While at Bank One Ballpark Friday, I filled out my first All-Star ballot
of the year. Well, it was probably my only All-Star ballot of the year; I used
to do a bunch of them—-issuing votes for my favorite players, the best ones,
the guys on my Strat team, the Yankees—-but I feel like one is enough now. It’s
not unlike my change in attitude toward cheesesteaks.
Before I continue, I have to say that filling out an All-Star ballot with
friends is one of the great pleasures of being a baseball fan. The
good-natured debates over what constitutes an All-Star are a key part of
loving the game, and getting to go through this process with Rany and Jonah
last week was a lot of fun. The all-Royals and all-Expos ballots were a little
tough to take, but that’s life in a democracy for you.
Anyway, I’ll run my NL ballot today, AL tomorrow. As always, I consider
All-Stars to be the top players at their position, with current stats running
secondary to established performance.
Once again, go ahead and cringe. Mike Piazza is waiting on an MRI for his strained groin, but it was pushed back due to swelling. You almost never like to see the words “swollen” and “groin” in the same sentence, so if we’re trying to figure out the severity of Piazza’s injury, this…well, this tells us nothing. Short term, Piazza wasn’t expected back anyway, but until the results of the MRI come back, there’s not much in the way of new guidance.
Seeing that Steve Karsay was headed back to the offices of Dr. Jim Andrews should have been the first clue, but Karsay is now officially out for the season. He’ll undergo surgery on Tuesday to determine the problem in his shoulder. The guess is that there is a small tear in his rotator cuff, but the surgery is termed “exploratory.” Some Yanks’ fans will no doubt question why surgery wasn’t performed back in April when Dr. Andrews said surgery wouldn’t be necessary. The chance of someone coming back without surgery often outweighs the pain and problems of injury rehab. Dr. Andrews has become quite conservative about opening up pitchers in the last 18 months, a fact worth knowing.
Eric Hinske hit a nice long one last night, but he’s still experiencing some problems with his wrist. Reports now move away from the earlier tendinitis and focus on a “radiating bruise.” The symptomology still sounds like some sort of impingement, but we’ll continue to monitor this. The worst of this is that even in an organization that ‘gets it’ like the Jays, some are still encouraging the ‘warrior mentality.’
My Giants source tells me that Neifi Perez knew the infield fly rule. I suppose that knowing the rules is something, but I’d rather have a player who can actually play the game. Everyone this weekend seemed to lose both their concentration and their cool–and thanks to some unfortunate luck, a number of them will lose some time to injury. Let’s get right to the good stuff…
Whatever its benefits, it’s clear that the unbalanced schedule has made it even more difficult to draw conclusions about teams in the early stages of the season. Schedules are so skewed that you have to consider quality of opponents in any discussion of what a team has done and what it might do going forward.
Take the Yankees. They opened the year 16-3 without Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera, inspiring a discussion of whether this team might be as good as the 1998 team that went 114-48. Since then, they’re just 11-13, and not even alone in first place. The difference? They opened the season with the Blue Jays (seven games), Devil Rays (five games) and Twins (seven games)–teams that now have an aggregate record of 65-65. They’ve since spent three weeks playing the AL West, a division that’s 94-77 overall and 56-39–good for a .589 winning percentage–when not playing itself.
Kris Benson is a slacker for not pitching a shutout every time out. Jose Guillen fails to grasp the concept of small sample size. Craig Monroe earns the first complimentary Tigers quote all season. Plus more quotable notables from around the league.
Jack McKeon has his work cut out for him in Florida. Nick Johnson goes down just as he started to meet his potential. Kip Wells is one walk per game away from becoming a true ace. Plus more notes and notes on the Marlins, Yankees, and Pirates.
Ken Griffey, Jr. returns to the Reds, much to the chagrin Jose Guillen; Travis Hafner and Ben Broussard trade spots on the major league roster; Kirk Saarloos is given little time to prove himself; and the prodigal son returns to the Yankee lineup for the first time since Opening Day.
A few items from the mailbag generated by The
Man With the Golden Gun: 2002, which ranked baseball’s best catcher
arms using a measure of Stolen Base Runs Prevented (SBRP):
I was glad that you concede that your analysis is biased against players that have a solid reputation. It strikes me as a limited phenomenon anyway. Only the real newbies are likely to get much of a bump from extra throwing opportunities against uninformed opposition. All catchers with good reputations will benefit by the comparison to the Piazzas of the world who have so many attempts against them.
— CDS
I did note in the original article that a catcher’s reputation
influences the number of steal attempts against him, and that the
number of steal attempts in turn affects his Stolen Base Runs
Prevented rating. But I wouldn’t say the analysis is biased against
players that have a solid reputation.
It all comes down to what you’re trying to measure, skill or value.
If you’re trying to measure skill–how strong, accurate, and
generally impressive a catcher’s arm is–then yes, you would want to
give extra credit to those catchers who prevent runners from even
attempting to steal.
