So you hate all the minor scheduling things like divisions and wildcards, but you were ok with the DH which is a massive change from the whole philosophy of what baseball is about? Odd definition of traditionalist.

Just to be clear, expected win percentage is the winning percentage for all remaining games, not where you expect them to finish the season at, right?

Haren's game score has already been beat ... Lee posted a 92 last night.

I don't think Daisuke's cash was "wasted". He was pretty good for them in 2007-2008, helped them win a World Series, and probably generated a ton of merch sales in Japan. Having him on the roster now is hurting them for sure, but I bet Henry doesn't see that money as wasted.

If they could do that, why would they share it on BP and not use it to make money for themselves?

Blackout policies are horrible, fan-unfriendly policies, but I doubt they go away anytime soon unless you have an NHL like uprising of the small market teams, and a commissioner willing to follow through with that vision and stick it to the big markets. Doesn't seem in Selig's game plan. BTW, not sure I like the reference to Tahrir Square ... it seems silly to be comparing a struggle for freedom and democracy to not being able to see a game on your iPhone.

It was mentioned: "They're also working to establish special in-market deals to allow fans who already subscribe to their teams' cable broadcasts to tune in via the web (though not, so far, mobile devices) as well: So far the Yankees and the Padres are the first two teams to have signed up. (MLBAM won't divulge details of exactly who gets paid how for these, but it's fair to assume that the checks are flying back and forth according to hideously complicated formulas.)"

You can really see how much the style of BP has changed over the 10 years in this article. If this same article came out today, there would be a lot more numerical tables and graphs in it, instead of the verbal argument we get here.

You mean like Oregon State working on expelling three PhD candidates because their father ran for office as a Republican? Oh, wait, no, we should protect those people because they have tenure.

Also, the NBA has a soft cap, so it's hard to compared that to a real cap, which sounds like is coming to the NBA real soon. I'm not sure the evidence is there that a cap/floor depresses the free agent market. It didn't stop Ilya Kovalchuk from signing for $100M this offseason in the NHL, or players like Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin from getting large deals as well. It hasn't stopped QBs in the NFL from making $15M+ annually. Personally, I think you have to give credit to the NHL for getting it close to right in their last lockout. 1) The salary cap and salary floor are pretty close together. ($16M) 2) The players are guaranteed an exact percentage of revenue every season. (The NHL holds some of the salary in escrow, and trues up with the owners/players after the season when revenues are finalized). 3) The teams have a pretty short timeframe in which they control a players rights (1 ELC for no more than 3 years, then usually 3-4 of restricted free agency, which requires draft picks to sign from another team). This would have to be longer in MLB, just because of the time it takes to develop a player. 4) Teams get significant revenue sharing based on their revenue, but they must also show revenue growth at least equal to the overall league growth or they will forfeit some of the revenue sharing.

Certainly you want payroll to correlate with wins. However, when the correlation is approaching 70% and you don't have a salary cap/floor mechanism to keep the spending close enough so that fans don't feel hopeless at the start of the season, you run the risk of having a product that is not as compelling to the entire nation, which ultimately will hurt the product. Not everyone is Yankees or Red Sox fans (or I guess Phillies now, with them at #2 for 2011). If what just happened with the Rays (2 out of 3 playoff appearance after a decade of building) is the BEST any other team can hope for, MLB has no hope of regaining lost ground to the NFL, and could ultimate slip behind other sports as well.

It doesn't mean that at all. I don't know what % of MLB revenues players get now, but there is no reason the % couldn't go up at the same time a cap was put into place.

I'm not sure how you get that from the data. If you look at the rank of the teams by the last 10 years of opening day payroll and the rank of the teams by wins in the last 10 years, the rank correlation is .652. If you exclude the hapless Mets (3rd in payroll at 1.13B, just 17th in wins at 800), the correlation is .689. That seems like a pretty high correlation to me. If you run a regression on payroll index (either one just for MLB a whole, or one weighted with division, league, and MLB indexes to approximate the schedule) vs wins, you get p-values on the order of 3 * 10^-15, so it's clearly significant. There is a lot of noise, of course ... the R-squared is just 20%, which means 80% of the variance is still unexplained. Looking at the regression a bit more, it shows having 1.00 payroll index being worth 81 wins (pretty much by definition), and then each increase of 10% above that being worth 1.4wins. However, the standard error of the estimate is on the order of 10 wins, so for teams that are relatively close in payroll, it doesn't overcome the noise in a single season. Top 7 Spending Teams in Baseball, 2001-2010: 1. NYY 1,778.4M - 973 wins (1st) 2. BOS 1,246.4M - 924 wins (2nd) 3. NYM 1,133.0M - 800 wins (17th) 4. LAD 1,001.3M - 856 wins (9th) 5. CHC 992.2M - 817 wins (13th) 6. LAA 934.1M - 898 wins (4th) 7. ATL 926.2M - 888 wins (5th) Bottom 7 Spending Teams in Baseball, 2001-2010: 30. FLA 388.8M - 812 wins (14th) 29. TBY 407.0M - 721 wins (26th) 28. PIT 437.8M - 669 wins (29th) 27. WSH 493.4M - 713 wins (27th) 26. KCY 523.7M - 662 wins (30th) 25. SDO 527.5M - 783 wins (21st) 24. OAK 543.0M - 880 wins (8th) I just don't see how anyone can claim spending doesn't matter.

"The only leagues"? Is the a even remotely major league that doesn't have a cap other than MLB? NHL, NBA, NFL, MLS, Arena Football, NLL, MLL. I bet even Team Tennis has a cap if I felt like looking into it.

As soon as they introduced revenue sharing, there should have been a salary floor.

I know this site's writers are generally united against a salary cap (or at a minimum, the ones that are pro-cap never write about it), but a salary cap is pretty much a necessity in pro sports now-a-days, and MLB will join the real world on this sooner or later. Spare me the claims of communism too. The Yankees and Red Sox are no more competitors than Sales and Finance are competitors in any large corporation.

Not minimum salary. Minimum dollars displayed.

Thanks for the info Ben. Obviously it would be awesome to include, but I can see the difficulties since different sites have different eligibility rules, and it's hard to know where a player is planning on putting a utility guy with eligibility in 4 positions.

I have User Centric inflation turned on, and my players are all on the right-hand box. However, I have 10 batters and 5 pitchers (with 10 batters openings {1B,2B,3B,SS,OF,OF,OF,C,Util,Util}) and I still have batters in the output. I understand that the batters may still have more 'value' than the pitchers left, but if I say that I only have 10 batter spots, PFM should recognize that and stop showing them.

Does PFM consider who we have drafted and the position limits, or are the position limits just for a scarcity calculation? I have all 10 batter positions filled in my team, but the output still includes batters.

At least the Brewers Are favored to win this year; Crap! No, they are not.

I thought the W-L on the depth charts was just runs scored and runs allowed expectations, not based on the schedule at all?

Think of it this way: If you had a perfect team that never lost, the impact on them would be 0. They go from 100% to 100%. Same is true if you had the worst team imaginable that never won. They go from 0% to 0%, no change. There is some maximum winning percentage where it helps you the most (somewhere around .525 in this case), and from there it degrades.

I figured that he meant the win total, not the playoff %. I mean, they won 97 games last year, and added 30 wins to the rotation, so you have to figure they are winning at least 120 this year right? (Yes, there is a heavy dose of sarcasm there.)

log 5 isn't linear like that.

Something looks weird with the table in 2004 and 2005 ... those playoff % can't be right, can they?

Is this consistent with one of the three 'old reports', or is it a whole new methodology?

They also get to put their stick in last for a faceoff, which is also a small advantage.

No one was forced to do business with Madoff, but that does make him any less of a scumbag.

I think I would take the zombie Rangers over the non-zombie Mariners if it came down to it.

"Connecticut-New York-New Jersey market, though with the complicating factor of the bay and a bunch of bridges that act as traffic bottlenecks thrown into the mix." Wait, are you saying that CT-NY-NJ doesn't have a bunch of bridges that are traffic bottlenecks?

What would you attach that camera to? It couldn't be low enough to potentially interfere with a pop up, and you wouldn't want it interfering with any sight lines.

What would cause it to move 3 inches from game 2 to game 6 in the same park? Is it possible it's really more like 3 inches off, and the 1st game was inaccurate 1 way, and game 6 the other. Being off almost half a foot is almost inexcusable.

Ah, keep baseball just like it's always been, America's 20th century pastime. Want to shorten half the games? Dump the DH. You aren't a baseball player if you can't play the field.

Meh. Howard had more HR and RBI, which is what he is paid to do. He also had less GIDP and the same number of triples. Huff obviously had more doubles, walks, and fewer K, and better slash stats.

Have to say, as a Phillies fan, this is the most nervous I've been for a series since this run began. The Yankee series I knew we were underdogs, and the rest I felt like the Phillies had the better team and just had to play their game to win. This series feels to me like the Phillies are the better team, but not by much, and there is a very good chance that even if the Phillies play their game to a tee, if a couple of bounces go the Giants way, the Phils will come up short of 3 straight NL Pennants.

It would be interesting to see how these probabilities changed if Lee was the starter tonight. Rangers up to 70% or only 55%?

OBP < AVG would be ... rare as well.

Very interesting article. If Cooper really does have a key to prevent pitching injuries, he's worth his weight in gold.

Completely true. Did the same thing to the Phillies in the WS last year. Pitched 1&5 instead of 1&4.

Royals won the AL pennant in 1980 as well.

Funny, somehow I thought the Phillies 97 wins was better than Tampa's 96 wins.

The Yankees have a rep for touting prospects as the next great thing in order to trade them when they are overvalued. Any time I hear about a 'great Yankee prospect', I just assume they are overrated until they prove otherwise in MLB. If I was a GM, I would never trade for a Yankee-hyped prospect.

How often does an attempted steal of third result in an E2 leading to a run? It seems like this happens way more than any other throw I can think of (Ryan Howard throwing to 2nd excluded).

At least this means we get the Lincecum/Halladay showdown.

Bring on RoboUmp.

Doc Halladay scoffs at 3.94 expected runs. :)

Given the choices, I think it was to the Phils advantage to lose that game. Otherwise if the Padres win, they face the Giants in the short series, which is the only team in the playoffs that can go nearly toe to toe with Hamels, Halladay, Oswalt. Getting the Giants in a 7 game series is a much better result for the Phils, assuming the two LDS go as expected.

No! That's not what percentiles mean. If PECOTA had 100% of players between the 45th and 55th percentiles (or the 49th and 51st percentiles) or whatever, then there prediction system is just as broken as it is when 40% of players are outside the 10-90% confidence interval.

