This Is How the Other Half Lives? Last year the Yankees claimed four of the league's top 20 hitters according to VORP, but with Alex Rodriguez and Jorge Posada sidelined and Derek Jeter and Robinson Cano struggling, things just aren't the same; since the first two went on the DL, the team is scoring just 4.22 runs per game. Jeter (.301/.331/.374) has yet to homer and has walked just four times in 131 PA, while Cano (.172/.226/.297) has been mired below the Mendoza Line all season long, as has Jason Giambi (.163/.324/.419).
Jeter finally homered on Saturday in the Yankees 38th game of the year, the longest he's gone without a dinger to start the year save for 2003, when he injured himself on Opening Day and missed 36 games. In 2001, he also hit his first homer on May 10, but that was in the Yanks' 35th game. Giambi homered on Friday night and doubled on Saturday; he dug himself an early hole but since I took a look at his performance a few weeks back he's actually hitting .255/.383/.660. I have to admit, that's better than I thought.
Anyway, one recurrent theme in this week's Hit List, which was titled "Walking a Fine Line," was pitcher strikeout to walk ratios. I needn't remind you of Cliff Lee, who shut down the Yanks last week and now has a 39/2 K/BB ratio which suggests the dude is, well, In the Zone. Fausto Carmona, whom the Yanks dinged the night before, only to lose when Joba Chamberlain surrendered a three-run, pinch-homer to David Friggin' Dellucci (a game I attended and found little reason to discuss here, such was my disgust), has a 15/31 K/BB ratio, more than twice as many walks as strikeouts. Elsewhere around the league, pitchers as diverse as Scott Olson, Gavin Floyd, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Justin Verlander and Saturday's Yankee victim Jeremy Bonderman (3 K, 4 BB to run his line to 25/29 for the year) are having similar issues, some of them succeeding in spite of those strike zone woes, others (particularly those Tigers) not so much.
As much as statheads harp on K/BB ratios for pitchers, not all ugly ratios are created equal, some are the symptoms of wildness or bad mechanics, others may be a byproduct of good situational pitching -- combined with some extra luck in the Batting Average on Balls in Play department -- over a small sample size. Anyway, the topic was one I spent a good portion of Friday's XM Radio appearance on the Rotowire Fantasy Sports Hour discussing with Chris Liss. You can hear the conversation here.
Big Hurts: the Yankees lose Jorge Posada, Alex Rodriguez, Brian Bruney and Philip Hughes to injuries in the same week. Both Posada and A-Rod are gone after wavering between the bench and the lineup, likely prolonging their absence, and while some question the validity of Hughes' injury -- particularly in light of dubiously timed reports of his night vision woes -- the latest word is that a stress fracture of his ninth rib may sideline him until July. Adding insult to this spate of injuries, the team is swept by the Tigers in their return to the Bronx following a record 18 road games in April -- 18 in a 20-game span, no less.
I'm not sure if it was Peter Abraham who technically broke the story on Hughes, but in the wake of Will Carroll's "Ferris Buehler comparisons in yesterday's "Under the Knife," he was the first I saw, and he's consistently the fastest gun on the Yankee beat when it comes to this type of news. If you're a Yankee fan and not stopping by his blog on a daily basis, go get a late pass.
• Via Pete, here's a good piece by the New York Daily News' media critic Bob Raissman on Joe Girardi's media management skills. Like predecessor Joe Torre, Girardi has experience in the broadcasting booth as well as the dugout, so he understands what it's like to be dishing out the questions. In light of this, many thought he'd be similarly deft at handling the media, but in his short time as Yankee skipper, he's proven himself to be a different beast. Where Torre gave the impression of complete openness, Girardi hoards information on things like reliever availability -- which is acceptable, tactically -- and often feeds reporters disinformation when it comes to injuries, disinformation that quickly winds up looking stupid when the front office reports that one of his players has been placed on the DL. Here's Raismann about the Hughes affair:
The honeymoon is officially over.
It ended before Wednesday night's Yankees-Tigers game. While meeting with boss scribes that afternoon, a reporter asked Girardi about the status of Phil Hughes. Girardi answered by saying Hughes' situation was the subject of "internal discussions."
"That's all I will say," Girardi explained.
The same reporter then asked if Hughes was still in the rotation. Girardi said, "Yes."
Another scribe asked if that meant Hughes would make his next start. Girardi answered by saying, "I just said" Hughes was in the rotation. The same scribe then said, "That's not what I asked you, I asked if he's going to make his next start."
Girardi repeated his "internal discussions line" and said: "That's just the way it is....I don't mean to get irritated, but I've been asked the same question five times."
The reporter said he wasn't "asking that" and - again - wanted to know if Hughes was going to make his next start. At that point a Yankees PR executive scolded the reporter and cut the session off, prompting the scribe - in full lecture mode - to remind the suit it wasn't his job to tell him how to "ask my questions."
"The ending (of Girardi's interview) may have seemed somewhat comical, but the whole session was tense," one participant said.
Torre would never have let things get that far out of hand. He would have admitted there was a problem with Hughes that the brass hasn't yet figured out how to deal with. Either that, or Torre would have said Hughes felt a "twinge" the other day, which may have something do to with his poor pitching performance. He then would have said either way, we're going to put Hughes on the DL, but go talk to "Cash" for the details.
Yeesh. I'll be surprised if he makes it through two seasons here.
• Bob Costas is on the damage control trail in the wake of Tuesday's debacle. Via Joe Posnanski (hilarious in his own take on dodging the bullet of appearing on that "Costas Now" segment), here's an interview with Costas by Kansas City Star TV critic Aaron Barnhart, who had already written a very good take (emphasis in original):
TV Barn: So, do you agree with Will Leitch that MSM-blogger relations were irreparably harmed by that exchange on your show?
Bob Costas: No. No. Buzz realizes that he did a disservice to his own points. On the other hand, if fairness prevails — which on the web it often doesn't because people are coming after whoever the villain-of-the-day is with torches and pitchforks — but if fairness prevails, you keep in mind who he is and that more than outweighs a subpar performance on his part.
The heat he brought to it obscured whatever points he made. And then some people made the leap that because I am critical of some — precisely SOME aspects of the web — that my sentiments are the same as Buzz's. And they’re not.
It's convenient, and in this case Buzz handed it to them on a silver platter, it’s convenient and self-flattering for some members of the blogosphere to think any and all objections to them come because mainstream media people are threatened by them.
While there is unquestionably a new media revolution going on, and much of it is good, the part — speaking for myself, the only part, the ONLY part — of which I am critical, is that there is an ethos on a significant portion of the web, an ethos not of criticism or skepticism or a contrarian viewpoint. There is an ethos of abuse, where not only is cogent thought not required, it’s almost resented. Where a reasonable argument has no place and where ad hominem attacks reign. That is not all or even most of the web, but no fair-minded person would say that isn't a significant portion of it. That’s my criticism.
Gotta call bullshit here. If you go to the barber every day, then you'll eventually get a haircut, and if all you read is Deadspin -- a site where the comments often go way overboard -- you're going to wind up thinking that blogs are basically abusive by nature. But there are a number of sites that do a great job of filtering out the good from the bad, the relevant from the irrelevant, sites like Baseball Think Factory and Ballbug and dozens of good blogs that will point you to other good blogs as well as good mainstream articles as well. It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to figure that out or to gain a knack for filtering it your own damn self via the RSS news readers at Yahoo, Google, or a million other places.
To read Costas' reply, particularly the bolded part of the statement which echoes Buzz Bissinger's opening salvo, only reinforces the notion that Tuesday's confrontation was a setup, with Costas clearly reaching for controversy instead of conversation. He had a chance to make a clear distinction between quality blogging and crap, and instead he created a situation where folding metal chairs across somebody's skull wouldn't have been out of place. We all had a right to expect better from him.
• As for Bissinger, not so much. Salon's King Kaufman runs down his sordid history:
Interrupting as usual -- because as the defender of literature and higher learning whatever he had to say was, like, way more important than what anybody else had to say -- [Bissinger] told Leitch, "You say you don't want to be in the press box because the facts get in the way," which isn't even close to what Leitch had said. What Leitch had said was that he declined to apply for press access because "the minute I start doing that, I start writing for the other people in the press box ... I get a lot of benefit from having that distance."
But let's not let facts get in the way, right, Buzz?
"It seems to me," Bissinger continued, "what you're saying is, 'I don't want facts to inhibit me. Facts get in my way, so I'm going to sit in my little room and I'm going to give this nebulous fan's voice.'"
Pretty rich coming from a guy who sometimes -- for instance, in this very comment -- takes only a nodding interest in facts. Here, courtesy of FireJoeMorgan.com, are links to a bunch of smartpeople finding fundamental errors in a piece Bissinger wrote for the New York Times magazine Play last year about Kerry Wood.
He'd have found them himself if he'd bothered to do a little research instead of just transcribing the thoughts of Tony La Russa and other baseball men, as he'd done for his book "Three Nights in August" two years earlier.
...Bissinger is big on boneheaded generalizations about people who are younger than he is, which is 53. In "Three Nights in August," he wrote that the sabermetric movement had populated baseball front offices with "thirtysomethings whose most salient qualifications are MBA degrees."
