Given the caliber of competition, it’s entirely possible that at least one
RotY award winner has yet to make his major league debut. If Willis and Berroa
can win the award based entirely on what they did after mid-May, certainly
other players can. So which prospects currently in the minors are set to make
the leap, and garner award votes come the fall?
The closer role developed over a period of years, evolving out of the 1970s
role of ace reliever, a guy who would pitch 120 innings a year in chunks of up
to three at a time. Herman Franks ratcheted down Bruce
Sutter’s workload for the Cubs in the late 1970s, using him solely to
protect leads late in games, and Tony La Russa went even further by
eliminating multiple-inning outings for Dennis Eckersley in
1988. With Eckersley, a new meme took hold: a team’s best reliever had to be
used to get outs 25 through 27 if those outs coincided with a lead of less than four runs. It was the ultimate triumph of statistics–the convoluted save rule–over logic.
At its core, the closer myth holds that those last three outs are the most
important, and therefore the ones you want your best pitcher throwing. If the
closercentric bullpen is to go the way of pullover jerseys and flying-saucer
ballparks, convincing people within the game that there are other, more
important outs will be a good place to start.
The Giants lost again yesterday, falling to 15-20 and eight games behind the
Dodgers in the NL West. That gap may be misleading–the blue boys are 10-0 in
one-run games, which has inflated their record–but it’s hard to see how the Giants
can make up even the true five- or six-game difference between the teams.
Over the past few years, I’ve come around the the idea that while Brian Sabean
may not assemble baseball teams in the same manner that, say, I would, his
track record of success warranted respect. The Giants have succeeded with
mid-level payrolls and seemingly mid-level rosters for a number of years, in
part because many of Sabean’s acquisitions outperformed expectations. If we’re
going to be about performance, then the record of the Giants from 1997-2003
demands respect.
The 2004 Giants reflect a complete failing of Sabean to do his job, however.
Knowing that he had a player of Bonds’ caliber on the roster, he neglected to
bring in a hitter with a reasonable chance of complementing him.
“Protection” has been studied, and it has largely been dismissed as
a myth. Hitters’ performances do not depend on having a comparable hitter
behind them in the lineup. However, there is a weak effect on walks and
intentional walks, an effect we’ve seen taken to the extreme as Bonds has had one
of the greatest peaks in baseball history while surrounded by mediocre
veterans playing replacement-level baseball.
There’s an interesting game show developing in MLB these days. With the Kansas City Royals playing down to their talent level, it’s becoming clear that they’ll have little reason to keep Carlos Beltran through the end of the year, after which they’ll lose him as a free agent. (No one, anywhere, thinks he’ll re-sign with the Royals.) Beltran has become one of the top 10 players in the game, a complete package of offense, defense and speed. He’s going to break the bank as a free agent, and is one of the few players in the trade market with the potential to change a race.
So the game of “Center Fielder!” consists of finding potential
suitors for Beltran and creating trade possibilities, blockbusters, with the
Royals and those teams.
“Addition by subtraction” is one of those terms that seems exclusive to sports, and more specifically to baseball. While it would seem to apply in other walks of life, you just don’t see it used very much. “Tina, you know Bob from accounting? He quit.” “Heck, that’s addition by subtraction; he never made deadlines, and he was always hitting on me.”
In baseball, however, addition by subtraction has a long and storied history. Over the past 48 hours, we may have the seen the concept have its all-time peak.
This is my fourth year of having the Extra Innings satellite package. Over the years, I’ve developed something of a system that determines what my “main” games are in any given time slot. Usually, I’m watching the most interesting pitching or team matchup, or perhaps someone’s debut or pursuit of a record. My default if there are no games of note is the Yankee game, and if they aren’t playing at a particular time, I could end up focusing on almost any matchup.
Mind you, I do all of this with remote in hand and a scoreboard Web page reloading on my screen so that I can jump to rallies or key moments. It’s sometimes hard to believe that a little over a decade ago I was a slave to “Baseball Tonight” and hoping that the New York Daily News had the West Coast box scores. This is really a golden age of sports fandom.
This year, I’ve been adjusting my personal decision tree. I’ve found myself watching the Brewers more and more, particularly the latter part of their games, after the 4 p.m. Pacific games come to a close. They’re really growing on me. Scott Podsednik is the player people think Darin Erstad is, Ben Sheets is on the brink of a Greg Maddux circa ’92 leap, two-way player Brooks Kieschnick, with an OPS nearly 10 times his ERA, is more fun than Jonah Keri on a Boone’s Farm binge. Keith Ginter is one of my guys for ’04, while the guy he’s been starting for over the last week, Junior Spivey, is an underrated second baseman, kind of Ray Durham Lite. Two years ago, I flagged Doug Davis as the pitcher with the best chance to have Jamie Moyer’s career, and I root for that every time he takes the mound. Hell, they’ve even resurrected Ben Grieve!
I got more than a few e-mails yesterday about Webgate, MLB’s plan to, as put
by most people, desecrate the bases with a promotional graphic for the
upcoming Spider-Man 2 movie. It’s a moo point–“Friends”
tribute–now, as MLB has backed away from the logoed bases in the face of
overwhelming fan and media backlash.
During the day that the plan was in place, I couldn’t get worked up about it,
in the same way that I couldn’t get worked up about the ads that appeared on
uniforms during the season-opening series in Japan. While I know that some
people consider these things to be an affront, as well as an aesthetic
nightmare, I consider neither to be the case. Certainly uniform and base ads
are less intrusive in person than ballpark signage or between-innings
advertising blasted at 110 decibels. For those watching at home, ads
superimposed on the backstop on every pitch are clearly a greater incursion on
the experience. If MLB could mine one more revenue source without detracting
from the game–and six-by-six painted squares certainly pale in comparison to
the profile of the other marketing messages being conveyed–then more power to
them.