Fine, but unless you think teams are horrible at putting the best players on the field, that should result in a upward sloping graph (fewest players in 0-10% and most in 90-100%) and not the U shape in TTango's graph or the downward slope in the graph in the article. Variance is a PITA to estimate, and PECOTA and BP wouldn't be the first (or last) to have underestimate just how much noise there really is in the data.

I was focusing on the hitter stats, but absolutely correct on the relievers vs starters. Both process variance (since the IP you are projecting the ERA for is lower) and parameter variance (since the amount of data you have to make the projection is generally less) ought to be significantly higher for relievers. I mean, I can see a rookie starter maybe having a higher variance than Mariano Rivera, but in most cases, the relievers should be much more variable around the mean.

If you are going to call them percentiles, you should have 10% of the players fall into 10 point wide ranges of percentiles.

No. The bell shape curve you are thinking of would come from calculating (Actual TAv - Expected TAv) / (SD of TAv) for each player, then plotting those results in a histogram. This is plotting percentile results, and by the definition of percentiles, there should be 10% of the players in the 0-10 percentile range, 10% of players in the 10-20 percentile range, etc.

I hadn't noticed they left on 0-10 and 90-100, the histogram below does look much worse. Judging by the graph below, PECOTA just doesn't have enough variability in their model. It almost looks like PECOTA might be picking up process variance ok (that is, the variability caused by the fact that not every player will hit their true expectation every year) but may not be adequately accounting for parameter variance (that is, the variance caused by the fact that your estimates of each players expectation is likely wrong as well.) Obviously, that's not anything I can say for sure, but I've seen percentile graphs like that before, and many times it was from not capturing parameter variance enough.

That histogram doesn't look too horrible to me. If you subject it to a Chi-squared test for uniformity, does it pass?

Thanks for everything Will. Good luck in future endeavors. FYI, the Phillies announcers said that Rollins was only going to get 3 at bats in the pregame show, and that's what he got, so I expect it was planned.

I don't see the issue. It's been this way for a while, everyone knows going in that if you are the top team in the league that has the 8 day DS that season you can select which schedule you want. No one whined about it when the Yankees used it last year to pick the long schedule. It is, of course, done for TV, so that you can have the following setup: We: N1 A1 A2 Th: N2 A1 A2 Fr: N1 N2 Sa: A1 A2 Su: N1 N2 A1 A2 Mo: N1 N2 Tu: A1 A2 We: N1 N2 4 games on Sunday, no days with only 1 scheduled game.

In many ways, the Braves remind me of the Phillies teams of the mid 2000s that had talent, but always seemed to come up a game or two short in September. We'll see if they can step it up to stay with the Phils, but often it can take a year or two of just missing to motivate a team to take that final step. The wild card here is there is no next step for Cox in terms of managing, so we'll see what happens. Should be an interesting race.

Presumably Jimmy Carter, referring to generally poor conditions of the US economy during his tenure as President.

Congrats on 1,000 Will. Hope this all gets straightened out.

Relax, I'm sure they are going to analyze the Rockies chances anytime now.

Welcome back to the column Ozzie!

Baseball teams aren't capitalist-style competitors. Capitalist style competitors maximize profits by driving all competitors out of business. If there is only 1 baseball team left, their profit is $0.

This might be asking too much, but do these stats include only the hitters that faced the knuckleballer, or the whole team?

Each franchise is owned by a separate entity. Key word there is franchise. Do you think two Burger Kings compete with each other, or are they competing with McDonalds?

Because the goal of MLB is to put an entertaining product on the field to compete with other entertainment choices, and the best way to do that isto ensure that the same 4-5 teams don't sign every single good player in existence.

It works in other sports. Hockey teams draft 18 year olds all the time, and they have their rights until July 1st after the kid graduates colleges. It gives the kid options (go to college or start pro career right away) and doesn't allow the player to use college years as leverage.

Also, they don't need to shorten the signing window, they need to extend it. Teams should hold rights 1 years + number of years of college eligibility left.

If they aren't going to have a worldwide draft, they should just dump the draft entirely, have a 4-6 week amateur signing window, and put a cap on the total amount spent by any one team on amateur players, with the cap dependent on the prior years record.

No Ozzie Guillen this week? What is the world coming to?

Relax, I'm sure the article about the Marlins or Rockies chances is in the hopper.

Boston to Philly is about 5 hours. Boston to NYC is no more than 3.5 or so, unless you are traveling in rush hours or something.

Stuff like this happens. The Giants won the NFC East because they beat the Saints in a 'road game' played in the Meadowlands after Katrina. The Flyers once had to play half a season in Quebec City because the roof got damaged at their arena.

The average everyday player might reach base on an error, what, 5-10 times a season. So maybe 1-2 base hits are errors or vice versa depending on the park? Doesn't this fall into an 'immaterial' category when doing estimates?

Agreed. This makes total sense to me. Sweeney got on base and kept the game alive. If he doesn't, he gets a -.041 WPA ... instead, he got .092, or a difference of .133. Ichiro HR to win the game gives him .867, if he gets out, it's -.133, a difference of 1.000 (Obviously, Ichiro could do other things, but these are the extremes). So is Ichiro's hit worth 7x as much? Well, he's responsible for 6 bases to 2, he's also responsible for Sweeney being able to advance to 3rd and home. I don't think 7x is all that far outside of the range of reasonableness.

This issue hasn't hurt the NFL, which has many of its own situations like this revolving around fumbles, yet they've found a way to deal with it. Plus, it's foolish to allow the field umpires to review the play. Have a 5th umpire in a booth, have him reviewing every play instantly, with the ability to signal down when a play may need to be reversed to hold up the game for a few seconds. Furthermore, if tennis can develop and successfully implement a technology to call balls in or out, I'm confident baseball can develop a technology to call balls and strikes / fair and foul more accurately. Automated strike calls, automated fair/foul calls, and review of the rest and you will finally be able to have a postseason where every 5th article isn't about the umpiring errors.

You didn't seriously use 1 year for a platoon split, did you?

I don't know how being among the top 3-5 lefty power hitters in baseball against lefties (go check out HR and slugging against lefties for LHB) has become a knock. It's well established Joe has a hate-on for Howard, why I have no idea, but he can't put together a rational argument ever about the man. At this point, I'll just bailout. I shouldn't have clicked on this ... one of my NY resolutions was to stop reading articles by Joe.

What a contrast. You take Matt's well reasoned, fact based article and compare it to yet another Joe Sheehan rant about Howard being a platoon player, it is obvious why they are emphasizing one and downplaying the other.

I agree that Werth isn't going to resign, but I don't think it's due to this deal. If Werth is willing to take '2nd tier' money, then he'll say a Phillie. But in the FA market, some team that needs outfielder power is going to pay him more than he's worth to the Phillies given the rest of their lineup.

Jim Thome at Age 35: .288/.416/.598/.322 TAv/5.1 WARP Phils would probably take that.

You remind me of an entry level 'think I'm a big shot' college graduate with a shiny degree that thinks they know how to 'fix' everything that's wrong. If the Phillies can choose to spend an extra $25M in 2012 to make an additional $30M, they will do so, whether that pushes the budget from $75M to $100M or from $425M to $450M. Even if they were losing $50M a year, spending the $25M to make $30M means they are only losing $45M.

The same is true of puck prospectus.

Re: Pitcher protection Do the pitchers want something like that? I'm guessing no ... it might be something you have to introduce in the minors and allow it to naturally work its way into the game, instead of mandating it on the ML level.

Is Week W-L supposed to be 'projected W-L' or 'Last Year W-L' or something like that?

I like the split rankings. Using the records without adjusting for the fact that the AL has a substantial advantage due to the DH rule (NL teams in AL parks are at a huge disadvantage; AL teams in NL parks are on nearly equal footing) just makes this whole combining thing questionable, in my opinion.

He does take a stand by saying the PECOTA updates are silly. Sorry, but if he thinks that way, can I have my money back?

If Forbes' numbers were a fair evaluation of the value of the teams, we would expect the actual sale price to average somewhat higher than that due to the winner's curse phenomenon, especially in sales with significant number of bidders.

I think if you permanently disqualified any voter once they failed to vote for a couple of people that got elected with 85% or more, maybe you'd get rid of the idiots farily quickly.

Raines played defense, hence was twice the player every DH was.

Then explain to us why BP is a better value than ESPN if BP content is available to Insider, and the costs are nearly identical.

This is a good point. Maybe BP subscribers can have access to Neyer and Law over at ESPN?

You are just the vocal ones. BP has many, many subscribers, not just the ones that comment. Joe leaving has about as much impact on my subscription as who gets elected President of Turkmenistan has on my life. There are many people here because they want to see more statistical-driven type articles.

I also wonder how much of a factor Lee not demanding the ball when his team was down 2-1 in the World Series played in this one.

No. For the same reason as a millenium starts in x001, a decades starts in xxx1. There was no year zero, so the first decade is 1-10, then 11-20. Now, you can rightly claim that 00-09 is also a decade, but then so was 96-05, so we could have a 'best teams of the decade' every year.

Awesome article. Thanks.

If there is a game 7, maybe they can play a few innings and then suspend it. It worked so well last year.

Amoroso is the real key. If you get a chance, the best place in Philly is out in Manayunk called Dalessandro's.

Overrated? No. With StubHub now offically linked with MLB, it's going to be impossible to keep the parks 'home team only'.

I know psychology doesn't count for much here, but I do think there is a significant confidence boost for a team when their starter throws a CG. I wonder if that's a split that is available ... what is the record the game after a CG?

They should put the 'A version of this was on ESPN' at the top, so we know which articles to skip.

Oops, I clicked 'flagged' on this post, and didn't mean too. I was just trying to scroll down. Sorry.

"just the schedule".