"It is wrong to say that the new breed doesn't care about baseball," he wrote. "But it's not wrong to say that there is no way they could possibly love it, and so much of baseball is about love. They don't have the sense of history, which to the thirtysomethings is largely bunk."
If by "it's not wrong," he meant "it's absolutely 100 percent gold-plated wrong," then I'd agree.
Funny, while Costas tried to apologize on Bissinger's behalf, Buzz himself has been strangely silent. Hallelujah to that.
Update: Dodger Thoughts' Jon Weisman alerts me to this summary of a post-melee Bissinger appearance on Dan Le Batard's radio show. Bissinger comes off as embarrassed by his own conduct and lack of professionalism but hardly conciliatory towards the medium he dismissed outright:
There were some things I should not have said. I shouldn’t have used profanity, I shouldn’t have been as hostile in my approach to Will Leitch, ’cause it makes me look bad, its unprofessional and its unfair to him … I don’t care if it’s Will Leitch or anyone, no one should be treated the way I treated them. Just wasn’t right.
...I don’t take back a word of what I said. I have a tremendous amount of problems with blogs. It doesn’t mean all blogs are bad. It doesn’t mean I’m against free speech, because I’m not.
...The reason for it was is that I really care about this passionately, because, you know, I think blogs are a threat, not a threat to old school, it’s not a threat to M-M-S’es, as they call it, the mainstream media, it’s a threat to writing and reporting, which is what I’ve done for 40 years and what many people have done better than me.
It’s not all just about what flies into your head, and let’s, you know, put it down, and let’s be nasty and mean-spirited and hope we get as many posts and comments as we can so traffic increases and then, bingo-bango, we make some money. That’s not what it’s about.
As somebody who's blogged for nearly seven years without making more than a few bucks to keep this endeavor self-sustaining -- something I share with a great majority of blogs out there -- I can agree with this clueless, self-important schmuck on one thing: that's not what it's about. Unfortunately, until Buzz Bissinger does figure out what it is about, he's welcome to the ignominy guaranteed by the eternal preservation of his shameful performance. Every time that "Costas Now" clip repeats or those spiteful words are read, the joke will be on him.
Sat through another chilly night at Yankee Stadium last night, watching the Yankees fall to the Tigers 6-4 in a game they should have won. Even with Alex Rodriguez and Jorge Posada on the sidelines, they had more than their share of opportunities against a team that has thus far fallen every bit as short of expectations as the Yankees have. Not that the Tigers haven't been playing decent ball recently; since starting the season 2-10, their offense had put up 6.9 runs per game as they won nine of 14. But their pitching remains a problem; of their five starters, three have more walks than strikeouts, with ace Justin Verlander not far off that unhealthy balance as well. Kenny Rogers came into the game sporting a 7.66 ERA and the burden of having not earned a regular-season win against the pinstripes since 1993.
Yankee starter Philip Hughes -- who wasn't even born when Rogers was drafted -- offered no sure thing either, and unfortunately for the makeshift lineup, provided little support. Hughes put the Yankees in a 2-0 hole right off the bat, walking Curtis Granderson on seven pitches, yielding a single to Placido Polanco, advancing both runners on a wild pitch, and surrendering a two-run single to Magglio Ordonez. That last hit was a frustrating one; Johnny Damon was playing center field, and lacking the speed and throwing arm of Melky Cabrera could neither get to the ball in time nor make a credible cutoff throw to limit the damage.
The Yanks tied up the game in the bottom of the second on a two-run homer by Robinson Cano, just one pitch after I noted that the kid hadn't gone yard while in the lineup, only as a pinch-hitter. Hughes couldn't keep the account square; he surrendered a solo homer to Granderson to lead off the inning and a two-run shot to Gary Sheffield following a Polanco double and another wild pitch. Catcher Chris Stewart, the fourth backstop to whom Hughes has thrown this year, was brutal behind the plate, and no Chad Moeller with the stick either; if the Yanks are going to be without Posada for awhile, they at least need defensively sound work back there. Half a dozen guys at the bus station could have done a better job than he did in his Yankee debut. Today's New York Times writeup notes that he and Hughes weren't on the same page:
If Hughes ever doubted that, he does not now. Hughes explained how he had no command of his fastball, so he resorted to throwing breaking balls. He also said that he and catcher Chris Stewart, who made his debut as a Yankee, had communication problems. Hughes called that “inexcusable,” a word that could define his entire outing.
When they make you pine for the halcyon days of the Moleman...
Granderson figured in the coup de grâce for Hughes the next inning, lashing a two-out double to deep left center field -- a ball Damon might have flagged down but Hideki Matsui could not -- and then scored on a Polanco single. That chased Hughes, whose ugly line for the night tallied 3.1 innings, 8 hits, 6 runs, 3 walks, 2 K's, his third disaster start out of four. Suddenly, he's in jeopardy of losing his rotation spot, and rightly so; he looks as through he needs a stint in Scranton to iron things out. Anyway, he departed to a smattering of boos -- yes, the wormy Yankee crowd has already turned on him -- in favor of another rookie, Ross Ohlendorf. We had little optimism upon seeing the Dorf, who had yielded eight runs n his last four appearances, but he held the Tigers to one hit and one walk while striking out five over 3.1 innings.
Not that the Yanks could do much about it. Though Rogers struggled with the strike zone, walking the bases loaded with two outs in the third, the Yankees just couldn't come up with the big hit when they need to. Reliever Denny Bautista walked the bases loaded as well in the eighth, then plunked Derek Jeter to force in a run, but sidearmer Clay Rapada needed only two pitches to get Bobby Abreu to bounce into an inning-ending force play.
The Yankees had their chances in the ninth as well. Facing Todd Jones, whose best days are behind him, they netted a quick run on a Matsui walk, a wild pitch, and a Jason Giambi single, bringing the tying run to the plate with no outs as the sparse remainder of the crowd came alive. Alas, perhaps determined to round off the night's Left On Base total at an unlucky 13, the Yanks went gently into that not-so-good night, making the final three outs in a five-pitch span. Shelley Duncan, who'd doubled and drawn three walks in what was otherwise a good demonstration of his lefty-mashing skillz, hit into a fielder's choice on Jones' first pitch, and Morgan Ensberg, who figures to be the regular at third base while A-Rod is on the DL, grounded out on the first pitch as well. Cano went down 1-2-3 like he had a plane to catch, and that was that. Yuck.
Update: Could it be that Hughes can't stand the glare of the spotlight? According to a New York Post article, Hughes has difficulty seeing at night:
Joe Girardi revealed after the Tigers' 6-4 victory over the Yankees that Hughes has some difficulty seeing at night, especially at Yankee Stadium. Hughes and GM Brian Cashman both confirmed the problem, but no one was quick with a remedy.
"At night things get blurry," Hughes said.
..."His night vision isn't great," Girardi said. "It is something we will have to talk about."
Hughes said he has been checked several times and that he has "perfect vision." He said his troubles come from the glare of particularly strong lights at night, which he finds problematic at Yankee Stadium. He said there has been some talk in the past of outfitting him with neon glasses to counteract the glare.
I'm not buying this rather poorly-timed excuse. Hughes' ERA at night for his limited big-league career is 4.94 in 71 innings, whereas in the day it's 7.23 in 23.2 innings. Night vision problems didn't seem to bother him when he made that no-hit bid against Texas last year, nor in his first outing of the year against the Blue Jays, his best start of this young season. Hell, it was still daylight when he got the tar wailed out of him by Granderrson and Sheffield.
I hate to sound like a hardass, but for this to suddenly be the explanation for Hughes' problems doesn't ring true, and even if it is true, it reflects poorly on the pitcher and the team for going even this long without taking the appropriate steps without this becoming a spectacle. Lame, lame, lame.
Update 2: the Moleman Returneth! Laments Peter Abraham, "A team with a $209 million payroll praying that nobody claims Chad Moeller. Amazing."
Watching Tuesday night's Yankees-White Sox game in an attempt to keep my mind off the Pennyslvania Democractic primary results, I saw Jason Giambi homer to left field in the second inning. Giambi came into the game hitting .109/.288/.283 in 46 at-bats, and more ominously, just .174/.323/.366 in 213 at-bats going back to last May 1. In the wake of Frank Thomas' unceremonious release from the Blue Jays, Steven Goldman floated the idea in today's New York Sun that it may be time for the Yankees to cut ties with the 37-year-old 1B/DH, who's in the final year of his seven-year, $120 million deal. The Blue Jays cut Thomas while owing him $8 million, but Giambi's contract is an even bigger pill to swallow; he's owed $21 million for this year plus a $5 million buyout for next year.
I'm not buying it, at least not just yet. It's unlikely the Yanks can find a trade partner to take Giambi off their hands even if they pay virtually every red cent of his deal AND convince Giambi to waive his no-trade clause. His results last year were skewed by the plantar fascitis woes which cost him two months and limited his availability; thus far this season there's no reason to believe he's in anything but a slump, as opposed to dealing with yet another injury. The Yanks aren't so desperate for a roster spot that it makes sense to cut him just for the sake of cutting him. Now, if Jorge Posada were to get to the point where he could hit but couldn't catch, I could understand, because his bat has far more life in it than does Giambi's. But Posada is back behind the plate tonight, so his arrow is at least momentarily moving in the other direction.
