Mike Piazza retired on Tuesday, ending a stellar 16-year career which saw him make the All-Star team 12 times and finish with a lifetime .308/.377/.545 line and 427 home runs. A fellow Dodger fan came asking about his Hall of Fame credentials on Tuesday evening, prompting me to put together a quick piece for Baseball Prospectus Unfiltered. The bottom line is that Piazza's JAWS score inches past the Hall of Fame standard for catchers on the basis of his strong peak, but that's not the most interesting part of the story:
Bolstering Piazza’s primary JAWS case are his secondary numbers, which confirm the oft-repeated claim that he’s the best-hitting catcher of all time. Piazza’s .311 EqA [Equivalent Average] is the all-time high for the position. No Hall of Fame catcher has an EqA above .300, though there are several in the .295-.299 range and the positional average is a robust .289. The highest EqA for a catcher not in the Hall of Fame is sabermetric hero Gene Tenace at .308 (ayyy Gino!), while the highest active marks coming into 2008 were held by Joe Mauer (.305) and Jorge Posada (.300).
Furthermore, Piazza’s 472 Batting Runs Above Average is light years ahead of the rest of the backstop pack. No Hall of Fame catcher has more than Johnny Bench’s 325 BRAA. Joe Torre, at 396, is the only hitter between Bench and Piazza, and while he played a plurality of his games at catcher (893) and this is classified as such in our system, the majority of his time was actually split between the infield corners (793 at first base, 515 at third). Torre’s got a lifetime .298 EqA as well.
Piazza also holds the record for home runs as a catcher, hitting 396 of his shots while playing that position. His fielding is another story; at -149 runs, he's the worst-fielding catcher ever, which prevents him from topping the JAWS list at his position. Had he taken the time to learn first base in his later years, he might have had a shot at 500 homers, but as it is, he's still got enough of the good stuff for the Hall of Fame.
As I discussed in the piece, his final game at Shea, as a member of the Padres, was a night to remember. No matter what uniform he wore, he was always something to behold as a hitter, and he'll be missed.
• • •
The transcript for yesterday's BP chat can be found here. The Cubs, about whom I spent a good portion of the day working on a forthcoming piece for the New York Sun, were a popular topic, as were the Dodgers -- particularly regarding the news that Andruw Jones has torn cartilage in his right knee -- and the Yankees, whose season continues to spiral downward:
scareduck (Still closer to Angel Stadium than Chavez Ravine): Three questions: 1) For my Cubs lovin' wife, are the Northsiders for real? They've done well so far, but what are their big questions down the stretch? 2) Is there any light at the end of the Andruw Jones tunnel, or is that the sound of a diesel locomotive? 3) Joe Torre: great manager, or *greatest* manager? Seriously, look at Friday's Dodgers lineup: how could he expect to win?
JJ: Cubs: for real. Their run differential is the best in all of baseball by a wide margin, and I don't see any of the other NL Central teams being able to hang with them. I think the big questions are whether Rich Hill rediscovers his control and returns to the rotation, and whether Kerry Wood can hold up as the team's closer. Barring injuries, I think they'll be OK, and even with those injuries, they have a bit of depth to either cover from within or make a trade to help themselves out.
Andruw: lots of questions about him today. The upside of his injury is that it may explain some of his struggles, it may force him to get back in shape as he rehabs, and it will give Dodger fans a bit of relief when it comes to the daily drama of the outfield lineup.
Torre: Furcal being hurt certainly takes a bite out of that lineup. But really, Torre's going to have to get over this Russell Martin-at-3B fetish, even though it's only been a total of 37 innings he's played there. It's fine to give him a breather now and then, but when you're stealing at-bats from DeWitt or LaRoche to give them to Gary Bennett, something is definitely wrong.
jlebeck66 (WI): Dodgers. DeWitt. LaRoche. How's this gonna end? Did LaRoche anger a deity or something?
JJ: Sticking with this topic for a moment, I'm as big a LaRoche booster as you'll find, but DeWitt is knocking the stuffing out of the ball. I don't expect that to continue unabated, but there's no sense in sitting him down right now.
From a long-term standpoint, it's a nice problem to have. I'd hate to see them trade LaRoche, but I don't think they necessarily have to. I wonder whether the Dodgers would consider revisiting the DeWitt-to-second experiment that they tried in 2006, when the kid was at Vero Beach. With Jeff Kent clearly showing his age and Tony Abreu apparently joining the Federal Witness Protection program, that may be a palatable option.
