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In the Dodgers series, it came via Matt Holliday's dropped fly ball on the potential final out of Game Two; had the catch been made, the series would have been knotted at one game apiece as it headed back to St. Louis, but as it was, the Dodgers rallied against closer Ryan Franklin for the win. In the Yankees series, it came when Alex Rodriguez slammed a Joe Nathan pitch into the bullpen in the bottom of the ninth of Game Two for a game-tying homer. The Yanks won it in the bottom of the 11th on a Mark Teixeira walk-off, but only after the Twins loaded the bases with no outs in the top of the inning and failed to score, a situation somewhat marred by umpire Phil Cuzzi's failure to see a Joe Mauer drive land in fair territory beforehand; Mauer would have gotten a ground-rule double, but he had to settle for a single. In the Red Sox series, Jonathan Papelbon came on to protect a 5-2 lead with two outs and two on base in the eighth inning of Game Three. He gave up a two-run single, then surrendered three more runs in the ninth, the last two on a single by Vlad Guerrero following an intentional walk of Torii Hunter (Joe Posnanski has a great rant about that one), and soon the Sox were packing up for winter. Riverdance that one, kid.
Meanwhile, the Dodgers will have to wait for their opponents to emerge from the other NL Division Series currently being played under frigid conditions in Denver between the Phillies and the Rockies. From a historic standpoint, a rematch with the Phillies would be more favorable, but the Dodgers' chances at reaching the World Series are probably better against the Rockies, whom they beat 14 out of 18 times this year. Personally, though, I'm just hoping for a protracted, miserable series full of extra-inning games ultimately won by the Donner Party.
I haven't had much chance to write about postseason action yet, but that doesn't mean I haven't been busy. The season's final Hit List is up at Baseball Prospectus, with the Yanks finishing atop the list for the first time since 2006 and the Dodgers, who led most of the year, winding up second. The latest installment of our "Kiss 'Em Goodbye" series is up at Baseball Prospectus and ESPN Insider; this one, to which I contributed, covers the just-defeated Cardinals:
Key stats: 62 starts, 425 2/3 innings, 2.45 ERA, .650 SNWP
That's what the Cardinals got from Carpenter and Wainwright, and after the pair combined for just 23 starts last year, it was their performances which were the main reason the Cardinals outdid their PECOTA projection by eight games. After pitching just 21 1/3 innings in 2007-2008 due to various elbow miseries, Carpenter rebounded to go 17-4 while posting the league's top ERA (2.24) and SNWP (.673), with microscopic walk and homer rates (1.8 per nine and 0.3 per nine, the latter tops in the league) further underscoring the fact that he was back in Cy Young form. Wainwright, who missed two and a half months with a finger tendon injury in 2008, emerged as an ace thanks to improved command his curveball, which enabled him to smother righties (.217/.255/.290). He led the league with 19 wins and 233 innings while ranking fourth with a 2.63 ERA and 212 strikeouts.
The Bottom Line
With Holliday, DeRosa, Troy Glaus, and Rick Ankiel all free agents, the team will need to find a heavy hitter or two this winter to keep the lineup from feeling like "Albert and the Seven Dwarves" again. As the Cardinals fill their holes, they'll especially need to emphasize plate discipline, given that Pujols and mid-season acquisition Julio Lugo were the only regulars to walk at least once for every 10 plate appearances. Furthermore, La Russa and Dave Duncan's possible departure might present real problems for this franchise, given the skill both have shown at squeezing the most out of veteran rosters — and particularly rotations — assembled amid the limitations of a mid-market payroll.
Tough to believe that La Russa and Duncan might not be part of the Cardinals next year; they've been constants for so long it's easy to forget they're not surgically attached to the team.
• A hearty congratulations to Pete Abraham, who is leavingThe Journal News for The Boston Globe and in doing so will move from covering the Yankees to the hated Red Sox. As any Yankee fan with an Internet connection knows, Pete's been THE go-to beat reporter for all things Yankees for the past few years, punching well above his weight against the city's major dailies because he took to the medium of blogging much more readily than his competitors.
In retrospect, that's hardly a surprise. Pete's been at the Journal News for the past decade, and back in 2004, he interviewed me for an article he wrote about the baseball blogosphere and threw a high compliment my way: "[Alex] Belth and many other bloggers were first inspired by Aaron Gleeman, Jay Jaffe and David Pinto, the Willie, Mickey and the Duke of this fledgling genre. They were among the first and are now three of the best-read bloggers."
Such flattery.
It wasn't until 2006 that Pete added blogging to his beat chores, but in doing so he's set an example of which the rest of the industry is only beginning to catch up (likely while muttering under their breaths). "Blog" was just another four-letter word in the world of mainstream sports reporting, and while there are still hundreds if not thousands of his peers who still don't get it, he took to it like a duck to water. Not only did he manage to create a durable, enthusiastic community at the LoHud Yankees Blog, as it's officially known, but he intuitively understood that things like pregame lineup postings, audio snippets and in-game notes were what his audience craved, and usually scooped the competition with his tidbits of info about injuries and roster moves (sadly, he was never any good at telling me when the Yankees game would be rained out, but that's a small quibble borne of the fact that the press guys are just as in the dark about said topic).
It was only a matter of time before he moved up in the world, and I had high hopes he'd remain in the New York market. As happy as I am for the big lug, he move to Boston is a bit of a kick in the stomach for his Yank-flavored audience, but you can't begrudge the man his due. He's earned this one, and I wish him nothing but the best.
• Twenty-seven years after it was published, I'm finally the owner of a copy of the 1982 Bill James Baseball Abstract. Though my curiosity had been piqued as a 10-year old when I read Dan Okrent's 1981 Sports Illustrated article, I'd never actually owned my own copy. I borrowed the '82 from a friend that fateful summer and kept it for a couple months, but if memory serves, I returned it once a minor feud over baseball cards was settled. I've been hunting for my own copy for the better part of the past decade and on at least two other occasions had thought I'd secured a copy, one through a bookseller who regretfully wrote back to say he no longer had it in stock, the other by an unscrupulous eBay retailer who refused to ship internationally despite making no note of that on the sale page.
Published by Ballantine, the '82 was the first of the mass-market James books, and because of that, it was a landmark, for it introduced such key concepts as the Pythagorean Method, the Defensive Spectrum, Defensive Efficiency, Runs Created, Isolated Power, park effects, the age 27 prime, pitcher run support, and so much more to the great unwashed audience. All of those concepts are still in use today, and they remain fundamental to the field of sabermetrics.
• This week's Hit List is here, with the Yankees on top, the Dodgers second, and the Red Sox third:
[#1 Yankees] Big Man: As the Yankees close in on 100 wins, lost amid A.J. Burnett's meltdowns, Andy Pettitte's fatigued shoulder and the never-ending drama that is the Joba Rules is the performance of CC Sabathia. He leads the league in wins (17), is second in innings (213 1/3) and ranks among the top 10 in SNLVAR, ERA and strikeouts. The Yankees have won 11 of his last 12 starts, a span over which he's put up a 2.75 ERA.
[#2 Dodgers] Coming Back: After seeing their division lead dwindle to two games while their rotation takes turnsforegoing Clayton Kershaw, Randy Wolf, and now Chad Billingsley, the Dodgers fall back on strong performances by Hiroki Kuroda, Vicente Padilla and Jon Garland to beat up on the Giants and Pirates and restore their NL West lead. Andre Ethier homers on back-to-back nights against the Bucs, the latter a 13th-inning game-winner which marks his sixth walkoff hit of the year. In doing so, he becomes the first Dodger to reach the 30-homer plateau since Adrian Beltre in 2004.
[#3 Red Sox] Dice Is Nice: Daisuke Matsuzaka throws six shutout innings against the Angels in his first big-league appearance in nearly three months. Though his ERA still stands at 7.05, Matsuzaka's return is well-timed given the potential diceyness of the team's current rotation situation. Elsewhere amid a seven-game winning streak, Jon Lester tosses eight shutout innings against the Rays two days after a rocky 23-pitch stint is washed away by the rain. He's riding a 17-inning scoreless streak and has allowed just 11 runs over his last eight starts, and now ranks third in the league in strikeouts (211), fifth in SNLVAR (5.9) and sixth in ERA (3.29).
Tough to believe I've got only two more of these to do this season. Where does the time go?