There may be something to the fact that Giambi homered to left; on the YES telecast, Michael Kay and Paul O'Neill spent a bit of time talking about his work with Yankee hitting coach Kevin Long and how he needed to return to going the other way. It's no secret that since coming to the Yankees, and particularly since 2003, Giambi has gotten away from his ability to hit to the opposite field; that's what the infield shift and his declining batting averages are all about. According to the data at Baseball-Reference.com's Play Index, the percentage of Giambi's homers that go to left field or left center is less than half of what it was during his Oakland heyday:
LHR Tot Pct Career 46 367 12.5
Oak (95-00) 28 187 15.0 NYY (01-08) 18 180 10.0
2001-2003 13 94 13.9 Since 2004 5 86 5.8
Obviously, the asymmetry of Yankee Stadium and the way it favors lefties (318-399-408-385-314) has something to do with that change; by comparison, the Oakland Coliseum was a more symmetrical 330-362-400-362-330. But as the last breakdown shows, this is something that's gotten more pronounced during his Yankee tenure, suggesting that it's more a function of choice or habit to focus on puling the ball to right field, than anything else. If he can't break out of that cycle -- and it's not just homers; O'Neill was incredulous that Giambi doesn't just take his pokes to the left side of the infield -- his career will continue its downward spiral. For the sake of the 2008 Yankees, here's hoping tonight's homer plants the seed for what he needs to do.
Update: good stuff at Replacement Level Yankees Blog on Giambi's lousy batting average on balls in play.
• • •
Regarding Thomas, Joe Sheehan appropriately savaged the move over at Baseball Prospectus:
So, as you read the coverage of the Jays’ decision to release Thomas yesterday, on the heels of their decision last week to reduce his playing time, remember that the “slow start” being cited as justification isn’t a slow start at all. It’s a slump that lasted all of 10 games, beginning April 9 against the A’s. Thomas was hitting .240/.296/.640 a week into the 2008 season, which is the kind of awkward line you get when you have 27 plate appearances, but it's nonetheless productive. In the subsequent nine games, Thomas was awful: 4-for-35 with no extra-base hits and 10 walks.
There were any number of ways the Blue Jays could have handled this. They could have given Thomas a day or two off, diddled with his spot in the lineup, put him into a platoon with Matt Stairs for a week or two, kept everything quiet and private. No, the Blue Jays had to turn it into a project, telling Thomas that he would be playing less, which invited Thomas to question their motivations. After all, Thomas is a bit more than 300 plate appearances shy of vesting his 2010 option for $10 million, and has already lost one contract to the invocation of a “diminished skills” clause. He would, justifiably, see this as an attempt to take money out of his pocket rather than a baseball decision.
Whether motivated by baseball or money, the Jays released their DH and #5 hitter based on a 10-game slump. Thomas was unquestionably awful over the last two weeks. If only there were evidence of him emerging from similar early-season stretches to be productive over the course of a season. It’s not like he hit .097/.243/.129 in a stretch of 37 PA last April, then went on to hit .285/.382/.500 afterwards. No, wait, that happened. Of course, that’s another small sample size. It’d be something else if, in 72 PA, he hit .154/.236/.323. That would be meaningful. He could never come back from that and hit .289/.403/.575 the rest of the way. What? He did that in 2006? Boy, I don’t know. Keep reading things like this, and you’d think that stretches of ineffectiveness weren’t all that meaningful when put up against Thomas’ career. But that would mean the Blue Jays had made a bad baseball decision, and that doesn’t seem…. No, wait.
It would be one thing if the Blue Jays were so larded with talent that they had to create space for it, and this was the only way to do so. On Saturday, the Blue Jays DH’d Matt Stairs, batted Rod Barajas sixth, and played Joe Inglett in left field. On Sunday, their DH was Barajas, who batted fifth; their left fielder was Marco Scutaro. I give you Jays’ GM J.P. Ricciardi:
I don't know that we have the luxury of waiting two to three months for somebody to kick in because we can't let this league or this division get away from us.
Really, now. Well, let me help you along with that, J.P. Rod Barajas is 32 and has a career OBP of .288. I seriously doubt it’s all going to “kick in” for him. Marco Scutaro is 32 and a utility infielder. Not playing him in left field is one good idea if you want to help your club's offense. Joe Inglett is 30 and might be a serviceable replacement for Scutaro, but is also not suitable for the outfield. These are all the guys who Frank Thomas is too done to play ahead of, based on 10 bad games.
Did I say savaged? There are days I read Joe as a fan rather than a colleague; like editor Christina Kahrl, I eagerly awaited seeing pounce on this petty little decision. Like a lion eating a rabbit (a particularly clueless one so as to better resemble the Toronto GM) -- "disembowled" would have been more appropriate. "Eviscerated" maybe. Classic Sheehan stuff.
• • •
Meanwhile, out in Milwaukee, there's been much made of Prince Fielder's decision to go vegetarian, not in an effort to slim down his bulky 260+ pound frame but for ethical reasons. Fielder started the season in a slump, and came into last Thursday's game hitting .224/.350/.286, without a single homer; he bashed 50 last year. By that point, even Brewers fans were begging Prince to go back to carnivory, and the national media was making a fuss. Luckily, Brewers' beat reporter Anthony Widtrado showed a good grasp of the situation with his piece the day before:
The national media, ESPN in particular, has been all over the topic of Prince Fielder not having any home runs in 45 at-bats. Oof course, people are blaming his vegetarian diet because it's an easy topic of conversation and makes Prince an easy target after his 50-HR season.
PTI and Around the Horn both had Fielder as subjects, and it amazes me that some people are still thinking that his diet is a way to lose weight and that it is contributing to his lack of home runs. I'm sure the Cardinals don't feel that way since they completely pitched around the slugger last night.
...Prince is struggling. Period. He isn't driving the ball because he is not squaring it up on the meat of the bat with any consistency. He's proven to be a good, patient hitter. His groove will probably come. The guy hit the ball 8 miles last season, so a drop in power won't mean he can't hit the ball over the fence. It'll just mean that instead of hitting balls off the scoreboard, he'll hit them into the bullpen.
Maybe, if there is a drop in power, and I'm not saying there is because I don't think that's the case, it would affect the balls that get to the warning track. But in reality, how many home runs of Prince's do we remember scraping the back of the wall? Not many.
He plays for a professional baseball franchise, and that franchise has enough money to hire qualified nutritionists to help Prince and all the players with what their bodies need to perform.
Fielder did homer last Thursday, just in time for me to note it in the Hit List, and he's now up to .250/.386/.368. His diet will continue to draw more scrutiny than merited, and he may not top last year's monster season, but we should at least wait for a larger sample size before trying to connect the dots between his lack of cheeseburgers and his lack of homers.
This week's Hit List was composed amid a hangover of sorts brought on by Wednesday night's Yankees-Red Sox match, an interminable 15-9 win for the Yanks that lasted four hours and eight minute. Four-hour affairs aren't really my bag any more -- I routinely avoid Yankees-Orioles games like telemarketers phoning at dinner time -- and it's not like a Yanks-Sox matchup needs anything to ratchet up the tension any further. Normally, one consumes beer at a ballgame to enhance the enjoyment, but this one required drinks just to tolerate.
The Yanks jumped out to an early 3-1 lead, as Bobby Abreu hit a two-run homer to right field and Alex Rodriguez immediately followed with a towering solo shot to left, his 522nd of his career, passing Ted Williams and Willie McCovey to move into 15th place on the all-time list. Both shots came at the expense of Clay Buchholz, a highly-touted rookie who threw a no-hitter last September and who wound up battling Joba Chamberlain for the top pitching spot on prospect lists.
Buchholz didn't have it on Wednesday, but neither did Chien-Ming Wang, who had two-hit the Sox the previous Friday night. Having already surrendered a first-inning run courtesy of a Manny Ramirez double, Wang couldn't hold the lead, as the Sox added runs in the second and fourth innings to tie the score at three apiece.
It was then that things got crazy. The Yankees broke the tie in the bottom of the fourth via a double by third-string catcher Chad Moeller, recalled from Dunder Mifflin a couple days prior after backup backstop Jose Molina tweaked his hamstring. A nine-year vet with a career line of .224/.284/.346, Moeller is the kind of generic backup catcher you can pick up at the service station just off the interstate. His hit was hard won, the result of an impressive eight-pitch at-bat against Buchholz, and it opened the floodgates. "The Moleman" -- my friend Nick's instant Simpsons-themed nickname for the new catcher -- would go on to collect two more hits and a walk on the night. Meanwhile, the Yankees scored three more runs before the inning was out, two on a Derek Jeter single which chased the rookie hurler and a third on a wild pitch by reliever Julian Tavarez.
