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.
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.
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.
Once again, it was a very surreal scene to see baseball hauled in front of Congress for the purposes of posturing about steroids. From where I sat in the Fox News Radio Studio, where host Dave Anthony and I were joined via phone by Jim Bouton, it was a pretty bad day for Roger Clemens. Andy Pettitte's testimony stating that Clemens told him of his HGH use, the revelations that Clemens discussed HGH with Brian McNamee, who injected his wife, and Clemens' potential tampering with a witness, the family nanny, who placed Clemens and family at the Jose Canseco house despite Clemens' claims to have been playing golf -- all of those things made the Rocket's testimony look less than credible.
As for the Congressmen we saw parading in front of the cameras, if it's true that we get the elected officials we deserve, then we as a nation must have befouled some giant ancient burial ground to bring forth the grandstanding morons of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Yesterday's proceedings mostly followed a partisan line, with Democrats going after Clemens and Republicans attacking McNamee, the latter with a high degree of histrionics (Dan Burton, Darrell Issa, Virginia Foxx and my old nemesis Christopher Shays being the most egregious). Blech.
Clemens came into the hearings needing to cast doubt on the Mitchell Report, on Pettitte, and on McNamee, and at best, the proceedings raised credibility questions about the latter, demonstrating that he basically fits the profile of the kind of desperate schmuck who gets backed into corners like these (allusions to a Florida rape case, a fake diploma, a sick son, and a sudden desire to set things right for the youth of America so as to avoid jail time). But I don't think Clemens got very far beyond that, and in fact created new problems for himself while dealing with the body blow of the Pettitte testimony and the revelations about his wife.
Furthermore, I don't think one can rule out a Department of Justice perjury investigation versus Clemens, though I doubt there's nearly enough to convict him. Meanwhile, there's nothing to suggest McNamee is in danger of it being proven that he's lying and thus in violation of his proffer agreement. If Clemens had just copped to HGH (and only HGH) a month ago like Pettitte did, this sordid saga would probably be over, and Clemens is a dolt for not recognizing that unless he was absolutely spotless he was gonna get hung out to dry. He's gotten way more than he bargained for in his bid for vindication.
Anyway, I'm in the midst of a heavy load of radio appearances this morning. Catch me if you can:
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.
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.
• Speaking of BP, I've got a quickie Unfiltered post on baseball-themed holiday loot that adds to a staff rundown of my colleagues' hauls. The best items from this awesome bounty might be the DVD burn of the 1975 All-Star Game taped off the local Brewers channel (it was played at Milwaukee County Stadium), and a scan of a photo of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig with a local politician who was the grandfather of a dear family friend, Karen Edson. Quoth my BP colleague Christina Kahrl, "About the only thing missing was a four-day weekend with Sandy Koufax."
Here's a shot of the All-Star Game, with AL starting pitcher Vida Blue resplendent in a full yellow uniform:
• My boy Alex Belth has edited a forthcoming anthology, The Best Sports Writing of Pat Jordan, which he's understandably jazzed about; the book hits the shelves in late February. Alex has some choice Jordan stuff on Joe Torre (his former batterymate in the Braves' system) dating back to 1996. It didn't make the cut for the book but it's enjoyable reading nonetheless. He's also been pulling some vintage articles on Red Smith and Dick Young. Go get 'em.
• The clearance of my major workload has meant the opportunity to catch up with some of my lighter reading. Amid an epic stint on the couch watching college football bowl games on New Year's Day (more football than I've watched all year combined), I settled in with some excellent entries from Josh Wilker's Cardboard Gods blog which reminded me what I'd been missing: Rickey Henderson, John Urrea, Ray Corbin, Paul Mitchell and Mickey Klutts. Sometimes hilarious, other times philosophical, and often painfully confessional, his stuff is always worth a read.
So much going on and so little time for me to write. After more than seven months of waiting, my wife and I finally closed on our Brooklyn apartment and will be moving this weekend, thus ending my nearly 13 years in the East Village. The timing isn't exactly great, coming in the middle of my winter deadlines, but with the closing having been postponed twice on the sponsor's part and the situation exacerbated by the collapse of the mortgage market, the past two months have been protracted agony as I watched the move date creep into this territory. At one point I expected to be watching the postseason -- or at least the World Series -- on a new flat-screen TV, but... wait 'til next year, I guess.