It happens every week: a reader sees his favorite team trailing one of its division rivals in the Hit List rankings despite leading in the actual division race and fires off a snarky email or comment questioning the validity of the list, often while attempting to divine the current location of my head, and usually while making reference to last year's division race or postseason results. Well into my fifth season of writing the Hit List, I'm far more amused by such occurrences than I am offended, but the weekly give and take serves as a reminder for the occasional need to explain the list's workings in greater detail. As such, I annually set aside a column called the Hit List Remix to walk readers through the process.
First, a quick refresher course on the Hit List's basics. It's BP's version of the power rankings, created by me back in 2005 and based upon an objective formula which averages a team's actual, first-, second- and third-order winning percentages via the Adjusted Standings. To go into a bit more detail:
• First-order winning percentage is computed (via Pythagenpat, Pythagoras' slightly more sophisticated sibling) using actual runs scored and allowed.
• Second-order winning percentage uses equivalent runs scored and allowed, based on run elements (hits, walks, total bases, stolen bases, etc.) and the scoring environment (park and league adjustments).
• Third-order winning percentage adjusts for the quality of the opponent's hitting and pitching via opposing hitter EqA (OppHEqA) and opposing pitcher EqA (OppPEqA), both of which Clay Davenport recently added to the Adjusted Standings report for those of you curious enough to care.
With the exception of an injection of preseason PECOTA projections during the season's first month, those numbers are all that go into the rankings, which are averaged into what I've called the Hit List Factor (HLF). There are no subjective choices to be made, no additional tweaking to favor the A's or hurt the Phillies or fit into any of the other 28 conspiracy theories our readers might think of offering. No recent hot or cold streaks or head-to-head records are accounted for, either, despite the frustration of readers wondering why their team hasn't vaulted to the top thanks to a 5-2 week against their division rivals. It's all about runs, actual ones and projected ones, because run scoring and run prevention give us the best indication of a team's strength going forward. Using all four percentages is a way for correcting for teams that over- or underperform relative to the various areas examined.
After running through the basics, I took a look at the relative strength of each division and dug deeper into the nuts and bolts of a few races where a team's ranking outdid their division standing such as the Rays being ahead of the Red Sox on the Hit List but behind them in the AL East. The article is free, so take a look.
The Hit List itself was a freebie as well. Once again, the Dodgers and Yankees were 1-2:
[#1 Dodgers] Knuckling Down: An extra-inning loss to the Rockies shaves the Dodgers' division lead to two games, but they rebound to win the series behind a solid debut by Vicente Padilla, recently released by the Rangers. The Dodgers are getting good results from the pitchers they've pulled off the scrapheap; knuckleballer Charlie Haeger combines to shut out the Cubs earlier in the week. For all of their recent rotation woes, they're second in the league in SNLVAR, and while the team is just 14-17 since July 25, they've outscored opponents by 18 runs in that span.
[#2 Yankees] Godzilla and Friends: Hideki Matsui's pair of two-homer games help the Yankees stave off the Red Sox by taking two out of three in Fenway; he drives in seven amid a 20-run deluge in the opener. Matsui's' 23 homers rank second to Mark Teixeira's 31, and with Robinson Cano contributing a pair of shots (and reaching a new career high), the team now has six players with at least 20 blasts, the third time in franchise history (1961, 2004) they've reached that plateau. Jorge Posada (17) and Derek Jeter (16) could help them surpass the 1996 Orioles, 2000 Blue Jays and 2005 Rangers, who had seven reach that mark.
[#22 Mets] Escape From New York: Just two innings into his comeback from Tommy John surgery, Billy Wagner gets traded to the Red Sox for a pair of PTBNLs, making him lucky enough to avoid the soaring body count, not to mention Omar Minaya's continued reign of error. The Mets lose both Johan Santana and Oliver Perez to season-ending surgery, the former due to bone chips in his elbow which have contributed to a 4.02 ERA and a 5.4 K/9 over his last 15 starts, the latter to patellar tendon tendinosis which turned his season into a 6.82 ERA, 7.9 BB/9 nightmare. Jeff Francouer could join the party as well due to a torn thumb ligament; his .305/.331/.500 line since being acquired includes just three unintentional walks in 175 PA.
Tough to believe the nightmare that is this year's Mets. Can't recall a more pungent combination of insult and injury.
• Back on Wednesday I examined the potential Hall of Fame fates of Vlad Guerrero and other contemporary right fielders, including Manny Ramirez, Gary Sheffield, Bobby Abreu, Ichiro Suzuki, Sammy Sosa and Larry Walker. There's not a single cut-and-dried case to be found among these due to steroids, park effects, the Japan factor and the BBWAA's undervaluing of plate discipline.
Here's the JAWS table:
Player Career Peak JAWS EqA Ballot/Age Manny Ramirez 90.2 52.9 71.6 .329 37 Avg. HoF RF 87.2 52.2 69.7 .306 Gary Sheffield 80.1 49.6 64.9 .315 40 Bobby Abreu 70.8 50.7 60.8 .310 35 Sammy Sosa 69.6 49.3 59.5 .292 2013 Vladimir Guerrero 69.3 48.8 59.1 .315 34 Brian Giles 62.7 45.7 54.2 .314 38 Tim Salmon 59.2 46.6 52.9 .303 2012 Larry Walker 63.7 41.9 52.8 .303 2011 Ichiro Suzuki 53.1 48.2 50.7 .297 35
When it's all said and done I think Manny, Vlad, Shef and Ichiro will all be there, but it's going to take a lot of time and a fair bit of ink spilled by the soapbox derby champions before we know the final outcome. After looking over his numbers last night in the service of this week's Hit List, I'm more convinced than ever that Ichiro's likely to make it.
• Today I examined (BP/ESPN Insider) the wonderfully freaky season Mark Reynolds is having, which includes his 223-strikeout pace, all-time top ten seasons for batting average on contact and slugging percentage on contact, the majors' #2 ranking in homers (38), slugging percentage (.595), isolated power (.314) and Hit Tracker's Golden Sledgehammer rankings for longest average home run distance, and the highest rate of home runs per fly ball.
The bottom line is that for all of his freaky and potentially fluky stats, Reynolds is a valuable player, good enough to crack the NL top 20 with a .304 EqA without giving too much back on defense. While some regression is inevitable regarding the extreme aspects of his performance, given that he's just in his age-25 season (he turned 26 on August 3), there's plenty of potential for growth as well. The select company he's keeping suggests we could be looking at player who's going to stick around and rack up some serious home run totals before he's through.
• Today's Hit List has the Dodgers retaking the top spot ahead of the Yankees despite trouble patching together enough warm bodies for a full rotation:
[#1 Dodgers] Our Kingdom For a Starting Pitcher: Chad Billingsley returns in fine form after skipping a start due to hamstring woes, but the Dodger rotation is again thinned when Hiroki Kuroda takes a liner off the noggin. As the team's division lead shrinks, they're at the point of dredging up knuckleballer Charlie Haeger, signing recently released Rangers reject Vicente Padilla, and taxing the bullpen with Jeff Weaver's brief starts, leading one to wonder why Eric Stults (4.86 ERA, .501 SNWP) is still Duking it out in Albuquerque (I know it's the Isotopes now, but I've been following Dodger farmhands in Albuquerque since before Stults—not to mention half the current lineup—was born). At least Randy Wolf is putting on a show, whiffing 10 while finishing a triple short of the cycle; he's 14th in the league in SNLVAR, and perhaps as importantly, seventh in innings pitched.
[#2 Yankees] Hail to the Captain: Derek Jeter passes Luis Aparicio for the most hits by a shortstop with his 2,674th, just one of 16 hits he collects over a seven-game span. He's hitting .331/.395/.471 this season, his best numbers in each category since 2006; the power appears to be a function of his new park (.319/.392/.496 at home), while he's simply hitting 'em where they ain't elsewhere (.343/.398/.449 on the road). His 2,696 total hits are just 25 behind Lou Gehrig for the all-time franchise lead.
[#3 Rays] Paint It Black: Not even a funky new hairstyle can disguise the fact that the Rays' shot at the postseason is slipping away. Even in a winning week, they're making no headway; their Playoff Odds have fallen from about 25 percent to 20 percent in the past seven days, and at 10 1/2 back in the AL East, the Wild Card route is the only one left. One could blame their starting pitching, but their SNWP is tied with the Yankees at .499, two points ahead of the Red Sox. It's the bullpen where they lose ground, but then we always knew last year's trick in that department would be tough to repeat no matter how many arms they stockpiled.