Joe (Tewksbury, MA): Why do I keep reading about how much trouble the Yankees are in? Hasn't this been the story for three years running now? Slow start, fast finish. Do you see anything to make you think this year will be different from 2005-2007?
JJ: Yes. Everybody in the lineup, including Alex Rodriguez and Jorge Posada is a year older, and with the exception of Melky Cabrera and Robinson Cano, they're a year further away from their statistical primes, to say nothing about the fact that Cano looks pretty lost right now. The bench is weak even for a team that's done poorly in that area in the recent past. Seriously, I'd take Chili Davis, Darryl Strawberry, Luis Sojo and Ron Coomer circa 2008 over some of the stiffs they have lying around.
There's that, plus a weak pitching staff where the back of the rotation has been a thorough disaster thus far and the bullpen situation is considered so fragile that there's actually a question about whether they'll move Joba Chamberlain to a starting role this year. Add to that the fact that the AL East has gotten tougher and I think there's no longer any guarantee that the Yankees will contend, let alone win the division.
The other thing in play is the new manager. Through the early season debacles of the last few years, Torre was able to absorb the front office's slings and arrows and still give off a sense of calm confidence that things would eventually turn around. Girardi is protected from the barbs of Hank Steinbrenner at the moment -- his focus appears to be on forcing Brian Cashman out -- but Little Joe is the kind of guy who seems more likely to go Billy Martin bonkers as things get worse, and I don't think that's going to help.
That's Rob McMillan in the top spot above, operator of the Dodgers- and Angels-themed 6-4-2 blog, which is one of my daily reads, incidentally. Anyway, I had some great chat questions left over, enough that I may repurpose some of them into my next Hit and Run column. Like a good chef, I do my best use the whole part of the beast.
It's only been a few days shy of four weeks since my last Baseball Prospectus chat long since we last chatted, but the powers that be have threatened to show me naked pictures of David Wells if I don't take the hill for another chat on Tuesday at 1 PM Eastern. Dodgers, Yankees, Mets, Brewers, brew, books, Brooklyn, JAWS, Hit List, Hit and Run... Hit me like I'm James Brown getting read to take it to the bridge and leave your question at the link above.
The Skinny: Though he's snapped a 1-for-28 skid, Carlos Delgado has fallen below the Mendoza Line; he's hitting just .198/.290/.272 with the lowest VORP on the team and the fourth lowest of any first baseman with at least 60 PA. Sadly, this isn't a new problem for Delgado. He was in the bottom third among NL first basemen last year, and it's increasingly likely that his days as a middle-of-the-lineup threat may be at an end.
Chris and I more or less disagreed over whether Delgado was able to salvage his 2007 season. His splits show that he hit a lousy .242/.305/.435 in the first half, albeit with 14 homers and 49 RBI, whereas in the second half, when not missing three weeks due to injuries, he hit .285/.375/.469 with 10 homers and 38 RBI -- more respectable, but lacking his usual thump (.279/.385/.545 career).
Tommy (OPS,FL): Back when the Rays were shopping Delmon Young there appeared to be some talk of Young for Cliff Lee, but nothing came of it. Knowing what the Rays got in return and Lee's hot start which deal would have been better for the Rays?
JJ: Long-term, I'd still take Matt Garza over Cliff Lee, and it wouldn't cost me a moment of sleep.
Rany Jazayerli has a great Unfiltered post about Lee's hot start, a post that includes a note form Joe Sheehan regarding the quality of competition Lee has faced: "A’s twice, Twins, Royals. Ninth, 13th and 14th in the AL in EqA." Right now Lee is living off a .151 BABIP, and that's not going to last forever by any stretch of the imagination. Furthermore, sooner or later he's going to have to face some competent lineups, and when he does, you can expect his ERA to get fluffed up. The bottom line is that I don't expect him to be a significantly better pitcher than the mid-rotation inning eater who surprised us with his bellyflop last year.
Fred (Houston): Is Sheffield headed for the Hall of Very Good? It doesn't seem like he's made many friends in the media over the years.
JJ: Are you kidding? If there's been one consistent facet of Sheffield's career, its that he'll talk to the media and is almost guaranteed to say something that will stir the pot and give the writer some high profile attention. Writers bash Barry Bonds for not cooperating. They don't bash Gary Sheffield for speaking his mind, however ill-considered his words may sometimes be.
