SEAT LICENSE RENEWALS It's almost spring
when a young man's thoughts turn to... those expensive
seat licenses. An online cash advance can help relieve the anxiety.
It's been a busy and exhilarating couple of weeks promoting Baseball Prospectus 2010. After a wave of some two dozen radio hits, last weekend my colleagues and I made appearances at the Yogi Berra Museum at Montclair State University in New Jersey and a Barnes and Noble in Manhattan. Sandwiched between those two appearances, I did an hour-long spot on the Fox Strategy Room's "Clubhouse Report" streaming videocast, on a panel with New York Post deputy sports editor Tim Sullivan and Sports Illustrated writer Pablo Torre, hosted by Duke Castiglione.
While we spent a bit of time at the top of the hour talking about the just-completed Olympics and in particular about the USA-Canada gold medal hockey match, baseball was the bigger topic. Duke's curiosity about BP 2010 led him to feed me a generous number of questions about the book and the way we use statistics to measure defense and reliever value. He was so taken with the discussion that a couple of days later he invited me to appear on his television show, Sports Extra, which airs every Sunday night at 10:30 PM here in New York on the local Fox affiliate, WNYW.
The spot, which taped a couple of hours earlier (I got to meet former NBA superstar and basketball Hall of Famer Dominique Wilkins while waiting my turn) and ran up against the Oscars, was just over three minutes long, and the topic of Derek Jeter's defense was the hook:
Overall, I wasn't terribly smooth — adrenaline, thanks — but I wasn't incoherent, and Duke certainly seemed enthusiastic enough that there's hope I'll get to do another spot down the road. I'm very grateful to him for having me on, and for giving BP 2010 such prime promotion.
Meanwhile, I'm back from a couple nights in Washington, DC, where yesterday Steven Goldman and I made an appearance on Sirius-XM's Home Plate "Power Alley" show with hosts Jim Duquette (he of the infamous Scott Kazmir trade and last year's self-deprecating introduction) and Seth Everett.
In the evening we joined colleagues Clay Davenport, Kevin Goldstein and Matt Swartz for our annual appearance at the fantastic Politics and Prose Bookstore. This marked, I believe, our seventh appearance there, and my fifth, four for the annual and one for It Ain't Over. Thanks to a bit of a push from the Washington Post's website, we set personal bests for attendance and sell-through, with something like 130 people present to hear us answer questions about Stephen Strasburg (who looked like something special — as advertised — in his spring debut, which we'd watched earlier), Derek Jeter, David Wright, Ryan Zimmerman, Bud Selig, competitive balance, Walter Johnson, Willie Mays and a whole lot more. I wish I had the energy to do justice to the discussion, but hopefully we'll have an MP3 clip or two to share. In the meantime, I'd just like to give a shout-out to the folks at XM and Politics and Prose for welcoming us and helping to give BP such a big push.
Update: Some pics of the Politics and Prose event from Matt's lovely wife Laura, and a fine writeup from another attendee. Thanks to both!
"The Strategy Room" turned out to be a frenetic hour-long roundtable discussion in which Steve and I were joined by host Brian Kilmeade as well as humorist (that's what the chyron said) Geno Bisconte and one Richard "Big Daddy" Salgado, an insurance and estate planner for athletes (over the last five years, his company "has insured twenty-five 1st Round picks for disability and career ending insurance," according to his website). As members of this motley crew, we were expected to hold court not only on baseball but also football, golf, and other sports (surprisingly little if any basketball was discussed), and for an entire hour at that.