[#4 Red Sox] Sagging: The Sox offense busts out six runs for Clay Buchholz, the first runs they've scored for him across three straight quality starts that lower his ERA to 3.99. Indeed, things are rather uneven in Boston, or perhaps all too even; they're just 22-21 since the beginning of July, having briefly fallen out of the Wild Card lead while losing two out of three in Texas. As you'd expect, there's good and bad news, such as David Ortiz snapping out of a 5-for-44 slump by homering four times in five games to lift his paltry season line to .224/.318/.431, and Tim Wakefield limping through a bullpen session, prolonging his stay on the DL.
• Tuesday's Todd Helton piece generated enough discussion and had enough leftovers that I took a second look at Helton's Hall case, this time in the context of his contemporaries at first base -- much as I did here.
• Along with colleagues Kevin Goldstein, Marc Normandin and John Perrotto, and ESPN Insider's Matt Meyers, I was part of a roundtable (BP/ESPN) on young pitchers who struggle to fulfill expectations, with Clay Buchholz, Homer Bailey and Mike Pelfrey being the prime examples. Here's a taste of the beginning of the piece:
Matt Meyers, ESPN Insider: The one guy I can't figure out is Clay Buchholz. The Red Sox righty burst on the scene with a no-hitter in 2007, but has not been able to sustain any sort of success in the majors. However, his 2.36 ERA and 8.1 K/9 at Triple-A this season show us he has little left to prove in the minors. I'll channel my inner Jerry Seinfeld and ask, "What's the deal with Clay Buchholz?"
John Perrotto: There are some around the Red Sox who believe Buchholz enjoyed the trappings of the immediate stardom that came with throwing a no-hitter in his second career start, and that was a major distraction. You can get by on pure stuff in Triple-A, but it's a different story in the majors.
Marc Normandin: Agreed. Buchholz has great stuff, and he throws a ton of first-pitch strikes. But for some reason, he walks too many hitters (4.9 BB/9 for his MLB career). He needs to sort out the "how" of pitching to go along with his natural talent.
Jay Jaffe: I think it's fair to say that few players in baseball have had as much pressure thrust upon them as Buchholz. Ever since the no-hitter, his name has been floated as the key to so many potential big trades (Johan Santana, Roy Halladay, Felix Hernandez), so every lousy start raises the question of, "What if they'd traded him for X ... "
• Today's Hit List finds the Yankees edging out the Dodgers for the top spot by a single Hit List Factor point, a gap closed by last night's 11-1 win for the Yanks as the Dodgers sat idle. The real fun is further down the list:
[#12 Blue Jays] Talentless: J.P. Ricciardi makes the biggest salary dump in baseball history when he lets Alex Rios go to the White Sox via waivers for nothing but salary relief from the $61 million remaining on his contract through (gulp) 2014. It's a move which obviously saves the Jays a pretty penny, but it's merely the latest embarrassing gaffe in a series which has seen the GM's name become synonymous with awful contracts, not to mention some awkward attempts to evade their full impact. On the field, Marco Scutaro continues to be the exception that proves the rule when it comes to Ricciardi's penchant for buying high; he's hitting .296/.387/.441 and ranking in the top five in both walks and runs while earning a base salary of $1.1 million.
[#13 White Sox] My Final Offer is This: Nothing: The White Sox score themselves a potential long-term solution in center field by claiming Alex Rios on waivers from the Blue Jays and refusing to submit to J.P. Ricciardi's demands of any talent in return to offset the $61 million remaining on his deal. It's a bold and obviously costly move, but his defensive numbers suggest he can cover the middle pasture which more easily justifies the investment in a 28-year-old hitting to a .275 EqA tune in a down year. Add in the fact that Jake Peavy is beginning a rehab assignment, and it's clear the AL Central race is about to get interesting.
[#21 Mets] No Drama: It's a relatively uneventful week for the Mets, with no executive firings or pratfalls, just peace, quiet and losing as befits a team whose Playoff Odds have fallen below 0.2 percent. The team does reward those masochistic enough to still pa attention with another injury setback (Carlos Delgado) and some late-inning heartbreak, as Francisco Rodriguez yields five ninth-inning runs to the Padres in Petco, an occurrence whose extreme unlikelihood breaks the Baseball Prospectus Infinite Improbability Drive.
For some reason, the Jays are often one of the last team's I get to when I'm writing the weekly Hit List, but they move to the front of the line when Ricciardi gets on a roll with his idiotic antics. And for that, I'm very grateful.
Plus, anything that give me an excuse to quote a Godfather movie is all good.
• • •
My Toledo radio hit, which was rescheduled for Thursday due to a chaotic Wednesday for Norm Wamer and company.
• • •
My deepest sympathies go out to Can't Stop the Bleeding snarkmeister/Matador Records co-owner Gerard Cosloy, whose Austin, Texas home burned to the ground at 3 AM on Tuesday morning. The cause of the fire is still unknown, but officials estimate it did about half a million dollars worth of damage, and by the looks of it, Cosloy lost everything that was in the house. Fortunately, he himself is safe. He told the Austin American-Statesman "There are a lot of people who have a lot less than I do who deal with a lot worse, but this is pretty bad."
To say I've been a fan of Matador Records since the early Nineties would be an understatement. Along with labels like Sub Pop, Touch and Go and SST, they're one of the definitive indie rock labels. I've got at least a hundred Matador albums in my collection from artists like Guided by Voices, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, the New Pornographers, Pavement, Pussy Galore, Railroad Jerk, Yo La Tengo and others, and that's without even touching upon how much some of those albums have meant to me over the past two decades.
So it was quite a joy to discover Cosloy was in the blogging game a few years ago, and that he was keeping at least an occasional watch on this site. After years of link-swapping, we finally met through mutual friend Nick Stone as the three of us attended a Yankees game back in June. But even if I'd never met him, I'd feel for him in the same way I felt for two other blogging brethren who found themselves in the same painful circumstance, Christian Ruzich and Larry Mahnken. I'm a bit of a pack rat, to say the least, with several lifetimes worth of stuff in our Brooklyn apartment — books, music, computers, artwork, memorabilia, photos, clothing — that I can't imagine living without, and more of the same in storage. Hell, I'm still smarting over the four CDs that got lost when our rooftop party was interrupted by rain four years ago, and just spent a month mourning the loss of my trusty 1 GB flash drive, only to rediscover it in a piece of luggage. Don't even ask about the stack of football cards left at Skippers Seafood and Chowder House, Salt Lake City, November 1978...
My point is that as with those previous fires, I can only begin to fathom Cosloy's loss, and my heart goes out to him at this time. In lieu of a donation and what's bound to be a hell of a benefit show or two given the bands he can probably summon, I ask that you pick one of his favorite targets -- the Mets, Isaiah Thomas, Phil Mushnick, Phillies fans, etc -- and bash away gleefully until he can get back on his feet.
Shopping at V-Mart: The Sox land Victor Martinez at the deadline at a time when their offense appears to be emerging from its July funk via 42 runs in seven games, and they manage to hold onto Clay Buchholz in the process. They'll need him to step up, with John Smoltz being smoked for a 7.04 ERA through his first six starts, Tim Wakefield and an unhappy Daisuke Matsuzaka on the DL, and Brad Penny backsliding (5.07 ERA, .445 SNWP after Wednesday's debacle). Meanwhile, the Leak Fairy outs David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez as two of the 104 players who tested positive in the supposedly anonymous 2003 survey test, which should put a sock in the mouths of those so sanctimonious as to claim that the Sox had the high moral ground on the Yankees—or any other team—when it came to performance-enhancing drugs.
V-Mart killed the previous lead, involving Adam LaRoche, who was flipped to the Braves for Casey Kotchman less than a week after being acquired, as did a larger bit about Buchholz. All of that's small beer compared to the bigger news therein, the sad but hardly surprising note regarding Ortiz and Ramirez being on the 2003 list.
I like Big Papi more than most Sox haters, having written a chapter about him for Baseball Prospectus' Mind Game back in 2005; one SABR member suggested via my Facebook page that the revelations now explain why the Twins non-tendered him back in late 2002, but I'm not sure I buy that; they were awash in left-spectrum hitters at that point, they considered Ortiz out of shape, and they always discouraged his power tendencies, trying to make him hit "like a little bitch" (his words). Anyway, schadenfreude is a bitch, ain't it? I suspect he'll survive much as Manny has, with fans ultimately at least somewhat forgiving, and I think the headline to Tyler Kepner's New York Times piece ("If Every Team Was Doping, Why Use Asterisks?") speaks volumes. Also, a tip of the cap to Craig Calcaterra; just when I was starting to buy the idea -- or at least considering setting aside some time to think about possibly looking into the feasibility of potentially purchasing that cup of Kool Aid -- that the list should be released, the Shystermeister weighed in with some well-reasoned perspective.