Wang could do nothing to hold the lead. He fell behind 3-0 on leadoff hitter Dustin Pedroia before allowing a double, and then surrendered four straight singles which cut the score to 7-6 and spelled his early exit. Ross Ohlendorf, a rookie reliever obtained in the Randy Johnson trade last year, came on in relief and made an instant impression by striking out Jason Varitek, but he yielded an RBI single to Sean Casey, the last of seven runs charged to Wang's room. Ohlendorf found further trouble by walking Jacoby Ellsbury after another strikeout, then surrendering a two-run single to Pedroia -- his second hit of the inning -- to run the score to 9-7 Boston.
Undeterred, the Bronx Bombers roared back with four more runs in the bottom of the fifth, the first on a Jorge Posada double, the second on a Robinson Cano single, and the last two on a broken play. With the bases loaded, Melky Cabrera grounded to Pedroia at second. He flipped to Julio Lugo for the force, but Lugo's throw got away from Casey at first, and two runs scored. The outburst completed a stretch where 14 runs scored in the span of eight outs, as the game blew past the two-hour mark and threatened to reach three before the seventh-inning stretch. According to the wire service summaries, the bottom of the fourth lasted 23 minutes, the top of the fifth another 31. Had the Yankees not taken the lead in the bottom of that fram, I might have chewed a limb off to get out of the ballpark.
The Yankees' LaTroy Hawkins and the Red Sox's David Aardsma -- the nitwit who displaced Hank Aaron atop the game's all-time alphabetical register -- brought some semblance of order to the game, as the next three half-innings went by without even the threat of a run. Billy Traber, who got Ortiz to pop out on his only pitch of the game, and a much slimmer, shaggier Brian Bruney than I remember, pieced together the top of the eighth inning. The Yanks more or less put the game out of reach in the bottom of the inning, beating up Mike Timlin, now 42 and with his best days blessedly behind him, for four more runs. Three doubles by A-Rod, Posada, and Jason Giambi provided the scaffolding for the rally.
It also served as enough of a cushion to give Mariano Rivera the night off. Bruney made things a bit interesting by allowing two of the first three hitters to reach base, but he dispatched the Sox before Ortiz and Ramirez could get one last lick.
• • •
Starting pitching has been the Yankees' weakest link thus far; as I noted in the Hit List, the team's Fair Run Average (their runs allowed per nine innings, adjusted to divide the responsibility for inherited runners between starters and relievers based on the base-out situation) ranked just 11th in the league, and youngsters Philip Hughes and Ian Kennedy had combined for an 8.87 ERA. Since then, the two pitchers have both fumbled another start against the O's (and no, I couldn't really bear to watch), and the Yankee rotation's FRA has fallen to 13th out of 14 AL teams. Hughes and Kennedy aren't even averaging four innings per start combined (27.1 innings in seven starts), and as a team the Yanks have now fallen below 5.0 innings per start (94.1 innings in 19 starts). The bullpen has been one of the game's best; they rank second in the AL in Reliever Expected Wins Added (WXRL) but their combined 70.1 innings leads the majors. Ohlendorf (14.1 innings) actually has thrown more innings than Kennedy. If that pace continues, it will make Yankee fans pine for the days when Joe Torre tried to pitch Scott Proctor's arm off.
In a season of great divisional and wild-card races, last year's NL West scramble may have been the best of the bunch. The Dodgers, Padres, and Diamondbacks all spent at least six weeks in first place, and by the end, just one full game separated the top three teams in the standings after the Rockies beat the Padres in a Game 163 playoff to decide the wild-card. The West looks similarly wild this year, as Baseball Prospectus's PECOTA projection system forecasts the Dodgers, Diamondbacks, and Rockies to finish with 87, 87, and 82 wins, respectively, the tightest three-team cluster in any division. As with last year, the outcome may well rest on the shoulders of young, homegrown talent. The Dodgers, Diamondbacks, and Rockies have earned reputations as three of the game's top player development machines, offering a pipeline of top prospects to combat the ever-rising cost of signing free agents - especially important for the small-market Rockies and Diamondbacks. All three are poised to augment their lineups and pitching staffs with even more prized prospects as the year goes on.
Hardly anyone predicted the Rockies could win the NL pennant last year, and nobody foresaw their season-ending 14–1 dash. However, BP prospect guru Kevin Goldstein ranked the Rockies' minor-league system the game's second-best at the outset of the season, noting their ability to provide instant help in the form of 22-year-old shortstop Troy Tulowitzki, who hit .291 AVG/.359 OBP/.479 SLG with 24 home runs while anchoring the league's best defense. The system also produced a pair of hard-throwing hurlers -— 23-year-old right-hander Ubaldo Jimenez and 21-year-old lefty Franklin Morales -- who patched a rotation wracked by injuries in time for their amazing stretch run. Meanwhile, 24-year-old Manny Corpas, a second-year reliever, took over the closer role from Brian Fuentes by midyear, saving 19 games after July 6.
Strong player development is hardly a new thing for the Rockies; it's arguably the only area in which the team (once notorious for a $172 million binge on free-agent busts Mike Hampton and Denny Neagle) has ever excelled. Their 2008 Opening Day lineup featured seven homegrown players, including five-time All-Star Todd Helton, 2007 MVP runner-up Matt Holliday, and former first-round draft picks Tulowitzki (2006), Jeff Francis (2002), and Jayson Nix (2001). Three days later, with Chris Iannetta behind the plate, and Ryan Spilborghs in center field, they featured an all-homegrown nine. Nix, 25, is a late-arriving, good-field/no-hit rookie; PECOTA forecasts him for a .245/.300/.379 showing but defense at second base that's nine runs above average. Iannetta, also 25, was expected to win the starting catcher job last year, but a .158 AVG in April coupled with a solid performance from Yorvit Torrealba consigned him to the backup backstop role. Still, Iannetta forecasts as the better hitter, and he may yet claim the job.
I've remarked before about the prescience of Goldstein's ranking of the Rockies' org, but left on the cutting room floor was Tulowitzki's role in helping the Rox lead the NL in Park-Adjusted Defensive Efficiency. I had plenty to say about the D-backs and Dodgers, of course, particularly with regards to the latter's new skipper:
Even more tantalizing [than third base prospect Andy LaRoche] is 20-year-old southpaw Clayton Kershaw, a blue-chip pitching prospect. Despite less than 25 innings above A-ball under his belt, he spent most of March in the big-league camp and drew raves for his poise and his arsenal. Though sent to Double-A to start the season, he's poised for a midsummer promotion, either as the fifth starter or -- of particular interest given new manager Joe Torre's experience last year -- in a Joba Chamberlain-esque setup role.
It's Torre who may draw the most scrutiny of any newcomer in the division. As the Yankee skipper, he often drew criticism for preferring marginal veterans over untested prospects, but his latter-day ability to integrate Robinson Cano, Melky Cabrera, Phil Hughes, and Chamberlain into the mix mitigated that somewhat. Already he's drawn fire for juggling Kemp with expensive, unproductive Juan Pierre in the outfield, and if Garciaparra and LaRoche are ever healthy at the same time, all eyes will fall on that choice, too. Given a slim margin for error, nothing less than a playoff spot may ride on Torre's willingness to choose youth over experience.
Given the Sun's space constraints, I didn't even have room to tackle the Padres, whom PECOTA forecast for a paltry 78 wins on the heels of their agonizing near-miss last year. As noted in my essay for Baseball Prospectus 2008, the Pads are at a real disadvantage against those divisional talent factories. They ranked 24th in Opening Day payroll last year, with the Rockies 25th and the Diamondbacks 26th; furthermore, Forbes.com's 2007 estimates show them second-to-last in Operating Income. Their farm system has improved in a year's time; Goldstein ranked them 29th in 2007, but they've risen all the way to 12th thanks to strong seasons from Matt Antonelli and Chase Headley and a stockpiling of free-agent compensation picks. Still, Antonelli's a year away and Headley, farmed out to begin this year, figures to help only so much once he arrives. PECOTA has him at .231/.316/.388 due to a shaky track record; an equivalent translation of his searing season in Double-A is .255/.356/.474, but he'd have to surpass his 90th percentile projection to reach that.
Back to Torre and the Dodger outfield, here's what I had to say in the Hit List, where they ranked 19th:
Ding-dong, Juan Pierre's consecutive game streak is dead at 434, but the early returns on Joe Torre's ability to manage the crowded outfield are less encouraging. Thus far, Andre Ethier's started nine times, Andruw Jones eight, Pierre and Matt Kemp five apiece, and the four outfielders are hitting a barren .204/.241/.301. On a more positive note, Rafael Furcal looks like the 2006 model as opposed to the 2007 one, and Jeff Kent has been solid despite missing most of spring training.
That's not very encouraging so far, particularly when it appeared towards the end of spring training that Torre had let go of the idea that Pierre would be a regular. It does appear I missed one significant choice, via this article: when Torre sat Jones on Wednesday, Kemp started in center field -- where he played just 17 innings last year -- instead of Pierre, with Torre again kicking the latter in the head: "I'd much rather have someone with the confidence and aggressiveness that [Kemp] has... I'd rather have his arm in center field." Thunk.
Elsewhere on the Hit List, the Yankees were just above the Dodgers at #18 (that's what happens when your offense is down to 3.1 runs per game) and the Brewers were fourth thanks to the anomalies of a Ben Sheets complete-game shutout (his first since his rookie year in 2001) and a sizzling start from Jason Kendall (.538/.567/.731). Most importantly, this week's pop-culture cameos include The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Keith McCready, the Capital Punisher, David Bowie and the former Attorney General, the latter of which should (and does) come with a suggestion to try the veal.