From a JAWS standpoint, Sheffield came into the year at 117.2 WARP career, 63.5 peak, 90.4 JAWS, with the average HOF right fielder at 125.0/68.7/96.8. I think he'll be a close call, because right now its not at all clear he can stay healthy enough to pass 500 homers (he's at 481), and there will be some who will hold his involvement in BALCO against him.
tommybones (new york): Is there a point in a borderline HOF career where the player is better off retiring than padding counting stats at the expense of pct. stats and reputation? I'm looking at Mike Mussina right now.
JJ: Sheffield seems to be a better answer to this than the Moose, whose numbers are well over the JAWS threshold (117.8/64.3/91.1 compared to 105.7/67.5/86.6 for the average HOF P) even if the perception lags behind. To me, I think we've seen enough great pitchers dragged off the mound kicking and screaming, having milked every last ounce of their ability for anyone's perceptions to be damaged by those final, futile days.
Which reminds me, for some reason, of one of the classiest thing I ever saw on a diamond. When Orel Hershiser tried to eke one last year out of his career with the Dodgers, he got knocked around pretty consistently, culminating in an eight-run, 1.2-inning bombing. Rather than boo him, the Dodger Stadium crowd picked up on the fact that the end of the line had arrived for Hershiser, and gave him an incredible standing ovation.
I think I have something in my eye...
bam022 (Chicago): Can you think of any analogue to Justin Upton's performance right now. A-Rod was similarly dominant at age 20, but other than him, does this have any parallel?
JJ: Tony Conigliaro hit 24 homers and .290/.354/.530 for the 1964 Red Sox as a 19 year old, which is pretty much the gold standard for teenage success for a hitter. Mel Ott (.322/.397/.524, 16 HR) also had a great Age 19 season. Those two would be a good start.
Homers aren't the only way to look at this obviously, but rather than worry about the number of plate appearances, I just did a quick list of the best single season hitter performances ranked by homers at B-Ref [here].
After enduring a half-hour delay at the start due to technical difficulties, I think I answered about 30 questions. I still had a lot of JAWS-related questions left over, enough to build a Hit and Run column around sometime soon. Anyway, it was lot of fun, as always, to spend a couple hours talking baseball with BP's readers.
• A Prospectus Hit List to go with Wednesday's Hit and Run piece on struggling rotations, with special focus on the current Tigers and the historically awful Rangers, with an aside about the Yankees' failure to get innings from their starting five (5.07 per start).
• a spot on the Rotowire Fantasy Sports Hour with Chris Liss, XM 144 at 2:25 PM Eastern
• Meanwhile, one article to recommend, today's freebie at BP. In it, Nate Silver aims a bullet at Bill James' recent, baseless allegations that steroid usage played a part in the development of Gary Gaetti and Kirby Puckett and their subsequent success in helping the Twins to a pair of unlikely world championships. James' comments come in his latest book The Bill James Gold Mine 2008, and as offhanded as they may have been intended, the fact that someone with his stature would stoop to the realm of the fingerpointers is a dark, dark day for baseball and for those of us who hold his legacy dear. I'd already decided I was in no hurry to buy the Gold Mine -- Steven Goldman bought one while we were on our promotional tour and we chewed on some of its rather pedestrian offerings -- and that sealed the deal.
• Drawing mention in Silver's piece is David Ortiz, as a victim of the old eyeball test for steroid stoppage, a statement that's a reliable litmus test to determine whether the person you're talking baseball with is a blithering idiot. Big Papi should have been part of my "Big Lugs and Small Sample Sizes" entry, now that I think about it. Ortiz started the season 3-for-43 since then has hit a considerably more robust .298/.377/.532, with 14 hits in his list 11 games. It's a coincidence that the turnaround almost exactly coincides with the excavation of a an Ortiz jersey buried in the bowels of the new Yankee Stadium. Probably.
The day after my JAWS-flavored take on the starting pitchers on the 2008 Hall of Fame ballot ran at Baseball Prospectus, my take on the relievers is up as well, thus -- to my great relief -- completing this year's series (the reliever portion is free, the starter one is sub-only). For those who have been following the series from year to year, the results among the pitchers shouldn't come as a surprise; my system identified Bert Blyleven, Rich Gossage and Lee Smith as Hall-worthy and the rest... not so much. That trio joins Tim Raines, Alan Trammell and Mark McGwire from among the hitters to make up the JAWS Class of 2008 photo.