The show was a bit of a free-for-all. While Kilmeade pitched us topics -- giving the BPers first crack at the baseball questions, Big Daddy the football questions -- we did have to compete for air time as we rolled through CC Sabathia, Joba Chamberlain, Jose Canseco, Joe Girardi, Ben Roethlisberger, Mr. and Mrs. Kurt Warner, Plaxico Burress, Tiger Woods, Jon Daly, the Greg Norman-Chris Evert power couple, and other topics. Seated between the high-energy Bisconte, whose gleeful mugging for the camera, tweaking of the host, and on-camera sending of text messages suggested he was a veteran of this setup, and the imposing but genial Salgado, a mountain of a man, on my left, I was in danger of disappearing into the woodwork. In this four-minute clip centered around the Yankees' slow start (0-2!!!) and the possibility that Girardi might be fired, you can see my similarly slow start. I struggle to get a word in edgewise until finally seeing the opening and running to daylight.
By the end of the hour, I had loosened up and might have even strained my jaw from laughing. It turned out to be ridiculous fun, even if I was a little out of my element, and I wish there were more clips to share. Instead you get screenshots:
Anyway, it made for an enjoyable afternoon, but not until I was back home later in the evening, signing off from recording a segment with Mike Ferrin of XM's "MLB Home Plate," did I realize the day's significance: eight years ago I laid the cornerstone for this site with a clumsy but heartfelt piece on the passing of Willie Stargell. When I started out jotting down reminiscences of my childhood baseball heroes and opinions on the action of the day, who knew that years later I'd reach the point where being on TV, radio, newsstands and in books and even bookstores -- to say nothing of multiple times per week on Baseball Prospectus and occasionally on ESPN.com -- while talking about or writing about baseball would become almost routine? It's not all about FutilityInfielder.com anymore, it's about being lucky enough to occupy this niche with so many other writers I admire and friends that I've made.
Every time I pass this milepost I'm reminded of what a fantastic ride it's been, and how much fun it continues to be. I'm deeply grateful to all you for sharing it with me.
It's a mallpark, and an absurdly expensive one at that. All the bells and whistles in the world could do nothing to alleviate the ambivalence I feel about the venue. To my mind, the Yankees need a new park more than ever.
As big and bold as the scoreboard is, it offers a dearth of real information; nowhere did the names of the pitchers appear, so because we arrived in the middle of the first inning due to subway havoc -- just in time to see Derek Jeter step into the box -- I went the entire evening without figuring out who actually started for the Cubs (it was Ted Lilly). In fact, I had a hard time paying attention at all, in part because it was an exhibition wrapped in a spectacle and in part because sitting in the bleachers makes one feel as though anything that happens in the infield is a distant rumor even under the best of circumstances. The new bleachers do have a steeper pitch to them, which at least makes seeing the outfield a bit easier.
Undoubtedly the highlight of the game came when Robinson Cano smacked a home run in the third inning, the first in the new park's history. It landed three rows in front of us, and soon afterward, stadium security came down to ask the gentleman who recovered the ball if he'd be willing to make a deal. He and his female companion left with them while their friends looked on with concern, but they came back a couple of innings later still clutching the ball: no deal.
As it turns out, Julie and I wound up visible on the brief NY1 highlight loop featuring the home run:
You can see me stand to applaud at the end of the clip here, for whatever that's worth.
Alex Belth weighs in with a more substantial take on attending the game, while Neil deMause has a pair of articles regarding the stadium's opening and the impressions gleaned from attending Thursday's workout, one at the Village Voice and the other at Baseball Prospectus.
I've watched the segment enough times to be hypercritical about my bit: the camera caught me looking at the monitor at the beginning... I stumbled over an answer or two, though I worked my way out of those jams... my body language could have been better, though the arrangement of the chairs didn't help... humidity emphasizes the fact that I need a damn haircut, and while wearing contacts eliminates the glare my glasses produce, you can see every missing hour of sleep in my eyes ("The eyes, Chico, they never lie...").
At least I had the presence to keep smiling and was smart enough to wear a suit; I didn't know whether or not I'd be behind a desk, as in some other TV appearances. And while I'm patting myself on the back, my decision to start the Tivo recording at 6:55 AM instead of 7:00 was prophetic, as they actually chose to squeeze us in just before the top of the hour. Anyway, as a friend reminded me, I probably never expected that when I started this site nearly eight years ago that some day I'd be calling a New York manager out for bullshit busywork on a local network TV show. He's right, of course. Pretty cool.