One brief but neat aside about the Hit List: Baseball Prospectus has long had a function called "Audit Team" available via a drop-down menu in the upper righthand corner throughout most of its site. They function as team-at-a-glance pages, handy to have up while watching a ballgame or mulling your local nine's lineup, but recently, they've received a massive and very cool overhaul, adding headshots, graphics, links to the oft-cited PECOTA projections, and a whole slew of BP-flavored sortable stats, including current Hit List ranking and recent Transaction Analysis entries. Here's what the Yankees page looks like -- if you're not familiar with their predecessors, let's just say that the new ones are like stepping into Technicolor. As I found while putting together this week's piece, this is a great resource that's worth taking advantage of, and you can't beat the price (free).
Hat tip to Dave Pease, not only for his hard work on this, but also for eliminating the single most painful hour of my week, the agonizing mad dash to finish each week's list that involved hand-coding each player mentioned in the Hit List with opening and closing < player > tags in order to link them to their BP player cards, often upwards of 100 per week. A very clutch performance.
The flip side to my aforementioned aversion to Opening Day at Yankee Stadium is my willingness to brave the elements for an early season game, particularly if the company is good. Last year, Jonah Keri and I endured a snow-filled sufferfest amid a horde of Bleacher Creatures, so it was virtually automatic that I'd accept an invite from Alex Belth for field level seats to Thursday night's tilt between the Blue Jays and the Yanks, particularly with Philip Hughes on the mound for his first start of the year.
After I endured the dauntingly lengthy ride to the stadium from my new outpost in Brooklyn (1 hour, Q from DeKalb Avenue, changing to the 4 at Union Square), I found Alex at our designated meeting spot, a shuttered deli at the corner of 161st Street and River Avenue. It took me a moment to place him; Alex was bundled up, wearing a parka and a winter cap, with his industrial-strength headphones worn over the outside. I hadn't gone quite so hardcore, opting for my usual overcoat and a Yankees cap -- it is wool, after all.
Before we went in, the two of us walked down the avenue to take full measure of the still-under-construction new park, Yankee Stadium III. I invoked Derek Jacques' Death Star metaphor as we crossed under the subway platfrom and the whole thing seemed even more apt as the new park came into full view. With its exterior shell substantially finished, right down to the gold lettering announcing its intention to keep its maiden name, so to speak, the new stadium looms imposingly over the current one, promising the latter's demise in a not-too-distant future. Alex compared it to a hospice situation, with the old park on its deathwatch. For all of the hype surrounding the Opening Day articles, there's no mistaking it once you arrive on the grounds: this is the beginning of the end for The House that Ruth Built.
As we wandered outside the stadium, my thoughts focused less on the new park and more on the current one, and I mused to Alex about the familiar anxieties as they came back to me. How much more oppressive will the Yankee Stadium ballpark experience be this year? My view of the current model was unshakably altered by a Saturday game last year which found the ballpark security closing off exits while hot and bothered Yankee and Red Sox fans taunted each other after a tense game to the point where I had to try hard not to think of soccer riot fatalities. From that moment, my nostalgia for the current park and my own personal stake in it -- the hundred-something I've attended there over the last 13 years, including the 1999 World Series Clincher and the thousands I've watched take place in its yard -- was trumped by the desire for a better fan experience. Not that I have faith that the new ballpark will provide it, not with my upper-deck seats some 30 feet further back from the action and my wallet bracing for the kind of abuse that makes prison showers seem church socials by comparison.
Once inside, spared the hefty hike up the familiar ramps to the upper deck in favor of a ground-level entry to our seats, the current ballpark's familiar pleasures overtook me. Yankee Stadium II contains the famous reminders of its old history -- Monument Park, the white frieze, the flagpole in what used to be the center field patrolled by DiMaggio and Mantle, with the park's original dimensions preserved by the wall behind it, the black batter's eye where only the chosen few have reached with their towering blasts -- and the portents of its own obsolescence, the narrow concourses, spartan amenities, and fatal lack of luxury boxes. As limiting as that latter set is, it's also been part of the park's charm, at least to me. If you go to Yankee Stadium, you're there to see a ballgame, nothing more and nothing less. No fountains, waterfalls, kiddie pools, mascots, slides, or other diversions. Compared to the modern mallparks, the centerfield PA system is much less intrusive, even when the hated "Cotton-Eyed Joe" blares.
Our seats were as good as any I've had in over a decade (I was four rows behind home plate for this one back in '97), just to the first base side of the netting behind home plate. With my current scorebook buried in some unmarked box from my recent move, and Alex empty-handed in that department, I shelled out $7 for a program so we could keep score. Mind you, doing so in the itty-bitty squares of the flimsy Yankees Magazine scorecard is like trying to get romantic in the back of an old Volkswagen Beetle. There was little room to make the usual notes I keep on a game -- the location of each hit, notations on complicated plays or memorable moments in the stands -- and, given the gift of gab between two friends who hadn't seen each other all winter and who generally talk like sugared-up six-year-olds when we do get together, I found myself battling to stay in synch with the game.
Which, in the 42 degree weather, was thankfully brisk. Hughes mowed down the Blue Jays, striking out Matt Stairs and Alexis Rios looking in the first inning -- the Toronto hitters never did seem to figure out home plate ump Bill Miller's strike zone, as five of their seven Ks were backwards on my scorecard -- and retiring all nine hitters the first time through the order. Hughes found trouble in the fourth, via a David Eckstein double and a Rios single, but the damage could have been much worse. Rios got all the way to third with one out after a Robinson Cano error in fielding a throw from Jose Molina compounded a successful steal, but the kid came back to whiff Vernon Wells and Frank Thomas. The Big Hurt thought he'd just received ball four and jogged to first base excitedly, but when told it wasn't so, he raised such a ruckus that he was bounced to the delight of the rather sparse crowd (47,785 officially, maybe 30,000 in reality). The Jays added another run in the fifth, via a two-out walk to Marco Scutaro, a double by Greg Zaun, and an infield single by "The Little Gerbil," (Eckstein, in my friend Nick's words).
The Yanks, meanwhile, could do little against Toronto's Dustin McGowan until the bottom of the sixth, when Johnny Damon drove a ball to the base of the wall in deep right field for a double. McGowan then loaded the bases by hitting Derek Jeter with a pitch and then walking Bobby Abreu. The crowd, at least at field level, rose to its feet with Alex Rodriguez coming up and nowhere to put him. The fourth pitch of the at-bat, a ball low and away from A-Rod, skidded away from Zaun towards our general vicinity as Damon scampered home, but Rodriguez followed by striking out. Jason Giambi lofted a fly ball that brought Jeter home, but Abreu made an ill-advised bolt to third base -- perhaps as an attempt to protect Jeter by drawing the throw -- and was meat.
Against this backdrop, Alex and I buzzed about books we have and haven't been reading lately. Pat Jordan was a frequent topic of discussion, as I'd just gotten a copy of his Belth-edited book and had devoured the infamous, withering profile of Steve and Cyndy Garvey which had resulted in an $11.2 million lawsuit. As the innings passed, we chewed on Red Smith, Ring Lardner and Ed Linn, author of Nice Guys Finish Last and Veeck as in Wreck, the latter Alex's second answer to a question he'd posed about classic baseball books we hadn't read. Boys of Summer was his first answer, and for a moment I wished I had the time to do nothing but read those two old favorites. I offered up Jim Brosnan's The Long Season, an in-season diary precursor to Jim Bouton's Ball Four, and Robert Creamer bios of Babe Ruth and Casey Stengel. The conversation shifted to the genre of boxing writing, as Alex told me about Mark Kram chronicling Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, the Thrilla in Manila. A trip to the Strand was an inevitability in the wake of such chatter.
After six innings, the two young starters departed, with the impressive Hughes giving way to a resurrected Billy Traber, a much slimmer and shaggier version of Brian Bruney than we'd known, and then an electrifying Joba Chamberlain; the latter struck Zaun out looking, and worked around a two-out single with little problem. Brian Wolfe came on for McGowan, who'd weighed in with an impressive six-inning effort of his own. Wolfe completed a 1-2-3 seventh, but yielded a leadoff single to Melky Cabrera in the eighth. Lefty Scott Downs came on, and Damon dropped down a bunt, an intended sacrifice which Downs bobbled, with all hands safe. Jeter then bunted as well -- I hate it when he does that -- this time pushing the runners over, and then Abreu came dunked a blooper into center for what proved to be the deciding run. Mariano Rivera backed it with his usual finesse, surrendering a leadoff single to Wells before mowing down the next three Jays on just eight pitches, freezing Aaron Hill with two strikes to end the ballgame in a tidy 2:45.
As we shuffled out, Alex hit me with a frightening question: what would you do if your last game at the current Yankee Stadium ended to the defeat-laden strains of Liza Minelli's version of "New York, New York" instead of Sinatra's? That's a horror I don't even want to think about.
For Alex's take on the game, see his entry at Bronx Banter.
