Best Matchup (Best combined record with both teams being over .500): Boston @ New York Yankees
We seem to have reached a point in baseball history where it is–what is the word?–understood that the Yankees somehow deserve to get the best available player on the trading block. When they don’t, their owner and fans appear shocked. With Freddy Garcia gone to Chicago and Carlos Beltran now in Houston, it will be interesting to see how firm Arizona’s resolve to keep Randy Johnson will be. The Newark Star-Ledger has also been kicking up some Tom Glavine-to-the-Yankees talk. It stands to reason. Glavine has been the best pitcher in baseball so far in 2004 (39.3 VORP, besting runners-up Mark Mulder and Carl Pavano), so it only makes sense that he should be on the Yankees. Why? Because it’s the Yankees’ world and we’re just the extras sent over by Central Casting to fill in their background.
I’ve been getting a lot of e-mail lately that runs like this:
I know you like Edgar Martinez, but don’t you think he should retire? He can’t run, he can’t hit. He should have some pride.
It’s true, I’m emotionally attached. But I know that, so I can recognize it, take a deep breath, and be rational about it.
And my answer is: “I have no business telling Edgar, or any player, to retire.”
I’m working on a piece that will run next week about unorthodox deliveries. Steven Goldman and I spent some time comparing the motions of Walter Johnson and Randy Johnson. I’ve also had my head buried in my Japanese “Nature of Pitching” book. Sure, I can’t read it, but the diagrams are great. Still, the best part has been going on MLB.tv and watching the archived games. I can watch the toe-tap of Tim Hudson, the pattycake in Akinori Otsuka’s windup, and the flaw in Roger Clemens delivery. For all the complaining I do about MLB, MLB.tv is about the coolest thing ever for a baseball fan. The archive and condensed games trump watching it on the big screen for me. If anyone has an interesting delivery in his or her memory banks, drop me a line. So, powered by that, let’s get right into the injuries…
The Carlos Beltran trade, from all sides. Art Rhodes, on keeping criticism in the clubhouse. Bill Bavasi, on taking Kenny Williams to the cleaner. The Controversial Willie Banks, pitchers old and new on going deep into the game, and Carlos Pena digging the walkoff. All this and more in this week’s edition of The Week In Quotes.
I’ll often talk here about “cascades”–the situation where one part of the body being injured or out of whack causes another injury–but it’s interesting to see the same concept apply to a team. Since the term comes from network science, it’s not surprising that it shows up in any networked system–a body, a team, even a league.
Tim Hudson went to the DL as a precaution after he once again felt an oblique strain affecting his motion. Little did the pitching-rich A’s know that Rich Harden would have a recurrence of his non-throwing shoulder’s laxity disorder. Had Harden gone on the DL, they would have been down two starters, but even then, the A’s were ready with Kirk Saarloos and John Rheinecker. This still leaves Justin Duschscherer in the bullpen and Joe Blanton on the verge. That’s just sick depth (and part of the reason that Billy Beane will be dangerous this trading season.) My favorite part of the episode is Larry Davis’ “everybody will make their next start” quote. It’s semantics like that which makes my job so “interesting.” Hudson will be out the minimum, while Rich Harden’s absence will depend on his pain tolerance. Remember his mechanics got out of whack early in the season when his gloveside drooped.
NATIONAL LEAGUE EAST
FLORIDA MARLINS
Currently sporting a run differential of just +5, using Lenny Harris as DH in interleague games, and that isn’t helping. 9-13 in June, and if you survey pennant races, it’s just one bad month that sinks many a strong team. Ate Billy Koch’s contract, which was just charity, tied for the league lead in caught stealing, pinch hitters batting .177, one of the worst benches in baseball… These scattershot muttering add up to a strong club being undone by inattention to detail. Reminiscent of some Braves teams of the past which had the pitching and select offensive parts but couldn’t buy a hit off the bench in about 800 post-season series. GRADE: D+
The Orioles fulfill their quest for Jason Grimsley. The Reds are awash in infielders. The Astros get their man in Beltran. The A’s get theirs in Dotel. The Royals…not so much. These and other happenings in a special Saturday edition of Trasnaction Analysis.
You’ve stumbled into the midst of series on minor league All-Stars. These aren’t the ones you’ll find on the various and sundry All-Star teams that will soon be squaring off against one another around the minors. Rather, these are the prospects who should be regarded as the luminaries of the minor leagues, at least according to this particular pontificator. Here’s my Double-A All-Star ballot, the best of the Eastern, Southern and Texas Leagues….
It was my pleasure to see former A’s great Rickey Henderson play for the Newark Bears on Wednesday night. I’m reminded of that scene in “Eight Men Out” when Joe Jackson is playing out the string on an independent team late in life–except, of course, that Henderson is not banned or anything like that. His at-bats were much like you remember them from his major league career. He came to the plate five times and saw a total of 32 pitches. He drew two walks and hit a single. His first trip to the plate came against Bill Pulsipher of the Long Island Ducks. On a night when Jason Isringhausen pitched for the Cardinals and Paul Wilson was resting up after pitching for the Reds the night before, Pulsipher looked pretty bad. Not that he was necessarily hit hard–none of the five hits he gave up were especially tagged (he also walked a batter without retiring anyone). It was his appearance. If he is serious about getting back to the majors, he needs to trim some ballast. Spare tires are acceptable only after one has won 15 games in a season.
