PECOTA sees the Rays scoring about the same number of runs, with a drastic reduction in runs allowed thanks to improved pitching and defense. that's all well and good, particularly given the arrival of pitcher Matt Garza to give the team a good third starter and third baseman Evan Longoria, a potential rookie of the Year candidate who was promoted from Triple-A over the weekeend. Nonetheless, the projection sparked some skepticism in me, and I decided to peek under the hood to see if I could pin down what it was that was bothering me. Suffice it to say that I found it:
Nonetheless, despite all of these good things, there are reasons to be skeptical about that Rays' projection. Perhaps the biggest -- beyond the fact that [Scott] Kazmir has yet to throw a pitch this year, and [Matt] Garza has been sidelined after just two starts -- has to do with the quality of defense behind that staff. Last year's Devil Rays allowed a major league-worst 944 runs thanks to one of the most inept defenses this side of the Bad News Bears. Their .662 Defensive Efficiency rate is the worst full-season rate in our database. (Note that this is the "1 - BABIP" version of Defensive Efficiency, which doesn't include Reached on Error totals). Taking into account their pitcher-friendly park, they had a Park-Adjusted Defensive Efficiency of -5.64 last year, meaning they were nearly six percent worse than the league average at converting balls in play into outs.
...Cumulatively, the position players were an astounding 119 runs below average, about 15 runs to the bad apiece. Among the regulars, only [Carlos] Pena was above average, and every position save for catcher was in double-digit negatives, which in each case means that awful defense at those positions cost the team more than one win apiece. [Brendan] Harris and [B.J.] Upton "contributed" to the problem at multiple positions, though the latter's move from second base to center field did stop a bit of the bleeding in the outfield.
The Rays have taken steps to improve their defense this season, particularly on the left side of the infield. Shortstop Jason Bartlett, acquired from the Twins in the Young/Garza deal, was 12 runs above average last year, while Longoria's performance at the hot corner was six runs above average between Double-A and Triple-A. Couple that with some improvement from the developing youngsters and a bit of regression to the mean, and expectations for the defensive performance of the new lineup doesn't look too bad...
A couple of months back, Nate [Silver] noted that the Rays' pitchers' PECOTAs improved considerably -- by 30 to 50 points of ERA -- in the light of this sunny defensive forecast. Still, it's worth questioning the fundamental assumption of how much the new alignment will improve its results on balls in play. To examine that, I took every team's depth chart-derived pitching statistics and calculated their expected Batting Averages in Balls in Play using the formula (H - HR)/(2.89 * IP + H - HR - SO), which gets the individual pitchers within 1-2 points of their PECOTA BABIPs without the messy work of figuring out how many batters each pitcher is estimated to face per our depth charts, and centers the major league average at .2994, within a point of last year's .3002. Again using Defensive Efficiency as 1 - BABIP, here are the 2008 figures as compared to the 2007 ones:
Team 2008 2007 change NYN .711 .707 .004 TBA .708 .662 .046 SLN .707 .700 .007 WAS .706 .706 .000 LAN .706 .691 .015 SFN .706 .699 .007 CHN .705 .712 -.007 OAK .704 .698 .006 DET .704 .699 .005 PHI .703 .691 .012 CIN .702 .682 .020 NYA .702 .696 .006 SDN .701 .706 -.005 ATL .701 .703 -.002 ARI .699 .700 -.001 BOS .699 .712 -.013 MIL .699 .684 .015 TOR .699 .714 -.015 CLE .699 .693 .006 SEA .698 .678 .020 HOU .697 .692 .005 CHA .697 .689 .008 PIT .696 .676 .020 MIN .694 .694 .000 KCA .694 .689 .005 TEX .692 .691 .001 BAL .692 .691 .001 FLO .692 .669 .023 ANA .691 .688 .003 COL .691 .703 -.012
If you're ready to call "bull(durham)" on this forecast, I can't say I blame you, because the combination of PECOTA and our best estimates for playing time show the Rays vaulting from a historical worst to the majors' second best. Meanwhile, the Red Sox and Rockies, the two teams who finished atop the PADE standings and were second and eighth, respectively, in the rankings for unadjusted Defensive Efficiency, they're expected to decline to be about average (in Boston's case) and the worst in the majors (in Colorado's case). This despite the two teams turning over at most one lineup spot apiece, the Rockies trading in a freakishly good season from Kaz Matsui (+20 FRAA) for rookie Jayson Nix (forecast for +9 FRAA), the Sox going from a similarly freakish season from Coco Crisp (+29 FRAA) to a job share between Crisp and Jacoby Ellsbury (forecast for about +5 based on the division of playing time). Now sure, we should expect some regression to the mean at either extreme of the Defensive Efficienty rankings, but this is ridiculous.