I'll repeat this from a week ago: ----------------------------------------------------- Since 2000, the NFL has had 284 'team seasons', 108 of which went to the playoffs. That gives a shot of about 38% of making the playoffs. So, of those 108 teams, 108 * 38% = 41 teams should have repeated in the playoffs. In reality, 49 of the 108 teams repeated, giving a p-value of .0714. Since 2000, MLB has had 300 team seasons, of which 80 made the playoffs. That gives a shot of about 26.7% of making the playoffs. So, of those 80 teams, 80 * 26.7% = 21 teams should have repeated in the playoffs. In reality, 40 of the 80 teams have repeated, giving a p-value of .00001. How about the other way? In the 9 seasons since 2000, the NFL has had 45 teams finish in the bottom 5. If the league was balanced so that teams could rebound quickly, those teams should have had the same 38% shot of making the playoffs the next season. That gives an expected number of bottom 5 teams making the playoffs the next season as 17. In reality, 9 teams made it there. This gives a p-value of .0077. For MLB, we have 10 completed seasons, so 50 bottom 5 teams. We should have seen 13 of those teams rebound to the playoffs, instead we saw just 2. This gives a p-value of .00003. Moving out of the binomial analysis, the NFL has had 29 of its' 32 (90.6%) franchises make the playoffs in the last 9 seasons, while 21 (65.6%) have finished in the bottom 5 at least once. MLB has had 24 of 30 franchises make the playoffs in the last 10 years (80.0%) and just 17 (56.7%) franchises finish in the bottom 5. -------------------------------------------------- Based on the p-values, the NFL is so much more 'even' that it's silly to think it's such the schedule.

No, they do not. It is the position of the shoulders, belt, and knees in a natural hitting stance. If you go up there and crunch up into a ball, your strike zone could be over your head.

Strike zones do not change because the batter moves around in their at bat.

It's not about Fox not getting the shows in, it's about MLB not having to put LCS games on at 1pm on the West Coast or 10pm on the East Coast any more than is necessary.

And it's best for betting because they change the rules constantly to ensure that the game remains balanced and no small group of teams will dominate.

And damnit, we are not going to emulate the most popular, successful sports league in the world.

I believe profits from the NFL playoffs are mostly, if not completely, distributed equally among the 32 teams.

It's hard to believe their are people that still argue that MLB is as balanced as the NFL. It's not even close people. Since 2000, the NFL has had 284 'team seasons', 108 of which went to the playoffs. That gives a shot of about 38% of making the playoffs. So, of those 108 teams, 108 * 38% = 41 teams should have repeated in the playoffs. In reality, 49 of the 108 teams repeated, giving a p-value of .0714. Since 2000, MLB has had 300 team seasons, of which 80 made the playoffs. That gives a shot of about 26.7% of making the playoffs. So, of those 80 teams, 80 * 26.7% = 21 teams should have repeated in the playoffs. In reality, 40 of the 80 teams have repeated, giving a p-value of .00001. How about the other way? In the 9 seasons since 2000, the NFL has had 45 teams finish in the bottom 5. If the league was balanced so that teams could rebound quickly, those teams should have had the same 38% shot of making the playoffs the next season. That gives an expected number of bottom 5 teams making the playoffs the next season as 17. In reality, 9 teams made it there. This gives a p-value of .0077. For MLB, we have 10 completed seasons, so 50 bottom 5 teams. We should have seen 13 of those teams rebound to the playoffs, instead we saw just 2. This gives a p-value of .00003. Moving out of the binomial analysis, the NFL has had 29 of its' 32 (90.6%) franchises make the playoffs in the last 9 seasons, while 21 (65.6%) have finished in the bottom 5 at least once. MLB has had 24 of 30 franchises make the playoffs in the last 10 years (80.0%) and just 17 (56.7%) franchises finish in the bottom 5. The NFL has a much better system of being able to go from bad to good (or good to bad) quickly, meaning very few franchises have to go through decades long drought of not even seeing a playoff game.

I rarely say this ... but I agree with Joe. Time for balls and strikes to be called by pitchFx, and if the technology is ready for other calls to be subject to replay.

" fear we’re in for yet another month of fail from the arbiters. " Why would October be any different than April? MLB umpires may be more inaccurate than NFL officials, which is saying a lot.

It's all good. If you asked Joe last year, I'm sure he had the Brewers in 4, the Dodgers in 6, and the Rays in 6. (Only that last one is for sure, though, as Jaffe wrote the other two for BP).

Apparently standard. 08 had the Dodgers at 11, but 07 had ARZ at 15, 06 had STL at 17, and 05 had the Padres at 18.

forgot 'around there' at the end of that.

Detroit at 15 but still likely to make the playoffs. I wonder if that's really low, or if it's typically.

Come in 30th in hit list, get 4 year contract extension.

I prefer 'Mitch saves'. ;-)

Yeah. Sure the 0 BS was a fluke, but I don't think 2008 was all that different from some of his other 'dominant' years.

1-in-a-million, or you know, 3 of the last 6 years for Lidge.

You can't use NL DH statistics. Ryan Howard and Raul Ibanez were the Phillies DH for most games this year as I recall, but those aren't the bats added to the lineup. Instead, you have to look at how Greg Dobbs or Mayberry or Bruntlett performed at the regular's position.

I'm virtually certain that the intrinsic roster advantage of having a DH on the roster is the main reason it's so persistent. The difference between the average AL DH and the average NL first guy on the bench has to be massive compared to the difference between the average AL and NL pitcher in terms of offensive performance.

Interesting. This has some interesting implications for playoff series. In a 2-2-1-1-1 format, all the homefield advantages would be relatively equal, where in a 2-3-2 format, you are possibly looking at something that is on more equal footing than expected because of the 'bonus' HFA for game 4.

But would you be a great Ceasar?

It was lunch break, and right now I'm waiting for an Excel spreadsheet to calculate.

I didn't know fangraphs provided that info. Of course, him swinging at balls means his chance of a walk is dimished, and his chance of doing something else is increased. Since all of H&R advantage in my analysis is outside the walk category, we can assume that Francouer shifting walks to other would increase the advantage of the hit and run. To address some of the other points: I assumed 1 base advanced on a fly ball single because it would seem to me that most of these would be a situation where the runner would have to wait to make sure it wouldn't be caught. I didn't assume any triple because, well, triples are really rare, and it's Francouer. I admit I don't have much support other than gut feel on the things like "How often are LD a double?" and "How often will FB outs in a hit and run situation result in a DP?", but I'll point out that they aren't really all that critical to the results, as they would impact both sides of the ledger. I just don't think that it's fair to cast "serious doubt" on the strategy, when there are a set of reasonable(?) assumptions that make this a hugely positive move. If a manager could correctly make a decision that made a 10% impact on every game (it's impossible, I know), you'd take a 88 win team and turn them into a 97 win team. I think that's a damn good manager right there.

10% better chance of winning is retarded?

Let's just work through this logically, without slight win/huge loss meaningless crap. All data is from baseball-reference.com. These are the outcomes that could happen: walk strikeout ground ball line drive fly ball First, we need to assign probabilities to each one of those events happening. Lidge throws about 40% of his pitches for balls. I don't have a stat that tells me how often Francouer would swing at a ball, so I'm going to simplify and assume he doesn't. Since about 21% of pitches to Francouer are fouled off, we get that the chance that a non-fouled off pitch is a ball is .40/.79 = .506. The probability that Francouer will walk is then .506 ^ 2, or .256. In the hit and run situation, it would only likely be on for one pitch. Francouer fouls off 31% of swings, so therefore the probability of a walk is .256*.31 = .079. (If he doesn't foul off the pitch, there is no chance of a walk.) Next, we move on to the strikeout. In the no hit and run case, he swings at 60% of pitches, and 62% of them are put into play (we are excluding fouls here, so the other 38% are swings and misses). That means he'll strike out 22.8% on the 2-2 count, and 9.12% on the 3-2 count, for a total K probably of .319. On the hit and run, we'll reduce the 'balls in play' to 55%, because of the loss of pitch selection. So, on pitch 1, he strikes out 45% of the time. If he fouls it off (31%), then we are back to the no H&R situation, and he'll strike out .319. Weighting the two, we see he strikes out with probability .409. Now we can move onto balls in play. Francouer hits 18% of hit balls as line drives. Again, I'll reduce that a little to 16% on the hit and run situation to account for loss of pitch selection. His ground ball to fly ball ratio is 0.76. If you combine all this together, you get the following probabilities (first column is no Hit and Run, the second column is hit and run): Walk .256 .079 SO .319 .409 Ground .150 .186 Fly .198 .244 Line .077 .082 OK, next up, we have to figure out what the win probability is if each of these happens. The walk is easy. We'll have bases loaded, 0 outs, down by 2. The win expectancy here is .464, using the same site Rob used above. The strikeout is also pretty easy. In the no hit and run case, you are going to be 12-, 1 out, down 2, for a win expectancy of .171. Runners are thrown out against Lidge about 10% of the time recently. So, 90% of the time, you will have -23, 1 out, down 2 for a win exp of .305, and 10% of the time you'll have -2-, 2 out, down 2 for a win expectancy of .042. Weight those together and you get .279 for the win expectancy. On to ground balls. This article is a little dated (http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/groundballs-flyballs-and-line-drives/), but it gives us that 27.5% of ground balls are hits/safe on error. In the no hit and run situation, let's assume you'll end up with these scenarios (WE in parentheses): Hits 123, down 2 .225 (.464) 1-3, down 1 .020 (.644) 12-, down 1 .010 (.514) -23, down 1 .010 (.677) -2-, tied .010 (.798) Outs --3, down 2 .575 (.063) 1-3, down 2 .100 (.167) -23, down 2 .040 (.305) 12-, down 2 .010 (.171) Weighted together, we get a WE of .204. In the hit and run situation, I would put it like this: Hits 1-3, down 1 .250 (.644) -2-, tied .020 (.798) 12-, down 1 .004 (.514) 123, down 2 .001 (.464) Outs -23, down 2 .700 (.305) 1-3, down 2 .015 (.167) 12-, down 2 .005 (.171) --3, down 2 .005 (.063) Weighted together, we get a WE of .397. Next up are fly balls. In the no hit and run situation, these are either home runs, hits or outs. Francouer hits HR on 8% of FB, so we have 8% with a WE of 1. 90 percent or so of the other 92%, or 83% of the time, we have 12-, 1 out, down 2, with the WE of .171. The other 9 percent of the time, it's a base hit. I'll assume that 4.5% of the time, it's a single, and the bases are loaded with 0 outs, for a WE of .464, while the other 4.5% of the time it's a double off the wall, scoring both and giving the WE of .798. Combining them all together we have WE of .279 on fly balls. The HR, single, and double assumptions are going to be the same for the hit and run situation. However, we'll assume that 73% of the time it's a normal fly ball out, and 10% of the time the guy gets doubled off 2nd for a 1--, 2 out, down 2 situation with WE of .043. Combining these, we get WE of .266. Finally, the line drive. 74.2% of line drives do not produce outs. I'm going to round that to 75% to make the math a little easier. I'm going to assume that 2/3 are singles and 1/3 are doubles. In the no hit and run situation, we'll assume that there is never a triple play, and 5% of LD result in a DP. For the hit and run situation, I'm going to assume 15% of LD result in a DP, and 2% result in a TP. No hit and run: 123, 0 out, -2 .400 (.464) 12-, 0 out, -1 .075 (.514) 1-3, 0 out, -1 .025 (.644) -2-, 0 out, T .225 (.798) -23, 0 out, -1 .025 (.677) 12-, 1 out, -2, .200 (.171) 1--, 2 out, -2, .025 (.043) -2-, 2 out, -2, .025 (.043) Weighted average WE = .473 And in the hit and run case: 1-3, 0 out, -1 .400 (.644) 12-, 0 out, -1 .075 (.514) 123, 0 out, -2 .025 (.464) -2-, 0 out, T .240 (.798) -23, 0 out, -1 .010 (.677) 12-, 1 out, -2, .130 (.171) 1--, 2 out, -2, .050 (.043) -2-, 2 out, -2, .050 (.043) ---, 3 out, -2, .020 (.000) Weighted average WE = .533 So we have win expectancy table of (1st column no H&R, 2nd column H&R) Walk .464 .464 Strikeout .171 .269 Ground .204 .397 Fly .279 .266 Line .473 .533 Combining the probability table and the WE table, I find that without the hit and run, the expected win expectancy after the Francouer AB is .295. With the hit and run, the expected win expectancy is .329. By calling for the hit and run, Manuel increasing the Mets chance of winning by 10% or so. (I'm sure there are errors here, as this is off the cuff, but hopefully there is nothing that changes anything in a huge way.)

