To the best of my knowledge, the STATLG-L vote is still the only public-access Hall of Fame balloting found anywhere. While those aging members of the Baseball Writers Association of America seemingly make their decisions based on little more than their memories of the heroes of their youth (and perhaps a few baseball card stats), we readers and surfers of BP can make use of the sophisticated analytic tools found here to compare and contrast the candidates. With this added information at our disposal, surely we can do a better and more accurate job of assessing the merits of the candidates than those besotted BBWAA members.
Or can we? Throughout our dozen years of existence, the STATLG-L participants have voted very much as the writers did. For example, Ron Santo had no better luck with us than he did with the BBWAA. We were ahead of the writers on Niekro, Fisk, and Carter, and never chose Sutton, Perez, or Puckett, but those are minor inconsistencies.
A good general manager costs money (and a bad one costs more), but with Rodriguez, you’ve got a GM on the field. Texas should be happy he wants to take such an active role in roster and organizational management. Rodriguez wants to bring in Mike Cameron? That’s a great idea–he’ll come reasonably cheap because Safeco Field’s eaten him alive over the course of his time in Seattle, and he plays great outfield defense, which will help the team finally develop some pitching. Has John Hart had an idea that good lately? Even if Rodriguez is no good as a GM, he’d be no good at no additional cost. Managers make a ton of money. Rodriguez can save the Rangers even more money if they’re willing to take a chance. And why not? As everyone’s fond of saying, they were in last place without him as the manager.
Vowing not to take a bite of turkey until he’s done, Clay Davenport rolls out the new 2003 BP player cards just in time for the holiday weekend. Adjusted translations, tweaked fielding metrics, plus plenty of other fixins. Dig in.
The White Sox will regret hiring Ozzie Guillen. The Astros’ Brad Ausmus and Jose Vizcaino: how to flush $4 million down the toilet. The A’s and Jays hook up for yet another trade. The Phillies won’t solve their bullpen problem with Billy Wagner alone. The Mariners look poised for a fall. These and other news and notes in this edition of Transaction Analysis.
One of the reasons patience at the plate is encouraged is that it wears out opposing starters, allowing the hitters to chew into the soft underbelly of middle relief where they can really score some runs. It sure sounds attractive, and it seems to make sense.
But it’s almost a trivial advantage. The range in pitches seen per plate appearance runs from 3.6 (Devil Rays and company) to 3.9 (Red Sox, Oakland).
Take an average AL staff. Every nine innings, they give up nine hits, three walks, strike out six, and watch one lucky fan get a nice souvenir. Look at a nine-inning game pitched by an average staff against the most and least patient teams:
9.30 H + 3.16 BB + 27 outs = 39.46 batters/game (by average staff in average park against average hitters)
So 39.46 PAs * 3.6 P/PA = 142 pitches to get through a game against the most-aggressive team. And 153 pitches to get through a game against the most-passive team.
The 2003 HACKING MASS All-Star team is a fetching mixture of the young and the old; the highly-regarded defensively with a sprinkling of butchers thrown in; members of good teams and members of awful ones. Elderly Astros catcher (and recipient of a brand-new two-year contract) Brad Ausmus, young Dodgers glove merchant Cesar Izturis, Most Valuable Player and Texas Ranger Colby Lewis, and Blue Jay starter Cory Lidle, who missed his traditional second-half stretch of high-octane pitching, all scored in the triple digits. White Sox first baseman Paul Konerko, Orioles third baseman Tony Batista, Expos center fielder Endy Chavez, Athletics right fielder Jermaine Dye, and Lewis and Lidle were all selected for fewer than five HACKING MASS squads. A perfect roster was worth 937 points in 2003.
The Cleveland Indians think they have found a loophole in the CBA which will allow them to reserve Danys Baez while still cutting his salary by more than the maximum percentage allowed by the CBA.
In November 1999, the Indians signed Baez, a Cuban defector, to a four-year, $14.5 million contract covering the 2000-03 seasons, with an option for 2004. International players like Baez are anomalies in MLB’s salary structure, earning free agent money from their first day of major league service Through the 2003 season Baez has only two years and 102 days of major league service time, not even enough to qualify him for salary arbitration, yet he was paid $5,125,000 in 2003.