Ok, that's a pretty liberal excerpt, but you can read the whole thing for free at BP. I'll be very interested to see if Nate addresses this in the near future. I try to learn as much about PECOTA as possible so that I can speak fluently about it when I do radio or promo events, but I wonder if there's something I missed in my reverse engineering here.
• • •
Elsewhere, I spent more time this past weekend attuned to the Mets-Brewers series than the Yankees-Red Sox one as I played host to my two Milwaukee-native brothers-in-law, and their respective significant others as they came to New York. One of them, Adam, went to Friday night's tilt with a friend, where he saw the Brewers fall to Mets 4-2; what was interesting about that game was the storybook plotline involving Mets starter Nelson Figureroa, a 33-year-old journeyman who journeyed as far as Mexico and Taiwan to pitch professionally -- this New York Observer article covers his odyssey -- before finally enjoying a storybook outing in front of a hometown crowd.
With the other brother-in-law, Aaron, arriving in town the next day, we TiVoed Saturday's contest, a marquee matchup pitting Ben Sheets, who hadn't given up a run in his first two starts, against Johan Santana, making his Shea Stadium debut. Sheets was shaky in the early going, giving up two runs in the first before settling down to retire 18 straight hitters. Meanwhile, the Brewers chipped away at Santana and touched him for five runs on the strength of homers by Bill Hall, Rickie Weeks and Gabe Kapler, thus carrying the day.
On Sunday, Aaron and I and our wives went to Shea to see the series finale, which featured Jeff Suppan and Oliver Perez on the hill in a rematch of the 2006 NLCS Game Seven. The weather was way too cold for our under-dressed tastes, and the pace of play too slow; with tickets in hand for a Sunday night Broadway show, we left after six innings, just shy of the three-hour mark. By that point the Brewers had gone up 2-0, fallen behind 6-2, and roared back to take an 8-6 lead thanks to a lackluster performance by Perez, who surrendered six runs in 4.1 frames before departing. Aided by inning-ending double-plays in five consecutive innings, the Brewers held on to win the game 9-7, thus taking the series. For those of us who remember back to last year when the wind was taken out of the Brewers' sails at the exact moment when they arrived in town -- they were 24-10 when arriving in New York on May 11 but just 59-69 the rest of the way -- we can hope that this year, things will turn out differently.