Astros trade Octavio Dotel, John Buck
and a million bucks for Carlos Beltran.
Just an absolute steal. Dotel is a very good reliever, but he’s a reliever,
not a top-three center fielder with as complete a game as any player in
baseball. The Astros, who have been playing a shadow of Craig
Biggio in center field the past year and a half, actually may get
more runs out of this trade defensively than they gain offensively (Beltran
takes Jason Lane’s playing time, with Biggio expected to move
to left and Lance Berkman moving to right).
Moreover, Beltran is a great patch for the Astros’ long-standing balance
problems. As a switch-hitter who bats well from the left side, he makes the
team less susceptible to the righty-killers that the Cubs and Cardinals have
in both their rotations and bullpens.
NEW YORK YANKEES
Andruw Jones and his $12.5 million to Yankees in the right deal? It sounds crazy, but the Braves are going nowhere, even in a division in which all the teams forgot to show up (echoes of “What if we gave a war and nobody came?”). If offered a choice between Carlos Beltran and Jones, who would you rather have? Beltran and Jones, both center fielders, are precisely the same age, having been born two days apart.
G AB HR AVG OBP SLG
Jones 1203 4361 233 .267 .341 .494
Beltran 792 3121 121 .287 .352 .482
Beltran has seemed to blossom while Jones has stood still, but keep in mind that Beltran has been hitting in a park very friendly to hitters, while The Ted has been tougher on Jones. Defensively, Jones is by far the better fielder. Finally, one will become a free agent at the end of the season, while the other is locked in for all eternity… We should probably alter the baseball vocabulary when it comes to pitching and injuries. We normally say, “Kevin Brown will be on the disabled list indefinitely.” A better way of putting it might be to say that “Kevin Brown has been activated from the disabled list indefinitely.” Actually, you can apply that to everything: relationships, mortality…boy, that’s depressing. Better have another donut.
Are Johnny Estrada’s numbers for the Braves indicitive of his true ability? What did the Devil Rays’ young players contribute to their 12-game winning streak? Is there something behind the good months that several Blue Jays pitchers have enjoyed? This and more news from Atlanta, Tampa Bay, and Toronto in your Thursday Prospectus Triple Play.
If you watch the home team broadcast, almost every start by a home pitcher isn’t just good, it’s great. No, it’s outstanding. Just plain fantastic. It was a gritty, gutty start. And that’s for a six-inning, 9-hit, 4-walk, 2-strikeout start where the pitcher sees four runs cross the plate. He worked himself out of some tough jams. He literally put out some fires (the use of literally to mean figuratively causing writers and English majors across the country to literally grind their teeth).
That’s to be expected. After all, the broadcasts are, first and foremost, marketing tools for the team. I shouldn’t get frustrated when baserunning gaffes are excused, or a hitter’s awful hacks are ignored. I do, but I shouldn’t. When we find nuggets of serious analysis, or discussions that aren’t flattering to the team, or even criticism of botched plays, it’s a bonus.
One of the most enduring concepts in baseball is the “clutch hitter.” Despite statistical evidence to the contrary, scouts, fans, and major league front offices continue to believe that some hitters are “clutch” and others are not. This is particularly evident in the playoffs, where the inability of a player with strong regular season statistics to hit in October is offered as evidence that the player is not “clutch,” while other players are lauded for a few, well-timed base hits.
While there is no statistical evidence for systematic clutch hitting, however, it is still possible that some players do under (or over) perform in the playoffs, due to a tendency for “mistake hitting.” Perhaps there are hitters who build their statistics up against bad pitching, but when faced with the quality pitching delivered in the playoffs, the holes in their game are exposed. Likewise, there may be players who do not have spectacular regular season numbers, but who have a solid batting approach that leaves them in an equally good position against low and high quality pitchers. The former type of player might be seen as “choking” in the playoffs, while the latter is seen as turning in a clutch performance.
One of the reasons we started Baseball Prospectus was to point out the biases
within the baseball industry that were affecting player evaluation. We’ve
worked hard to establish the ideas that great athletes don’t necessarily make
great baseball players, that command is as important to pitching as throwing
hard is, and that hitters tend to follow a predictable career path.
We traded infallibility for a package of draft picks, though, so along the way
damaging biases have crept into our analyses, the same way that they did in
traditional evaluation. If performance analysis is going to continue to make
inroads as both a perspective for covering baseball and a decision-making tool
for management, its practitioners will have to understand these biases and how
they corrupt the process.
If you think the discussion on steroids is bad, wait until you see what’s next. This month’s issue of Scientific American has a discussion on gene doping. That’s performance enhancement at the DNA level, which is not only effective, but like hGH and testosterone, nearly undetectable. With something as simple as muscle recovery, genetic changes can have amazing effects. The recent discovery of a genetic mutation in a German child proves the possibility exists. The scariest part of the article, to me, was how close this technology is to affecting sports. It’s five years away at the outside. Somewhere, there’s a geneticist who’s looking at BALCO and laughing.
Powered by Wilco’s A Ghost Is Born, on to the injuries…