Following the closing, my wife and I went for a celebratory drink even though it was only about 3:30 in the afternoon -- how often does one get to buy a home? Afterwards, still a bit buzzed from the 20-ounce beers, we made a trip to Staples to pick up more boxes. We were schlepping them along 34th Street looking for a cab when my cell phone rang. It was the producer from Sports Radio 1470 in Toledo (WLQR), my weekly spot with Norm & Matt; I had forgotten to tell the show I'd be out this week. Thinking fast, my wife and I ducked into some random foyer on 34th Street so I could take the call, and they hit me with the news of Alex Rodriguez's end-around.
My first reaction was that Rodriguez's decision to engage the Yankees without Scott Boras was in fact a Boras ploy, designed to let the superstar play good cop to the nefarious agent's bad cop in the hopes of winning the Yankees and the fans back. Otherwise, if Rodriguez was so disgruntled with the job Boras had done, why not fire him and prevent him from getting his commission on whatever bajillion dollar contract was coming his way?
Just over 24 hours later, the framework of a deal is in place for A-Rod to return to the team he supposedly scorned, calling for $275 million over 10 years, with incentives that could make it far more valuable if he does in fact chase the all-time home run record. Rodriguez still gets a record-breaking contract, but he falls far short of the $350 million Boras told the Yankees would be the starting point of any pre-opt-out negotiations. He falls short of the annual salaries he would have made via the old contract's escalator provisions in 2009 and 2010, or via the eight-year, $230 million offer that the Yankees had planned as their opening gambit. It's understood that somewhere in the new figures is a remedy for the $21 million subsidy from the Texas Rangers that was lost on the contract's termination, a loss that had led Brian Cashman and the Steinbrenner brothers to take a hard-line stance on not negotiating with Rodriguez after the opt-out.
For some reason I'm reminded of a Simpsons episode where Homer has to ask for his job back at the nuclear plant. Instead of being allowed to walk into Monty Burns' office through the door marked "Applicants," he's forced to crawl through a doggie door marked "Supplicants." "A-Rod Crawls Back," read the cover of Thursday's New York Post, and it's clear that whether or not this is a Boras ploy, Rodriguez has been forced to swallow some pride in order to rekindle his pinstriped career.
In any event, despite the awkwardness of the reconciliation, this is a solid win for the Yankees, who were faced with a very difficult task of replacing Rodriguez's monstrous production amid a poor free agent crop and a trade market where Miguel Cabrera could only be had for their brightest pitching prospects. The Yankees lost no face by accepting A-Rod's olive branch because of the superstar's acknowledgment that the lost subsidy would be factored into his new deal.
It's less clear whether A-Rod himself won. While it's tough to begrudge him the opportunity to exercise his contractual right, particularly in light of the rocky ride he had endured over the past three years, the timing of the announcement of his opt-out was horseshit, making him appear to try to upstage the World Series. That may have been a Boras move, but if it went against Rodriguez's tastes that only raises the question of who's wearing the pants in this relationship.
Furthermore, Rodriguez's action almost certainly burned bridges with a segment of Yankees fans. Yes, it may have been the bandwagoneers who were happy to see him stay when he was bopping 54 homers and looking like the MVP, but another underwhelming postseason for him and for the team thinned that herd while frustrating just about everyone who follows the Yankees. For all of the pressure he put on himself in the previous three years, his Hamlet act has cranked the knob to 11 for the coming years. Until he chases his October demons away, he will be under an even hotter spotlight than before.
Speaking as a Yankee fan, I'm glad his production is back, and I certainly do enjoy watching Rodriguez play, at least from April through September. But I'll be hard-pressed to muster the heights of enthusiasm that I've felt towards him before on those days when I knew I was watching Alex Rodriguez, Best Player on Earth. Things may be chilly for awhile. In addition to winning a championship, he's gonna have to bake me and every other Yankee fan one big chocolate apology cake apiece before bygones are bygones.