• If you live within earshot of my Wednesday afternoon radio hit on "The Front Row" on 1470 WLQR in Toledo, please note that my time slot has shifted from 4:10 Eastern (3:10 Central) to 5:35 Eastern (4:35 Central). The segment, which alas isn't streamed, now runs for about 20 minutes instead of 15 so that we can ramble a bit more. Doing this hit with host Norm Wamer is one of the high points of my week, and I'm delighted to have an opportunity to expand just a bit more.
• The Philadelphia CityPaper interviewed me for their Phillies preview:
Another structural change could be more subtle. In 2008, Cole Hamels materialized as a true Major League ace, but stressed his body far past its previous limits in doing so. Last year, including the playoffs, Hamels pitched 72 more innings than he ever had in any previous season. The central question surrounding the Boy Wonder is whether the heavy load sustained during last season's joyride to championship glory will take its toll this season. This is less a question of motivation — Hamels' work ethic is lauded throughout the organization — and more of health. Still. Last season Hamels predicted that if he could get through just one season injury-free, all the questions about his fragility would expire. Well, he did and they haven't. Already this spring, questions have arisen about whether Hamels' increased workload will lead to increased time on the sideline, decreased effectiveness or worse.
The fears aren't unfounded: The extra work is catching up with the young ace. Two weeks ago, Hamels felt tightness in his pitching elbow and was examined by the team physician. The tightness turned out to be simple inflammation, likely the result of normal wear and tear. This sounds reassuring until you remember that normal wear and tear usually develops toward the end of a long season, not at the beginning of one. Jay Jaffe, one of the authors of the annual Baseball Prospectus tome, explains, "Over a three-year period any given pitcher has something like a 50 percent chance of getting hurt." According to him, for Hamels, a stint or two on the DL would be "pretty par for the course." If he's right, the Phillies, compared to last year, just got quite a bit worse.
Speaking of dangerous trends, the Phillies' bullpen is also unlikely to have the type of season it pulled together in 2008. Behind closer Brad Lidge and his perfect 48-48 in save opportunities, the Phillies not only won every game they were leading after eight innings, but were also ranked by BP as having statistically the best bullpen in baseball. Part of that was skill, but a bigger part was good timing. Lidge, Ryan Madson, J.C. Romero, Chad Durbin and Clay Condrey, the Phillies' first five arms out of the bullpen, all had ERAs well below their career averages. Out of the group, Madson (3.94 to 3.05) was the only one within a full run of his career mark. Regression is likely. "Historically," Jaffe warns, "relievers just haven't held up."
• Proving that I'm nothing if not consistent, I make similar points about the defending World Champions in today's ESPN Insider/BP stroll through the National League version of the PECOTA Projected Standings:
One real pleasure that we get in working with the PECOTA projection system comes when we move beyond the individual player forecasts to the team level. Every year, once we release the first batch of projections, our staff compiles depth charts and calibrates the playing time at each position for each team. Our system adjusts for strength of schedule, team defense, and reliever leverage, and we update these on a daily basis throughout the exhibition season based upon camp reports, expert injury analysis, our own intuition, and input from readers who keep a close eye on their hometown nine.
The result is our Projected Standings, and it's often where we generate the most controversy. Two years ago, we drew fire for forecasting just 72 wins for the White Sox, who wound up winning exactly that many. Last year, we raised eyebrows with our assertion that the Rays would finish well above .500 for the first time in history. While we don't always hit the bull's-eye so directly, the standings are an area where we stand tall.