NL East NL Central NL West Mets Brewers Dodgers Braves Cubs* Rockies Phillies Reds Diamondbacks Nationals Cardinals Padres Marlins Astros Giants Pirates
NL MVP 1. David Wright 2. Ryan Braun 3. Mark Teixeira
NL Cy Young 1. Johan Santana 2. Jake Peavy 3. Chad Billingsley
NL RotY 1. Jay Bruce 2. Kosuke Fukudome 3. Johnny Cueto
Brian Kingman Award (pitcher most likely to lose 20): Matt Cain
Cristian Guzman Award (for the position player most likely to put up the lowest VORP in regular playing time): Jose Lopez
Jose Hernandez Award (most strikeouts, batter): Adam Dunn
The 2008 DiSar Award Winner (most AB before first walk): Corey Patterson
Best Player traded at the July deadline: Rich Harden
Barry Bonds Signs With: Orioles, July 1st
Players named in the Mitchell Report who will be suspended (of 89): Paul Lo Duca
The team that first decides to blast down to the foundations will be the: Blue Jays, July 31st
The team with the smallest spread between its upside and downside potential: Red Sox, 85-95 wins
The team with the widest spread between its upside and downside potential: Reds, 70-90 wins
Obviously, the Tigers' 0-6 start doesn't make my AL Wild Card pick look too good, though it's not like I wasn't forewarned about that team, particularly with regards to their bullpen. The spring showing of Clay Buchholz in the wake of the loss of Curt Schilling did lead me to temper my predictions for the Red Sox a bit, though as I said in the Hit List, it's not hard to imagine them working their way into the picture. I may be accused of letting my heart influence my head throughout this exercise, as I've picked the Yankees, Dodgers, and Brewers to come out on top of their respective divisions, but the Yanks and Dodgers legitimately topped their divisions on the basis of BP's PECOTA forecasting system and the related preseason Hit List power rankings. Besides, my track record in this deparment isn't too bad either.
On a staff-wide basis, the Red Sox were more heavily favored than the Yankees in the AL East, and the Tigers barely edge the Indians in the AL Central. The only other division where my picks differ from the consensus of my colleagues is in the NL Central, where the Cubs get the upper hand over the Brewers, though at least I did have them as the Wild Card. As with the Indians and Tigers, the Cubs and Brewers each averaged a rank of 1.5, with the frontrunner decided on a tiebreaker of first place votes, 9-8.
Anyway, I'm glad we didn't have to put World Series winners into this one. I had the Padres last year, and that didn't turn out so well.
As I did on Opening Day, I awoke at virtually the crack of dawn this morning and did a handful of drive-time radio hits across the country, previewing the World Series for Fox News Radio. Starting at 7:10 AM, without benefit of coffee or an alarm besides the phone (some idiot who shall remain nameless forgot to tell my wife about my schedule), I hit WREC (Memphis, TN), WJCW (Tri Cities, TN), KFAB (Omaha, NE), WPIN (Blacksburg, VA), WHJJ (Providence, RI), WERC (Birmingham, AL), and KCOL (Fort Collins, CO). No, they're not all New York City, but a couple of those hits are close to the cities of the two Series participants, and it's always fun to spread the Baseball Prospectus gospel and the Futility Infielder name to new and occasionally out-of-the-way places.
Which isn't to say that I'm overwhelmingly bowled over by the prospect of this World Series, as I'm not exactly prone to rooting for either team. I was greatly disappointed that the Red Sox came back from a 3-1 deficit in the League Championship Series to defeat the Indians, but I was hardly surprised. Since the 2004 ALCS, I refuse to believe the Red Sox are dead until I see somebody picking the splinters out of their fingers after hammering a wooden stake into their collective heart. The Indians had their chances to apply the coup de grâce to Josh Beckett, Curt Schilling and Daisuke Matsuzaka, but they failed to deliver, then lost the late-inning battles in a big way. The Tribe's bullpen was charged with 16 runs allowed over their final three games and 11 innings, helping to create the widest average margin of victory in a seven-game series at 6.28 runs. The Sox, in winning despite not starting Josh Beckett in Game Four, undid my prediction for the series because of those bullpen failures, but also because the real C.C. Sabathia and Fausto Carmona -- to say nothing of Travis Hafner -- never showed. Requiescat in pace.
The Sox are overwhelming favorites to win this series as well, and when pressed for a prediction, I've called it in six games on all of my radio hits. But I do believe the Rockies have a shot thanks to the vulnerability of Boston's rotation. Game One starter Josh Beckett remains the modern-day answer to Bob Gibson, but Game Two starter Curt Schilling will be going on four days' rest, something he's done only once since returning from his seven-week stay on the DL; manager Terry Francona has done everything but volunteer to take the ball himself in order to get the Big Schill an extra day of rest. Game Three starter Daisuke Matsuzaka hasn't gone longer than five innings in his three postseason starts after a brutal final six weeks of the regular season. With Tim Wakefield left off the roster due to shoulder trouble, Jon Lester is the potential Game Four starter. As an extreme flyballer, he isn't best suited to Coors Field, where fly balls tend to wind up littering Pike's Peak.
