played by the McKeon-captained Marlins, the baseball media have cataloged his apparent impact on the final score. If we really have to explain to a reporter the inanity of judging a manager by one, three, 20 or even 50 games, then he might want to consider the night court beat.

What we all conspire to ignore is that managers are charged with three primary functions, and two of them have no immediate effect on their team's play. Only lineup construction can possibly alter team effectiveness immediately, and even that is an organizational decision. A manager's main task is to create a culture in the clubhouse, something that happens over months, not days, and still represents little more than a pinky on the scale. 

A dearth of hitting, pitching and fielding talent swamped Joe Torre's managing acumen in his first 14 years with the lowly Mets, Braves and Cards. His teams saddled him with an 894-1003 record. Torre didn't suddenly get 1173-767 worth of brilliant when he took the helm of the Yankees. He got 1173-767 worth of Mariano Rivera, Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Roger Clemens, David Cone, Paul O'Neil, Scott Brosius, etc.

(Managers are also responsible for in-game decisions, but they are so rote that even the average jamoke could adequately pull the levers in a major league game. Do you really need a Dartmouth MBA to bat for the pitcher with a runner on and down by a run in the bottom of the seventh?)

The Marlins could storm back from the abyss and snag the pennant this year, or they could fold like a wet potato chip and move to Brooklyn. Neither would shed a single photon of light on Jack McKeon's managing ability. As long as he's bedfellow with Hanley Ramirez's .605 OPS, the Florida manager is doomed.

Apologies to Jeff Foxworthy for mangling his witticism: if you're name's on the building, you're filthy rich, if it's on the door, you're doing great, if it's on your desk, keep grinding, and if it's on your shirt, you might be a redneck. Managers' names aren't even visible from in front. It's no coincidence.

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A Change of Plans

So you're a sportswriter for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer covering the M's tilt against Washington on June 21. It's the middle of the ninth and you're a couple of quotes and one mouse click from hitting the send key on a completed story. It looks like this:

Doug Fister baffled Washington batters with solid command and a four-pitch repertoire, limiting the home team to a run on three hits and a walk in eight impressive innings as the Mariners humbled the Nationals 5-1. 

The top three in the Mariner order, Ichiro Suzuki, Brendan Ryan and Adam Kennedy combined for all the offense the team needed with seven hits and four runs scored. Brandon League finished Washington off in the...

Oh, wait. League's in some trouble. With two out, left fielder Jerry Hairston just singled home shortstop Ian Desmond and moved Jayson Werth to third. 

Brandon League made it interesting in the ninth, allowing a run to score and putting the tying run at the plate before David Pauley mopped up.

Uh oh. Keystoner Danny Espinosa brought Werth home with a single and now the tying run's at first. You can just edit that last paragraph.

Relievers Brandon League and David Pauley made it interesting in the ninth, allowing Washington to climb within two before stranding the tying run at first base. Pauley earned his first save of...

Oh. Ohhhh. Pauley is kicking dirt as Nats catcher Wilson Ramos exults. The baseball Ramos just hit to deep center is about to change ownership. That's a real walk-off homer, because no one has to run.

Select all. Delete. It's going to be a long night of rewriting. Here's the Associated Press account:

Wilson Ramos capped Washington's five-run ninth inning with a game-ending three run homer, lifting the Nationals to a dramatic victory over Seattle. 

Jerry Hairston Jr. and Danny Espinosa each had two-out RBI singles before Ramos connected on a 1-1 pitch from David Pauley., hitting a drive to deep center for his sixth homer. Ramos threw his arms up almost immediately after the ball left his bat as Pauley (4-1) trudged off the mound.

The Mariners wasted a fine effort from Doug Fister.

Dang. I hate when that happens...

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A Win Saved Is A Win Earned

When we say that Tim Hudson earned a win yesterday in the Braves game against the Blue Jays, we mean he earned the win. Hudson dominated Toronto over eight shutout innings and plastered a two-run homer for the only scoring of the game. Give that man a cookie.

Hudson relinquished just two hits in eight-plus innings, walking one and fanning eight. For those of you not bothering to keep score, that's a far finer effort than a five-walk, three-strikeout no-hitter.

That said, Hudson owes a tip of the cap and a malt beverage to closer Craig Kimbrel. After Hudson allowed his only free pass and a base hit to start the ninth, Kimbrel entered the game with first and third and the lead on the line. He preceded to blow away Jose Bautista (.330/.476/.657), Jose Lind (.324/.369/.605) and (anti-climax alert) Aaron Hill (.242/.284/.344) on 15 pitches. "Kimbrel" is to "closer" as "pizza" is to "meal."