Our projections for this year's National League standings aren't likely to receive much brotherly love from Philadelphia, the home of the defending World Champions. That's because PECOTA sees the Phillies finishing with 87 wins, second to the Mets in the NL East and a game short of the Wild Card. Their offense is slated to match last year's number three ranking in scoring, but the pitching is poised for a major drop, from third in runs allowed to 10th. It's not that the staff hasn't seen upgrades; a full year of Joe Blanton and a more or less league-average expectation from fifth-starter candidates Chan Ho Park and J.A. Happ make for a stronger back end of the rotation. Their problems begin with the improbability of Cole Hamels matching last year's 3.09 ERA over a career-high 227 innings (plus another 35 in the postseason); we've got him down for 3.65 and 180, and note that he's already paid a visit to the doctor. The system also sees considerable regression for bullpen studs Brad Lidge and Ryan Madson. If there's room for optimism, it's that 46-year-old freak of nature Jamie Moyer practically broke PECOTA, and our 5.16 ERA forecast is based upon a dearth of comparable players.
As PECOTA sees it, the NL East race should see the twice-brokenhearted Mets christen their new ballpark with a 92-win season and a long-awaited division flag. While they could have done more to patch their rotation and their outfield corners, the bullpen makeover — starring Francisco Rodriguez and J.J. Putz — squarely addresses last year's biggest flaw, and David Wright, Jose Reyes, and Carlos Beltran forecast as the league's third-, fourth-, and fifth-most valuable hitters according to WARP. Also in the hunt for October are the Braves, who not only feature three players who forecast as the league's best or second-best at their positions (Chipper Jones, Brian McCann, and Kelly Johnson), but can boast adding the Derek Lowe-Javier Vazquez tandem to their rotation, the strongest duo of pitchers added by a team last winter this side of the Yankees' CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett.
Bitch if you must about the way the PECOTA projections see your favorite team, but the system is the clear leader of the pack at this sort of thing.
• Perhaps as karmic payback for all my squawking, a friend bestowed upon me a pair of tickets for Friday night's Yankees-Cubs exhibition, technically the first game in the new ballpark. I'll be in the bleachers beholding the dawn of this brave new world, no doubt missing the ballpark we've left behind, bemoaning the outrageous prices for piss-quality beer and reveling in the grief the Yankees are catching as they continue their efforts at social stratification.
• Speaking of the new ballpark, the photos from the Sliding Into Home blog show a new Monument Park that's completely soulless. I'm not much of a Joni Mitchell fan, but her opening line from "Big Yellow Taxi" sums up the situation perfectly: "They paved paradise / And put up a parking lot."
At last, our long national nightmare of criminally stupid wingnut rule is (nearly) over thanks to the election of Barack Obama as the first Democratic president since 1992 and the first African-American president in U.S. history. What an awesome, momentous day for America. I am damn near beyond words when it comes to describing how proud I am to have been part of it as a citizen and a voter.
At last, we can move past this confederacy of dunces unbound by the rule of law. At last we have a leader that Americans and the rest of the world can respect, a man who inspires hope instead of preying upon fear, a man capable of advancing the fulfillment of this country's promise.
I won't belabor the point beyond that except to note that my old nemesis on MSNBC's Connected Coast to Coast panel for the Congressional hearings on steroids in baseball, Representative Christopher Shays (R-CT) was put out of a job on election day. A blowhard who didn't know anything about anything when it came to the issue at hand, Shays was so stupefying that I took on the look of a sedated toad while listening to his blathering:
I broke that look out at an election night party for old times' sake and cracked up an entire room. Thank you, Mr. Shays, for adding to the mirth.
• • •
Unlike host Chris Villani (who produced the station's election-night coverage), I did answer the morning bell for today's WWZN-Boston "Young Guns" appearance. My head and stomach were in rough shape from too many Obamartinis and too much champagne, but ragging on Jason Varitek is always worth getting out of bed for. Listen here.
I shoulda shown more cleavage, I guess. Apologies to anybody who wasted their time trying to track this down.