What's also clear is that whoever won, Boras lost, even if he does get to take home five percent of the $275 million deal. Many, including Fox's Ken Rosenthal (who gets the scoops while Peter Gammons plays the house organ) surmised that a back-channel deal had already been worked out prior to the opt-out. But Boras' timing angered those inside the game, and the mere threat of his outrageous demands quickly sent teams into retreat, or at least into the mode of reassessing their offseason priorities. Among the half-dozen or so teams equipped to make A-Rod an offer, all but the Angels and Dodgers had asserted at one point or another that it might be beyond their capability. Boras overreached, and while the new contract -- incentives regarding his potential chase of the all-time home run record aside -- sets a record by being $23 million more than the 10-year, $252 million deal Rodriguez signed for the 2001 season, the increase doesn't even match the rate of inflation. That's all ya got, Scott? Pfft. In the words of Nelson Muntz, "Ha-ha!"
Meanwhile, the man Rodriguez may someday be chasing for the all-time home run lead, Barry Bonds, was indicted on four counts of perjury and one of obstruction of justice in relation to his BALCO testimony. Again, I found out about it from somebody wanting to put my instant opinion on the radio; Fox News Radio interviewed me for some national soundbites about a half-hour after the story broke on Thursday, and I'm in the midst of nine affiliate hits on Friday morning as I post this.
Even as a decided non-fan of Barry Bonds, I'd say that the announcement feels anticlimactic. Bonds has the home run record, tainted though it may be, and as a 43-year-old free agent, he's already low on most teams' shopping lists. Bud Selig can't suspend him without a conviction lest he set off a fight with the Players' Association, but the owners and GMs now have one more excuse to shun Bonds like a leper in a nudist colony. That's not to say that some team won't sign him, but if you thought the market for A-Rod was tepid, the one for surly, indicted 43-year-olds with multiple knee surgeries is sure to be even moreso.
The announcement feels anticlimactic mainly because I doubt the charges can stick. From the old saw about how a good prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich, the four-year timespan in which this indictment was put together, to the testimony leak, to the lack of a Bonds positive test for anabolic steroids under the auspices of Major League Baseball (though the indictment says the evidence includes a positive test, it was one apparently administered by BALCO, lacking a clear chain of custody), this may well wind up being a circus designed to do little more than hassle Bonds and prevent him from getting another job rather than actually generating a conviction. If they couldn't nail O.J. Simpson...
Which isn't to say that I think Bonds is innocent, not by any stretch of the imagination. As I wrote on the occasion of his 756th home run:
Even absent a positive test, the mountain of evidence that Bonds used performance enhancing drugs is enough to convince me that his accomplishment is tainted. We'll never know the extent to which Bonds was aided, but the fact that his historically unprecedented late-career surge matches up with the well-documented timeline of his alleged usage is enough for me. However, Bonds certainly wasn't the only player using during this sordid era, and the extent to which the drugs helped him achieve his record will forever remain uncertain. Furthermore, Major League Baseball's failure to address in any meaningful way the pervasiveness of the steroid problem made them complicit in Bonds' use...
This much we know: the three players who topped Roger Maris' long-standing season record of 61 homers have varying degrees of evidence suggesting they had help in the matter, and it's not unreasonable to eye their latter-day accomplishments with some degree of suspicion so long as that evidence remains. I'm not advocating an asterisk in the record books or the expungement of any stats; if the fabric of baseball history can withstand the variable impacts of the spitballers, scuffers, bat-corkers, sign-stealers, and greenie-poppers -- to say nothing of the Black Sox and Pete Rose, rats of an entirely different color -- it can withstand this. That doesn't mean we have to worship the record or the man with the prickly persona who achieved it, nor does it diminish the accomplishments of the men who preceded him in holding that record.
Will a Barry Bonds conviction heal the wounds we feel from the cynical chase and toppling of Hank Aaron's home run record? Suffice it to say that I'd be surprised if we ever get to find out.
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.
Somewhere in there I found time to take in the Yankees-Red Sox series, albeit with my thumb pumping the Tivo remote's fast-forward button. I've literally become tired of watching Yankee games; the combination of the team's recent mediocrity and typical plodding pace is a total drag when on a given night you can watch about a dozen other games moving along at a more sprightly pace (offer not valid in Boston). Even with the Tivo, watching Kyle Farnsworth endlessly fidget outside the strike zone is no fun.