There have been 15 unassisted TP in the history of baseball. Fewer than perfect games, even. How was there a 'good chance' of it happening? Even just normal triple plays have happened at a rate of 5 per season, or once every 500 games or so. This is like in poker, where if you fold a full house because the other guy might have quads, you are a fool. If a manager decides not to hit and run because he might line out into a triple play, the manager is a fool.

Fair enough. That completely contradicts what I found when I did something similar for a different sport, but I guess every sport has their quirks. Thanks.

I used to do it for another sport, but no longer do so due to time constraints. If you are willing to pay me whatever BP pays Jay to do Hit List, though, I'll reconsider.

I guess my objection is more with the term power rankings if that's NOT what your goal is. Power Rankings, in general usage, are typically rankings of 'who would beat who right now'. The Hit List is more of an adjusted standings than that, in my opinion.

I don't disagree ... but winning matters too. And honestly, until we see that the Hit List factor is actually correlated with future performance, they really aren't much more than a different form of standings, are they? They tell us about the past, not about the future.

Pretty easy to see why people would think there are 3 components when you have 3 bullet points. It would have been easier to read/comprehend if you just listed the four bullet points, and not explained the actual winning percentage part is detail.

No one said only use 2 weeks of data, but I think the last 2 weeks tells us more than the first two weeks of April on who is likely to win in the next week or two.

Oops. So it does. I missed it on the 2nd reading as well. Ok, so ignore my second paragraph above. The rest of it still applies. :)

I thought it was just W1 (based on runs scored/allowed) + W2 (equivalent runs scored/allowed) + W3 (Eq. RS/RA adjusted for schedule) divided by 3.

My biggest issue is you consider them 'power rankings', when they really aren't, they are just a summary of how teams have performed (while ignoring the biggest indicator of performance, wins) to date. Why ignored 0th order wins? BP likes to call teams that outperform their 1st, 2nd, or 3rd order wins 'lucky', but I haven't seen a recent article showing that the correlation from year to year on Wins Above Expectation is near 0. Unless that's the case, I think wins are a necessary part of a power ranking measurement. Additionally, Power Rankings ought to be be informing us of how teams are playing right now, so additional weight ought to be given to the most recent 7, 14, or 30 days. It would be interesting to see what the correlation is between the current power ranking formula and the performance in the next 2 weeks or so. I'm guessing that correlation could be improved by weighting the more recent games more heavily. On a different subject, if you are going to 'adjust' for league difficulty, please make sure you do it right. I don't have the extensive database to prove it, but I'm 100% certain that if the AL and NL were perfectly evenly match, the AL's expected winning percentage in interleague is significantly higher than .500, because the advantage of having a DH on your roster and using them while the NL has to use the first guy off their bench in AL parks is way more than the advantage the NL has in their park, where their pitcher will hit a little better than the AL pitcher due to more practice. If the AL should win 56% of their home games and the NL should win 52% of theirs, the AL would have an expected record of 131-121.

Is Daniel Murphy a lock to score from 1st on a double? What does Francouer's hit chart look like? He seems like a player that is going to pull more often than not, so the value of the newly opened hole is much higher than the value of the newly closed hole. How do you know it was a CS? I think the Phils catch someone stealing on Lidge about once in a blue moon. I know this is just an unfiltered post, but at least give us some of this info instead of just dictating 'slight loss' without any backing.

Kevin, Can you suggest the Mets make Minaya "GM for Life"?

First, fire all the Republicans. Then, fire all the Democrats. Then ... oh, wait, NationalS recovery plan. Never mind, that's a much bigger hole to climb out of than what I was talking about.

I'm an actuary, I'm not so good with these letter things.

Pet peave: The Santa Philly fans booed was so drunk he could barely walk straight, or at all. Philly has no "anti-Santa" agenda.

Wishful thinking. MLB will never pass the NFL in sports unless they passively promote the gambling side of the sport the way the NFL does.

Baseball is going to end up like the NBA and NHL, where draftees will get $x total, signing bonuses inclusive, and it's all because these kids think they deserve more money than most people make in a lifetime because they are good at a game.

It'll be a national holiday the day Boras dies or retires.

All the depth in the world wouldn't have saved the Mets this year, but yeah, Minaya has sucked.

Will, Just a friendly warning. Anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering, and that is the path to the dark side.

I'm not a Red Sox fan but live in the area. I'm certainly getting the feeling the tide is turning on Epstein. I've even heard people say that Duquette is the one that deserves the credit for the titles, and Theo just got lucky joining at the right time. Not sure that's sure, but I think Epstein's welcome in Beantown has worn pretty thin.

And then there is the story of former Flyer Patrik Thoreson, who blocked a puck with his cup, only to have the cup shatter into pieces.

Would it make sense for the Phillies to 'tagteam' Martinez and Moyer, at least for a few start until Pedro can prove he can go 6 innings? Moyer is likely useless from the pen oher than starting an inning, but if Pedro is going to go innings 1-4, and then Moyer will go innings 5-7, I think you might have a rather effective 'starter' that doesn't tax the rest of the bullpen too much.

The salary floor is based on the amount of revenue sharing you get. If the bottom 5 teams get $75M in 'shared revenue' (national + revenue sharing), a salary floor of $60M or so should be easily manageable.

Yeah, look what it's done to the NHL. Record attendances and revenues eery single season it's been in existence. The horrors!

Would a worldwide draft run afoul of EU labor laws, or would they not apply since the job is in North America?

Salary cap w/ exemptions for signing players you drafted, salary floor, and something like this proposal is really what is needed.

Yup. I was 7 for the movie. My bad. :)

a) I bet Blue Jays fans would love if JP Riccardi wasn't allowed to do anything else he needs to be rescued from. b) The title could have been 100x better with the simple addition of the word 'the'.

Moving expenses are on the players? Rough. Is that true in MLB as well?

Other than the team stats, which just sort of seem thrown in there, this is a very good and well put together article. Thanks. Instead of the team splits, it might be more interesting to see it by manager/year. It would be interesting if this is a management philosophy thing, or if you just make a decision based on the player at hand. I'm a bit stunned that Howard has gotten to 3-0 111 though. That would require him to not swing at 3 bad pitches in a row. Stunning.

Pretty much always the case. Things that come out looking simple always have 1,000,000 things going on behind the scenes that make it hard to do, while groundbreaking stuff is usually from an interesting insight, but fairly basic number crunching.

But maybe Eric has all the answers to make the financial markets work.

No, but MLB could have a 'front office type' person leak the entire list anonymously to a reporter or two that the league trusts, and they could release the list. You are right that Selig is never going to have a press conference announcing the 103 names, though.

Victorino left the game last night after rolling onto his wrist making a play in CF. Have you heard if it's serious?

Ah, more of the anti-salary cap rhetoric. The salary cap is the reason the NFL is where it is today. It's the reason the NFL became the powerhouse sport on the American landscape.

Probably not. Adding 2 wins to the Pirates would actually have negative value if it moved them down in the draft a couple of spots.

Deal pending medical record review: Cliff Lee and outfielder Ben Francisco for Class A right-hander Jason Knapp, Class AAA right-hander Carlos Carrasco, shortstop Jason Donald and catcher Lou Marson, according to major-league sources.

Read that the Phillies scouts have left Seattle before seeing Halladay pitch, and they have essentially finalized a deal with Cleveland: Cliff Lee + unknown for Knapp, Carrasco, Marson, and Donald. I wonder how much return on Halladay the Blue Jays just lost if this is true, and the strongest pursuer of his services is out.

I think you greatly underestimate the force of cultural inertia. It might change in the 25-50 year timeframe as there are no longer generations that didn't grow up with computers, but there are 40-50 year old people right now that have NO interest in being 'online', and will want their games on TV the old fashioned way.

Pirates trade Jack Wilson and Ian Snell for Jeff Clement, Ronny Cedeno, Aaron Pribanic, Brett Lorin, Nathan Adcock.

Dawson might be a better candidate than Raines, IMO.

I always enjoy your articles, but you seem to have an inferiority complex involving the NFL. The NFL is obviously doing lots of things right, they are by far and away the most popular and profitable sport in the country. Granted, a lot of that is from the fact that they have the weakest players union of the 4 major sports, but they have to be making better decisions on these type of issues than the other lagues most of the time, or they wouldn't be where they are.

True, but in his chat earlier this week, he still picked the Mets to win the division.

These Mets have shown they have the hearts of a lion. They won't just quit and give up. You are acting like this is a team that blew a 6.5 game lead with 3 weeks to play.

I'm sure tons of teams have come from 4th place 7.5 games out with 75 or so games to go and won the division.

I agree with most of the rant here. As a Phils fan, Wade is frustrating at times, but he is competent and will do the right thing most of the time.

I don't know if the MLB version is the same, but the TMR average ticket price is useless for the NHL, because they allow the teams to determine what are 'premium' tickets ... some teams claim the entire lower bowl as 'premium' so the high tickets are excluded and they can market a low average ticket price.

Congrats to you, Ken. Can't say I'm thrilled with the decision, because I found Ken's style irritating at times, but your analysis was always top notch.