I can't say I was all that surprised at the outcome. I refused to let the producer put words into my mouth, settling for responses to their questions that didn't break up into neat two-second soundbites ("This is a dark day for baseball," "A-Rod is the last hope," etc.). Basically, my every suspicion about tabloid TV's depth of interest in the story was confirmed. While I'd have loved the segment to have aired so that I could add it to my clip files, and while rushing out the door to jump through their hoops was a serious inconvencience given my workload, the whole adventure was nonetheless a fascinating peak into the sausage factory of TV, and I'd be lying if I said I was the least bit bitter about the outcome.
• the second segment of my JAWS 2008 Hall of Fame ballot roundup went up on Thursday, December 20. It covered the outfielders on the ballot, most notably Tim Raines, whose segment was the longest I've ever devoted to one player. In it, I made a direct comparison between Raines and Tony Gwynn and found that the two of them come out mere whiskers apart on the JAWS scale despite their different skill sets:
Raines [123.7 career WARP/68.4 peak/96.1 JAWS] is often slighted because he doesn't measure up to his direct contemporary, Henderson (187.8 career WARP/83.4 peak/135.6 JAWS). He doesn't have 3,000 hits, and his 808 stolen bases rank "only" fifth all time, and while his 84.7 percent success rate is the best among thieves with more than 300 attempts, that skill doesn't really register in today's power-saturated age, limiting the impression of his all-around ability. But Raines does more than measure up to another Hall of Fame contemporary, 2007 inductee Tony Gwynn. Their JAWS totals are virtually identical (124.4/68.4/96.4 for Gwynn, within one win in each category), but Raines outdistances the left field benchmark by 4.8 JAWS points, while Gwynn rates a hair below that in right field (125.0/68.7/96.8). Gwynn gets the glory because of his 3,141 hits, five 200-hit seasons, and eight batting titles. Raines won only one batting title, but while he never reached 200 hits due to his ability to generate so many walks, he compares very favorably to Gwynn in many key statistical categories:
TOB is times on base (H + BB + HBP), BG is bases gained, the numerator of Tom Boswell's briefly chic mid-'80s Total Average stat (TB + BB + HBP + SB - CS), which is presented here to show that Raines' edge on the basepaths made up for Gwynn's ability to crank out the hits. The point is better served via the comprehensive Equivalent Average and WARP valuations, but it's nonetheless a worthwhile comparison for those wishing to stick to traditional counting stats. The conclusion is the same: Tony Gwynn and Tim Raines were two fantastic ballplayers who had slightly different skills. One was disproportionately heralded in his time thanks to his extreme success by the traditional measures of batting average and hits, while the other was under-appreciated in a career that included a more concentrated early peak and a lot more ups and downs. The two were equally valuable on both career and peak levels, and there is absolutely no reason why one should be in the Hall of Fame on the first ballot while the other should languish outside for more than five seconds. If the voters don't see it that way -- and the early line is that they won't, at least initially -- it will be a gross injustice.
I received a good amount of support regarding Rianes from BP's readership, including a very nice note from a beat reporter who is still a few years away from obtaining his ballot but who told me that I had swayed his thinking about the Rock. That made my day.
• Alasdair Wilkins of Harvard's student radio station, WHRB, interviewed me for a lengthy multi-part podcast regarding my JAWS take on this year's ballot.
• Also on the subject of the Hall of Fame, I had a civil exchange with none other than Rob Neyer last week in which I took issue with the way he handled some performance-enhancing drug hypotheticals in a recent chat in the wake of the Mitchell Report. More specifically, I was peeved at his repeated lumping of Jeff Bagwell in with Mark McGwire in what I read as an "I know it when I see it"-style accusation, and with his statement that the burden of proof now lies on the players (how do you disprove such a negative?). Bagwell has never tested positive, never been mentioned in the context of a steroid-related law enforcement investigation, and while he was tarred by his erroneous inclusion in the notorious WNBC "fake list" that circulated in the hours before the report's initial release, there are no credible PED allegations against him. To simply begin finger-pointing based on a player's late-career injury history -- even in the context of numerous Mitchell-named players with similar latter-day histories (Kevin Brown comes to mind) -- is a slippery slope that leads to a lowest-common-denominator mudpit that any responsible writer should take pains to avoid.