We can look forward to these "historic" markers growing increasingly absurd as the year wears on, with broadcasters encouraging fans to catch the historic final midweek series against the Rays in July, and in August alerting us to Carl Pavano's historic final trip to the Yankee Stadium Trainers' Room. (I can almost hear Suzyn Waldman reverently running down the historic implications of the latter event: "Should Pavano somehow stay with the Yankees next year, and need a cortisone shot, or a rub down, or a precautionary X-Ray, it will be at the new Yankee Stadium.")
Of course, there will be an audience for all the sentimentality that's being unleashed with the Stadium's send-off. In a sport that conscientiously markets itself on its past and its traditions, the Yankees trade most effectively in nostalgia. Possibly the greatest achievement of the Yankees' nostalgia machine is the perceived continuity between the building that Colonel Ruppert built in 1923 to house Babe Ruth's bat and the current Yankee Stadium. The 1976 "renovation" was more of a gut-and-rebuild job than a simple sprucing up of the structure. Just about every significant detail of the building -- its dimensions, the playing field, the seats, the scoreboard -- was altered, resulting in an arena that doesn't fit in with the great classic ballparks like Wrigley Field or Fenway Park, but doesn't quite have the plastic uniformity of the cookie-cutter parks of the '60s and '70s, either. Although many still admire its timeless look, Yankee Stadium II (as we sometimes like to call the post-1976 structure) shares little with the original other than its address.
Across the street, the new new Yankee Stadium looks a bit like the Death Star, circa Return of the Jedi, enough so that I half-expect it to sprout a laser cannon and vaporize the present stadium sometime after the last pitch of the 2008 season is thrown. Its still-under-construction exterior shell self-consciously recalls the original structure, but the ballpark within will be thoroughly modern and built from scratch-there's no longer any plausible deniability that this isn't a break with history. Talking to fans around the ballpark, the recurring theme was anxiety about the new ballpark. Will they be able to afford tickets? Will they be near the other regular ticket plan holders in their section? Will the new Stadium be the same kind of place the old one was?
• My parents were just in town, and in addition to getting to watch the Dodgers opener with my dad, I took him to see the plaque commemorating the signing of Jackie Robinson to a professional contract at the Dodgers' offices on 215 Montague Street in Brooklyn, a few minutes' walk from my new apartment. Speaking of Robinson, Steven Goldman has a great (and free) piece on his arrival in the majors, set up by another scene from Steve and Jay's Excellent Promotional Adventure:
I hope you enjoyed Opening Day, or as I like to think of it, the 61st anniversary of America. Yes, there was 1776, when the 13 colonies declared independence, or 1787, when the current Constitution kicked off, or even 1865, when Abraham Lincoln both ended slavery and established the supremacy of the federal government over the states by force of arms. Yet, in all that time, the country never began to close the gap between its rhetoric and its realities. That had to wait for 1947 and Jackie Robinson.
This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. A couple of weeks ago, Jay Jaffe and I were in Philadelphia for a BP book signing. We were doing our usual Q&A when an older black man, standing at the back in a tweedy newsboy cap, raised his hand. He didn’t really want to ask a question, but to say a few words — well, a lot of words — about Barry Bonds, and how the color of his skin influenced the way he had been treated by the media and by official baseball. I’m not completely clear on how the conversation progressed, because the gentleman was making a speech without stopping to breathe, let alone allow us to answer, while Jay and I were simultaneously trying to respond and reclaim our platform, with the result that the three of us were talking over each other in a way that became unintelligible even to me.
I do know that at one point, while the gentleman was indicting baseball for racism, I brought up Jackie Robinson, saying that whatever happened since, the breaking of the color line was a huge, gigantic thing, more than just a seminal moment in baseball but in all of American history.
That gave him pause. "Why?" he asked.
"Because for the first time in this history of the country, something that had been promised at the very beginning was finally delivered: equality of opportunity."
"Well, I don’t know about that," the gentleman said. At that point Jay jumped in again, and the conversation spiraled off in another direction. Eventually, the gentleman thanked us for the use of our soap box and left.
The point I tried to make in that three-way scrum was that I have colleagues who don't consider any major league baseball before Robinsons's arrival in 1947 to be valid -- an extreme view, perhaps, but by no means an unreasonable one. Anyway, what follows that excerpt is a lengthy history lesson involving democracy and baseball, one that rises above even Steve's usual high standards. Read it.
• Hat tip to Yanksfan vs Soxfan: This isn't an April Fools joke, though the outcomes of Steve C. Wang's use of Chernoff faces to graphically represent managers' tactical tendencies look like the help at a Mongolian yak-farming outpost. From the article: "Dr. Wang used a kind of statistical Mr. Potato Head to portray the spectrum of managerial characteristics in a way that intrigued even the skippers themselves."
If I'm reading these correctly, Joe Torre keeps a stable lineup, goes with the platoon advantage, uses a lot of pinch-hitters, tends to steal, sacrifice bunt, and hit and run. A pretty good summation of his tendencies with the Yankees.
Randomly picking a couple of others... Oakland's Bob Geren: lots of lineups, lots of platooning, few pinch-hitters or pinch-runners, almost no stolen base or sac attempts. Washintgton's Manny Acta: big platoon advantage, lots of pinch hitters, lots of lineups, few sacs, few hit and runs or steals, few sacs.
Acta incidentally, considers Mind Game to be his baseball bible. So now I'm rooting for the Nationals, too.
• Acta's not the only manager reading BP. Joe Girardi has an annual in his office, and from the sound of it, the New York Times' Tyler Kepner is the one who's unfamiliar: "...I don’t think I ever saw a Baseball Prospectus volume like the one Girardi has in his office." And he calls himself a respectable journalist!
• Another no-fooling April 1 selection, from when I was surfing through the Giants' MLB page in search of details for the fantasy update and reveling in just how craptacular they looked on Opening Day. The top headlines (none of these are made up):
Giants have big plans for parking lot
Young Giants adjusting to bench roles
Giants make no changes to lineup
Zito's fastball lacking in opening loss
Giants shrug off low expectations
With news like that, an 11-151 record appears optmistic. And then there' this: it's no secret that Brian Bocock, the 23-year-old who's playing shortstop in Omar Vizquel's absence, isn't qualified to be a major leaguer. Last year the guy hit .220/.293/.328 in High-A and he was old for his level. He hit .183/.247/.183 this spring in 71 at-bats, and while those numbers don't count, that's not a typo either. There are PE teachers all across America who can hit that.
Though extra innings from the Tigers-Royals game pre-empted the start, we joined the action in time to catch Jeff Kent's two-run homer, saw Juan Pierre's soul shrivel as his consecutive game streak ended at 434 (score one for Torre, who correctly identified Andre Ethier as the better ballplayer), watched rookie Blake DeWitt collect his first major-league hit as he subs for three-count-'em-three injured third basemen, and wondered if Barry Zito's uniform number (75) was an advertisement for his current fastball speed. Zito had nuthin' as the Dodgers rapped out eight hits and four runs in his five innings, and the Giants compounded that with a bunch of mental mistakes. Brad Penny and the relievers held the Giants to five hits in winning 5-0. Congrats to Torre on his first win as a Dodger; here's hoping for many more.
The always-controversial preseason Prospectus Hit List went up on Sunday. Derived from BP's state-of-the-art PECOTA forecasting system, the staff's playing time projections, and Clay Davenport's Postseason Odds Report, it has the Yankees ranked first with a 97-65 record and a 64 percent shot at making the playoffs. The Mets are second at 95-67 -- a projection that I think considerably understates their injury risks -- and about a 60 percent shot at October. They're followed by the Indians, Cubs, Tigers, Angels, Red Sox, Brewers and Dodgers. Boston at 91-71 is the only one of those teams not projected to top their division or win the Wild Card, though given the dead heat they're in with the Indians and Tigers projected for 92-70, that one may as well be a toss-up if you're scoring at home.
For each of the comments, I took a hard look at the PECOTA projections underlying the rankings, noting, for example, that Detroit's shaky bullpen (Denny Bautista and his 6.93 ERA as the new setup man) was likely to undo that advantage over Boston, that the Rays' defensive gains over last year were overstated (I like them at .500 assuming Kazmir comes back soon, but 88 wins is a stretch and a half), and that the Rockies' defensive prowess is understated. A few excerpts of the personal favorites around here:
1. Yankees Torre's out, Girardi's in, and everybody's a year older, but the lineup remains a threat to top 900 runs again. Even as Johnny Damon, Hideki Matsui and Jason Giambi battle for playing time, four other hitters figure to top 30 VORP, and nobody's an easy out. The real focus will be on the remade pitching staff, where Philip Hughes, Ian Kennedy and Joba Chamberlain (71.9 combined VORP projected by PECOTA) will battle inning caps while the Yankee brass fights the temptation to turn them loose to cover for a shaky bullpen. Is Girardi up to maintaining this delicate balancing act?