Enough of that. A few of my pre- and post-trade takes from the BP Hot Sheet over at ESPN Insider:
TRADES: RED SOX GET VICTOR MARTINEZ Baseball Prospectus: There will be rest for the weary
The Sox made by far the best move among the three AL East contenders, acquiring a potential difference-maker who's hitting .284/.368/.464. The switch-hitting 30-year-old provides the lineup with flexibility, as he can catch or play first base, allowing the Sox to rest Jason Varitek, Kevin Youkilis, or Mike Lowell (with Youkilis shifting to third) -- a major boon given Lowell's fragility. --Jay Jaffe
TRADES: REDS GET SCOTT ROLEN Baseball Prospectus: We're scratching our heads here
Rolen's having a fantastic season (.320/.370/.476 with defense about five runs above average), but even assuming he has waived his no-trade clause, this one's a puzzler. The remaining money on Rolen's deal (about $3.5 million this year, and $11 million for next) represents a substantial burden for a notoriously cost-conscious team, and given that the Reds have lost 18 of 26, they're hardly contenders -- fifth in the NL Central at 9.5 out, ninth in the Wild Card at 10.5 out. --Jay Jaffe
TRADES: WHO WILL REPLACE SUPPAN? Baseball Prospectus: Injury won't force Milwaukee's hand
It's somehow fitting that Jeff Suppan hit the disabled list the day before a trade deadline at which the Brewers didn't make a splash. The Brewers' highest-paid player ($12.5 million, with another $12.5 million due next year) is currently putting up a 5.27 ERA and .415 support-neutral win percentage. He is a major reason the team ranks second-to-last in the league in support-neutral value and didn't have the financial flexibility to replace the losses of CC Sabathia and Ben Sheets with a front-line starter this past winter. It appears that because the Brewers were not willing to part with a top prospect such as Mat Gamel or Alcides Escobar -- or alternatively, to trade J.J. Hardy so the latter could play -- they'll likely do little more than play out the string over the final two months of the season. And the right move was probably no move, if the best they could have obtained via one of those two highly regarded youngsters was Doug Davis. --Jay Jaffe
OLNEY/STARK: YANKEES EYED BANNISTER Baseball Prospectus: Bannister reinvents himself on the mound
Brian Bannister quietly has had a very solid season for the Royals. In one of the more fascinating little stories of 2009, he has remade himself as a pitcher by studying the pitch f/x data provided by Major League Baseball Advanced Media and abandoning his four-seam fastball in favor of a cutter to generate more ground balls [see here]. Mission accomplished: His ground-ball percentage has risen from 38 percent last season to 46 percent this season, his home run rate has fallen from 1.4 per nine innings to 0.9, and he has shaved almost two runs off his ERA. He'd be a solid No. 5 starter for a contender, and for the Yankees to balk at such a minimal price tag might rate as one of their dumber [non]moves this season. --Jay Jaffe
• A Basseball Prospectus/ESPN Insider piece examining second-half strength of schedule, revisiting an earlier piece but using Hit List Factor instead of a team's projected winning percentage. Here's how the teams shake down:
Glad to see that two of my three teams have cupcake schedules, though for the Brewers it won't mean much if they can't improve their pitching.
• Last week's Hit List, which found the Dodgers and Yankees 1-2 for what I believe is the first time in the column's history.
• Speaking of the Hit List, I was lucky enough to get to take a time out during its creation to watch the final two innings of Mark Buehrle's perfect game. While I've seen a few no-hitters in their entirety (including Nolan Ryan's record-setting fifth) and caught the tail end of several more, this was the first perfecto I'd seen the end of; I missed those of David Wells (turned that one off early, d'oh) and David Cone. DeWayne Wise's spectacular catch to rob Gabe Kapler of a home run to lead off the ninth inning was worth the price of admission alone.
• Also from last Friday, in honor of Rickey Henderson's induction into the Hall of Fame, I took a at which contemporary players are most like Henderson:
Rickey Henderson will be inducted into the Hall of Fame on Sunday, an honor that feels long overdue for the player who holds the all-time records for both stolen bases and runs, is a member of the 3,000 Hit Club, and is widely acknowledged as the greatest leadoff hitter of all time. "If you could split him in two, you'd have two Hall of Famers," wrote Bill James of Henderson nearly a decade ago. The bearded bard of sabermetrics was onto something, and not only with regards to Henderson's Cooperstown credentials. Scanning the horizon in search of a truly similar active player, one comes up with only fractional Rickeys, players who possess elements of Henderson's game — his speed-power combo, his keen batting eye, his basepath derring-do — but nowhere near to the exact same blend.
In honor of Rickey's impending induction, I set out to search for the most Rickey-like player among the current crop of actives, devising a series of similarity scores in categories that typify the unique shape of Henderson's performance. Rather than use raw statistics to compare a player whose major league career began 30 years ago, I called upon Clay Davenport's translated statistics, which normalize all players to the same run-scoring environment. Instead of relying upon a single year's performance, I used a 3/4/5 weighted average of 2007, 2008, and 2009 stats for all players with at least 900 actual plate appearances over that span, then boiled those down to a per-650 plate appearance format for comparison to a similar encapsulation of Henderson's career. This sells the superstar short by including his decline phase, but with nobody even remotely close to Rickey Henderson at his peak out there today, the bar needs a bit of lowering.
The players were then scored in ten categories, with Henderson's performance defined as 1000 points, the least Henderson-like as zero, and all performances in between scaled accordingly. Occasionally, small-sample outliers had to be removed for this to work; crediting a player who's 4-for-5 in stolen bases with similarity to Henderson's 80.4 percent success rate on the basepaths isn't appropriate. It's important to note that players who exceeded Henderson in these categories — with higher slugging percentages or stolen-base success rates, say — were penalized, too; this process isn't designed to tell us the best player, just the "Rickeyest."
While obviously I had the upper hand because I was the one creating the system, I was as surprised as anyone else when the Orioles' Brian Roberts came out on top, with B.J. Upton, Johnny Damon, Jose Reyes and Carl Crawford following. "All of these players combine speed, power, and the ability to get on base to some degree, but none of them profile quite like Henderson does; each punts at least one category in this particular decathalon," I wrote, noting particularly that none of the overall leaders walks with Henderson's frequency. For more, see BP and ESPN Insider, and look for a follow-up at BP on Tuesday.
• Following up this item, which gave me ample fodder for the Mets' hit List entry, Tony Bernazard gets what he richly deserved: a pink slip. What an asshole. Meanwhile, Diamondbacks scout Carlos Gomez clarifies his part in one of the incidents that led to the firing. Contrary to the New York Daily News' earlier report, Bernazard did not directly address Gomez with his profanity-laced tirade, but rather berated a Mets official who told him to wait until the end of the half-inning before taking the seat occupied by Gomez.
[Update]: Via Shysterball, Mets GM Omar Minaya's performance at the press conference is worth a look. He tangles with Daily News Mets beat reporter Adam Rubin, accusing his coverage of being slanted by his own desire to join the Mets' player development department under Bernazard. This is turning into a parade of trainwrecks. And I can't stop watching.
• Finally, I'll be at the Society for American Baseball Research convention in Washington, DC from Thursday until Sunday. Don't be shy if you see me there and want to say hi — I don't bite.
As for the centerpiece, who ever heard of an All-Star Game played in less than three hours? It was downright old-school, a competitive affair that turned on a spectacular defensive play (Carl Crawford's catch of Brad Hawpe's drive) and a triple by speedster Curtis Granderson, and kept the suspense right up to the final out. But all of the early-count swinging -- 15 at-bats ended after a single pitch, another 14 after two pitches -- kept the contest feeling like an exhibition. Swing at this, because I've got a plane to catch.
Anyway, between the actual midpoint of the season (which was a week ago Sunday) and the All-Star break, it's a convenient time to look back at the first half, and at Baseball Prospectus we've been using the time to examine how our PECOTA projections have fared thus far. In Tuesday's piece I gave an undignified burial to three teams whom PECOTA saw as potentially playoff bound, the Diamondbacks (88-win Wild Card favorites), the A's (84-win AL West favorites) and the Indians (86-win AL Central favorites. All three are well below .500, with the latter two in last place in their divisions, and all have seen their Playoff Odds approach zero. Hence, "The Flatliners."