My team has a great big red pennant with the year 2008 flying from the flagpole at our home park. Congrats on the All Star Game win though. I guess it's something, if you can't win them when it matters.

So even ties count as AL victories now?

Incredible catch by Crawford.

I hope that Halladay ends up a Phillie for Happ, Brown, Marson, and Carrasco. I expect he'll end up a Yankee, because the Phils won't part with Drabek, and the Yankees will take the horrible Wells deal without blinking.

Amazing, amazing article Tim. Fanastic.

I would go with Reyes or Papelbon.

I've found it best to just assume that Joe's opinions about the Eastern divisions will have a severe bias towards the NYC teams. It nevers fails. The Mets will be lucky to finish with 80 wins this season.

The Phillies did sign him this year to a 3 year deal, didn't they? It wasn't $20M+ money, though ... 3 years/$54M or something like that.

The Home Run Derby is almost the "main event", while the Game itself often feels like the undercard. As far as the Howard argument, Joe just likes to keep turning the knife. I'm not sure why, because it hurts his credibility in other aspects of his work, where he does do solid analysis. With his next HR, Howard will get to 200 HR for his career, and it'll be done in about 550 fewer plate appearance that Albert Pujols, and as far as I can tell, fewer than anyone in the history of the sport of baseball. (This could be wrong, I could not find a definitive list.) When one person towers over history in an aspect of a sport, it's hard to imagine that he is the "most overrated", even acknowledging that he has flaws in other parts of his game, which he constantly works to improve.

But if a replacement level pitcher does considerably more damage to a team than a replacement level hitter (I don't know if that's true or not), then relatively equal VORPs would imply the hitter is contributing more, because they being judged on a harsher curve, no?

UZR = 0.2, good for 12th in MLB, behind Rollins and ahead of H. Ramirez.

Sorry, but calling balls and strikes has to be the easiest officiating job in the 4 major sports, and they are still worse at it then any of the others, barring maybe NFL officials.

This has been a great series of articles. Thanks BP.

I get the feeling from the press in Philly that they are unwilling to move Drabek, so it's unlikely to get done unless that changes. Also, over half of that 1/3 of a run lead on the NL comes from Monday's game, right? Figure a normal game gets them 6 runs, so 16 excess runs in a single game pushes up the average by about .20 runs per game.

The initial contest description said it was a contest where the winner would 'write a weekly column from the end of the contest until the end of the World Series.' This wasn't intended to be a permanent job, though maybe the quality of writing has changed that.

My point is that many of the good statistical articles now end with 'A version of this article was previously published on ESPN Insider.' Why should I continue to give BP $35/year when I can pay ESPN $60 for 2 years and get 75% of the BP articles I'm interested in (a day earlier too from what I understand), plus a ton of other things? I hate the idea of giving ESPN money, because they are the antithesis of what sports journalism should be, but if BP is going to become more and more like ESPN, I might as well get the better deal.

So it's fair to say you have a bias as well here?

The coefficient of variation, CV, is a common one you may have seen. CV = standard deviation / mean, so a s.d. of 2 on a mean of 20 has a .1 CV, while the s.d. of 3 with a mean of 40 has a CV of .075.

Why? So BP can be even more like ESPN? Baseball Prospectus is following the "Hockey News" path of drifting from serious sports analysis to media driven drivel. I would much rather they get rid of "Baseball Prospectus Radio" and "Unfiltered" and "Prospectus Idol" and go back to what drew many of us here in the first place, solid baseball analysis backed up by statistics or insider knowledge. Even "Prospectus Today", which used to be a great feature article on the site, is now more often filled with rants or opinion than any sort of fact based analysis.

Funck has an annoying style, at least to me. I was honestly shocked he made it past rounds 2 or 3.

All four deserved to get this far, and nothing that happened this week changed that. They might as well have said, "ok, we are down to 4" so now we'll flip a coin twice to see which three move on.

How about releasing the vote counts so we can see that for ourselves. You don't have to realise the names of the people the vote counts go with, if you don't want to.

Well, this is probably the last straw for my subscription to BP. I can get most of the interesting articles by subscribing to ESPN Insider, and Matt was the best writer in this group, but lost because BP took a contest that was supposed to be about readers interest and made it about making sure the person could promote BP and make them money.

I'd rather them just scrap the ASG altogether before I see a pennant decided because an ace pitcher has a hand broken on a comeback liner. This game is completely and utterly meaningless. What has HFA given the AL the last few seasons. The World Series titles are pretty evenly split.

I apologize to the contestants, but I just can't sit through reading these transcripts. It's just so damn boring. No one will get my vote this week, but that's not a reflection on anyone's talents, just that I hate this week's format and I can't really judge.

Joe does some amazing writing, but I think to get the best out of him, BP needs to restrict a few topics as off-limits for him, at least for a season or two: 1) All Star Game 2) Hall of Fame 3) Any team, player, or organization in the Eastern division of either league

If you want the Yankees to be able to make homer decisions to get their marginal players on the team, maybe they should try winning the AL.

Citizens' Bank Park is a run-neutral park, please join us in 2009 instead of hanging out back in 2005.

Is being compared to Willie Mays Hayes a compliment or an insult?

Now, in Brian's 'LaRussa decisions' article, I just said I generally don't like the 'you made the whole decision' articles, because it's easy to say that after you know the results. However, the use of run expectancy to show that LaRussa should have known he was hurting his chances to score/win by bunting is an article saver to me. It shows that even prior to the result, we know this is a bad decision. Nice work. 3 thumbs up this week for me, and this will clearly be one of them.

Not a fan of this article. Mainly because I think it's way to easy to say 'this is what they should have done' after the game is over. Plus, I actually agree with LaRussa here. The Cardinals bullpen is pretty good, but Carpenter is your ace, and only getting 5 innings from your ace sets you up for problems, especially when 2 of your last 3 starters failed to get out of the 6th. There are times when managers do make choices that are clearly inferior. I don't think this is one of them at all.

I don't generally like Ken's style, but this article is pretty well done and getting the PH stat when you only have a few hours to write the story is almost impressive enough to get the thumbs up all by itself. And I agree with you on the umpiring. To me, baseball is easily the easiest of the four major sports to officiate, and other than the NFL (who are part time), the MLB umpires seem to have the most trouble with the basic calls.

Actually 10, counted too fast. The other 6 are performing closer to their career averages.

That's 11 of the 16 players above Howard. Marc used the EqA stat in the opening paragraph, and that's what I used here. It's also the stat that's been used in several articles claim Utley is 'way over his head' this season. How, exactly, did I cherry pick?

Not really what I was hoping for with Bastardo. Couldn't figure out when it went wrong when I was watching.

Kevin Youkalis - 2009: .333 Career: .298 Carlos Pena - 2009: .309 Career: .297 Russ Branyan - 2009: .338 Career: .282 Adrain Gonzalez - 2009: .353 Career: .301 Prince Fielder - 2009: .340 Career: .305 Victor Martinez - 2009: .325 Career: .295 Adam LaRoche - 2009: .298 Career: .283 Lyle Overbay - 2009: .317 Career: .282 Justin Morneau - 2009: .322 Career: .292 Joey Votto - 2009: .356 Career: .303 Ryan Howard - 2009: .294 Career: .308 When Chase Utley improves stats over his career numbers, it's because he's playing "over his head" and will regress to the mean. When other players do it, it makes Ryan Howard "average", despite the fact that his career EqA is 5-15 points better than almost every single person on that list above. Yeah, I understand why you all get upset when people complain you have agendas against certain teams.

So no 30 year old has ever improved their skill level and maintained it for a few years?

But April was just so hideous. I can't find league rankings for even something as simple as ERA for splits by month, but I suspect they are significantly better than 15th/13th since May 1, particularly in SNLVAR. Not saying that they don't need pitching help, because they could certainly use another starter, but the staff isn't hopeless either the way it looked like it might be in April. Jamie Moyer in particular has given up just 20 runs in his last 7 starts, while going 43 innings in those starts. His ERA is still near 6, but it's a more respectable 4.19 in the last 7.

So crazy. If the Phillies were just 18-17 at home, the division would be all but wrapped up. The Phillies starting pitching has been getting a little better (sub 4.00 ERA in June), so if they can get the real Lidge back to settle down the bullpen, maybe they can start to get the home record under control.

I agree with you. If it's possible in the technology you are using, it would be a nice feature to allow users to set their own threshold for hiding. The certain setting seems to capture too much, where it seems like a -10 or -15 setting would only get the truly off topic, ranting, or unproductive posts.

Great work for the last month or so, Matthew. Good luck.

I knew there was something about you that I just liked. Go Phillies! :)

The baseball draft goes on far too long. What is it, 50 rounds? That's nuts. I understand the competitive balance reasoning for the draft, but does that matter after 5-10 rounds? Baseball players have it better than football players w.r.t the draft, though. At least they have another respectable league they can play in, granted it is in Japan, if they can't come to terms with MLB.

His clients were the players, but in the entertainment industry, he also has to make sure that the product that is a result of his negotations is entertaining and affordable to the fans as well, and in that he failed.

I suspect this is similar to the world's top soccer clubs whining that the World Cup tires out their players and makes them more injury prone the next year. Even if it's true, it's one of the price you pay for having the best of the best players. Don't like it, well then, don't sign players that make their international teams.

That's the type of foolish reasoning that's the reason America thinks unions are past their usefulness. The unions job are to make sure the employees are treated fairly. If a truck driver is cuaght drunk driving, the union should actively work to get him fired, to protect the rest of their members that aren't drunk driving from having to pay higher insurance premiums, or facing the social stigma where people think they are a bunch of drunks.

Never said that. But Fehr was part of the group that led to the situation where it is today, and to pretend it's all the evil owners fault is nonsense. The owners and players union are both responsible for the absurdness of the economics of the game today.

I'm not surprised, but I totally disagree. Fehr built a legacy: * Cancellation of a World Series * Families priced out of going to games * Labour unrest through almost his entire term * Protected PED Users He was great for the players, perhaps, but he was a disaster for the fans.

Given the 50% assumption, yes.

I understand that, but the 1991 World Series is a topic that just about sells itself, in my opinion. Now, when you pick a topic that sells itself, you have to make sure you get people's attention early, or they are going to stop if it's just like one of the many other things they've read on the topic. Matt accomplished that, this was an article I enjoyed reading right through to the end.

I found the 2004 ALCS way more significant than the 2004 WS. The 2004 WS was a boring snorefest, that no one that isn't a Red Sox fan will ever go back to watch with there kids to say 'that was a great series'. The 1991 WS was the type of series that you can do that with. Game 7 was just an incredible event, one that you could watch in full over and over again on MLB Network.