Sometimes a win really is a win and a save really is a save.

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Eighteen Hits of Choke

Luddites in the world of new baseball analysis often complain the statistics can't capture everything in the game, like moving the runner on a ground out or motivating teammates with "intangibles."  While that's true as far as it goes, the newfangled stats like OPS (on base average plus slugging percentage), VORP (value over replacement player) and SIERA (skill-interactive earned run average) capture much of what is unaccounted for by flaccid old stats like batting average, RBIs and pitching wins.

The inter-league rivalry game between the Orioles and Nationals last night provides a great example. Baltimore's first baseman, Derrek Lee, notched a double and four singles in five at bats. Center fielder Adam Jones smacked a double and three singles in five at bats and right fielder Nick Markakis added four more singles. Second baseman Robert Andino pitched in a single and a double and others added safeties, including pitcher Zach Britton and pinch hitter Vlad Guerrero in his only trip to the plate.

The O's batted .419 with their 18 hits ... and plated just four runs in an 8-4 loss.

Batting average just fails to represent enough of what transpired in this game. One important reason for Baltimore's fecklessness is that despite making 43 trips to the plate against six different pitchers, they didn't manage a single walk. Perhaps D.C. pitchers were laying every offering in the strike zone, but more likely, the Orioles need to alter their approach at the plate.

The Nats can take more credit for playing error-free ball in the field and turning a pair of double plays to douse rallies. Geeks and deniers can agree that the Birds' inability to string hits together was also a key contributor to their low run total. Because just three players produced 13 of the team's 18 hits, there wasn't much opportunism up and down the lineup. Indeed, the Orioles left 13 on base. 

Seamheads would call that an unfortunate distribution of results. Change-haters would ascribe psychological characteristics to the two teams, asserting that the Orioles weren't "clutch" or Nationals pitchers "bore down." Research finds there is very little to that. No matter how you measure it, there's little consistency to "clutch hitting" or "choking" among players, and even less among teams. 

Indeed, just the night before, Baltimore left just seven men on base and scored two in the ninth to defeat Toronto. So they're not chokers, just a team whose batting average doesn't tell the whole story. And in that sense, the Baltimore Orioles are every team in baseball.

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Payback's Gonna Be A Bitch

Before Ranger northpaw Alexi Ogando got torched by the Yankees for six runs in five outs on Tuesday, he was 7-0, 2.10. A deeper dive into his body of work suggests that 2.10 is irrevocably in the rear view mirror and 3.50 is decidedly on the horizon.

Ogando was being fitted for a bust in the BABIP Hall of Fame until 12 Bronx batters stacked up four singles, two doubles and a walk against him. Batters were hitting just .210 on balls in play against him this year (it's now a similarly unsustainable .226), which suggests that Lady Luck wasn't just on his side, she was accompanying him to the Oscars.

In 124 lifetime innings, Ogando possesses the fourth lowest pitching BABIP of all time. No one with any experience is below .240, suggesting that Ogando is due some comeupance. Compounding the misery-projection, the 6'4" Dominican has stranded an otherwordly 81% of baserunners. Research shows that this characteristic is almost always a function of pure happenstance, so a visit from the regression fairy seems inevitable.

As Ogando's BABIP and strand rates return from Death Valley, his ERA will rise towards 3.68. That's the number that seamheads have determined best represents the value of his pitching given average luck and fielding. A 3.68 ERA is a mark of excellence, particularly at The Hitting Factory at Arlington, but it isn't 2.10. If a 3.68 ERA is a valid representation of his ability, Ogando has some robust paydays ahead of him.

Of course, that ignores one important issue. The 27-year-old sophomore twirled just 72 frames last year between the minors and majors and only 80 minor league innings over three years before that. In other words, his arm is already in uncharted territory. It would surprise on one who is paying attention if, come mid-season, he's gassed.

So while Ogando appears to be a legitimate talent, he's not yet Pedro. If you've got him on your Fantasy team, sell high now.

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And You Thought Jackie Robinson Broke the Color Barrier

I remember riding the subway as a teenager with some friends  -- all Caucasian -- when a very inebriated black man got into a discussion with us. 

"You're white, right?" he asked, clearly on the way to making a Kumbaya statement about race.

"How did you know?" I asked perkily. "Roy White!" I leaped across the aisle and shook his hand. 

"No, no," he stammered. "I mean you're white and I'm..."