In today's piece, mirrored at ESPN Insider, I expand upon that piece to show which teams have seen their Playoff Odds change the most since our preseason projections:
The three-day All-Star break is a convenient time to begin the grieving process, and so yesterday made for a timely opportunity to shovel dirt on three teams whom PECOTA tabbed as potentially playoff-bound back in April. The Diamondbacks, A's and Indians may not be mathematically eliminated from postseason contention yet, but with their odds of joining the dance falling below 0.5 percent, a burial seemed in order.
As the BP staff has taken the past several days to examine how our preseason PECOTA forecasts have fared with regards to teams, hitters, starters and relievers, it's worth remembering that such projections don't equal destiny. They're simply a shorthand for a wider range of probabilities centered around the weighted mean forecasts we publicize, and all kinds of real-world factors — injuries, bad luck, mismanagement, imperfect information, and so on — can affect their accuracy.
Bearing that in mind, today we'll examine which teams have helped or harmed their postseason chances the most relative to our initial forecasts using our plain vanilla version of the Playoff Odds report, thus isolating the effect of our projections from our expectations for these teams going forward. In that report, each team's current record and third-order Pythagorean record — their record after adjusting for scoring environment, run elements, and quality of opposition — are factored into a Monte Carlo simulation of the rest of the season, with their records regressing not to .500 but to their third-order winning percentages. Run differentials play a big part here; a team that's above .500 but being outscored won't see favorable odds.
Surprisingly enough, none of the freshly buried teams rates as the biggest disappointment from this perspective:
...From this vantage, it's the Cubs who have disappointed the most, though at least they maintain about a one-in-six shot at October. Expected to pace the circuit with 95 wins and an MLB-high 11-game cushion, they're instead tied for third in the NL Central, 3 1/2 games back. Injuries to Milton Bradley and Aramis Ramirez, disappointment from Alfonso Soriano, and a hole in the lineup where Mark DeRosa used to be (their second basemen have hit a combined .224/.280/.294) have limited the Cubs to just 4.1 runs per game and the league's third-lowest EqA.
The Diamondbacks' offense ranks directly above them, a problem compounded by the loss of Brandon Webb, who hasn't pitched since Opening Day, and a wretched bullpen. The A's main problem has been a lack of offense, some of which is attributable to bad luck on balls in play>. The Indians merely have a staff that's been the league's worst in terms of run prevention because they don't miss enough bats; they're 12th in strikeout rate and 13th in Defensive Efficiency. The Mets have been without offensive stalwarts Jose Reyes, Carlos Delgado and Carlos Beltran for weeks now, and their pitching depth has been compromised by injuries as well; their playoff hopes aren't dead yet, but please excuse their weak pulse, clammy skin and stiffening limbs.
The Yankees wind up in the middle of the pack; their overall preseason odds of 66.6 percent have fallen slightly, to 58.9 percent, but they're still very much alive. The Dodgers wind up second from the top of the final list, those teams whose odds have improved the most; they went from heavy pre-season favorites (57.2 percent) to near-certainties (99.3 percent) despite Manny Ramirez's 50-game suspension.
Anyway, I've also got another piece up today on BP and ESPN that looks forward to the second half; I'll save that for another post.
[#1 Dodgers] Prodigal Sons: The Dodgers regain the Hit List top spot as Manny Ramirez returns from a 50-game suspension. He goes 6-for-18 with two homers and seven RBI, drawing louder jeers for being ejected after an awful strike three call than for his transgression. With Juan Pierre sitting, Rafael Furcal is restored to the leadoff spot and feeling better about his swing via a 14-for-30 showing this month.
[#3 Yankees] Running the Table: A 13-2 run carries the Yankees back into a first-place tie with the Red Sox. They take a three-game set from the Twins in Minnesota, thus winning the season series 7-0; they've won 18 of their last 24 games against the Twins. Alas, the run is tempered by the loss of Chien-Ming Wang due to a shoulder strain. Not that he'd pitched well (9.64 ERA overall, 5.50 since returning from the DL, and still waiting for that first quality start), but his absence forces the Yanks to pull Alfredo Aceves into the rotation. Along with Phil Hughes, he's become a key player in a bullpen that's put up a 2.39 ERA and 3.3 K/BB ratio since the beginning of June; he's 18th in the league in WXRL.
[#10 Blue Jays] Break Up the Jays: J.P. Ricciardi opens the door to offers for Roy Halladay, though the ace won't be a free agent until after 2010. It's a consequence of a ridiculously top-heavy payroll; they have $74.45 million — 92 percent of this year's Opening Day payroll — committed to just six players for next year, including B.J. Ryan, whom they punt with some $15 million remaining on his deal. The bigger problems are their five-year commitments to Vernon Wells ($107 million) and Alex Rios ($59.7 million), hitting an interchangeably pallid .264/.313/.418 and .259/.314/.415, respectively.
[#30 Nationals] Dunn Deal? Adam Dunn's 300th career homer halts Tommy Hanson's 26-inning scoreless streak and helps the Nats snap their four-game losing streak. Dunn's the fifth-fastest to 300 homers, at least in terms of the fewest at-bats to reach that milestone, trailing Babe Ruth, Mark McGwire, Ralph Kiner and Harmon Killebrew. Acting GM Mike Rizzo has no plans to trade the curiously consistent slugger. Meanwhile, ex-Nat and current Pirate Joel Hanrahan earns the win in a suspended game against the Astros, with the winning run scored by Nyjer Morgan, who arrived from Pittsburgh in that deal.
Notes galore to these:
• That NBCSports.com link in the Dodgers entry, by Mike Celizic, may be the best piece yet about Manny Ramirez's return. Between that and Eric Seidman's piece on John Hirschbeck's lousy strike three call, that's a rather off night in the Mets' booth for the usually appealing Gary Cohen.
• The ease with which Hughes has taken up residence in the bullpen should be used to quiet those who continually pine for Chamberlain to return to the pen. Why? Because it shows that Chamberlain isn't so unique in his ability to dominate in relief. A pitcher with excellent stuff — Chamberlain, Hughes, even Aceves — can succeed down there by shortening his arsenal and attacking hitters more aggressively. Those same pitchers may struggle a bit in the rotation, but that's life in the big city; it's a much harder job getting hitters out three or four times a game, and it's no crime for even a pitcher with their skills to scale a learning curve. Particularly given the specter of a Brett Tomko start.
• As somebody who likes to dine on schadenfreude pie, metaphorically speaking — it's the term my friends and I use when discussing the pleasure of watching right-wing lunatics self-immolate — I'm continually amused by Ricciardi's brash displays of incompetence. I can't believe that guy still has a job.
• That Hanrahan-Morgan game is just so wonderfully weird I had to squeeze it into the last line of the Hit List. A box score for the ages.
Last week's Hit List, submitted for Thursday publication prior to my departure for Milwaukee (hence the holiday traffic title reference) but alas, not run until Friday. The list marks the first time since Opening Day that the Dodgers were not #1; they were one point short of the Rays. Ouch.
Meanwhile, at a Fourth of July barbecue in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, my in-laws challenged me to repeat a recent feat of box score archaeology. As White Sox fans during their pre-Milwaukee days in Chicago, they rarely frequented Wrigley Field, but they recalled a rare visit. It was a game where the Expos' Warren Cromartie led off with a home run, but only after Cubs third baseman Steve Ontiveros dropped a pop foul and was charged with an error. "That might have been all the scoring," said my father-in-law.
Bingo: July 4, 1979 — thirty years to the day! It was a low-scoring affair, with Cubs starter Bill Caudill allowing just one other hit besides Cromartie's homer, an Ellis Valentine solo shot. He wound up on the short end of a 2-1 decision, with Spaceman Bill Lee getting the win. Years later, my brother-in-law recounted, he was getting Caudill's autograph after he'd moved on down the line and said he'd seen him pitch a good game in Chicago. "Is that the one where Ontiveros dropped the ball?"
It was a weird week for the Prospectus Hit List in that I worked ahead considerably so that I could enjoy a night out with my wife for her birthday. Then of course I found that three players whose slumps I'd highlighted — the Tigers' Magglio Ordonez, the Rangers' Chris Davis, and the Reds' Willy Taveras — all had big nights while I was out. Get me rewrite, and more coffee, damn it.
[#8 Tigers] Cancel Maggs Subscription? The Tigers bench Magglio Ordonez for four games, a move which has agent Scott Boras up in arms. The 35-year-old Ordonez is only 204 plate appearances away from vesting an $18 million option for 2010, but he's hitting just .274/.348/.354 after connecting for his first homer since April 27; his GB/FB ratio has nearly doubled, while his line drive rate has dropped 40 percent.
