The Angels need to upgrade at CF and DH. The Cubs need players who get on base. The Tigers need an intervention for their pitching staff. These and other news and notes out of Anaheim, Chicago, and Detroit in today’s Prospectus Triple Play.
The Marlins apparently didn’t need experience to keep their emotions under control. SeaBass had a feeling. Josh Beckett doesn’t care about billy goats–deer on the other hand… Big Stein draws up his plans to clean house. John Smoltz is not a fan of three-run homers. These and other quips in the World Series (and beyond) edition of The Week In Quotes.
Over the last two articles, I’ve looked at various methods for removing some of the complicating factors when looking at team defense. Based on the idea that team defensive metrics were really a measure of three separate factors (park, pitching, and actual defense), we determined one way to remove park factors (PADE: Park Adjusted Defensive Efficiency) and another to remove pitching factors (PIDE: Pitching Independent Defensive Efficiency). By removing these outside influences in our defensive metrics, we’ve leveled the playing field, allowing us to better judge which teams have the best team defense, based simply on the percentage of balls in play that they convert into outs.
With both PADE and PIDE, we removed one factor, but not both. We were able to see either how a pitching staff and defense together looked compared to the league or how a defense and park looked against the league. What we did not have was one metric that simply measured defense versus defense, our ultimate goal.
From the NY Post : “An MRI revealed an inflamed tendon in Jason Giambi’s left knee as well as patellar tendinitis. The condition is chronic and he will have to undergo diagnostic arthroscopic surgery after the World Series.” Sometimes, it’s good to know where my work hasn’t made it. You, of course, realize that an inflamed tendon is the very definition of tendinitis. Giambi will have surgery, but the recent pain that kept him out of the World Series could indicate more damage than expected. This will surely bear close watch. The Yankees will also be watching as Derek Jeter undergoes his expected off-season shoulder surgery. As we saw with Phil Nevin, the time period from surgery to game-ready is reduced from previous expectations due to new technologies and techniques. Jeter should return in plenty of time for Spring Training, assuming he maintains the new timeline we’ve seen established in the past year. There should be no ill effects and in fact, Jeter should be expected to improve slightly, on a pure health basis.
The Marlins have a cleanup hitter too young to drink and a manager too old to drive. They’re owned by a man who was a key part of one of the ugly episodes that marred MLB’s integrity in the late 1990s. They drew 8,362 fans to a Memorial Day home game as years of neglect, deception and wheedling continued to hold down interest in the team. And yet, they’re the champs, and they stood on one of the game’s sacred spaces last night and beat back a team that was supposed to be too experienced, too well-paid, and too blessed by the gods to lose to such an upstart. As a Yankee fan, I hated it. As someone who despises the way in which Jeffrey Loria came to own the Marlins, I hated it. As a baseball fan, it was hard not to love it.
It’s official: Josh Beckett will start Game Six for the Marlins on three days’ rest, with Carl Pavanoscheduled to do the same if the Fish can’t put the Yankees away tonight. I strongly disagree with this decision. It’s a move you make when you’re down 3-2, not up 3-2. It’s a decision you make when the difference between your best pitcher and the rest of the staff so large that going with anyone else in Game Six almost guarantees a Game Seven. Neither of those apply here. The Marlins need to win just one game to be champions, and they don’t get style points for winning in six. The Marlins have at least one pitcher available, in Mark Redman, who was arguably their #3 starter during the season. They certainly have Dontrelle Willis available for at least a few innings, and Willis was lights-out for a good part of 2003 and has been tough on Yankee lefties in this series. Frankly, outside of Game Five starter Brad Penny and Beckett (assuming you hold him back), the Marlins have nine pitchers who can give them at least a couple of innings, and some of those are the better pitchers on the staff. It’s Pavano’s throw day, so even he can give the team a couple of innings. Deciding that you’d rather start someone–two pitchers, actually–on short rest rather than use those guys is an inexplicable vote of no confidence.
How many people, with Ruben Sierra standing on third base Wednesday night, Aura and Mystique shaking their moneymakers just behind second base, and Mariano Rivera getting loose down the left-field line, would have figured this World Series would not only be going back to New York, but going back with the Yankees down three games to two? Other than Jack McKeon, I mean. The idea that the Yankees have some stash of special skills that only come into play in October took a huge hit the last two nights, as the Marlins not only bounced back to win Game Four in 12 innings, but took advantage of the Yankees’ bad fortune and bad baseball to move within one win of their second championship in seven seasons.