The meltdown in Beantown would be epic if Papelbon really did sign with the Yankees.

I think the CE always refering to the home team is the same as the traditional way of presenting WE, isn't it?

It was one of the greatest World Series ever played. I can't imagine how it's "not historically significant".

Matt, If you've checked every single World Series, maybe you have this answer available. What have been the biggest chokes/comebacks in terms of Championship expectancy? Has any team ever been over 98% and gone on to lose? I'm just wondering how the percentage line up to the BP article a couple of years back on the biggest regular season collapses in terms of playoff probabilities.

Other than the earthquake, this is the first WS that I remember anything about, and it's because it was such an awesome World Series. Fanastic selection of a topic, and a pretty good execution. My only quibble about CE would be the home team should be given ~53% WE for the future games.

I forgot to add, the title is too long. It shouldn't ever be more than one line unless you have a really good reason, and this doesn't qualify as a good reason.

I liked the analysis, but as I'm an actuary, I wonder if this is a case of well put together analysis on crummy data leading us to a conclusion we just don't know if we can trust. It's a tentative thumbs up (I tend to vote for half of the contestants), but I still have a couple more articles to go, so I'm not sure it'll survive.

Another great example. He had two great at bats against Sabathia that game if I remember correctly, using something like 18 or 20 pitches in total, and was given a lot of credit for wearing Sabathia down.

Unless it's Kevin Gross busting open a tight 1-0 with a three run bomb in the 5th. http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/PHI/PHI198606190.shtml Or Mitch Williams ripping a single off one of the elite closers to end the latest ending doubleheader in baseball history in extra innings. http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/PHI/PHI199307022.shtml Or Steve Carlton breaking open a game against Fernando Valenzuela in just the situation you described. http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/LAN/LAN198405160.shtml Lots of great memories from my youth are from Phillies pitchers overcoming the odds and getting it done in the batters box. Pitchers that can hit will win you games in the National League. (One bad memory of pitchers being able to hit was a series in Montreal when Burrell was young, and his batting average was below 4 of the 5 Expos starting rotation, as a sign in the Big O clearly pointed out.) I think it's sad that the 'I want offense and I want it now' crowd has taken these memories away from half of the kids that are fans of baseball today. Teams that never have their pitchers work on hitting are decreasing their probability of winning games in the NL. Even if I pitcher only hits .200, that's enough of an advantage over other teams. We should have just replaced the 1980 Olympic hockey team with ringers from Canada, the US team had no real chance to do anything anyway, right? The unexpected is far more fun. I'll get more enjoyment out of a Joe Blanton solo home run than 10 Ryan Howard solo blasts, because the Blanton HR is a real dagger to the other team, precisely because it's just not supposed to happen.

Tyler, great run. The eliminations from this point on are going to be brutal. While I agree with the voters that Tyler's was the one of the weaker articles this week, I think all of the contestants could be BP writers and be valuable contributors to this site.

BTW, for anyone in the PED thread complaining that the records were made meaningless by those that used PED, it would be made my contention that the DH had far more of an impact on baseball records and statistics than PED did. There are people that are going to end up in the Hall of Fame that wouldn't have even had a serious MLB career if they had to play the field for their entire career.

If management wants to give up a free out every 3 innings, that's their choice. Personally, I think the NL teams that do have their pitcher practice (at a minimum) bunting and hitting do have an advantage over other teams. The DH takes away that option for teams. The DH is a great rule for little leagues or leagues where everyone should get some kind of playing time. The DH in major legaue baseball just makes it a less interesting sport, the same way the NBA would be inferior if they allowed 6 people on the court for each team, with 4 running the whole floor and 1 'designated attacker' and 1 'designated defender' not allowed to cross half-court.

This doesn't relate to Sammy Sosa, per se, but is there any way we can set our own 'viewing threshold' for when comments get hidden. In comment threads like this one, it seems like the minority opinion often gets 'hidden' because people just click the minus button for anyone they disagree with.

Watching the pitcher try to lay down a bunt or actually rope a key double is a ton of fun. Much rather watch that and watch the dreary, strategy-free AL game.

As a Phillies fan, a good way to make sure I never payed for another interleague ticket would be to inflict me with having to watch the abomination that is the DH.

Totally missed that the first time through. Very nice.

Why is that surprising? AL teams have the DH rule, so you'd expect them to have higher averages. All the "baseball players" that can only hit migrate over there.

Possibly just having Ed Wade as a GM. He just doesn't seem to ever have a plan if anything goes wrong.

Some great quotes in there this week.

I'll be pretty disappointed if Vladdy doesn't make the HoF. I'm guessing the years in Montreal will hurt him because of the relative obscurity, but for my money, he was the most dangerous hitter in baseball for a period of a few years, and that ought to be enough.

Howard has 99 HR on the road (1 per 14.36 PA) and 97 at home (1 per 13.34 PA). So he hits them about 7% more frequently at home, but that doesn't seem huge given the HR park factors for the Cit over the last few years. If anything, I think Howard underperforming at home.

Great player profile. I really enjoyed this, and didn't feel like skipping to the end as I often do in player profiles. I think the Phillies are going to have a very tough decision when it's time to resign Howard, because I don't think he's just going to fall off the face of the earth.

For some reason, MLB Gameday doesn't have the Crawford homer on 5/7 (the LD HR) in their video highlights.

PECOTA saw TBY coming last year, and their were articles on BP that basically said PECOTA is way too optimistic, they can't improve their defense that much in one year.

Sorry, missed the 29th article. Last one I saw had him at 5 days.

The NHL regularly streams games through Comcast and Yahoo, so I assume when you said it's a 'first for major sports team', you just mean the full season package? MLS has also done it for a few years now for all games, but I'm guessing that's not going to be counted as a major sport.

Hey Will, what are the odds of Brett Myers getting back for this season? Most of what I read says he's done, but the Phillies got Utley back from hip surgery faster than most expected too.

Chase Utley seems to have taken Joe saying he was 'over his head' personally.

For the most part, this was a terrific week. Looking forward to Sunday already.

Citizens Bank Park has had the 13th-15th highest "runs" park factor since 2007. It's not the reason that the Phillies offense scores as much as it does. For the 100 games 2008 and 2009, it's barely over the average for home runs as well. Sure, when it was first built, it was a very offensive park, but moving the wall back some and putting up the glass on the top of the fence has helped make it a more fair park by quite a bit.

The Phillies are also missing a major part of the rotation. If you want to say there's not that much that separates the two teams, I suppose that is fair, although, the results on the field of play over the last 2 seasons would seem to separate them in some way to me.

This is a losing battle on this site. I've been calling out Joe's NY bias for 3 years, but you'll just end up getting -20 ratings for daring to imply the Mets might be an inferior team to the Phillies.

Fixing the Mets requires more than this. This core of Mets have shown they don't have "it", in my opinion, and all the tinkering in the world won't fix that.

Best article of the contest to date, and I don't think it's even all that close. Well done.

This whole articles seems to go against the spirit of the week's topic. I mean, I was hoping to get articles about topics I would never otherwise read about, not just one more article about a trade between 2 sub-.500 teams that has been analyzed to death already.

Howard's only problem with lefties is the K rate goes way up, and he's been improving that every year. He struck out 36% of the PA against lefties in 2006 and it was down to 33% in 2008. Not nearly good enough, but it's improving. He has a batting average excluding Ks of over .400 vs both RHP and LHP. If he can continue to develop more discipline facing LHP, his splits will improve.

I think he's telling us how he actually voted in the ballpark. Joe votes via chads, not via online ballot.

The more conspiracy minded Montrealers will tell you that Loria did exactly what he was sent to Montreal to do by MLB, hence why he was rewarded. It's pretty clear it was all intentional, though, he had many of the scouts signed to contracts with him personally instead of with the team, iirc. That's why when Loria went to Florida, all of the Expos scouting team (plus the reports, equipment, etc) all went south too, leaving the Expos to start from scratch.

Granted, he hasn't made an error yet (even completing 5 straight throws to 2nd, something he had 5 errors on 20 tries last year), but let's see where he ends up this year defensively before turning that into a positive. [Albert has 5 errors so far this year, just for completeness.]

I think you meant "It took a decade for MLB to destroy Montreal". Les Expos were fine, and even had land to build their own Camden Yards style park in downtown Montreal until Loria came in and tore the franchise down brick by brick.

You seem to be focused on the results. Even if it never changed the result of a single play he was involved in, it's still cheating, it's still dishonest, and it still violates an ethical code of conduct that I think professional athletes should be held to if they want to play a game for large amounts of cash.

The NHL has a revenue sharing scheme designed to make sure teams can afford to pay the floor, assuming they have 'reasonable' other expenses. A huge part of Phoenix's issue is they pay Gretzky $8M a year to coach, when most teams don't pay 20% of that. I do think the floors are a little too close to the cap in both leagues, I think a ratio of .6 or so is about right. A Cap and Share system is certainly not the ONLY way to get parity, but it is the general flow of American sports. MLS is a single entity, the NFL, NBA, and NHL all have cap and share, all the other sports minor leagues have caps as well. MLB is the last league standing, so to speak, and I don't think they remain standing alone forever.

You can have that opinion, I have mine. My opinion is that Ramirez is a cheater, for who knows how long, and by cheating has deprived fans everywhere of having an honest game of baseball, like all the other cheaters have. This wasn't a case of "oops, I accidently took a prescription that made me test positive." This was a masking agent that is used to prevent you from failing a steroids test.

Thanks. If there is a decent list of available guys, then it is what it is. But then it becomes an issue of do you want to give up the 1.050 OBP against RHP, which is probably at least 2/3 of the league, when Howard signs somewhere else that won't platoon him, which I'm prett sure would happen.

I never said his numbers were fraudulent. In fact, his numbers are real, facts are facts. HRs don't vanish because you cheated. He's still a cheater. He still defrauded the fans. If a player is going to take fans money to play a game that every fan would love to be playing instead of their 9-5 job, they have a duty to play the game honestly and to the best of their abilities. Manny, lived up to neither of those. We always knew he was a slacker ... we know he's a dishonest cheater now too.

OK, I get it now. Thanks.

OK, that's fair. I'm still guessing that once you came up with a list of available people that are 770+ against LHP, you'll still be left with a pretty short list.

Can you explain Adam Dunn then? Honestly, I'm not seeing it. I see a guy that hits a lot of HR and nothing else offensively, but is so slow getting to balls in the outfield that he must cost the Reds a couple of bases per series defensively.