[#12 Rangers] Swish Davis and Company: A 2-7 tumble, part of an 9-12 June swoon, knocks the Rangers out of the sole possession of first place that they'd enjoyed since May 5. They're hitting just .221/.282/.368 this month, with Hank Blalock (.182/.280/.3218), Nelson Cruz (.183/.256/.394) and Chris Davis among the bigger bats stinking up the joint, though a four-hit performance snaps him out of a .200/.250/.333 showing. Davis has whiffed 22 times in his last 49 at-bats, and 103 times in 230 at-bats overall (against just 15 walks). He's crossed the halfway point to breaking the single-season strikeout rate—by mid-September.
[#22 Reds] Can't Stop the Bleeding: The Reds slide below .500 and into fourth place in the NL Central thanks to Dusty Baker's stubborn insistence upon keeping Willy Taveras not only in the lineup but also in the leadoff spot. Taveras is just 4-for-54 in June without a walk or an extra-base hit, and as Geoff Young points out, his slump actually goes back to May 15; he's now at .104/.128/.113 in 111 PA since then. In an unrelated story, the Reds are averaging just 3.8 runs per game since May 15, the league's third-lowest rate. Late note: In the exception that proves the rule, Taveras goes 3-for-5 with a double.
By the third one, to hell with it, tack on the postscript.
• In "Conquering the Cubs," the latest edition of my "Pair Up in Threes" series, I examine the Brewers, Cardinals and Reds, all of whom are atop the Cubs in the NL Central race, a major surprise given that our PECOTA projection had the Cubs at an NL-best 95 wins. Here's a bit on the Brew Crew:
The Brewers stumbled to a 4-9 start, but since then, they've put up the league's second-best record even with a recent 2-6 skid. Their turnaround largely coincides with the arrival of 41-year-old Trevor Hoffman, the former Padres closer who spent the season's first three weeks on the disabled list. Since returning, he's yielded one run in 20 innings, converting all 16 save opportunities while allowing just 13 baserunners, a performance good enough for seventh in the league in WXRL. LOOGY Mitch Stetter and a pair of free-talent pickups who've worked their way into meaningful roles, Todd Coffey and Mark DiFelice, are in the league's top 30 as well. As a unit, the Brewers' bullpen fourth in the league in that category, a major reason why they've exceeded their third-order Pythagenpat record by 4.8 games, the league's second-best mark. Though they've lost five straight one-run games to fall to 10-12 in that category, they're 16-8 in games decided by two or three runs.
While the rotation's been shaky (more on that momentarily), the staff as a whole is getting plenty of help from a defense which two seasons ago ranked third-to-last in Park-Adjusted Defensive Efficiency. Their impressive ranking is nothing new, actually; they were 10th last year with virtually the same lineup, the outcome of a chain of events which saw the arrival of center fielder Mike Cameron, the move of Bill Hall from center to third base and of Ryan Braun from third to left field. The sudden loss of Rickie Weeks for the season hasn't changed things much; this remains a quality unit that's been helped by the fact that the pitchers are allowing the league's third-lowest line drive rate as well as the third-highest groundball rate. Whether they can keep that up remains to be seen, but it's certainly easier to do so than maintaining a high Defensive Efficiency in conjunction with a high line drive rate.
• In "Another Mile-High Miracle?" (which also ran at ESPN Insider), I examine the Rockies' 14-5 surge under interim skipper Jim Tracy, and whether the Rockies have enough to contend that they should consider buying instead of selling:
Only a week ago, the rumor mill was abuzz with the future destinations of Brad Hawpe, Jason Marquis, Ryan Spillborghs and Huston Street, but the streak has allowed the Rockies to defer such decisions. To the credit of Tracy and GM Dan O'Dowd, they've quickly made moves which help their chances of sustaining some momentum, starting with the replacement of third baseman Garrett Atkins with Ian Stewart, who's now out of the way of Clint Barmes at second. In a lineup that's second in the league in scoring but just seventh in EqA (.262) — taking stock of the Rox starts always starts with letting the air out of their offensive stats — Atkins (.210 EqA) has been the lineup's only real sinkhole; he recently went five weeks without a homer or a multi-hit game, a tough task for an everyday player. Barmes (.270) has been the team's hottest hitters over the past month (.345/.405/.560). Stewart (.262 with a team-high 12 homers) is hitting .314/.357/.667 this month after fighting through a prolonged slump.
As Joe Sheehan pointed out recently, the Atkins shuffle should bear fruit for a team that's 10th in the league in Park-Adjusted Defensive Efficiency (-1.05 percent below average) and last in raw DE (.677); Atkins is a lousy third baseman, Stewart a natural one, and Barmes is better at the keystone than the latter. Also helping the defense is the recent promotion of Carlos Gonzalez, a toolsy former top prospect with the ability to play center field. He spent the first two months of 2009 in a Triple-A refresher course following his acquisition in the Matt Holliday trade and a none-too-impressive half-season in Oakland (.242/.273/.361 with an 81/12 UIBB ratio). Tracy's slotted him in left, previously the domain of an unstable but not wholly unproductive cast of righty Spillborghs, lefty Seth Smith and redheaded stepchild Matt Murton.
...When it comes to making any deals, thanks to their streak the team has the luxury of playing both sides of the fence in the six weeks between now and the trading deadline. If they continue to play well, they should have few glaring weaknesses to shore up aside from their bullpen, and may have a spare outfielder to deal if Gonzalez clicks. If this latest burst is simply a mirage, they can gain salary relief and/or restock their larder by flipping Street, and selling high on the none-too-cheap Marquis ($9.875 million this year) and the relatively affordable Hawpe ($13 million total in 2009-2010). Perhaps they can even offload Atkins ($7.05 million); as discussed yesterday, the Cardinals need a third baseman, and the Reds could use one as well to hedge against Edwin Encarnacion's continued wrist problems.
As an aside, I was sorry to see Clint Hurdle's recent firing. While by no means a great skipper, he showed a ton of class in leaving the stage, reminding me that the former phenom is the author of one of baseball's great quotes: "There's two kinds of people in this game — those that are humbled and those that are about to be."
• And in the spirit of former Dodger manager Tracy's revival, I'll stick with the (ex-)LA theme in excerpting this week's Hit List:
[#1 Dodgers] The Dodgers continue to sit pretty even as their offense has cooled off in Manny Ramirez's absence thanks to the strong performance of their bullpen. They're 37-8 when leading or tied after five innings, second in WXRL and first in Fair Run Average, with Jonathan Broxton leading the league and Ramon Troncoso — who's saved four games while giving Broxton the night off — ranked fourth. The team is winning more than its share of the close ones: 16-6 in one-run games and 10-7 in two-run games.
[#2 Red Sox] Penny for Your Thoughts: Brad Penny tosses 11 innings against the Yankees and Marlins without allowing an earned run, but even so, he's only put up a 4.94 ERA and a .465 Support-Neutral Winning Percentage. That's mainly due to his 40.5 percent groundball rate, about 10 percent lower than last year. With the June 15 deadline for trading last winter's free agents without their permission having passed and John Smoltz slated to debut next Thursday, Penny's the subject of trade rumors, but for the moment, the team will cycle through a six-man rotation.
[#8 Rangers] Ruw the Day? Released by the Dodgers in the spring, Andruw Jones exacts a modicum of revenge by homering twice against them — one less than his 2008 total — though the Rangers drop both games and thus the series. Jones is hitting .245/.355/.504 but is just 4-for-30 in June; he's started in the field just 12 times, none in center, even with Josh Hamilton missing so much time.
[#1 Dodgers] Riding high in April (.306/.423/.553) but shot down in May (.211/.306/.295), Andre Ethier has picked himself up and gotten back in the race. Collecting walk-off hits on back-to-back nights against the Phillies, then bashing a pair of homers—his second two-fer in three days—against the Padres, he's hitting .400/.417/.914 with five jacks in June. That's a welcome power surge for an offense that's averaging 4.6 runs per game and hitting just .271/.341/.380 since Manny Ramirez's suspension, though they still lead the league in batting average and rank second in OBP.
[#2 Red Sox] Papi Pop? David Ortiz quadruples his season home run total by connecting three times in five days. with the middle shot kicking off the scoring in Boston's three-game sweep of the Yankees, against whom they're now 8-0. That Ortiz is hitting .310/.394/.655 in June may be cause for optimism, but until Thursday night he was still below the Mendoza Line overall, and his numbers since his celebrated mid-May benching (.195/.262/.403) aren't much better than what proceeded them. Also interesting: Ortiz is hitting better against lefties (.233/.284/.425) than righties (.187/.306/.291) despite a career platoon split that's 139 points of OPS higher against the latter.