Nonetheless, it was good to see a bit of energy flowing through the Yankees as they beat up on Tim Wakefield and Curt Schilling; the benefits of time-shifting allowed me to pause after Hideki Matsui's home run in the latter to cue Blue Oyster Cult's "Godzilla" for an impromptu celebration of the team's 3-0 first-inning lead against the Tubby Bitch. And then to see Doug Mientkiewicz upper deck Schilling, both literally and figuratively, aw yeahhh. Derek Jeter passing Joe DiMaggio for fifth place on the Yankee hit list in the midst of a streak of his own added icing to the cake, as did watching Alex Rodriguez get his groove back with homers in three consecutive games, not to mention a nasty take-out slide of Dustin Pedroia that drew words from Boston. Hey, when Jason Varitek takes off his mask to fight A-Rod instead of hiding behind it like a pussy, the latter can send flowers to Pedroia.
Nonetheless, it was a bit of a dark week in Yankeeland for the off-the-field stuff. Jason Giambi's steroid-related comments drew an audience with Bud Selig, not to mention talk of a voided contract (no chance, and given the Yanks' cynical contract concessions none deserved) and a failed amphetamine test (quite likely a smear job from within MLB offices; Peter Gammons says that Giambi hasn't been asked to take follow-up tests, which would have occurred after a positive). My BP colleague Joe Sheehan had an excellent column (free, not subscription-only) on the Giambi situation:
The specifics of Giambi’s point can be debated, but the central idea here, the one that blame for the nominal Steroid Era lies with personnel both in and out of uniform, cannot. The players who took performance-enhancing drugs shoulder the majority of any responsibility, but to absolve non-uniformed personnel, up to and including the ones on Park Avenue, is folly. We live in an era in which the idea of “clubhouse chemistry” is considered a tangible thing that can be manipulated and monitored. With that the case, it’s silly to think that front offices, spending all kinds of time looking for the right mix of personalities, could not be aware of a different sort of chemistry making the rounds.
Fourteen months ago, Commissioner Bud Selig drafted George Mitchell to investigate the use of PEDs in baseball during the pre-testing era. I said at the time, and I believe now, that the Mitchell Commission is a cynical exercise in public relations, designed to turn up no surprises. What I didn’t see coming was how the Commission would be used to focus blame for the era exclusively on uniformed personnel. Every time the Commission makes the news, it’s in some way reflecting badly on the players: they won’t talk, they won’t give up medical records, they won’t cooperate. If the Commission isn’t going to make any new findings along the way, it will certainly make sure to establish in the public eye who the villains are.
To which I say, “enough.” The Mitchell Commission isn’t going to—and isn’t designed to—make any discoveries about the nominal Steroid Era. It has neither the authority nor the gravitas to do any real work. It exists merely in the hopes that it will provide a veneer of credibility to official disdain and/or condemnation of the media-approved bad guys of the timeframe.
The Mitchell Commission should be disbanded. It should be disbanded because all it’s doing is extending the shelf life of a story that does the game no good. MLB isn’t going to get anywhere by trying to figure out who was doing what five to 10 years ago; there’s nothing that can be done, and no credible way or sorting out the impact of PEDs on gameplay, wins and losses, or statistics. If the evidence in Game of Shadows isn’t enough for the Commissioner to come down on Barry Bonds — and no, it’s not — then no amount of paper-shuffling and stern questioning is going to produce actionable information.
The Commission isn’t helping baseball. It’s only keeping a dead story alive, while shifting focus from the evidence we have from three years of testing, from MLB’s toughest-in-sports PED policy, from the great storylines created by the players on the field. In four seasons of testing, going back to the survey year, the number of positives has dropped from the high 80s in survey testing down to a single-digit number. Of the players who have tested positive, we’ve seen a mix of pitchers and hitters—putting the lie to the idea that steroids were responsible for the raised offensive levels of the 1990s—and the entire list has a Q rating comfortably behind your average “Dancing With the Stars” cast.
Also weighing in with a must-read is The New York Times'Harvey Araton:
Imagine if Jason Giambi had gone to the House Government Reform Committee hearing in March 2005 and said what he told a USA Today reporter last week.
Imagine if, after Mark McGwire had ceased stammering and Rafael Palmeiro stopped grandstanding and Sammy Sosa was done pretending he couldn’t understand English, it was Giambi’s turn and this is what he said:
“I was wrong for doing that stuff. What we should have done a long time ago was stand up — players, owners, everybody — and said: ‘We made a mistake.’ We should have apologized back then and made sure we had a rule in place and gone forward.” In that setting, that context, can’t you hear the politicians and reporters gushing over Giambi, saluting him for setting a standard of accountability for the rest of baseball to follow?