8. Brewers As close as last year's Brewers came to reaching the postseason for the first time since 1982, they frittered away their chances with a horrid defense, some bad bullpen management, and abbreviated seasons from Ryan Braun and Yovani Gallardo. They've addressed the defense and thrown money at the bullpen, and from the outset of the season they'll carry one of the game's most enviable cores of young talent; even with Mike Cameron's 25-game suspension, the top seven hitters in the lineup forecast above 20 VORP. The real key is at the back of the rotation, where they'll need Manny Parra and Carlos Villanueva to exceed PECOTA's low expectations.
9. Dodgers Ousted from the Yankees and the perennial two-team battle in the AL East, Joe Torre wound up with the Dodgers in a much wilder NL West. He's got some potential minefields to navigate--a three-injury pileup at third base, and the Andre Ethier/Matt Kemp/Juan Pierre situation in the outfield, which appears may shake out with the Dodgers carrying the league's most expensive fourth outfielder. Beyond that, Torre inherits some of the game's best young talent, including the league's top catcher in Russell Martin, not to mention a pitching staff that blends experience and youth and forecasts to be nearly every bit as good as the unit he'd be guiding in the Bronx if that bug spray had worked.
Anyway, the article is free, so you can enjoy or gripe about the rankings to your heart's content. The staff picks go up at BP tomorrow; I'll link back to them here along with a bit more commentary.
In last Friday's Prospectus Hit and Run, I took a look at the Yankees' "decision" to shift Joba Chamberlain to the bullpen to start the season, making some ballpark estimates as to his workloads in the rotation and in relief and how they fit in with the team's plans:
So, the recent Yanks [2005-2007] have averaged about 123 starts per year from their top five, leaving 39 starts to be absorbed by the rest of the staff. Even if they were to play towards the high side of that time span, 136 starts, those extra 26 are more than one extra pitcher can be expected to absorb. Of that surplus, how many can we expect Chamberlain to make?
An aggressive estimate might put him at about 15 starts, leaving the Yanks to come up with another dozen or two from among the Jeff Karstens/Darrell Rasner/Kei Igawa/TBNL herd. Suppose Chamberlain pitches on a 180-inning pace as a starter for three months of the year, and takes the guise of a heavy-use 90-inning reliever for the other three months. In his starter phase, he could total 15 starts averaging six innings per start (90 innings) and as a reliever, he'd average an inning every other day (45 innings). That would put Joba at 135 innings, not far off from his Rule of 30 target. Of course, that wouldn't leave a ton of headroom for October, if the Yankees get there. One can't determine whether the team might want him to be part of their front four, or to return to the set-up role without knowing the rest of the staff's strengths and weaknesses at that point in time. Either way has its merits so long as he can usurp a greater percentage of innings than the regular season, but both have their drawbacks as well.
From there I took a look at Chamberlain's performance in relief last year using BP's Reliever Expected Wins Added stat (WXRL), which measures the incremental impact, in wins, of a reliever's performance based on the changes in score margin and game state (runners on base and number of outs) when he arrives and departs. Joba was 1.85 wins above replacement level in his 24 innings last year; on a per-inning basis, only Cleveland's Rafael Betancourt had more of an impact, and all Betancourt did was set a record among the subgroup of nonclosers that I'm calling MISERs (Maximum-Impact Setup Relievers, crudely defined as pitchers with at least 1.0 WXRL and fewer than six saves in a season). The leaderboard for 2007:
Pitcher Team IP WXRL WX/9 Rafael Betancourt CLE 79.1 6.845 0.777 Joba Chamberlain NYA 24.0 1.848 0.693 Hideki Okajima BOS 69.0 4.429 0.578 Mike Gonzalez ATL 17.0 1.079 0.571 Heath Bell SDN 93.2 5.656 0.543 Brandon Lyon ARI 74.0 4.357 0.530 Zack Greinke KCA 53.1 3.114 0.525 Carlos Marmol CHN 69.1 3.694 0.480 Rafael Perez CLE 60.2 3.142 0.466 Pat Neshek MIN 70.1 3.572 0.457 J.C. Romero 2TM 56.1 2.822 0.451 Bobby Seay DET 46.1 2.303 0.448 Akinori Otsuka TEX 32.1 1.566 0.436 Tony Pena ARI 85.1 4.103 0.433 Ehren Wassermann CHA 23.0 1.075 0.421 Henry Owens FLO 23.0 1.051 0.411 Chad Qualls HOU 82.2 3.608 0.393 Derrick Turnbow MIL 68.0 2.752 0.364 Matt Herges COL 48.2 1.927 0.356 Justin Speier ANA 50.0 1.950 0.351 Scott Downs TOR 58.0 2.260 0.351
By comparison, Mariano Rivera's WXRL/9 was 0.467, which ranked 20th in the majors. Still, as good as Chamberlain's performance was, 24 innings is a pretty small sample size to base many conclusions on, so when I retroactively computed leaderboards for the seasons 2001 to 2006, I raised the bar to 40 innings to allow the occasional LOOGY or midseason callup to sneak through. What the rankings show is that the Yanks have been fairly deficient in this department recently. Here are the qualifying Yankees dating back to 1996:
Pitcher Team Year IP WXRL WX/9 Rk Mariano Rivera NYA 1996 107.7 6.876 0.575 1 Mike Stanton NYA 1997 66.7 3.541 0.478 2 Ramiro Mendoza NYA 1999 84.0 2.385 0.256 27 Mike Stanton NYA 1999 58.3 1.480 0.228 34 Jason Grimsley NYA 1999 75.0 1.608 0.193 41 Jeff Nelson NYA 2000 69.7 1.534 0.198 35 Mike Stanton NYA 2001 80.3 3.333 0.373 10 Jay Witasick NYA 2001 40.3 1.037 0.231 32 Ramiro Mendoza NYA 2002 91.7 1.621 0.159 44 Chris Hammond NYA 2003 63.0 1.954 0.279 21 Tom Gordon NYA 2004 89.7 6.438 0.646 1 Paul Quantrill NYA 2004 95.3 1.546 0.146 51 Tom Gordon NYA 2005 80.7 3.269 0.365 11 Scott Proctor NYA 2006 102.3 1.833 0.161 49 Luis Vizcaino NYA 2007 75.3 2.081 0.249 35 Kyle Farnsworth NYA 2007 60.0 1.142 0.171 51
Since Mo ascended to the closer role, only Mike Stanton and Tom Gordon have cracked the majors' top 20 in a given season. For a team spending as much money on its bullpen as the Yankees have, that's no relief. And it's yet another reason why sending Chamberlain to the bullpen for at least part of the year makes sense.
As for writing about the Rocket's 'roids-related revelations, I covered the pinstriped angle of the Mitchell Report for Bombers Broadside 2008, a forthcoming book on the Yankees from Maple Street Press. This is the second year in a row I've contributed to Bombers Broadside. In this edition's 112 pages of glossy, full color goodness you'll also find editor Cecilia Tan and such familiar names as Mike Carminati, Vince Genarro, Dan Graziano, Derek Jacques, Tara Krieger, Dan McCourt, Sweeney Murti and Pete Palmer. The book will be available on newsstands in the Tri-State area on March 4, and can be ordered directly from the publisher now.
As for what I actually think about whether Clemens used? As skeptical as I am of the Mitchell Report and of Brian McNamee's character, I've had a hard time believing the Clemens camp's protestations from the beginning. Furthermore, every weird turn this case has taken -- from the Mike Wallace softball interview to the taped phone call to Andy Pettitte's admission and testimony to the needles and gauze to the naming of Debbie Clemens to the Rocket's glad-handing up on Capitol Hill to Rusty Hardin's down-home machismo -- has further eroded my confidence in Clemens' version of events. The only major point scored in Clemens' favor since the report's release was the revelation that he was not in fact named in the Jason Grimsley affidavit, contrary to the Los Angeles Times' previous reports.
Which isn't to say that I particularly care whether Clemens used or not. Though his late-career accomplishments certainly fit a pattern not unlike that of America's previous Public Enemy #1, Barry Bonds, I'm more skeptical than ever about what the drugs he allegedly took may have done to his performance. In the context of the hundreds of other players who allegedly used PEDs prior to baseball's beefed-up policy, his case isn't especially remarkable; it's the denials which have amplified the coverage and given the story legs. What's certain is that the public persona of Clemens that has emerged through this saga is even less charming than the one on display throughout his career. And while I have to admit that I'm not really prone to sympathizing with right-wing, redneck bullies, I fear that the cover-up -- if this flurry of activity is indeed covering up for Clemens' misdeeds -- is worse than the crime.
That said, I doubt there will be enough evidence to convict Clemens of perjury, and I find the whole notion that Congress should be involved in this dispute to be patently ridiculous. Henry Waxman, Tom Davis and their colleagues -- particularly my old nemesis Christopher Shays, America's expert at Not Knowing Anything About Anything -- are a bipartisan bunch of camera-hogging assclowns who ought to be doing something more important, like begging their constituents for forgiveness for wasting their time and taxpayer dollars on such relatively trivial matters.
Anyway, as ever I'll try to impart a modicum of reason into the reportage.
