The Daily Prospectus: All Over the Place

Just riffing as I look at the AL stats:

• I haven’t mentioned him in a while, so here’s a Garret Anderson
  update. He’s walked 15 times–just 12 times on his own–in more than 400
  plate appearances, and his OBP is once again under .300.

  Here’s some perspective: Anderson is playing every day and taking no
  criticism. Tim Salmon, just off the disabled list, is perceived as
  having a disastrous season, batting .206 with a .363 slugging percentage.
  Yet Salmon’s OBP is 64 points higher than Anderson’s, so his Equivalent
  Average is 15 points higher than that of Anderson, .272 to .257. Not making
  outs–what OBP measures–is the most important thing a baseball player can
  do.

  Of course, Anderson leads the Angels in RBIs, so he must be good, right?

• One of the most pathetic job battles ever is being waged in Baltimore,
  where Brook Fordyce and Fernando Lunar are dueling. Fordyce,
  who was considered a good defensive catcher until about 1999–when he began
  to hit, invoking Nichols’ Law of Catcher Defense–is watching his playing
  time go to Lunar, who is now considered the catch-and-throw guy of the pair.
  Both players suck: Lunar’s .267/.302/.311 just happens to look better than
  Fordyce’s .202/.260/.305.

  My guess is that Lunar will eventually go on a hot streak, his defensive
  reputation will suffer, and the Os will bring in Joel Skinner.

• Anyone else think Jose Canseco might end up leading the White Sox
  in walks? He has nine so far, and with a good weekend–say, six walks–could
  move into sixth on the team. The leader is Magglio Ordonez with 40.

• I didn’t expect C.C. Sabathia to make it this deep into the
  season in the Indians’ rotation, but not only is he there, he’s been the
  team’s second-best starter. The Indians’ right-handed relief depth has
  enabled them to endure his inability to get past the sixth inning, and
  they’ve pushed his pitch count just once, and that was in his best start of
  the season.

  Most impressive is Sabathia’s in-season improvement:

  
  Month       IP     BB    K    HR
  
  April     21.2     10    9     1
  May       24.2     12   19     4
  June      30.2     18   28     2
  July      23.0     13   30     0
  

  
  The Tribe took a risk in putting so much on Sabathia’s shoulders, but they
  deserve credit for riding out his rough patch, and are now being rewarded
  with some tremendous pitching.

• The Royals have three players posting OPSs above 800, one of whom is
  Raul Ibanez.

• Fantasy Tip of the Millennium: if you have Joe Mays on your team,
  get rid of him. Yesterday. His second half is not going to be pretty.

• I took a fair amount of criticism from Yankee fans who defended the
  team’s dumping of Brian Boehringer and acquisition of Mark
  Wohlers. Part of their argument was that while the Boehringer had been
  better for the season as a whole, his recent performance had been terrible,
  while Wohlers had been pitching well of late.

  In Boehringer’s last month as a Yankee, he threw seven innings, allowing
  nine runs on 14 hits, with three walks and five strikeouts. Since joining
  the Yankees, Wohlers has thrown 6 1/3 innings, allowing 11 runs on 13 hits,
  with four walks and four strikeouts. (For completeness, Boehringer has a
  3.52 ERA in 7 2/3 innings with the Giants.)

  So if recent performance is the important consideration, should the Yankees
  now release Wohlers and trade for the next W on the list, perhaps Steve
  Woodard?

  Relief pitchers below the level of Trevor Hoffman are fungible, and
  any team that trades something of value–say, D’Angelo Jimenez and
  Ricardo Aramboles–for a reliever is making a huge mistake.

• Why does Terrence Long get so much playing time? He wasn’t
  anything special last year, but you could defend his presence as a center
  fielder who could field the position. Now he’s in right field, batting
  .272/.324/.401; he doesn’t even steal bases (six so far, with just one
  caught stealing), and no amount of right-field defense is going to make a
  .263 EqA look good.

• Trot Nixon has a higher EqA than Ichiro Suzuki, and isn’t
  that far behind Suzuki as a defender.

  If you’re a parishioner at the Church of Ichiro, that’s fine, just
  understand that he’s a good player, not a great one, and that he’s not even
  the best player in the Safeco Field outfield this year.

• Speaking of the Mariners, here is the combined line of Kazuhiro
  Sasaki, Arthur Rhodes, and Jeff Nelson:

  121.1 IP, 67 H, 43 BB, 153 K, 2.23 ERA

  Now remember that almost all of those 120-odd innings have been in
  high-leverage situations. I’d be interested in seeing where a context-based
  evaluation system, like Doug Drinen’s, placed any or all of these three
  among the league’s most valuable players.