Can’t you picture the commissioner, Bud Selig, thanking Giambi for placating the pols instead of summoning him to meet with baseball officials — as Giambi did Wednesday — and perhaps considering punitive action?
Meanwhile, it appears Carl Pavano's tenure in pinstripes is mercifully over, as the various big-name surgeons consulted confirmed that Pavano is a candidate for Tommy John surgery. As I said in the Hit List, here's hoping Dr. Octagon — or Dr. Nick Riviera or Dr. Leo Spaceman, depending which flavor of pop-culture quack you prefer — performs the operation, preferably after some Yankee official slips the guy a $20 and tells him to take a detour through the abdominal cavity. After drinking a six-pack, preferably.
I did a quick bit of figuring on Pavano's contract, comparing it to the infamous Darren Dreifort deal (five years, $55 million) the Dodgers handed out back in 2000. Using BP's marginal dollars per marginal win formula, Dreifort netted the Dodgers one extra win for every $13.1 million of the deal. Pavano blows that away, with one extra win for every $35 mil. It may take BP's equivalent of the Warren Commission to find a worse contract.
On the topic of marginal dollars per marginal win, do check out Maury Brown's tribute to the late Doug Pappas, the originator of that formula. It was three years ago this week that the game lost its foremost expert on financial matters and one of the biggest bees in Bud Selig's bonnet, a sad day indeed.
• • •
A bit more about those off-site articles of mine. The most interesting facet of the JAWS piece, to me at least, was the impact of Frankie Frisch on the Veterans' Committee from 1967-1973. Frisch led the way in the election of some of the Hall's most dubious members, particularly with regards to my methodology:
To give an idea of just how far off the mark these candidates — Frisch's Follies, if you will — are, [Chick] Hafey (CF), [Fred] Lindstrom (3B), [George] Kelly (1B), and we'll-include-him-anyway [post-Frisch honoree and former teammate Travis] Jackson (SS) rate as dead last among Hall of Famers at their positions according to JAWS, which makes them the players that I drop when I compute the positional averages (as explained here). [Jess] Haines is the second-to-last pitcher, which puts him in the same category (I drop four pitchers). [Ross] Youngs is second-to-last in rightfield,[Jim] Bottomley is third-to-last at first base. [Dave] Bancroft, sixth-to-last at shortstop (one hair ahead of Phil Rizzuto), is the closest thing to a defensible pick here.
...Bancroft aside, none of these players are within 25 JAWS points of the average Hall of Famer at their positions. Furthermore, out of the 138 hitters with a JAWS score, Bancroft ranks 100th, Jackson 119th, Youngs 126th, Lindstrom 134th, Kelly 136th, and Hafey 137th — that's right, three of the bottom five. To borrow a phrase suggested by Derek Jacques, these guys should pack their plaques.
Along with that, a look at the cases of Jeff Kent and Bobby Grich, the all-time ranking of Roger Clemens, I also found time to add JAWS to BP's glossary, a long-overdue move that can provide a quick reference for anyone looking for the system's explanation and standard numbers.
At the Sun (which is now free as well), I examined the likelihood that the AL Wild Card would come out of the Central division, as it did last year:
When the Red Sox went into a tailspin last August, the collapse hastened an end to their threeyear monopoly on the AL Wild Card. Confusion reigned, as though birthright and expense guaranteed playoff spots for the AL East's top two teams, the Sox and Yankees. That breach was filled by a thrilling AL Central race, as Minnesota overcame the upstart Tigers' early lead and fought off a late challenge by the defending World Champion White Sox. Though the Twins won the division, Detroit's wild card winners ultimately snagged the pennant.
With the Yankees currently limping along below .500 and nine games behind the sizzling Red Sox, the Central again appears poised to send two teams to the playoffs. This time it's a four-team race, with the Indians joining the White Sox, Tigers, and Twins. But which two teams will win out? Baseball Prospectus's Postseason Odds report uses a team's run-scoring and run-preventing proclivities, adjusted for park effects and quality of competition, in a simulation which plays out the rest of the season one million times. Run the numbers, and the Tribe (67%) and Tigers (47%) have the best shot at October, with both teams' chances dwarfing those of the Yankees (26%), though both are also well behind the Red Sox (93%).