As I wrote in the starters piece, Blyleven ranks among the top 20 pitchers of all time according to JAWS. He's the highest-ranked pitcher who's eligible for the Hall but not in:
Pitcher PRAA PRAR WARP3 Peak JAWS SUP Walter Johnson 818 1994 209.6 109.5 159.6 HOF Cy Young 943 2024 213.8 99.5 156.7 HOF Roger Clemens 666 2016 199.6 83.9 141.8 Greg Maddux 481 1689 180.3 86.0 133.2 Pete Alexander 593 1520 160.1 91.0 125.6 HOF Christy Mathewson 480 1285 149.1 92.9 121.0 HOF Tom Seaver 439 1576 152.2 75.8 114.0 96 HOF Warren Spahn 324 1598 153.3 72.9 113.1 HOF Randy Johnson 428 1570 147.0 77.3 112.2 Lefty Grove 520 1456 138.5 81.9 110.2 HOF Kid Nichols 494 1248 131.2 84.1 107.7 HOF Steve Carlton 264 1509 137.0 71.6 104.3 104 HOF Phil Niekro 262 1485 137.7 67.5 102.6 97 HOF Robin Roberts 304 1448 129.8 74.8 102.3 HOF Gaylord Perry 266 1512 132.9 68.8 100.9 96 HOF Tom Glavine 296 1341 137.4 63.7 100.6 Bert Blyleven 323 1546 135.1 65.3 100.2 97 Bob Gibson 329 1260 120.7 76.3 98.5 HOF Hal Newhouser 311 1109 111.0 83.0 97.0 HOF Fergie Jenkins 290 1384 125.1 68.4 96.8 101 HOF ... Nolan Ryan 210 1661 128.1 59.4 93.8 95 HOF Jim Palmer 203 1116 100.8 63.9 82.4 109 HOF Don Sutton 141 1371 112.2 48.2 80.2 105 HOF Catfish Hunter 1 820 70.0 51.9 61.0 112 HOF
It's true Blyleven has one of the lowest WARP peaks shown above, but he more than holds his own with his enshrined contemporaries. His secondary peak measure, PRAA, puts him 30-60 runs past Carlton, Niekro, Perry, and Jenkins, and more than 100 beyond his other enshrined contemporaries -- Ryan, Palmer, Sutton and Hunter; only Seaver outdistances him. Spoiled by the half-dozen of those aforementioned peers who won 300 games from the mid-'60s to the mid-'80s, when the days of the four-man rotation dominated, the BBWAA hasn't elected a starter with fewer than 300 wins since Jenkins in 1991. Note the last column, which compares the run support of those contemporaries in a park- and league-adjusted index similar to ERA+, where 100 is average; Blyleven got three percent less support than the average starter during his time, comparable to many of those contemporaries but nonetheless something which kept him from attaining 300 wins.
For the relievers, I use some extra information -- BP's Reliever Expected Wins Added (WXRL) stat:
WXRL accounts for the discovery that a reliever at the end of a ballgame has a quantitatively greater impact on winning and losing (a ratio called leverage) than a starter does. It measures that impact by comparing a team's chances of winning based on the game state (bases, outs, score differential) before he enters and after he leaves. For the purposes of measuring a pitcher's Hall-worthiness, it functions as something of a career/peak hybrid; one can accumulate a high total via performing well under high-pressure situations for shorter periods or in more moderate pressure situations for longer. Two years ago, I put aside an earlier kludge and began incorporating WXRL totals into a Reliever's Adjusted JAWS score via the formula RAJAWS: ((0.5 x WXRL) + JAWS).