But having done enough of thatlast week, I switched gears for this week's Prospectus Hit and Run. I tied up up a few loose ends by revisiting the 2013 Hall of Fame ballot, the close-but-no-cigar crew who topped Jim Rice's 72.2 percent, and correcting myself regarding a slip on David Justice. Finally, I turned my attention to the forthcoming season via a topic I covered in the forthcoming Baseball Prospectus 2008 (which ships February 18), namely the Brewers' abysmal defense:
As I wrote a few months back, the Brewers finished 28th out of 30 teams in Park Adjusted Defensive Efficiency. They were 3.44 percent below average in converting batted balls into outs, a shortcoming that translates to -44.7 runs (every one percent away from average equals 13 runs). A look at the defensive numbers of the infielders suggests that number isn't far out of line. Based on their Fielding Runs Above Average totals and a simple Linear Weights conversion of Baseball Information Solutions' Plus/Minus ratings into runs, the quartet of Prince Fielder, Rickie Weeks, J.J. Hardy and Ryan Braun came in a whopping 49 runs below average.
In a tight but winnable division, that simply won't do, so kudos to the Brewers for not sitting on their hands. The recent signing of Mike Cameron to play center field created a domino effect, shifting incumbent Bill Hall, who struggled to hold down the middle pasture, to the hot corner, and Braun, who put up a ghastly .895 fielding percentage, to left field. According to the Davenport fielding numbers, Hall has performed as a league-average third baseman in 84 career games, 59 of them in 2005. Braun, however, is untested in the outfield.
How much will all these moves improve the defense? I set out to do a quick, back-of-the-envelope calculation, incorporating 2007 FRAA, Plus/Minus and the new kid on the block, Dan Fox's Simple Fielding Runs...
I did two estimates, one the those numbers, the other using the 2008 PECOTA projections, which account for multiple years of data, player aging patterns, and regression to the mean. Between the two estimates, I bracketed the defensive improvements as worth between 1.5 and four wins, something that should comfort my Brewer-loving in-laws.
• • •
Elsewhere at BP, yesterday was a big day, as Kevin Goldstein published our Top 100 Prospect list, then submitted to a full afternoon of interrogation. Topping the list is Cincinnati center fielder Jay Bruce, and the Reds can also boast pitcher Homer Bailey (#), first baseman Joey Votto (21), and pitcher Johnny Cueto (41). That's a nice bit of high-end talent, but nobody can touch the Rays, who have five of the top 25 prospects; their days as the AL East's doormat may be at an end.
The Yankees' Joba Chamberlain comes in ranked an impressive #4, though that won't be enough to appease the nitpickers who sweat Boston's Clay Buchholz being ranked #2. The Yankees placed five kids on the list, the Red Sox seven, but beyond that raw count, it's it's actually a tossup between the two beasts in terms of strength. Boston has the higher-rated player and two in the top 20, but the Yanks have four in the top 50. Ian Kennedy is ranked 34th, outfielders Austin Jackson and Jose Tabata 47th and 48th, respectively, and pitcher Alan Horne 67th (Philip Hughes, in case anybody was wondering, is no longer eligible for the list, having topped 50 innings last year). Beyond Buchholz, the Sox have center fielder Jacoby Ellsbury (16), starting pitcher Justin Masterson (53), "shortstop" Jed Lowrie (57), outfielder Ryan Kalish (60), starting pitcher Michael Bowden (95th) and first baseman Lars Anderson (100).
The Dodgers fared well, too. Starter Clayton Kershaw ranks fifth; according to Goldstein he's the early favorite for next year's #1. Third baseman Andy LaRoche is 14th, shortstop Chin-Ling Hu 32nd, and pitcher Scott Elbert 66th. That's solid but not incredibly strong, but when one considers that the system has graduated Chad Billingsley, Jonathan Broxton, Andre Ethier, Matt Kemp, James Loney and Russell Martin to the bigs in the last two years, whoa. Goldstein's Top 11 Dodger prospects will be up later today; I'll check back with a link.
• • •
We won't know until this evening whether the deal will become official or not, but the Mets are poised to steal Johan Santana from the Twins. You know it's bad when Baseball America's home page boldly greets you with the headline "Twins Didn't Get Enough."
Of the four prospects headed Minnesota's way, the highest-ranked on BP's list is center fielder Carlos Gomez at #65. He's a toolsy guy with what they call a projectable body, which is to say he causes scouts' hearts to go pitter-patter despite the fact that he has yet to translate his physique into results. As a 21-year-old he was pressed into big-league duty by injuries in the Mets' outfield last year, he hit just .232/.288/.304 in 125 big-league at-bats. As bad as that is, the kid has hit just .278/.336/.399 in four minor-league seasons, and between being overmatched in the bigs and suffering a broken hand, he lost a good bit of development time. PECOTA forecasted a weighted mean equivalent performance of .265/.315/.392 in 2007 (that's translated from wherever he played in the minors); for this year it's .253/.310/.371 -- about 25 OPS points lower. Backwards moving is he.
The deal gets worse for the Twins. Neither pitchers Phillip Humber nor Kevin Mulvey crack BP's Top 100; both are seen as back-of-the rotation guys. Nineteen-year-old pitcher Deolis Guerra ranks 79th, but that's again a function of his projectable body rather than his results to date. After an impressive 2006 as a 17-year-old, he put up a 4.01 ERA and 6.6 K/9 in the Florida State League last year; he'll need to bulk up his repertoire so that he actually misses bats if this deal is to be salvaged for Minny.
Here's what BA's Jim Callis had to say:
Guerra (No. 2), Gomez (No. 3), Mulvey (No. 4) and Humber (No. 7) all ranked prominently on our Mets Top 10 Prospects list. But there’s simply too much risk involved in this deal for Minnesota.
The two best prospects in the trade, Guerra and Gomez, come with high ceilings but also lack a lot of polish and have a long ways to go to reach their potential. The odds that they both will do so are slim.
Guerra has an 89-94 mph fastball and a promising changeup and he’s only 18. But he also has a below-average breaking ball, has yet to pitch more than 90 innings in a season and while he has held his own, he hasn’t dominated. Gomez had the best package of tools in the Mets system, but his bat is still extremely raw...
Mulvey has an arsenal of four average pitches and throws strikes. He’s not overpowering and he’s most likely a No. 4 starter. Since having Tommy John surgery in 2005, Humber hasn’t fully regained the stuff that made him the No. 3 overall pick in the 2004 draft. His curveball is his best pitch but his fastball now sits at 87-91 mph. He too projects as a No. 4 starter.
The Twins have traded Santana for two high-reward but also high-risk prospects, and two back-of-the-rotation starters. They didn’t get a prospect whose combination of ceiling and certainty approaches that of Hughes, whom the Yankees were willing to deal for Santana earlier in the winter. They didn’t get a package comparable to the ones the Red Sox reportedly offered earlier, fronted by either Jacoby Ellsbury and Jon Lester and also containing two solid prospects nearly ready for the majors: righty Justin Masterson and shortstop Jed Lowrie.
BPs Joe Sheehan was none too wild about the haul either, though he did counter some of the conventional wisdom based on the rumors that have floated around all winter:
The package just wasn’t the right one. I’m not going to compare this trade to the long-rumored and varying offers that were reportedly on the table at varying times this winter, because I’ve come around to the idea that what’s actually offered and what gets reported are two wildly different things. We can’t compare an actual trade to rumors. However, evaluating this deal in a vacuum, we see that it adds just one position player of note, one with some major flaws and who wouldn’t be one of the top ten prospects at his position in the game. The rest of the deal is mid-rotation pitching prospects.
There are mitigating circumstances here that must be noted. Santana forced Bill Smith’s hand by threatening to invoke his no-trade clause, which would have ended all talks and forced the Twins to either sign Santana or lose him at the end of the year for nothing. With the Twins looking up at the Tigers and Indians in the division, and the Red Sox and Yankees in the league, it didn’t seem reasonable to keep him in a push for success in 2008, and the Twins have never acted like signing Santana was a reasonable option for them. With Santana pointing the gun, apparently wishing to have his 2008 status settled right now, Smith had little choice but to make a deal. This trade does little for me, but when positioned as “one year of Johan Santana or this trade,” it’s a bit more defensible... Blame Bill Smith for the deal that he did make, but save a little ire for Terry Ryan, whose decision three years ago [to grant Santana the no-trade clause] set these events in motion.
What's really funny is that I spent nearly six years at a design studio with a boss named Bill Smith. Didn't know much about baseball; the story goes that when he was taken to a game, he brought magazines to read and asked when halftime was. Possibly more legend than fact, but good for a punchline in this context.
Mainly I'm relieved that the Yanks didn't give up Hughes to get Santana, and that they won't have to face him in what would have been an insanely stacked Red Sox rotation. If it goes through, the Mets are a solid bet to finish the job they botched last year and take the NL East, though I really think the Braves, with a full season of Mark Teixeira and continued development of their young nucleus (Brian McCann, Kelly Johnson, Yunel Escobar, Jeff Francoeur) will be a continued threat (Philly's lack of pitching will doom them).
Anyway, I've got more links to share, but that's enough blogging for one entry.
• This week's installment of Prospectus Hit and Run just went up. In it, I note that the 2007 Red Sox are in very fine company in terms of post division-play teams that went on to win the World Series after conclusively proving themselves as the best teams of the majors in terms of run differential, Pythagorean record, and/or Hit List ranking -
