There are going to be a lot of trades and trade rumors in the next month. More players will be approached, and more will be confused. I want to see this looked at evenly for once, that’s all. It’s not an issue of players being selfish; sometimes, when they’re choosing between their families and a chance at a ring, it’s an issue of them being unselfish. I’d like to see the story covered that way, just once.
Red Sox Nation shouldn’t panic just yet. The Reds’ Adam Dunn is a historial oddity. The Padres park has played to extremes. All of this and more news from Boston, Cincinnati and San Diego in your Thursday Prospectus Triple Play.
At the halfway point of the season, it’s hard to find a player who isn’t sore and fatigued, a pitcher who doesn’t have some problem, or a team that isn’t affected by its health. One of the more interesting questions I’ve been asked was by a national baseball writer who asked if teams have “health inertia”–do teams that have been healthy tend to stay healthy or is there a regression to the mean? With only limited data to work with, there doesn’t appear to be much of a pattern. Over three-year periods, “luck” tends to even out, but over the course of a season, it follows a pattern that looks more like roulette than anything else. There are patterns, but they’re not usually meaningful. Instead, it appears that a focus on prevention and risk management is the way to minimize the loss of playing time.
The Yankees always are a bit different. There’s now some discussion that George Steinbrenner would rather not see his players taking part in the All-Star Game unless they’re fully healthy, but with Gary Sheffield and Jason Giambi, that definitely isn’t the case. Sheffield has been playing with a damaged shoulder, while Giambi has been dealing with a plethora of problems, including parasites. I’m still confused why Giambi was selected for the Home Run Derby, but don’t be surprised to see pressure on them to play. That said, the Yankees don’t normally succumb to pressure, even from the Office of the Commissioner. It’s hard to argue that any player, especially one dealing with injuries, wouldn’t be better served with extra rest.
Bob Brenly’s time with Arizona comes to an end. J.D’s brother arrives in Atlanta. Boston’s got too many bats for their bench. And Tampa Bay brings up a player worthy of a Hallmark special. All this and much more news from around baseball in your Thursday editon of Transaction Analysis.
I’d mentioned that when I returned from my week in Massachusetts, some things
took me by surprise. At the top of that list was the emergence of the St.
Louis Cardinals in the NL Central. In the eight days I was gone, the Cardinals
went 5-2 and took a 4 1/2-game lead in the division. Since then, they’ve gone
6-3, sweeping their last two series. As of this morning, the Redbirds have a
six-game lead that is the largest of any division leader.
The first thing you notice when digging into the Cards’ performance: their
52-32 record is real. They’re not getting lucky in run
elements, in their schedule, or by outplaying their runs scored and allowed.
They are benefiting from the Cubs and Astros underplaying their run elements
and their actual runs, but the Cardinals are just as good a team as their .619
winning percentage indicates.
As some of you may have noticed, there have been some changes in the Minor League EqA page.
Let’s start with the simple. When you go there now, you’ll get a short, simple, fast download, with what is essentially a page of links. The long list of every player in the minors? Not gone, but moved under its own link–so that only the people who really want it have to wait for it to download.
The main feature on the page is a list of all the leagues, along with their stats, sorted by offensive level. I’m always trying to remind people of the context of minor league statistics, and this is one more heavy-handed way to remind people that some leagues (near the top) favor the hitters, while others (near the bottom) favor the pitchers. Click on the league, and you’ll get the information that was on the old minor league page: a top-10 list for each league, a breakdown of league statistics by position (approximated by games played at each position), and a list of all players in that league, sorted by team.