On November 15, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that the Indians were buying out Baez’ 2004 option for $500,000. This left Baez in the same position as any other unsigned player with his seniority–except for his salary. Because the CBA forbids clubs from cutting the salary of a player under reserve by more than 20%, the Indians appeared to have the choice of offering Baez a 2004 contract for at least $4.1 million or non-tendering him.
For the first time in a while, I didn’t think there were any major mistakes in the BBWAA awards. Or more accurately, I didn’t find any outcome that I couldn’t understand.
That’s not to say that everything was perfect. The one award that clearly went to the wrong person was the NL Rookie of the Year honor. Dontrelle Willis had the story, though, and combined with his clear advantage over Brandon Webb in the W-L column, there wasn’t much doubt that Willis was going to win. It was the wrong choice, but one that had been a fait accompli for some time.
American League voters got their rookie honors right, although perhaps for the wrong reasons. Angel Berroa came from behind to grab the award, something that rarely happens with this particular balloting. Berroa was helped by the refusal of two voters to put Hideki Matsui on the ballot, despite Matsui being eligible by the rules of the voting and pretty clearly one of the top three rookies in the AL this year. The two writers, Bill Ballou and Pat Souhan, both cited Matsui’s experience in Japan as a factor in their decision, and both are wrong for doing so. Matsui was a rookie, and acceptance of a ballot in this process should mean acceptance of the eligibility rules, not an opportunity to make a statement against them.
Beyond the baseball implications, Oakland was taking on a player with back problems and giving up their catcher and…well, losing Long makes some sense. Kotsay had a sub-par 2003 season, deeply underperforming his PECOTA, losing power and looking all the world like his Mike Greenwell comp was dead on. There’s hope though, A’s fans, because back injuries aren’t what they used to be.
Kim Ng started her baseball career straight out of the University of Chicago as an intern for the Chicago White Sox. After rising to take over arbitration duties with the Sox, she took a job with the AL league office. Ng then spent four years with the New York Yankees as an assistant GM, where at age 29 she was the youngest in that position in baseball when hired. After completing her second year as vice president and assistant GM for the Los Angeles Dodgers, she’s now one of only two women to hold such a position in baseball operations and the highest-ranking Asian-American executive in the majors. She was mentioned as a candidate for several GM jobs this off-season. Ng recently chatted with BP about learning the business, taking lessons from different mentors, and what it takes to succeed in baseball.
Next spring, the San Diego Padres and Philadelphia Phillies will take up residence in new stadiums, Petco Park and Citizens Bank Park respectively. It promises to be a momentous occasion, not just for Phils and Pads fans who’ll be inaugurated into the era of club seats and cupholders, but for baseball itself. Because it’s looking likely that once the Dog Bowl and the Big ATM Machine That’s Not The Vet throw open their doors, it will mark the first time since ground was broken for Toronto’s SkyDome in October 1985 that not a single new big-league ballpark will be under construction on planet Earth. It’s been quite an 18-year run: 19 new stadiums, 18 new corporate monikers (including such double-dippers as Enron Field/Minute Maid Park and Pac Bell/SBC Park) and around $5 billion in taxpayer money sunk into the cause. But is this the end of the new-stadium era, one we’ll one day look back on like the 1910-1915 era that produced the first wave of steel ballparks (if perhaps not as fondly)? Or is it just a statistical blip, a pause in the action before the next round of construction?
Steroids seem like a meatball for me to rant about one way or another. I’m chilling, though. For all of the hype about what a big deal this is, how tainted the game is, how Canseco and Caminiti were right…they weren’t. Not even close. The predictions of baseball’s critics have failed to come true: the number of positive tests includes some minor leaguers (who have long been tested for drugs), and it’s not 50% or 75%–it’s one-tenth that. It’s a guy per team. Well, probably not–it’s likely that like the drug-haven clubhouses of the past, there are going to be organizations who are much deeper in this, and others that will turn out almost entirely clean. One player a team. As people talk about what a rampant scandal this is, how terribly damaged baseball is, remember that a 5% rate means about one player a team. If everyone could try and be reasonable about this, the debate would be a lot more productive (though of course the column inches wouldn’t fill up as fast). Speculation, of course, is that if the positive results were x, then the real numbers are x times y, producing result z that someone wants to highlight to show how bad the problem is. For instance, I believe that given the random sampling and small number of tests per athlete, for every positive result, there are 25 more players that use steroids at some point in a year but go uncaught. So let me do the math: Over 100% of baseball players are on the juice! Players who are retired…dead players! Dead players are using steroids!