Now, in the context of the entire chat (instead of just two or three questions which I cherrypicked) I do think Rob did a better job of positioning the Bagwell instance as a hypothetical than I initially gave him credit for. And I definitely take pride in the fact that he referred to me as "one of my favorite writers" before running my email to him (with permission) in his Insider column (subscription only, alas). That means a lot to me, particularly because I'd likely be nowhere near this forum had I not started reading him at ESPN years ago and tapped into my long-dormant Bill James-flavored taste for baseball analysis. Neyer had that impact not only on me but on hundreds of writers -- he's our Blogfather -- and thousands upon thousands of readers. He's arguably done more to elevate the debate about all kinds of baseball-related topics than anybody since his mentor, James. But as both a fan of Rob's work and a fellow writer, I would have preferred see him handle the matter in question with a bit more precision and a bit less cynicism instead of taking what I read as a guilty-until-proven-innocent approach.
It's difficult and probably futile to convey the whole scope of our conversation within this brief rundown, but basically I just think that particularly in the wake of the Mitchell Report that baseball writers of any stripe need to do a better job of separating fact from speculation lest they feed the rampant hysteria that the Mitchell Report stoked in some quarters. Steroids isn't the most appealing topic to spend a few minutes or hours dwelling upon as a writer, but I've always tried to take great care in addresing the issue with precision, accuracy, and a lack of hysteria. Within the tens of thousands of words I've devoted to the topic over the past several years, there are only a few I'd like to take back.
As for the report, I have my issues regarding it. I think the release of names without due process was rather appalling, and that the committee's investigative powers were hamstrung greatly by the lack of legal standing and subpoena power. Nonetheless, I feel that Mitchell was basically right on regarding the need for amnesty and moving forward, and that many of his recommendations could help continue to clean up the game. As flawed as it is, the report should move the public dialogue forward, but this "cheater cheater pumpkineater" syndrome that the more tabloid elements stoke does the game and its fans no good.
Anyway, particularly given the Hall of Fame-related ramifications of the issue, I'm planning to do an addendum to my JAWS series regarding my take on Mitchell, my exchange with Neyer, and how to regard the likes of McGwire, Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, etc. going forward. I don't claim to have THE solution, but if nothing else I feel a great need to clarify my own position on the matter.
• • •
In the event that I don't find my way back to this space before 2008 is rung in, I'd like to thank all of my readers here, at Baseball Prospectus and at points beyond, my wife Andra, the Jaffe and Hardt extended families, and my dear friends for their continued support and encouragement. This has been an exciting year for me on the professional and personal fronts -- new column at BP, prominent placement in It Ain't Over, a debut at SI.com, more than 100 radio hits around the country, new apartment, and more -- and while it's resulted in a much lower profile at this blog, it's a positive set of developments nonetheless. Here's hoping the ride takes us in even more interesting directions in 2008. Happy New Year to all of you!
And yes, I believe this constitutes my national network TV debut. As Mel Allen would say, "How about that!"
Rather than write coherently about what transpired with Thursday's Mitchell Report release and its aftermath, and thus threaten my deadlines even more, I got links to:
The D.C. appearance was great, last night's Yankees game -- first time I've been on hand for a player homering twice in one inning, as Alex Rodriguez did -- was even better. Tonight I'm headed to Philadelphia for a TV appearance to promote It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over. At 6:15 PM, I'll be on "Daily News Live" on Philly's Comcast Sports Net. Hopefully the segment will be added to the network's multimedia page and I'll be able to pass it along.