[#7 Yankees] We Searched All of Recorded History But Couldn't Find Anyone Who Sucked Worse: Chien-Ming Wang fails to escape the third inning against the Red Sox amid a three-game sweep in Fenway. The Yankees are now 0-8 this year against the Sox, their longest season-opening losing streak against their rivals since 1912; they've been outscored 55-31 in those games. On the subject of pre-World War I factoids, Wang's 21.61 ERA through five starts is the highest since 1913, when baseball began tracking the stat. He's on a short leash as far as remaining in the rotation, with Phil Hughes awaiting another turn.
[#26 White Sox] We'll Meet Again: Ozzie Guillen erupts at his team's lack of execution and threatens plenty of face time: "Good teams win games. Horse**** teams have meetings." Alas, things only get worse for the Sox amid a 2-8 skid as Carlos Quentin is diagnosed with a tear which will sideline him through the All-Star break. He's hitting just .229/.325/.458 and hasn't homered since April 29.
God bless Ozzie Guillen for making the White Sox Hit List entries among the more enjoyable to compile.
Randy Johnson won his 300th game on Thursday, waiting out an outburst of ark-building weather before getting down to business. Though he entered the game with a 5.71 ERA, the highest of any pitcher going into his 300th win start, he dominated the Nationals for six innings, throwing just 78 pitches and allowing two hits and an unearned run. He depart in part because he bruised his shoulder making a fantastic defensive play. Impressive.
On the local front, Johnson didn't fare tremendously well during his two years in Yankee pinstripes. Though he won 34 games in 2005-2006, his 4.37 ERA was right at the park-adjusted league average, and his 6.92 postseason ERA during that time was a big reason the Yanks didn't make it out of the first round in either year.
The irony, of course, is that the pinnacles of Johnson's career prior to reaching 300 came at the Yankees' expense. The combined tally, as I noted years ago: 5-0 with a 1.64 ERA and 35 strikeouts in 27.1 innings facing them in two postseason series. First, he came out of the bullpen on a day's rest to close out the thrilling 1995 Division Series for the Mariners. "To this day," I wrote back in 2003 of rooting against the Yanks in that series, "the hair on the back of my neck rises when I recall the cameras panning to the Seattle bullpen as one of the announcers excitedly exclaimed, 'The Big Unit is getting loose!'" Any Yankee fan bitter about that one need only recall that it was the series loss which triggered the firing of Buck Showalter and the hiring of Joe Torre. Things didn't work out too badly over the next few years.
At least until the heartbreaking 2001 World Series, where pitching for the Diamondbacks in the godawfulest purple-and-teal atrocity of a horseshit uniform ever devised by man, he collected three wins, two as a starter and one in relief, the latter on zero days' rest in Game Seven. That one wasn't so fun from where I sat, but that it was Johnson delivering the coup de grâce makes it slightly more bearable, at least in retrospect. As Cooter and Spud -- the Simpsons' carny folks who might pass for Johnson's kin -- would say, "We were beaten by the best."
In any event, the ugly 6'10" goober with the mullet and the meanest goddamn slider you ever saw has stuck around into his 46th year, doggedly fighting his way through multiple back surgeries since leaving the Yankees, generally effective when he could get to the mound, which wasn't especially often (51 starts in 2 1/3 seasons). Take note, because it's going to be a long time before we see another 300-game winner. That's the subject of one of my pieces up today at ESPN and Baseball Prospectus:
At this writing, the only pitcher within 80 wins of the magic 300 is 46-year-old Jamie Moyer (250), whose own 7.62 ERA suggests that he's on his last legs. Of the three other active pitchers above 200 wins, 37-year-old Andy Pettitte (220) has annually threatened retirement since 2006, 37-year-old Pedro Martinez (214) is currently unemployed after three injury-filled seasons, and 42-year-old John Smoltz (210) is rehabbing his way back for a final go-round in Boston. Just three other active players are even halfway to the milestone: 42-year-old knuckleballer Tim Wakefield (184), 36-year-old perpetual rehab case Bartolo Colon (153, but just 14 since 2005), and 34-year-old palooka Livan Hernandez (151), the game's most hittable pitcher.
Of course, not everybody does care these days, as pitcher wins ain't what they used to be thanks to the rising offensive levels, deeper lineups, longer at-bats, and increased reliever specialization which have made the complete game a relic from the increasingly distant past. In 1972, the year before the designated hitter's introduction, starters completed games 27.1 percent of the time, collected decisions 78.5 percent of the time, and lasted an average of 6.7 innings in their starts. In contrast, last year they went the distance 2.8 percent the time, collected decisions 69 percent of the time, and averaged 5.8 innings. Against this backdrop, the win has come to be understood less as the product of an individual pitcher's brilliance or intestinal fortitude on a given day, and more as the confluence of the right amounts of support from the offense, the defense, and the bullpen. That's true both in sabermetric circles, where pitcher value is preferably measured in isolation of such factors, and in the dugout, where a manager cares less about who collects the W and more about bridging the gap from starter to closer, inning by inning or batter by batter.
Down by the old mainstream, however, the attachment lingers. The Baseball Writers Association of America hasn't elected a starting pitcher to the Hall of Fame since 1999 (Nolan Ryan), and hasn't elected a starter with fewer than 300 wins since 1990 (Fergie Jenkins). With the disappearance of the 300 clubbers on the ballot, the writers have barred the door for the eminently worthy Bert Blyleven, almost solely due to his missing the mark by 13 wins, and they never came close to inducting Tommy John (288 wins) or Jim Kaat (283), pitchers with shakier credentials. Though Roger Clemens, Greg Maddux, and Tom Glavine have reached 300 this decade, the Rocket's raging steroid-related controversy suggests that it will take until 2014, when Maddux is eligible, for another starter to earn election to the Hall.
As for the Big Unit's successors, the current field's distance from 300 wins leaves us lacking a rigorous methodology for forecasting. PECOTA, which looks "only" seven years into the future, foresees just 81 wins for both Johan Santana and CC Sabathia from 2009-2015. The annual totals, which dwindle into single digits, put Santana at 190 through his age-36 season, and Sabathia at 198 through his age-34 season. Less scientifically, Bill James' aptly named Favorite Toy method identifies nine pitchers with at least a 10 percent chance at 300 wins in The Bill James Handbook 2009, estimates that are based upon weighted three-year averages of each hurler's win totals. James' notion of an "established win level" is rather dicey because of the teammate-dependent nature of the stats — pitcher wins don't predict future pitcher wins very well.
I took a look at the field of contenders who are at least one quarter of the way there, using James' toy as well as what I called the Jaffe Blind Optimism Method, which "generously assumes each pitcher will average 15 wins annually through his age-42 season, unfettered by injury or bad luck, and with the bonus of not having his 2009 total to date counted against this year's allotment." Uh-huh. The three pitchers who emerge looking as though they have some kind of shot are Sabathia, Santana, and Roy Halladay, with the latter possibly reaching the halfway mark by year's end.
Meanwhile, in this week's Hit List, I noted of Johnson, "[C]onsider that with a JAWS score of 89.0 (110.5 career, 67.5 peak), he's in the mix with Warren Spahn (122.4/62.7/92.6) and Lefty Grove (110.6/68.7/89.7) as the top lefty hurler of all time." Here's a few more tastes:
[#1 Dodgers] Opening Day starter Hiroki Kuroda makes a solid return to the rotation after missing nearly two months due to an oblique strain, and while the Dodgers fall in that game, they continue to hold the majors' widest division lead. That the Dodgers are where they are despite Kuroda's injury is a surprise; they're 14-5 in games started by Eric Stults, James McDonald, Jeff Weaver, and Eric Milton despite a .490 combined Support Neutral Winning Percentage and a 4.83 ERA because they've supported those hurlers with 6.8 runs per game of offense.
[#11 Brewers] Hoff Time: The Brewers share the top spot in the NL Central, and their bullpen (save for a meltdown-and-out by Jorge Julio) is a major reason why, as they're third in WXRL and first in reliever Fair Run Average. Trevor Hoffman is 14-for-14 in saves while tossing 16 scoreless innings and allowing just seven baserunners. He's fourth in WXRL, while free-talent pickups Todd Coffey and Mark DiFelice are also in the top 25.