"Do you know my friends?" I interrupted cheerily. "This is Vida Blue, Dick Green, Alvin Dark and Red Ruffing! Say hi, guys."

"Wait, no, I mean I'm a black man," he enunciated through the Thunderbird haze. "And you are white boys. But we're all here together getting along."

"Well sure, we're getting along," I said, "but I'm the only White boy here. Alvin isn't a White, he's a Dark. And even though he stays over my house a lot, Dick's not a White, he's a Green. Vida's a Blue, though a lot of kids at school say he's yellow. Ruffing is a...well...a Ruffing, but he's Red. Not a Red like Brezhnev, if you know what I mean. He's as American as apple pie. More like red, white and blue."

The poor guy just folded into himself at that point, overwhelmed by a torrent that seemed to him disconnected from whatever point he had been trying to make. He remained sullen until we bid him a hale adieu at our stop, reminding him which color of the wheel we each represented. I'm not sure if we advanced or set back race relations that evening.

That scene was brought to mind again by this fanciful post penned by Jacob Peterson at Beyond the Box Score, in which he calculates what color name produced the most, best players.

Here are the concluding paragraphs:  

After tabulating the results, "White" came out on top. While "Brown" had the top two color-named players in MLB history (Kevin Brown and Mordecai "Three-Finger" Brown), there were no other star players with that name. "White," on the other hand, had 8 players with at least 25 WAR, led by Roy White, Deacon White, and Devon White. All of this despite there being more than twice as many players named "Brown" (86) than [sic] "White" (40). "White" was also helped by having relatively few players who came in below replacement-level: 30%, compared to around 50% for most other names.

Coming in a distant third was "Green," which featured solid careers from Shawn Green and Danny Green, but not much else. There have been only 7 fewer Greens than Whites, but the Whites have accrued 227 more WAR.

Right on the heels of "Green" was "Blue," which finished in 4th place despite only having 3 MLB players to its name. Of course, two of the three players were Vida Blue, the longtime A's ace, and Lu Blue, the 1920's 1st baseman who was sort of like that era's John Olerud, though with a bit less power. By average or median WAR, "Blue" easily comes out on top.

The accompanying graph is pretty neat, so see for yourself.

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Twelve's Not Enough

It was a big night on Monday for Diamondback starter Zach Duke. His team spotted him 12 runs in four innings and he smashed a two-run cookie at the plate against the drowning Marlins.

Alas, Duke did not get the win. Up nine-zip, he relinquished three runs in the third, one in the fourth and another three before he could get out of the fifth. Duke left the game with a five-run cushion, but came an out short of "earning" the win.

The good news is: he didn't lose. That's high praise for a 4 2/3-inning performance of seven runs on 13 hits, including doubles by each of the two opposing pitchers. It can come as some consolation that the Brewers' Randy Wolf and Cubs' Ryan Dempster also didn't win, despite pitching seven shutout frames against each other. They walked one and fanned 14 between them.

Also not losing was the Rays' Alex Cobb (5 2/3 shutout innnings) and Detroit's Phil Coke (6 1/3 innings of goose eggs). So they're all in the same boat with Duke as far as the W-L record goes.

A.J. Burnett can't say the same. He held Cleveland to a run on five hits, a walk and eight strikeouts in 7 2/3 innings. But he was "charged" with the loss.

Of course, there's one thing Duke accomplished that the rest of the pitchers didn't. In a 12-9 barn burner he hit the game's only home run.

Baseball's a crazy game.

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Indian Givers

Well, that didn't take long. While we were all wondering whether the Cleveland Indians were for real, their entire team signed with the Miami Heat.

Since jumping out to a seven game lead over the rest of the AL Central and a 17-game advantage on the woeful Minnesota Plan B, the Indians have dropped 14 of 18 while the Twins' substitutes have begun competing. Detroit, 11-4 in its last 15, has caught the Indians, and the Twins, though still looking up at the rest of the league, are within seven games.

It's not just bad luck in Cleveland, which would be redundant anyway. The Indians have scuffled on both sides of the ball, tallying under three runs per game while allowing more than six during their slide. Minnesota, meanwhile, has discovered itself, though most of itself is on the DL (Joe Mauer, Denard Span, Jim Thome, Jason Kubel). The two leading sluggers on the team are Michael Cuddyer, 9 home runs, and Danny Valencia, 5. (Yes, that Danny Valencia.) That's an annual rate of 25 and 12 respectively, which is roughly what your bank CD is paying these days.