Additionally, the Sox are faced with sitting David Ortiz, Kevin Youkilis, or Mike Lowell in the games at Colorado due to the loss of the DH. Ortiz can play first base (he had seven games there this year) but may sit against lefty Jeff Francis in Game Five, and if he's in, Youkilis is out unless he plays third, where he saw only 13 games worth of action. Given how top-heavy the Sox lineup has been this year, losing one of those guys is a blow both offensively and defensively (Youkilis > Ortiz, Lowell > Youkilis), though Francona's overdue decision to start Jacoby Ellsbury over Coco Crisp in centerfield has reduced the number of offensive sinkholes by one.
As for the Rockies, they've got vulnerabilities in their rotation as well. Game One starter Jeff Francis, the staff ace, is good but is no Beckett. Rookie Ubaldo Jimenez is prone to walking hitters (3.86 unintentional walks per nine, including the postseason). So mediocre is Game Three starter Josh Fogg that he's never posted an ERA better than the park-adjusted league average; his career ERA+ is 91, nine percent worse than the league. Game Four starter Aaron Cook has been sidelined by an oblique strain since August 10; starting him at the expense of rookie Franklin Morales is a huge gamble, and while one can point to Cook's ability to keep the ball on the ground as a reason to pitch him at Coors, Nate Silver points out, he's not a particularly good matchup for this lineup. Morales lasted only seven innings in his two starts, though he came into the postseason as hot as any Rox pitcher. As another lefty, he too may have forced Ortiz to the bench, which is a chance worth taking.
Beyond that, I don't have a ton to add at this point. Nate did an excellent job previewing the series at BP; it's free. He makes a couple of salient points worth remembering:
• Though the Rox have won 21 out of 22 and become one of the great Cinderella stories of all time, being an especially hot or cold team coming in to the World Series has no predictive value in and of itself.
• The 2007 Sox are the best Secret Sauce team since Division Play began. The Secret Sauce, as created for Baseball Between the Numbers is the combined ranking of each team in the only three categories found to be statistically significant in systematically predicting the outcome of a series: the quality of the team defense as measured by Fielding Runs Above Average, the power-pitching orientation of the staff as measured by Equivalent Strikeouts per nine innings, and the quality of the closer, as measured by WXRL ranking.
One more not-so-predictive tidbit to add, courtesy of USA Today. With the Rockies coming off an eight-day break in the action, it's worth noting that last year's Tigers to the contrary, seven of the last 10 teams to enter the series on five or more days of rest have won. Be that as it may, I'm sticking with my prediction of the Sox in six, but I'll be pulling for the purple gang from Colorado to provide an upset for the ages.
Oh, and I'll add another prediction or two to the pile: Don Mattingly in as Yankee manager as of Friday. Back on that score later this week.
Most importantly, the 2007 baseball season is upon us. Plugging away at my final Fantasy Baseball Index spring update, I didn't have the luxury of sitting still to watch either Sunday night's Mets-Cardinals affair or Monday's Yankee opener, but the magic of TiVo allowed me to get the gist of both. On Tuesday I made my first foray into MLB.tv's Mosaic, as it appeared that would be the only way to see out-of-market ballgames this year; I watched the Dodgers cough up a 3-2 lead on Kevin Mench's two-run homer, and sampled a few other games from the West Coast, impressed at the software's integration with the Mac OS X platform but exasperated by the glitchy sound cutouts and the between-innings Pong bleeps.