[#26 Astros] Breaking the Wandy? After allowing just one homer in his first 70 1/3 innings, Wandy Rodriguez is blitzed for four over his next 2 1/3 frames, including two by Garrett Atkins, who hadn't hit one since Colorado attained statehood. After yielding a 1.83 ERA and 6.6 hits per nine through his first nine starts, Rodriguez has been lit for 29 hits and 18 runs (12 earned) over his last three turns (13 2/3 innings). The loss snaps Houston's season-high four game winning streak and quashes their hopes of an undefeated June, but they can still root for the Tooth Fairy to show up.
[#27 Diamondbacks] In a performance that surely confuses senile Angelenos, Billy Buckner blanks the Dodgers for six innings en route to one of the team's two victories on the week. Demoted during the season's first week with a 15.75 ERA compiled in relief, Buckner's put up a 2.95 ERA over three starts since being recalled...
I don't know why, but at 1 AM on Friday morning I was especially proud of that opening line in the latter entry; those confused need look no further.
In any event, I write this while watching Jamie Moyer befuddle the Dodgers through his first six innings, perhaps on his way to 251. I won't be happy if he adds this particular notch to his belt, but at this rate, he may get there yet. [Late note: nope, as the Dodgers rally in the ninth at the expense of a Pedro Feliz error and the none-too-perfect Brad Lidge. See how hard 300 is?]
Meanwhile, because Alex Belth didn't get to it today, I'll link Pat Jordan's excellent New York Times magazine profile of Johnson and Curt Schilling, "The Odd Couple." It's a doozy mainly for what it says about the latter, but it's also a teling portrait of the man of the hour, and one of the best lefties of all time. Enjoy.
The Saints, an independent team in the independent American Association, won behind a couple of long home runs, but I didn't actually pay too close attention to the game, even failing to notice former big-leaguer Kerry Ligtenberg closed the door with the save. In addition to my own beverage and pork consumption, I was busy shelling peanuts and otherwise playing with five-year-old Kate and two-year-old Jackie, the daughters of our hosts, who also had a one-month-old infant son in tow. This was the kids' first baseball game, and while they weren't overly interested in the proceedings, they were thoroughly sugared up and entertained by the between-innings shenanigans, particularly the mascot Mudonna, a bright pink pig who alternately scared and fascinated my new buddy, Jackie, who understandably had trouble figuring out exactly what she was looking at: "Where pink bear go now? Where pink bear go now?"
I'd read about the Saints years ago in Neal Karlen's excellent Slouching Towards Fargo, a book that chronicled life in the independent Northern League during the mid-90s. The Saints, owned even to this day by a group that includes actor Bill Murray as well as baseball's Barnumesque scion, Mike Veeck, featured Darryl Strawberry on his way back to the majors as well as Jack Morris on his way out of baseball, along with a whole bunch of other characters just happy to be playing ball anywhere for a living. Anyway, more than a decade after reading Fargo, I was glad to finally get a chance to attend one of their games, a particularly welcome antidote to Epic Fail Stadium in the Bronx. Tomorrow, I'll pay a visit to the Metrodome (another first) for a Twins-Brewers game, but I'll be hard-pressed to top the fun I had here.
• • •
This week at Baseball Prospectus, I wrote a "Pair Up in Threes" piece about a trio of teams whose overall showings were in marked contrast to the performance of their rotations. Both the Red Sox and Phillies continue to contend despite abysmal 6.00+ ERA showings from their starters, while the Diamondbacks are deep into the second division despite strong showings from their starters even with Brandon Webb sidelined. Here's part of what I wrote about the D-Bags:
What's Happened: After lasting just four innings on Opening Day, Webb was pushed to the Disabled List due to bursitis in his shoulder. He was expected only to miss a few weeks, but since suffering a setback in late April, he's been limited to playing catch and won't be back until sometime in June. While Yusmeiro Petit has pitched poorly in his place (8.03 ERA, -0.2 SNLVAR, .367 SNWP), Haren leads the league in SNLVAR, [Doug] Davis is 11th, and [Max] Scherzer is 26th.
Alas, Webb's absence has been the least of the club's problems; right now this may be the unhappiest team in the majors. Manager Bob Melvin was fired on May 8 with the team a disappointing 12-17, 8˝ games out of first. They've gone just 2-6 under replacement A.J. Hinch, whose lack of managerial experience has drawn fire from the media as well as departed pitching coach Bryan Price. Last Friday, upon pulling Davis for a pinch-hitter, the pitcher — who had thrown just 80 pitches but trailed by a run in the seventh — confronted his new skipper in full view of the TV cameras, never a good sign.
The real problem isn't a lack of respect for the manager's authoritah, it's a snake-bitten offense that's scraping together just 3.9 runs per game, which ranks 15th in the league; their .236 EqA is the NL's worst. Three lineup regulars (Chad Tracy, Conor Jackson, and Chris B. Young) are below the Mendoza Line, and Stephen Drew and Eric Byrnes aren't much above it. As well as Haren and Davis have pitched, both rank in the league's bottom 10 in run support, well under three runs per game; Haren is second-to-last at 2.3. Meanwhile, the bullpen's been pretty lousy (12th in the league in WXRL and 13th in Fair Run Average), but most of the damage has been done in lower-leverage situations. Closer Chad Qualls and set-up men Tony Pena and Juan Gutierrez, the only relievers with Leverage scores above 1.00, are all in the black, WXRL-wise, while the mop-and-bucket patrol has sloshed kerosene around during their aisle nine cleanups.
What Will Fix It: Even if Webb returns at full strength, the Diamondbacks have dug themselves a huge hole. The PECOTA-based version of our Playoff Odds Report puts their chances at reaching the postseason at just 9.3 percent, down from 45.0 percent to start the year. The suspension of Manny Ramirez won't do very much to bring the Dodgers back to the pack; in fact, the Diamondbacks have lost three games in the standings since then. If they don't start scoring runs soon, it's going to be a long summer in the Arizona heat.
As for the Hit List, the Dodgers continue to hold onto the top spot, the Brewers are third despite some bad news, and Yankees are 10th. Here's a taste:
[#1 Dodgers] Life Without Manny: Clayton Kershaw no-hits the Marlins for seven innings; he's allowed just six runs and 13 hits and zero homers over his last four starts, and batters are hitting just .205/.313/.333 against him overall. The Dodger rotation has picked up the slack since Manny's suspension via a 2.81 ERA and just three homers in 80 innings despite the presence of both Jeff Weaver and Official Hit List Whipping Boy Eric Milton, two pitchers who survived the fly-ball pitcher's hell of Albuquerque to return to the majors.
[#3 Brewers] Weeks, Months, Year: Amid a seven-game winning streak, the Brewers incur a loss of a different sort, as Rickie Weeks suffers a torn tendon sheath in his left wrist, ending his season at a point when he was hitting .272/.340/.517 while tied for the team high with nine homers. Given that the injury is in the opposite wrist as his 2006 season-ender, this only perpetuates the concern that he'll never be durable enough for full-time duty; he's topped 100 games only twice in five years. For the moment, the Brewers will patch from within via Craig Counsell, Casey McGehee, Hernan Irribaren, and perhaps Alcides Escobar.
[#21 Astros] Ortiz Finally Homers! Russ Ortiz beats Big Papi to the punch by a day with a two-run shot, his first homer since 2003. With a 5.81 ERA and a 21/22 K/BB rate, he ought to consider a career move, as he hit .252/.301/.403 with four homers in 2002-2003, numbers that outdo more than one current Astros lineup regular. On the other side of the coin, Wandy Rodriguez allows his first home run since last August 10, a span of 88 1/3 innings. He's second in the league in ERA and fourth in SNLVAR; the Astros are 7-2 in his starts.
[#23 Marlins] Crouching Tiger, Rotting Fish: Andrew Miller returns from the disabled list and notches his first win in 11 months, but it's the Marlins' only victory in an eight-game span. The Miguel Cabrera/Dontrelle Willis deal hasn't turned out well for the Fish thus far, as Miller's put up a 5.88 ERA in 124 innings, Cameron Maybin's been sent back to Triple-A after a .202/.280/.310 start, and Mike Rabelo, Burke Badenhop, and Eulogio de la Cruz have all been below replacement level as well.
That last entry came out of an on-air conversation with WLQR-Toledo radio host Norm Wamer during my weekly spot, while the Ortiz one was something I made light of during my WWZN-Boston spot on the Young Guns (audio link hopefully forthcoming).
Meanwhile, I've got one more article in the pipeline, an ESPN Insider/BP piece related to Randy Johnson's pursuit of his 300th win that will be held until he finally reaches the milestone. I hope it happens soon — he took a no-decision on Friday night, keeping him at 298 — because I gots to get paid.