...Given the small sample size of Hall of Fame relievers, it's worthwhile to check out the RAJAWS leaderboard for some perspective. The list is somewhat incomplete, as our play-by-play database currently only goes back to 1959, so it's missing the first seven years of [Hoyt] Wilhelm's career, four years of Lindy McDaniel, and seven of Stu Miller (all denoted with asterisks below), to say nothing of their forebears. Nonetheless, we can get a pretty solid idea of where this year's candidates rank with regards to the enshrined and the two active pitchers who are likely bets to reach the Hall soon after retirement, Mariano Rivera and Trevor Hoffman. Here's the provisional version of the RAJAWS Top 20:
Pitcher WARP Peak JAWS WXRL RAJAWS Mariano Rivera 93.9 62.6 78.3 62.5 109.5 Dennis Eckersley 120.8 53.7 87.3 35.1 104.8 HoF Rich Gossage 88.4 56.0 72.2 53.8 99.1 Trevor Hoffman 82.2 49.2 65.7 62.3 96.9 Hoyt Wilhelm 96.5 47.6 72.1 39.0 91.5* HoF Lee Smith 83.7 47.3 65.5 47.0 89.0 Rollie Fingers 80.1 49.4 64.8 45.8 87.6 HOF John Franco 80.9 41.2 61.1 44.8 83.5 Tom Gordon 85.5 46.7 66.1 33.8 83.0 Billy Wagner 66.7 49.2 58.0 44.9 80.4 Doug Jones 66.5 48.2 57.4 33.0 73.8 Lindy McDaniel 72.0 44.1 58.1 31.3 73.7* Bruce Sutter 59.0 47.6 53.3 37.4 72.0 HOF Roberto Hernandez 66.8 46.5 56.7 28.2 70.7 Stu Miller 63.5 43.6 53.6 34.1 70.6* John Wetteland 58.5 46.5 52.5 35.0 70.0 Tom Henke 59.9 42.7 51.3 36.8 69.7 Tug McGraw 60.1 38.5 49.3 39.6 69.1 Dan Quisenberry 55.2 48.2 51.7 34.0 68.7 Kent Tekulve 64.7 40.3 52.5 30.3 67.7
Rivera surpassed Eckersley atop this list last year. With Gossage apparently poised for enshrinement after receiving 71.2 percent of the vote last year, the day where six of the top seven relievers via my system are enshrined isn't far off. In that regard, the election of Sutter two years ago may have been the best thing to happen to the Goose. As I said on my XM spot with Chuck Wilson yesterday, Sutter as the save specialist and Eckersley as the ninth-inning specialist represented easily definable data points for the evolution of the modern closer. The recognition of Gossage's transcendence of that ever-narrowing niche has created a groundswell of support such that his vote totals have increased dramatically over the last four votes:
Year Votes Pct 2004 206 40.7% Eckersley elected 2005 285 55.2% 2006 336 64.6% Sutter elected 2007 388 71.2%
It's probably just a coincidence that those numbers parallel the widening exposure of my JAWS project, which began in '04 as well, but I can't help feeling a tiny measure of satisfaction at this trend nonetheless.
In any event, I've got a fair bit of Hall of Fame-related media lining up for next week:
• a radio appearance on KTRH 740 AM in Houston, Monday at 7 a.m. ET / 6 a.m. CT, discussing Roger Clemens' appearance on 60 Minutes. You can listen via their website. I may be doing more Fox affiliate "phoners" that morning as well.
• a BP chat on Tuesday, 2 PM Eastern, just as the voting results are announced.
• a radio appearance on Sports Xtra 1360 AM in San Diego, Tuesday at 3:40 p.m. ET / 12:40 p.m. PT. You can listen via their website.
• my regularly scheduled appearance on Sports Radio 1470 in Toledo, Wednesday at 4:10 p.m. ET.
In a pennant race, every edge matters. The late-season heroics of one individual may turn a close race into a tale of success writ large, but it's the failures writ small, the weak links on a team, that commonly create that close race in the first place. All too often, for reasons rooted in issues beyond a player's statistics, managers and GMs fail to make the moves that could help their teams, allowing subpar production to fester until it kills a club's postseason hopes. Nowhere is the value of the replacement level laid more bare than when the difference between playing into October and going home is simply a willingness to try something else.
Sometimes a manager sticks with a veteran who's passed his sell-by date because the guy has helped the skipper win in the past, and the club is convinced it lacks better alternatives. Sometimes a regular simply isn't performing up to his established level due to injury, but misguidedly tries "toughing it out." And sometimes a rookie hasn't yet adjusted to the big leagues, yet the club doesn't want to risk destroy the youngster's confidence with a benching. In the just-released It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over: the Baseball Prospectus Pennant Race Book, I examined numerous instances of teams' pennant hopes dragged down by such "Replacement Level Killers."
For the book, I compiled an all-star team of ignominy that went back further than a half-century, but even in a single season, it's not too difficult to assemble such a squad, and at the suggestion of one reader from my most recent chat, I've done just that. The difference is that with some six weeks of baseball still to go, teams may still take steps to avert disaster even if they've placed a player on this 2007 edition of the Replacement Level Killers; indeed, some already have.