Three days and a series win for the Yankees later, those odds are more or less unchanged: Red Sox 93.6 percent, Indians 57.5, Tigers 51.2, Yankees 27.5, White Sox 16.3, Twins 9.0. Further sobering news comes in the form of my quick hit at Unfiltered: "During the Wild Card era, just three teams have come from at least 10 [games] back to win a division flag, including last year’s Twins. However, 11 out of the 24 Wild Card teams have come back from double digits to make the playoffs. Five of those teams had fallen to 10 back by the 41-game mark [as this year's Yanks did], including the pre-Joe Torre 1995 Yankees, not to mention the 2002 Angels and 2003 Marlins, both of whom went on to win the World Series."
Despite the arrival of Hunter Pence, the Astros are decidedly earthbound after nine losses in 10 games, and at this rate, the only Rocket ride they can look forward to is on Kiss Alive II. Owner Drayton McLane, GM Tim Purpura, president of baseball operations Tal Smith, and manager Phil Garner confer, deciding that Garner's mustache is trimmed to the optimal length to inspire Craig Biggio in his deathless march to 3,000.
And that's without even considering the state of the Yankee rotation, which we'll get to momentarily. Late in my Friday afternoon chat at BP, I made reference to a bit of sarcasm passing me by like a Clemens fastball, and then shortly afterwards, fielded a question about the Rocket:
The Animal (Boston): Speaking of Clemens... got a prediction?
Jay Jaffe: Yes. With the Red Sox lacking a defined need and the Astros going nowhere fast, I think this is the Yanks' play if Clemens comes back, and my guess is that he heists them for something like a prorated salary of $30 million.
Sunday afternoon, during the seventh-inning stretch of the Yanks' 5-0 win over the Mariners, the cameras cut to Clemens as he made a surprise announcement from owner George Steinbrenner's private box: "Well, they came and got me out of Texas and I can tell you it's a privilege to be back. I'll be talking to y'all soon." Terms were not immediately announced, but ESPN's Buster Olney reports that Clemens' salary will be a pro-rated $28 million -- not a bad guess on my part, I must say -- or about $4.5 million per month. Not a bad living for possibly the greatest pitcher of all time.
Clemens, amid his rather tiresome annual retirement ritual, had insisted over the past several months that he wouldn't be making a decision between the aforementioned three teams until the end of May. But the combination of the Yankees' decimated rotation, the other two teams' delayed timeframe, Clemens' accelerated workout schedule, and cold, hard cash made for an inevitable resolution. As Olney reports:
Clemens and [agent Randy] Hendricks made it clear to everyone, even into late April, that he wouldn't make his decision until late May. But as Mike Mussina got hurt and then Carl Pavano, the Yankees felt they could and should become more aggressive. After landing in Texas, Cashman wanted to set up a meeting with Hendricks -- only to learn, to his horror, that the agent was meeting with the Red Sox, which the agent confirmed to Cashman with a text message on May 1. Hours later, Phil Hughes hurt his hamstring. The Yankees' need for pitching was acute.
Cashman and Hendricks e-mailed back and forth on Tuesday and Wednesday, kicking around the idea of meeting during the day Thursday in Houston, but there was a terrible storm in Arlington that forced the postponement of the game. The Yankees and Rangers were scheduled for a doubleheader Thursday, and Cashman felt that if he was away from the team during the game, then the media might get an inkling of how he was trying to make an aggressive move on Clemens. He had used the same approach in signing Johnny Damon: Make a very aggressive offer quickly and force a decision.
So Hendricks and Cashman spoke on Thursday night, and the financial parameters were laid out: Clemens would cost a prorated salary of $28 million. Hendricks got off the phone and called Clemens, and told him that the time was nearing for the pitcher to make a decision, and that if he was going to go to the Yankees, now was the time. "Let's do it," Clemens responded.