Kindly point out for me all the .770+ OPS guys currently sitting on the bench somewhere that the Phillies could pick up to platoon with Howard.

Not going to bother with Howard, because we all just laugh at your belief he's a platoon player. Especially when you later put Dunn on your ballot, who is worse than Howard in most ways imaginable. Very disappointing you wasted a vote on a cheater though. You may not like rewarding current season performance, but there is a guy hitting .349/.410/.724 in the NL OF that is way more deserving than someone that was probably cheating for years, defrauding the fans.

Ryan Zimmerman is definitely a fun player to watch. If the Nats do decide to get rid of him, I wouldn't mind him taking over for Feliz in a season or two. However, I suspect he'll be a cornerstone for the Nationals for a long time to come.

I'm confused ... how could a walk drought overlap with another one?

The NFL's cap is the best thing for fans in all of sports. It truly is the goose that lays the golden egg. Calling it 'socialism' just shows you don't fully grasp the marketplace. The Eagles and Redskins are competitors on the football field, but they are not competiting with each other in the business world. There are very, very few "up for grab" fans, and loyalty to a brand is insanely high. The NFL recognizes that the teams are essentially 'branches' of the same company, one that is competing with MLB, the NBA, NHL, MLS, movies, concerts, etc for the consumer entertainment dollars. The NFL might have an uncapped year in 2010, but the cap will be back in force in 2011 and for the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, Baseball is in the midst of a 'golden era'? Exclude the 5 most valuable franchises (NYY, NYM, BOS, LAD, CHC) and the other 25 teams have seen a total drop in their franchise value from 2008 to 2009, according to the Forbes report. Meanwhile, the NHL only had 1 team shrink in value last year (2009-2010 season data obviously not available yet). The NFL had NO team shrink in value last year. The NBA had a bunch, but their growth wasn't tied up in 2-3 top franchises either as POR and OKC both had double digit growth rates. I think it's mypoic to think that baseball is in a golden era. Sure, if you live in the northeast, maybe it is. But it dying in cities like Kansas City, Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati. IF MLB wants to be more than a regional interest league, it will have to concede that the salary cap is the way to do it. It is the lone sport in North America to not do it at this point, and it'll either have to confirm, or continue to make itself irrelavent to fans in many, many cities.

And any day, the Mets are going to prove they are the better team than the Phillies and win the division.

The car dealer isn't expecting you to pay him $50-100K again in 2010, and 2011, and 2012 ...

That would explain the .171 EqA.

What a shock ... ANOTHER article about these stupid stadiums. There is real baseball being played. These fluff pieces should have stopped on Opening Day.

Thanks Harry. We'll miss you terribly here, but you can call the games for heaven with Richie now. :(

Maybe I'm missing something, but Jay's article has Schilling's WARP career as 110, but the DT card on BP has it at 83. What's the difference? Postseason numbers?

Maybe Baseball needs a strong international federation such as FIFA to take real control over international play. FIFA has certain days where club teams cannot refuse to release players to the national teams. I know one exists for baseball, but it is incredibly weak. If countries and MLB want an international competition, give IBAF the power to force club teams to allow international competition.

If there is anything that could suck the joy out of me from the Phillies winning a World Series, it\'s Chase being out for the better part of next year. Hopefully he can get back into the swing of things soon.

Yankees 5/142.75M on 11/30

PHILLIES: Kill whoever is responsible for Chase Utley not being a Gold Glove winner.

Phillies: Resign key talent, build a better bench and back end of the rotation. Watch Mets collapse again, win NL East, and go from there.

Hockey is the king of sports. Yes please.

Thanks for the article Joe. Amazing intro.

As a Phils fan, I hope not. I\'d rather see them spend some of the $100-125M or so Manny is going to get on keeping Burrell for a 3 yr deal or so, and the rest on someone not named Adam Eaton to fill in behind Hamels and Myers.

MLB announces: Game on. 8:37PM ET tonight. By 10PM, either there will be wild celebrations in the streets of Philly, or they\'ll have to watch the bridges very carefully.

Hopefully they get this game in. To be so close to ending the Curse of Billy Penn, and have every stopped for 48 hours driving me insane.

Disaster how? It looks like it\'ll be cold, but it looks like the rain/snow is done.

In my experience, you can\'t have a low enough opinion of the general populace. There are large groups of people that will vote next Tuesday based on things like \'his middle name is Hussein\' or \'McCain forgot how many houses he owns\'.

I imagine the Phillies organization would like to give their fans a chance to win the series at home in game 5, the way it was originally scheduled.

Yeah, or imagine if the game starts, and then has to be suspended in the 9th again because of another rainstorm after being delayed due to the ad. That might cost him votes.

If MLB actually asked the Phillies to give up home field for what could be a massive celebration, I hope they keep that half-rat, half-human moron out of the stadium entirely tomorrow. Persona non grata.

If you think \"poor but playable\" is an acceptable condition to determine the champion of a league, then I guess that\'s a major difference of opinion. I, for one, could not care less if FOX has to pre-empt House, or the Simpsons, or anything else because of the World Series. If game 5 has to be played on November 15th, then so be it, but play the entire game in weather that isn\'t going to affect the outcome of the game. Plus, if nothing else, the game should not have been suspended in the middle of an inning. The Rays should have had to tried to field for the same number of innings as the Phillies did in conditions where a fly ball to left landed at first base, and any ground ball turned into a rocket.

I\'m a Phillies fan, and there is NO WAY I wanted the Phillies to win a title in a rain-shortened game. You lose so much not having the last out to celebrate, or the roar of the crowd as they realize it\'s over.

Selig decided to start the game when (a) it was already raining (b) every weather report in the world said it was going to get worse (c) and once the game was stopped, they knew it was for 24-48 hours.

The hit that got by Rollins in the 6th essentially hydroplaned out there, and may well have been a routine out under normal circumstances. We\'ll never know, nor should we have to wonder, the field was unplayable, and they should not have been playing.

Given the potential for snow in the Philadelphia area, plus the general ineptness of the Philadelphia area airport, I wouldn\'t be shocked at all if there is a needed travel day because the teams just can\'t get down to Tampa in time to make it work.

No, because baseball indoors is unnatural. The real solution is to roll back the season to 140-148 games, and end the World Series in early October, when weather patterns are typically better in much of the country.

Wouldn\'t his throw day be Thursday? I thought it was rest-rest-throw-rest-pitch? More likely, they\'ll save him for a game 7 start, be it on short rest or full rest, depending if there is a travel day.

The instant an umpire determines that a lazy pop up isn\'t catchable by ordinary effort, and therefore the infield fly rule doesn\'t apply, is the time you know the game has gone on too long.

The game should have never started. You don\'t start a game that you know going in has virtually no chance of completing. Second, if you are going to suspend it, you do it after the 5th inning, not in the middle of the inning. They don\'t even let you turn the lights on in a ballpark in the middle of an inning.

Hopefully, Selig will do the right thing and add the travel day on Thursday so the Phillies might have the opportunity he stole from them last night, having a chance to win the World Series with the ace on the mound.

8pm, first day where the weather cooperates. Probably tomorrow, possibly tonight or even Thursday.

The game never should have been started once it was clear the rain like this was coming. I hope it rains until Wednesday so the Phillies can get Hamels back on the mound for a game 7 Saturday.

No one special. I\'m just a property & casualty actuary that is enjoying messing with you. And you haven\'t played poker with me in a while unless you go to Foxwoods. I stopped playing online when Congress got all uppity about it. If you do play at Foxwoods, I\'m the guy at 2/5 NL in a Phillies Howard jersey. :-) I will fess up to playing devil\'s advocate on some things, but here are things I really honestly believe: (1) Howard is not a platoon player at all. You might move him down to a 6th hitter against lefties, but he is too much of a power threat, even against left handed pitchers, to leave on the bench. (2) The AL is probably better than the NL, but the rule difference is a major impact. The AL was 149-103 this season, but if you were able to adjust for the rule change, my actuarial instincts tell me the number would be around 130-135 wins for the AL. (3) The Yankees might be better than mediocre, but they weren\'t a real threat this year for anything, and unless they get significantly younger, they are a fading team. (4) The Blue Jays are a mediocre franchise. They aren\'t a threat to win anything. (5) The Phillies pitching staff is better than people give them credit for. People laugh at Citizens Bank Park for how easy it is for offenses, yet someone this team had the 4th best ERA in the NL despite playing 81 games there. In 3 years, maybe Pena, Crawford, Longoria will be better than Rollins, Utley, and Howard; but right now, in this instant, at this point of time, the first set looks overmatched and the 2nd set looks like players ready to win. Anyway, time to watch game 5. Enjoy it.

Joe, I\'ve vehemently disagreed with your characterization of Howard in this series, and I still do, but thanks for all the work this season. I do enjoy most of what you write, and BP remains the best place for baseball knowledge (even if you are all a bunch of AL fans :))

Oh, and the Yankees and Blue Jays are mediocre, at best.

We don\'t \"All know that\". Personally, I believe that is a myth perpetuated by AL driven media in NY and Boston. I think the majority of the difference in the record in interleague play can be explained by one simple fact. Playing under AL rules in AL parks is a MASSIVE advantage to the AL team, while playing under NL rules in NL parks is virtually no advantage to the NL team.

I\'ll almost admit that I\'m likely digging in harder on this than I normally would, because Joe has been incredibly biased against the Phillies in his entire coverage of this series. If the Phillies win tonight, it\'s for one very simple reason. The Phillies are the better team than the Rays, despite the \'conclusions\' to be drawn from the biased draft Joe and Jay did. The Phillies have a deeper pitching staff, a better bullpen, and a more reliable 1-6 in the lineup.

Given you have to get to the playoffs to do that, I think you have to show that carrying a \"platoon\" for Howard throughout the entire season is an effective use of 1 spot out of 4 you get for the bench.

The fact that I think Howard will be voted MVP doesn\'t mean I think he should win it. In fact, he\'s not even the MVP of the Phillies this year (Utley is, and Howard might be behind Lidge as well). You might hate RBI and other counting stats, and I freely acknowledge they have some flaws, but the object of this game is to produce runs, and there is no one in baseball that produces honest-to-god runs better than Ryan Howard, OBP be damned. In poker, there is a concept of \'theoretical money\'. That is, it\'s the money you would have won if you got x% of the pot everytime you make a decision that gives you x% chance of winning. Good players have higher theoretical money than the fishes do ... but you know, at the end of the day, you can\'t go an buy a steak dinner with theoretical money, you had to be able to convert it to real money. Same thing here ... you can say Howard is lucky that he gets a bunch of chances with RISP and that\'s why he has so many RBI, but he still has to take advantage of them, and he has. How many seasons in a row does he have to do it before it\'s not just luck anymore? I was certainly rooting for Howard to win it in 2006, but I didn\'t expect him to ... missing the playoffs is a huge negative. However, if I recall that season correctly, Howard\'s Phillies were actually had a better record than the Cardinals while playing against a tougher division, so maybe that helped overcome that.