The Yankees were an easy choice at one position:
1B: Doug Mientkiewicz, NYY (-2.2 VORP, 0.1 WARP), Miguel Cairo, NYY (-1.8, 0.3 WARP), Josh Phelps, NYY (0.1 VORP, 0.0 WARP), Andy Phillips, NYY (1.5 VORP, 0.2 WARP), and Wilson Betemit, NYY (1.2 VORP, 0.2 WARP)
For all of the craft that Brian Cashman and company put into their $200 million juggernaut, the Yanks turned a blind eye to first base, sacrificing any shot at offensive production in favor of some notion of defensive competence via which they could justify limiting the increasingly immobile (and for a two-month period, injured) Jason Giambi to the DH role. They left the gate with a plan to platoon Minky with Rule 5 pick Phelps, but the former broke his wrist, and the latter couldn't buy the time of day from Joe Torre, getting discarded only to bob back to the surface in Pittsburgh.
Torre then installed futilityman Cairo--one of "his guys"--at the first base slot for a few weeks until the fateful day when the supposed defensive whiz made three errors, including a pair on a play where the Angels scored the winning run. That loss turned out to be a win, as it forced Torre to turn to organizational soldier Phillips, who hit a thin but nonetheless useful .320/.355/.420 in July as the Yanks began turning their season around. He's cooled off considerably since (.327 SLG in August), but continues to share time with deadline acquisition Betemit, who's provided some pop off the bench along with the ability to play all four infield positions. The Yanks may muddle through, but the standing reservation they've held for the postseason since 1995 has been jeopardized by poor planning here.
I was at Yankee Stadium on a gorgeous Saturday to reap the benefits of a team replacing its Replacement Level Killer. In a surprise move, on Friday the Tigers DFA'ed leftfielder Craig Monroe and promoted blue-chipper Cameron Maybin, who had just a couple weeks of Double-A experience. Though he appeared to struggle with the transition to leftfield -- he's a natural centerfielder -- Maybin collected a single and an impressive 417-foot homer off Roger Clemens in just his second big-league game. BP prospect maven Kevin Goldsten ranked him seventh on our Top 100 Prospect lists over the winter and compared Maybin's upside to "a healthy Eric Davis." Now that's buzz.
Fellow 2007 RLKillers Stephen Drew and Andruw Jones came up as topics in last Friday's chat, where JAWS talk predominated -- A-Rod, Ichiro, Chipper (and Andruw), Gary Sheffield, Kenny Lofton and Omar Vizquel all got cursory evaluations, which should make up for the lack of JAWS in this week's Hit and Run. Here's a thread of Ichiro questions:
Alex (SF, CA): How many more years of top-notch CF play does Ichiro need to be a shoe-in or is he already?
JJ: At least three, since it takes 10 seasons in the majors to be eligible.
He won't have the career numbers to make him a slam dunk, but assuming he keeps up his level of play long enough to get at least 2000 hits , I think he's a good bet to get in.
For what it's worth, if he finishes the season with the WARP3 he's on pace for, his JAWS peak score will be three wins above the average HOF centerfielder (66.6-63.7).
birkem3 (Dayton): For HOF purposes, should Ichiro even be considered a CF? This year is his first full-time exposure to CF.
JJ: Good point, though rightfield is actually a steeper hill to climb (119.8 WARP3/65.5 peak/92.7 JAWS) than centerfield (109.1/63.7/86.4).
Hal Incandenza (in here): On the other hand, if we are admitting _any_ "extra- (i.e. non-) statistical" criteria for the Hall, Ichiro -- assuming continued production -- is a slam dunk, no?
JJ: Indeed. I doubt he'll have a World Series ring (sorry, Mariner fans) let alone two, but I do see Ichiro as having a Kirby Puckett-esque case for the Hall - short career, high peak.
Hopefully without the belated allegations of violence towards women and the early grave bit, of course.
Finally, there's last Friday's Hit List. In keeping with the It Ain't Over plugs and the chat-related synergy, we'll chose the Angels' entry:
In Steven Goldman's most recent chat, one reader of the just-released It Ain't Over's chapter on Carl Yastrzemski (written by yours truly) asked if the Angels fit the bill as a team whose pennant chances might be hurt by the lack of a second superstar behind Vladimir Guerrero. To the contrary, the Halos appear to be in great shape on that front, since the correlation between winning percentage and WARP3 increases markedly the deeper one drills into the roster. Vlad (8.2 WARP3) is joined by Orlando Cabrera (9.4), Kelvim Escobar (8.5), and John Lackey (8.1) in terms of front-line talent, with Gary Matthews Jr. (6.9), Reggie Willits (6.6), and Francisco Rodriguez (6.4) in strong supporting roles... For results of last week's Rat-tastic contest see here.
More on the Angels -- once again proving themselves to be the thorn in the Yankees' side -- when I get a chance.