It’s weird…for all the power the Orioles supposedly added over the winter,
they’re just 12th in the AL in home runs. Larry Bigbie leads
the team with four. They’re fifth in runs, though, as the top five guys in the
lineup are all putting up at least a .320 BA and a .380 OBP.
If you were thinking about climbing on the bandwagon, don’t: the rotation’s
composite strikeout-to-walk ratio is 79/75.
With Nomar Garciaparra’s return getting closer, the Red
Sox are going to have an interesting decision to make. Mark
Bellhorn is third on the team in OBP and out-hitting Pokey
Reese by what would be about 50 runs over a full season. I think
Reese has to be in the lineup behind Derek Lowe, but none of
the other Red Sox starters gets enough ground balls to justify playing him
over Bellhorn.
How Terry Francona handles this is the first real test for him as Red Sox
manager.
With Todd Walker in the lineup, Dusty Baker’s bench on
most days consists of Todd Hollandsworth and four guys who
are 13-for-87 with three doubles and six walks this year. Not that Baker needs
another reason to leave his starting pitchers in, but at least three of them
are better hitters than the available pinch-hitters, save Hollandsworth.
I was hyping Ryan Wagner in the offseason, so I should
point out that he’s the worst
reliever in baseball this year, with an ERA of 11.25, and just eight
innings pitched in 10 appearances. The league is hitting .488/.520/.707
against him, and at this point, he needs to be demoted before the words
“David Clyde” start seeping into stories about him. He’ll be back,
though.
There has to be some category for what Hee Seop Choi is
up to: nine homers, no other extra-base hits. Choi, by the way, is at
.277/.405/.692 so far. Derrek Lee is a good player, but the
Cubs could have had Ivan Rodriguez and Choi for what they’re
paying Lee and Michael Barrett. That they don’t is a cost of
employing Dusty Baker.
Last night, the Rangers added a few more people to their growing bandwagon
with a 4-1 win over the Red Sox. The victory completed a sweep and allowed
them to maintain sole possession of first place in the AL West. They have the
best record in the majors at 16-9, and that’s no fluke; BP’s Current
Adjusted Standings have them atop their division, and also with the game’s
best mark.
There’s something of a
groundswell developing around this team, with two storylines that have
nothing to do with their performance taking over the coverage. One is that
this hot start was made possible by the Alex Rodriguez trade, and the second, that they’re playing so well because of great chemistry.
I’ve been getting a fair share of e-mail asking whether Barry Bonds’ first few weeks of 2004 have been the hottest start to a
season any player has ever had. I’ve been hesitant to answer, in part because
the sample size was pretty small, and in part because that’s not the easiest
thing to research.
With April all but in the books, however, I think it’s safe to say that Bonds’
.472/.696/1.132 line is historic. It’s not only the best start anyone has had
in the past 30 years, it’s the best month any player has had in that
time.
Now, when I make a statement like that, you can be pretty sure it’s been
researched by someone smarter than myself. In this case, Keith Woolner put
together a list of the best months, by OPS, as far back as 1972…
Dayn Perry did some great work last week. His Can \’O Corn column pointed out
how much of the difference between MLB and NFL \”competitive balance\”
is really a function of the shorter schedule. Sixteen is a very small number
of games, and serves to increase the amount of turnover in the playoffs each
year. There\’s just not enough time to recover from slumps, while luck and
injuries are much greater determinants of success and failure.
I want to look at that issue from a slightly different perspective. Consider,
if you will, the MLB standings as they would have looked through everyone\’s
13th game this year…
Despite living on the West Coast since 1989, I’m still an East Coast guy, and
as such, can occasionally show some of that famous East Coast media bias. That
was evident in yesterday’s column, when I picked apart the lessons from the
weekend’s big series in New York, while neglecting the games, just as big,
that division co-favorites played 3,000 miles away in Oakland.
Just as in the Bronx, the road team out west, the team generally considered to
be the underdog of the two, came out of the weekend with a sweep. Unlike in
the other series, however, the Angels and A’s played without the apocalyptic
hype that surrounds their Eastern counterparts.
I was on Boston’s WEEI radio just after Opening Day and was asked, in a very concerned manner, whether the Red Sox could stay with the Yankees in April given their depleted state. I’m thinking we have an answer.
Today’s column was supposed to be a game report from yesterday’s Rangers/Angels tilt in Anaheim. Due to a series of events that, had they been filmed, would have been Oscar-worthy, my ticket went unused. I’m disappointed not only because I haven’t been to a game yet this year, but because I would have enjoyed the company. I was invited by Stephen Roney, who is the president of the Allan Roth chapter–the L.A. area chapter–of the Society for American Baseball Research. SABR might be one of the most misunderstood organizations in the country, associated as it is primarily with baseball’s statistics. Sabermetrics is much more than this; performance analysis is just a subset of the field, and any time spent with the historians and biographers and researchers of SABR shows you just how broad a knowledge base is represented in the group.
Barry Bonds didn’t hit a home run last night, and that makes me happy.
Don’t get me wrong; I haven’t climbed aboard the Hate Barry! bandwagon. I think Bonds is a remarkable baseball player, someone who I enjoy watching whenever I can. He’s reached that level where no matter what I happen to be doing, I stop to watch his at-bats.
No, it’s just that the record is held in part by a player whose at-bats also used to dictate my movements: Don Mattingly. Mattingly made history by roping homers in eight straight games in July of 1987. If you’ve read this column for a while, you know that Mattingly is my all-time favorite player. I’m glad to see him hold his distinction, his place in history, for a bit longer. Records are made to be broken; I just don’t need to see this particular piece of my adolescence shattered.