Even if staff ace Francisco Liriano continues his comeback on the mound and manager Ron Gardenhire remembers where his bullpen went, it's going to take a paradigm shift for the Twins to become relevant again. The same can not be said for Detroit or the White Sox, who are now within three-and-a-half of the division lead. They both look capable of looking capable over the last 100 games and making the early aptitude of the Indians and scuffling of the Twins ultimately irrelevant.

But they had us wondering for a minute there. 

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Him Hit Cookie...Yum Yum Yum

Reports of Big Papi's baseball death -- notably mine -- were greatly exaggerated.

Following a poor 2009 season and a miserable start to 2010, David Ortiz suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous predictions. Combining his declining skills with a big body and an inability to play the field (not to mention steroid whispers), many pundits wrote Oscar the Grouch stories about Boston's Cookie Monster.

I plead guilty to some of this. Here's what I said last April: "Undoubtedly, the wrist injury of '08 was part of the equation, but turning 230 pounds into baseball's golden years -- he's 35 this year -- is likely responsible for some of it too. Look for Ortiz to continue to be an asset, but a depreciating one, particularly since he can't play the field."

Here's your depreciating asset, punditheads. After batting .143 with one home run last April, Papi finished the season at .270/.370/.529 and 36 blasts, and has started this year at .326/.394/.612 and a 40-homer pace. He's already twice as valuable as he was in the injury-plagued '08 campaign.

The pivot point seems to be that Ortiz can get around on lefties again. He's hitting .333 versus southpaws after struggling to .221, .212 and .222 the last three years. He's never really powered up against same-side hurlers, but as long as he gets on base with regularity against them, his ability to crush righthanded pitching means he's still an awfully dangerous at-bat.

So in retrospect, it appears Ortiz's wrist woes sapped his strength in '09 and maybe during the cold New England April of last year. But he's been hotter than Courtney Kardashian since, which is to say he's the same David Ortiz he was from '03-'07. The conclusion being drawn, that Ortiz was in decline because his performance had tailed off, he was aging and other players built like him hadn't aged well, was reasonable, but ultimately wrong. Those factors suggest decline, but they don't guarantee it.

The Red Sox may luxuriate in a full season of the Big Papi who led Boston to a pair of World Championships. Still, they would be wise not to bet the farm on his svelt self after his contract expires this year.

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Ichiro At .261

Ichiro Suzuki is going to the Hall of Fame. A .330 lifetime average, 400 steals at an 80% rate, 10 straight 200-hit seasons and a rifle in right field, combined with a brilliant first act in Japan punch his ticket. A former Rookie of the Year and MVP -- inappropriate and undeserved respectively -- and a consistent Gold Glover, he's not just worthy; he's unique. He's the second or third greatest leadoff hitter of all time even without his career in the Orient.

So far in 2011, we're seeing exactly what Ichiro's limitations have always been. In a nutshell, for Ichiro, it was always about piling up singles. Infield scrambles and shallow outfield drop shots have always been the key to his value. They drive an unprecedented lifetime BABIP (batting average on balls in play) of.356. (Unlike most pitchers, hitters do have some control over their BABIP. Great bat control, hitting line drives, avoiding pop-ups and shallow flies, and beating out infield hits all inflate BABIP, which inflates overall batting average.)

This year, at 37, Ichiro seems to have lost his magic. With a below average BABIP of .280 and batting average of .261, Ichiro is a replacement level player. Lacking power or much of a proclivity for free passes, his .261/.317/.299 is abysmal for a corner outfielder. He's still swiping bases -- 14 in 18 attempts so far, but the defensive metrics suggest he is no longer an asset in the field either.

What this suggests in practical terms is that he no longer possesses the rare ability to place the ball on the field. Losing a split second of reaction time to age makes all the difference in the world in that regard. 

There's no precedent for quite this. In Ichiro's worst previous year, 2008, he still sported a fluky-looking .334 BABIP, batted .310 and got on base nearly 39% of the time. In 2005, a BABIP of .316 held down his average and on base to career-lows, but he seemed to be swinging more for the fences, smacking a career-high 15 homers.

In those two seasons, Ichiro was a below-average hitting right fielder. His other virtues still made him a reasonably valuable 4-5 win player, but none of that was due to a .300+ batting average that we thought for years branded a player exceptional.

Live by the BABIP; die by the BABIP. This may be the early hours of the sun setting on a singular career, a career based more than any other in history on a freaky ability to flick out the bat and loop a pitch into right field.
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