The past week-and-change has intensified the need for stability in the Yanks' rotation. Last Saturday, Jeff Karstens was drilled by a line drive that fractured his fibula. On Tuesday, Philip Hughes broke hearts just as he was winning them over, popping his hamstring while chasing a no-hitter. On Friday, Kei Igawa, who had come out of the bullpen to fire six innings of shutout ball in relief of Karstens, pitched like the guy who got sent to the pen in the first place. And as the week wore on, doubts about Crippled Pitcher's Carl Pavano's return this season reached a deafening crescendo. Despite good work from Andy Pettitte and Darrell Rasner, a sizzling start from just-activated Mike Mussina and Chien-Ming Wang chasing perfection, the Yanks' rotation doesn't appear to have the necessary depth to hold up its end of this $200 million deal, which is why a team with the highest-scoring offense in the majors is still clawing its way back to .500 while losing ground to their rivals. Here's a thumbnail comparison of the Yankee and Red Sox rotations thus far:
The Yanks aren't even averaging five innings per start, they're getting a Quality Start less than half as often, allowing about 1.50 runs per game more; the three wins above replacement level difference (according to BP's numbers) seems to be an underestimation given the superiority of the Yankee offense thus far, but the difference in bullpen performances has been even steeper, and there's no question the latter fact is a product of the former. As the Yanks have spent the past decade reminding us, the soft underbelly of long relief can make for quite a feast.
There's no question Clemens can still pitch. Granted, the NL has played as an inferior league during Clemens' three years years in Houston, and that's before considering the DH/non-DH factor, but a pitcher who put up these numbers from ages 41-43 can still get it done:
Year W-L IP K/9 ERA ERA+ 2004 18-4 214.1 9.1 2.98 145 Cy Young #7 2005 13-8 211.1 7.9 1.87 221 Led NL in ERA 2006 7-6 113.1 8.1 2.30 197
Despite the drama of the announcement and the Yankees' obvious need, as a fan I've got mixed emotions about Clemens' return. I was no fan of Clemens when he came to New York -- I screamed myself hoarse at some of his early starts -- but I came around. I was in the House That Ruth Built watching him nail down the 1999 World Series clincher, an indelible moment in my time as a fan. I was also at his stellar Game Three performance in the 2001 Seres, where he held off the Diamondbacks in a tense game played under tense circumstances. For all of his checkered history in big games -- a history I've explored several times -- his best big-game performances have come as a Yankee: "In 17 pinstriped [postseason] starts, he had a 3.24 ERA and won two World Series rings; with the other two teams, his ERA is 4.19 with no championships," I wrote in 2005. And I've held that when he retired for the first time, he owed the Yanks and their fans nothing except perhaps the return of that Humvee, which is just more Steinbrenner money anyway.
Having said that, I've watched Clemens reveal himself as even more of a mercenary since then; like Krusty the Klown, selling out is in his blood. Clemens is perhaps the ultimate mercenary in baseball history, one who's not only able to call the shots on where he plays, but exactly when he gets to show up to work. Taking him at his word on any matter involving his retirement or his return is a foolish act, and his burly-redneck-football-adrenaline-junky-drama-queen persona is a bit tough to digest. And that's before his pitching even comes into play. He's still a going-on-45, six-inning pitcher coming to a tough division -- not to mention the loftiest, championship-or-bust expectations to be found in team sports -- and counting on him to dominate as he did even for stretches during this millennium is probably a pipe dream given the contrast to his cushy Houston environs.
Still, when the alternative is watching a parade of Your Name Heres limp from mound to DL to bullpen or Scranton and back again trying to fill out the Yankee rotation, Clemens is the preferable alternative. In for a penny, in for a pound, as my Anglophilic friends would say. His pricey presence allows the Yanks to continue with their attempt to have cake and eat it too, winning while rebuilding, buying time for a young arm like Hughes to develop. If nothing else, this Rocket ride is certain to be an interesting one.
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A reminder to those of you who are XM subscribers: I'll be doing my usual 2 PM Eastern slot with Chris Liss today on XM 144's "Baseball Beat," and I'm sure you-know-who will be at least one topic of conversation between two Yankee fans.
Also on the radio, on Wednesday at 4:10 PM Eastern I'll be appearing on Toledo, Ohio's 1470 AM (WLQR), doing a show called "Front Row" with host Norm Wamer. Wamer had me on last week, and I'm delighted to return. Catch it if you're in the area.