I see Pujols\' potential value, which is the highest in the NL. But if the whole point is to win, then Pujols\' value is currently not being maximized. Turning a 78 win team into an 85 win team has less \"value\" than turning a 90 win team into a 93 win team if you need 92 wins to be in the postseason. Again, I know the pure statistical analysis says that Pujols was the most productive player in the NL. There is no doubt about that, at all. I\'m just unconvinced that\'s what the MVP is for. And yes, it does mean you need a reasonably good set of teammates to win an MVP, or just being so overwhelmingly better than the rest of the field that your value is higher even though you don\'t make the playoffs. And that is a negative to my particular viewpoint of what the MVP is. But there is a negative to the WARP = MVP viewpoint, since WARP is not a leverage-adjusted stat. A leverage adjusted WARP (both for in-game and season long leverage) would be a really interesting number, and might tell you more about who adds \"value\". Pujols might still win that number, but I\'m not convinced of that right now.

The whole MVP = WARP thing is another thing that drives me nuts. The Cardinals without Pujols are still failures ... the Phillies without Howard are not one game from changing the color of the flag that will fly next year at the Cit to the way too rare \'red\'. Albert was the most productive player in the NL ... but what VALUE did it add if they weren\'t good enough to make the playoffs? Now, I don\'t think Howard is even the Phillies MVP this season (I\'d give it to Utley), but Utley has the perception issue because he struggle a little in the second half when Howard was on fire, so I\'m not going to be shocked at all if Howard is the highest balloting Phillie, nor will I be shocked if the voters refuse to give the award to a player on a team that was out of the playoff race. As far as the Phils looking for Howard to go the opposite way, that is true enough. But often, the two things come in tandem, when Howard goes the opposite way, the ball goes somewhere where it can\'t be caught. I\'m not arguing Howard is a great hitter against lefties, but he is able to do enough damage with his few hits that\'s it is worth it to keep him out there. 35 HR and 110 RBI would be a career year for many ballplayers, the fact that Howard averages 48 HR and 130 RBI against righties doesn\'t take away from the fact that he is a power threat no matter who is on the mound.

Howard\'s job is to hit Home Runs. That\'s it. I know that doesn\'t jive with the stathead \"OBP is life\" mantra, but the Phillies pay Howard to do exactly what he\'s done in this World Series, put the ball into the stands.

Wait ... Howard can hit HR off lefties? What\'s that, you say ... he averages 35 HR per 600 PA against lefties? Huh, from the coverage by Joe you\'d think that was his first off a lefty ever.

Well, that call is now a moot point, because the call on Rollins at third in the first inning in game 4 is now the worst call in the series. Man, if these are the six best umps in baseball, it\'s time for another mass firing.

They could have gone to 1-1-1 back in the olden days.

I missed where the fact that Crawford was out, by a half step that no mediocre college umpire should miss, was mentioned at all on BP.

No it wouldn\'t have been. Fox has a good Tuesday night lineup, and they didn\'t want to preempt it. Why do you think there was the bogus off days between games 4 and 5.

Weather.com calls it only a 20% shot at rain at the 8pm start time. Unforunately, it looks like the rain isn\'t going to stop until between 6 and 8pm, so I suspect they\'ll wait to the last minute before making a decision.

Accountability should be he is excused from umpiring postseason games for the next 3 years, and if he doesn\'t show improvement while on probation, then he can be excused from regular season games as well.

This ignores the fact that even if the guy didn\'t swing, it was STILL strike three.

Exactly. Howard\'s job is not to get on base and keep rallies going. His job is to hit the ball over the fence. End of story. And as much as Joe loves to say he should be a platoon player, Howard\'s career average is around 35 HR and 110 RBI per 600 PA against lefties. That\'s production, and that is his job.

Thanks for this article. I\'ve been looking forward to it since you mentioned it in chat.

The non strike call lead directly to a run. The non HBP call puts men on 1 & 2, with no one out, for Werth, Utley, and Howard. It may not of meant the difference, and the Phillies sure blew many other chances, but the umpiring did significantly hurt the Phils in a couple of key points last night.

Would be nice to know how the game would have ended up if the Rays weren\'t handed a free out and an out stolen away from the Phillies by the home plate umpire.

I guess the slugging is showing something there, I was mainly looking at the OBP. I\'m still not convinced that moving Utley up to the 2 spot is ultimately the best choice here.

Here is the problem with splitting Utley and Howard with Werth Werth is .291/.374/.545 vs LHP and .251/.347/.408 vs RHP in his career. Utley has a little bit of a split in favor of RHP, .306/.373/.546 to .280/.381/.479. So it is an easy decision to let Utley hurt you a little more against a righty, and then kill Werth with the righty, and then go lefty with Howard. Victorino has no splits to speak of: .289/.346/.404 vs RHP and .279/.346/.486 vs LHP. He\'s got a little more power against lefties, so again, you probably going righty, righty, lefty, and I\'m not sure what you\'ve gotten out of this, given you now have fewer people hitting in front of Utley, meaning there are less RBI opportunities for him.

I love the Howard platoon argument from him. Howard, over his ML career, has averaged around 35 HR and 110 RBI per 600 PA (about a seasons worth for a clean up hitter, I\'d think) against lefties, but somehow, that\'s not good enough to be out there. I agree with him on the strike zones, but I don\'t think electronics are the answer. I\'d have to see them in action to be convinced. If last night was a \'must win\' for the Phillies, I assume tonight has to be \'must win\' for the Rays? This is by far their best pitching matchup of the series the rest of the way, I think. Garza vs Moyer favors the Rays slightly, but Moyer\'s junkballing can be quite effective against young players not used to it, and the Phillies have won 8 or 9 straight with Blanton on the hill, so I can\'t think Game 4 is a huge advantage for the Rays, especially in Philly.

I object to the characterization of Taco Bell as food.

Did anyone else think: \"Stop! It\'s Hamels Time! (Oh-oh oh oh oh-oh-oh)\" when reading the title?

Here I was hoping for some actual analysis, not a glorified IM conversation.

No, but Joe has had a pretty serious anti-Phillies slant this season, although I think he did pick them in both of the previous series (hard not to, the Phils were superior to everyone in the NL not named the Cubs this year, and the Cubs choked away what could have been a classic NLCS.)

As a Phillies fan, I\'m going to take heart from the fact that going back to 2003, the only time BP has picked the winner right for the World Series were the two Red Sox wins, both of which they called in 7.

The Phils have been ignored and underrated all year. I\'m not worried about the Vegas Odds at all, I read in a couple places that the bookmakers are trying to get more money on the Phillies because they have a significant amount of future bets from the beginning of the season on the Rays, when the Rays were going off at 100 or 200 to 1. I think this is by far the closest of the four possible World Series. I think it\'s going to go 7, while I think the Red Sox-Phils would have ended in 5 or 6, and anything involving the Dodgers would have ended in 4 or 5.

I think it is probably because the Rays have an unfavorable split against LHP (.246/.330/.396 vs .267/.344/.434 vs RHP) and the Phillies are going to throw lefty starters at least 4 of the 7 games in this series. The Phillies don\'t have much of a split (.255/.330/.426 vs RHP and .257/.337/.464 vs LHP), but since the Rays can throw 5 righties in 7 games, what split they do have hurts them a little as well.

Assuming you are talking about the Drew strikeout at the end of the eighth, that was a swinging strike. The umpire clearly pointed at Drew saying he offered at it. Based on the replays they showed, I think it was the correct call.

This may be the first time some has EVER said \'that ball would have been a home run anywhere but Citizen\'s Bank Park.\'

Utley melted down when the heat was on, and Howard carried the team. Honestly, if there is a second Phillie that appears on a ballot, it should be Lidge, not Utley. I love Utley as a player, but being MVP is more than about VORP, it\'s about raising your game in September when things are decided. I know every game counts equally, but there are high leverage ABs in a game, and there are high leverage games in a season, and Howard produced this year in those situations, and Utley did not.

Bud will just move both games to Milwaukee, and have the Cubs play a doubleheader on Monday.

If tonight is rained out and the season ends: PHI 91-71 NYM 90-71 MIL 89-73 would they give the Mets the chance to play the Cubs to win the East, or since the Mets are in no matter what do they get the Wild Card and get on with the playoffs? Obviously if the Brewers are 90-72 or better then the Mets have to play.

ESPN seemed to think Maine was already activated in last night\'s game? Was that just ESPN being ESPN and not bothering with trivial things like facts, or did I misread you on him?

I\'m of the belief that centuries from now, history will record 9/11/2001 as the day America died. I\'ve seen countless number of ridiculous security measures and \'enforced patriotism\' since, including seeing someone thrown out of an independent league baseball game for not removing their hat for God Bless America. He stood there quietly and listened, just didn\'t remove his hat.

Howard\'s splits against lefty are worse, but they aren\'t that horrible. He hits a HR once every 10.41 AB against RHP, and once every 15.51 AB against lefties. Give him an entire season (500 AB) against left handed pitchers, and he\'s still hitting 32 HR a year. He\'s also an incredible September player. .314/.436/.710 career in September/October, with a HR every 9.73 AB. Also in his career, he hits .289/.414/.630 with men on base, better than the .266/.341/.544 he hits with the bases empty. Every Phils fan I talked to thought the worst managing decision of the inning was bunting Chase Utley. Why give up an out to allow them to walk your hottest hitter and pitch to Pat Burrell, who has 26 hits and 8 GIDP since August 1 with a chance to get out of the inning. Now, it worked out for Charlie and not for Ned, and Yost probably should have gone to a righty against Burrell, but the walk of Howard is automatic once the Phillies decide to bunt Utley. If I count right, Howard now has 6 HR in September that tied or gave his team the lead. Lefty or righty, you don\'t challenge him when you don\'t have to.

Howard\'s only the ninth player in MLB history to hit 40 HR in 3 straight years, but Joe Sheehan thinks he\'s a platoon player. Thanks for the \'insight\'. Your \'contributions\' to this website are the only thing that degrades the quality of the coverage here. You have about the same credibility as Fox News.