I didn't get to see any baseball Wednesday night; instead I went out to see Steven Goldman and Jonah Keri read at the Gelf Magazine Varsity Letters series, where both deviated from the script to read something a bit less... Prospectus-y than BP07 and Baseball Between the Numbers. Steve read some passages from Forging Genius, including my suggestion of the story where Casey Stengel, manager of the Worcester franchise in the Eastern League, sent a letter to Charles D. Stengel, club president of said franchise, requesting that he be freed from his contract so that he could take a better job with the Toledo Mud Hens; president Stengel wrote back, acceding to the manager's surprising request. Jonah read his farewell to the Expos piece from BP as well as a segment from BBTN on Derek Jeter's defense. Also speaking were Cor van den Heuvel, who in three seperate (and somewhat interminable) interludes offered a number of baseball haiku, and Curt Smith, who read from The Voice, his biography of Mel Allen, the famed voice of the Yankees and "This Week in Baseball," making a case for Allen as the greatest sports announcer of all time (my nickel goes to Vin Scully on that score, but I'll grant that Smith may have a point). Afterwards, accompanied by Derek Jacques and Jonah's friend Dave, we went out to dinner, and en route, Derek received an email from a BP colleague telling us the wonderful news: MLB and In Demand struck a deal to keep the Extra Innings package on cable TV.
That happy news meant that on Thursday afternoon, free from deadlines for the first time since, like, October (yes, I made it through an entire offseason gainfully employed from baseball writing, how about that?), I was free to kick back with the Extra Innings showing of Matsuzaka's major league debut against the Royals, with a compelling pitcher on the other end, too: Zack Greinke, making his first big-league start since September 2005 after missing most of last season due to what was termed a social anxiety disorder. For seven innings this turned out to be a hell of a pitcher's duel, though the 36-degree weather and ump Jeff Nelson's wide strike zone had something to do with that.
The Sox scratched out a run in the top of the first against Greinke, with Manny Ramirez doubling home Kevin Youkilis. But even then, Greinke looked promising; the double was sandwiched by backwards-K strikeouts of both David Ortiz and J.D. Drew, with Big Papi especially stunned. Matsuzaka, after surrendering a leadoff single to David DeJesus and then his only walk of the afternoon, needed a double play to escape the first unscathed. He got his first major-league strikeout on a 94-MPH fastball that fooled Ross Gload to end the second, and wound up ringing up 10 hitters, including the entire side in the fourth on a mere 14 pitches.
Matsuzaka's motion (dissected by Will Carroll over at MLB.com) was interesting, featuring a pause at the top of his windup that was noticeable but less pronounced than, say, Hideo Nomo. He went as high as 95 on the gun, but changed speeds effectively with a changeup, a splitter, and three or four breaking pitches, one of which may have been the fabled gyroball (the New York Sun's Tim Marchman does a nice job of describing his repertoire). Sick stuff that will give hitters fits this year, guaranteed.
Greinke, in a heartening comeback, struck out seven himself, including Ortiz twice more (once looking, once half-assedly swinging). But his defense let him down in the fifth, as the Sox doubled their lead when Julio Lugo doubled, stole third, and scored on a throwing error by John Buck. The Royals didn't score in the bottom of the inning, but K.C. phenom third baseman Alex Gordon led off the frame with his first major-league hit, a sharp single to leftfield. They got on the board in the sixth when DeJesus led off the inning with a solo homer to rightfield, and they should have tied the game shortly after. Esteban German singled to follow DeJesus, and then was thrown out at the back end of a strikeout-throwout double play -- which was immediately followed by an Emil Brown double that shoulda coulda woulda tied the game. Gordon struck out looking to end the frame, and that was that. The lines for the two starters wound up looking impressively similar:
IP H R ER BB SO NP-St Dice-K 7 6 1 1 1 10 108-74 Greinke 7 8 2 1 1 7 101-64
With Greinke done for the day, Royals reliever Joel Peralta instantly surrendered two runs in the eighth, and Boston's Jonathan Papelbon came on to close the door in the ninth, more or less completing the checklist of what to watch for. Not too bad for a Thursday afternoon. (to be continued)