That's when the Dodgers rolled up four straight homers at the Padres' expense, and while the drives themselves weren't as impressively telegenic -- the Monster and the boisterous Fenway crowd make for better theater than a half-empty Dodger Stadium -- the context was much more important. The Dodgers hit their homers in the ninth inning of a game that came in the heat of a pennant race. Two came off Jon Adkins, a garden-variety scrub reliever, while the other two came off Trevor Hoffman, the all-time saves leader and a likely Hall of Famer. And the call came from Vin Scully.
The Red Sox, by contrast, banged out their four homers in the third inning of an April game. The homers came in the veritable slaughterhouse of Fenway, a park that on a per at-bat basis produced 24 percent more homers than Dodger Stadium did last year. The blasts were hit off Chase Wright, a shellshocked 23-year-old who came into the night with a grand total of fewer than 20 innings of experience above A-ball. Wright is the Yankees' #8 starter only because the team didn't want to take the trouble of adding top prospect Philip Hughes to their 40-man roster. Throw in Tyler Clippard or the rapidly improving Sean Henn and Wright might charitably be called the Yanks' 10th best rotation option. Yes, four homers in a row is still remarkable, but the two occurrences scarcely deserve comparison.
A win is a win, and so props to the Red Sox for taking advantage of a decimated Yankee club. But if you're a Yankees fan, it's hard to get too worked up about the outcome of this past weekend. Yes, the Sox swept the Yanks in Fenway for the first time since August 31-September 2, 1990, but the three wins were by a combined total of four runs. Two of the three games were started by rookies who likely won't be in the rotation for much longer. Hideki Matsui, who returns this week, missed the entire series, and Jorge Posada was limited to three plate appearances due to a bruised thumb. Josh Phelps caught a couple innings of a major-league game for the first time since his cuppa coffee days in 2001. The Yanks showed an ability to reach Boston's new X-factor addition to the rivalry, Daisuke Matsuzaka, who surrendered six runs -- as many as he had in his first three starts combined -- in seven innings.
The most disconcerting aspect of the weekend was the way the Yanks' top three relievers, Luis Vizcaino, Scott Proctor and Mariano Rivera, were smacked around, charged with seven runs allowed in 3.2 innings. Even then there are mitigating circumstances; Vizcaino, Joe Torre's new favorite toy, had been torched for four runs against the Indians the day before his contribution to Friday's meltdown. Proctor had worked the previous two games before last night and had gone seven scoreless appearances between allowing runs. Rivera... well, he's been off to slow starts before, though blowing two high-profile saves within five days of each other still constitutes a kick in the groin, as it's taken the Yanks to 8-9 from a potential 10-7.
Still, the Yanks are grooming some additional bullpen options. It was nice to see Colter Bean get a shot last night, his fourth major-league appearance despite numerous appeals from the stathead crowd for him to get more work. He responded with two scoreless innings of long relief, though he did walk three. Henn had two scoreless appearances over the weekend, and has allowed just one earned run in 11.1 frames so far. Chris Britton made his Yankee debut with a pair of scoreless innings against Cleveland, but he was sent down so that Karstens could be activated just before the Boston series. Brian Bruney has allowed just one run in 10.1 innings after an ugly exhibition season. Torre doesn't need to run the same guys out there every night, but then that's a story that predates this year's model.
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I'm pleased to announce that I've got a regularly occuring satellite radio slot as of today. From now on, I'll be appearing on XM 144's Baseball Beat with Chris Liss every Monday at 2 PM Eastern. If you're a subscriber, please tune in if you get the chance.
This morning I recorded a radio spot for WGBB 1240 AM's Sports Break with Joel Blumberg. Over the course of about 20 mintues (starting 7:45 in), Joel and I talked about Brian Cashman's bold power play, the Mets' middle relief, the Red Sox's winter spending, and (sigh) the impact of steroids on the single season and all-time home run records. You can hear it all here.
Last week I taped a 20-minute spot for WGBB Sports Break 1240 AM radio with Joel Blumberg, a slot where I've appeared before. We talked about the Yankees' and Mets' offseason plans as well as other Hot Stove action. You can hear the spot here; my segment begins at 8:30 and runs through the rest of the show.
I'll be back at full strength in this space sooner or later. In the meantime, continued best holiday wishes to you all.
, which he's understandably jazzed about; the book hits the shelves in late February. Alex has