It’s time to announce the winners of the 12th annual Internet Baseball Awards. More than 1,500 cyberspace baseball fans participated in this effort to select the baseball players whose 2003 seasons were most deserving of honors.
“This is the famous Allen “Bud” Selig. We know of no Commissioner in any age that costs the game as much in action and in sloth. His unique harebrained ideas and wild schemes produce a sense of dread you will find in no other executive in any sport…” I wrote that little parody of the Budweiser label off the top of my head and, relatively, I don’t even drink that much Bud. Which is to say I drink a lot of it. Selig said that he thought the Marlins’ post-game celebration after winning the NLCS was “tacky and out of place in today’s society which is less tolerant of alcohol abuse.” No problem with the victory cigars, apparently, but the alcohol…oooh nooo…save me from the deadly alcohol, where in a joyous clubhouse celebration following one of baseball’s great team achievements, being sprayed over the head with sweet, delicious champagne causes: Nation-wide increase in SIDS Tripling of federal budget deficit Teenage pregnancy Massive outsourcing of middle-class jobs to India Outbreaks of the deadly mutaba virus in every metropolitan area All of which clearly call for–no, demand–the intervention of Bud Selig.
On September 9th, Edwin Jackson assumed he would be celebrating his 20th birthday with a few friends. Instead, the Dodgers summoned him to join the big club in Phoenix and make his major league debut. Towing the rubber for the Diamondbacks was Randy Johnson, who we’ve heard is a decent pitcher in his own right. The 36,488 people in attendance could hardly be classified as friends, and we are fairly certain that most had never heard of him before game day. Jackson made himself at home anyways, holding Arizona to one run on four hits in six innings to earn his first major league win.
Very few pitchers can make the necessary adjustments to debut by their 20th birthday, but Jackson’s climb up the ladder is even more remarkable than most. He is a conversion, having made the transition from high school outfielder to major league pitcher after the Dodgers selected him in the sixth round of the 2001 draft. Jackson is not alone, as the presence of converted position players on the mound is growing in the major leagues, and more teams are viewing a pitching career as a viable alternative to releasing struggling hitters who were blessed with strong arms.
The Orioles begin their search for a manager. The Rockies weren’t lucky or unlucky–they were just untalented. And the Mets are trying to lure away Rick Peterson from the A’s. All this and much more news from Baltimore, Colorado, and New York in your Thursday edition of Prospectus Triple Play.
Dear Aaron Boone: It was a home run, not diplomatic immunity. Love, Joe Boone, whose Game Seven home run won the ALCS and sent the Yankees to the World Series, has been swinging at pitches he has no hope of hitting ever since then. I looked it up, expecting to see that Boone has taken about four pitches in the World Series. It turns out that he’d actually let 25 baseballs go by in the first three games, just shy of half of the 51 pitches he’d seen. He’s pushed counts to 3-2 in a number of at-bats, so it’s hard to make the argument that he’s not being patient enough. That said, he was horrific last night. The Yankees’ three biggest chances to win the game landed in his lap, and he approached his at-bats as if it were fifth-grade gym class or a co-ed softball league with some goofy rules like “swing or you’re out.” Against Carl Pavano in the second inning, with the bases loaded, one out and the Yankees down 3-0, Boone swung at the only two pitches he saw and flied to center field on the second one. Sacrifice flies down three runs with the pitcher coming up aren’t team baseball, they’re a lifeline for the opposition. Boone got another chance in the ninth, after Ruben Sierra’s triple tied the game. Boone again went up hacking, fouling off the first and third pitches he saw to fall behind 1-2, then grounding out weakly to shortstop after two more foul balls. Finally, in the 11th inning, Boone again batted with the bases loaded and one out. And just as he had against Pavano and Ugueth Urbina, he made Braden Looper’s job easy by hacking at fastballs up and in, pitches he doesn’t have the bat speed to hit. Boone swung at six of the seven pitches he saw, looked completely overmatched, and struck out. Three at-bats, two pitches taken out of 15 seen, three times falling behind in the count, three outs. Boone needed to have a solid approach last night, and his mental effort was completely lacking, leading to wild swings that gave the pitchers all the leverage they needed to get out of jail.