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September 17, 2007

Under The Knife

Patterns

by Will Carroll

Every year, we start looking back at the things that we saw and collected over the season to see what we can learn. For me, it's looking for patterns and changes in previous patterns. The most apparent was the broad range of outcomes for shoulder injuries. Pedro Martinez didn't come back as quickly as Bartolo Colon, but he's looked better. On the other hand, Mark Mulder came back at Pedro's pace, and hasn't looked nearly as good. There's a lot of noise in the injury data this season, but there's signal in there somewhere. Data collection in this field isn't clean or easy--there are no box scores for injuries, and the DL is hardly the best accounting method, but it's what we have as a starting point. As the data set grows, we'll learn some rules, start being able to predict events better, and apply advanced techniques like kNN algorithms to find patterns. Who knows what's in there, and how it could change the game of baseball?

A reader wrote in asking if the innings workload of Fausto Carmona was a concern for next year. The simple answer is yes. The conservative handling of Justin Verlander gives hope, but we're years away from any sort of real understanding, of finding true measures rather than proxies. At 23, Carmona's not above the injury nexus, but neither was Verlander. Carmona doesn't have the college issue I'm looking at in regards to Verlander, but he has more of a minor league track record. He hit 150 innings in the minors twice, but last season, in relief, barely reached 100 total innings between the majors and minors. Carmona wasn't overworked last season and his leverage wasn't high, so we're left just noting this, and hoping that he's more like Verlander and less like Jaret Wright. While I'd love to give Lonnie Soloff and the Indians some credit here, I can't--yet. Ask me again in five years.

Jorge Posada left Saturday's game after a collision, complaining of dizziness. In the NFL, they'd call it anything but a concussion, but in baseball, they're learning to take this seriously. Posada was sent for tests and was expected to get some rest, something he could use anyway heading into the playoffs. Instead, he was in the game on Sunday night against the Red Sox, though he did DH until late in the game. The next few days are key, as the Yankees watch closely for any sign of post-concussive symptoms. Of all the players they have, Posada is perhaps the most difficult to replace.(I've been working on this kind of story for a while; forgive a mild rant, but what the NFL is doing with concussions is outrageous.)

In the other Yankees injury story, Roger Clemens looked good if not great in his return to the mound. Like his opponent Curt Schilling, he's going to need to make quick adjustments, and work on command and efficiency rather than try to be a gunslinging legend. His mechanics looked normal, the blisters on his feet didn't seem to be a problem, and he generally looked like 2005-07 vintage Clemens while pitching. Unlike most teams in the playoffs, the Yankees have tough decisions to make at the bottom of their rotation rather than at the top. (For more on this, check out today's BP Radio to hear Joe Sheehan and I debate the best 1-2 punches heading into the playoffs, or revisit some of the arguments put forward by Nate Silver or Christina Kahrl have put forward on the subject.)

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