On Wednesday evening, approximately 40 people gathered at Rocco’s Pizzeria in Walnut Creek for a BP Pizza Feed. Unlike most of the NorCal Pizza Feeds, the evening didn’t consist primarily of me, Wolverton, Wilkins, and Cleary answering a bunch of questions and listening to a rather malicious version of Les Nessman’s Death Watch, usually focused on Steve Phillips. We were fortunate enough to be joined by Mark Wolfson, the Director of the Oakland A’s Broadcasts on KICU 36 in the Bay Area. Mark knows more about broadcasting and that side of baseball than anyone really should, and has a facility and feel for the business that most people wish they had about any business. If you missed it, you missed an informative and entertaining evening, and a gathering of a bunch of very nice, very dedicated and jovial baseball fans. I hope you can make the next one. (Houston and Fresno–we haven’t forgotten about you.)
One of the topics that always comes up when conversation turns to baseball broadcasting is the length of games. There’s a common perception among people on the broadcasting side that games are too long. You’re probably familiar with the line of thinking; kids today are used to more stimulation, instant gratification, and the long “slow spells” in baseball make it difficult to sell the game to people, particularly young kids. The powers that be in MLB’s front office have responded to this perceived challenge by forming a task force with the goal of speeding up games. Personally, I like a lot of the simple, quick hits that have been implemented. It makes sense to have a batboy ready with an identical bat in case one breaks. There’s a lot of little things along those lines that make sense for MLB and the fans, and it’s good to see those steps being taken.
Why have Cincinnati’s pitchers done poorly? The ball-strike count plays a big part. In a previous column, I noted that the Reds’ strike rate was tracking with their wins and losses. This is an essay about the importance of strike rates, but let me get the caveat out of the way: Strike rates play a big part, but of course they don’t explain everything. High strike rates don’t necessarily mean success. Brian Anderson rarely gives up walks, but he gets hit hard. That said, strike rates have a big influence on outcomes. Pitchers and batters alter their approach to an at-bat on where they are in the count. Whether or not a pitcher works ahead in the count and can use his whole repertoire matters, and it matters whether a batter has to protect the plate because he’s behind in the count. Strikes reflect how well a pitcher controls a game.
What might surprise a lot of people is that there is no official method of scoring balls and strikes, just as there is no official way to publish a box score. You won’t find anything in chapter 10 of the official rules on box score formats or ball-strike tabulations. There is no official method, but for both box scores and pitch scoring there is a customary, standard way of doing things.
Under the standard, swinging strikes, called strikes, foul balls on full counts, and balls in play are counted as Strikes. All balls, including those thrown for pitchouts and intentional walks, are counted as Balls. As strikes are recorded now, a called third strike is no different than a 500-foot homer. An intentional ball is no different than a wild pitch.
Travis Hafner and Ben Broussard return to first base musical chairs. Adrian Beltre carries the banner of the BP Curse. Jeff Cirillo may still have a pulse. Plus other news and notes on the Indians, Dodgers, and Mariners.
It’s very bad news for the Expos–in fact, it could barely get much worse. Just days after losing Orlando Hernandez, Les Expos took a harder hit when Tony Armas was diagnosed with tears in both his labrum and rotator cuff. Just a week ago, the reports on Armas were glowing, so I’m not sure what changed. No decision has been made on a program, but Armas will likely be making a visit to Jim Andrews, Lewis Yocum, or another leading surgeon in the next few days. I don’t foresee him avoiding surgery, but Jim Andrews has been seemingly reluctant to cut lately, preferring aggressive non-surgical therapy.
From the files of Brad Arnsberg: A good source, Lewis Shaw, wrote in with this assessment of Javier Vazquez:
“I saw Vazquez enough tonight to have serious concerns about his elbow. He strides way too far out from the windup, but more especially from the stretch. He lands with a stiff front leg from the stretch, is violent (as indicated by his head moving all over the place), and shows maximum effort. This was not the case as recently as last season. He constantly drops his elbow below his shoulder at delivery, getting no downhill angle on the baseball. Thus, from the stretch his four-seamer is flat. He torques his elbow in an effort to get life on his four-seamer, and depth on his slider. His velocity has diminished, and he sometimes gives the impression of pushing his flat four-seamer up. As recently as the spring of 2002, his four-seamer was consistently 95 mph; now it is consistently 91-93, touching 94. He appears to have lost arm strength. Thus, given his history in 2002, he might be a candidate for serious elbow injury.”
This is not good news for Expos fans or baseball fans in general. I’m hoping to hear a lot more from Lewis in the near future.
Don’t jump, Jonah.
I’m heading to Phoenix today for an impromptu gathering of BP staffers at Bank One Ballpark. It’ll be my first ballgame there–I did eat dinner at the TGI Friday’s in the park last year–and I’ll be taking it in with Rany Jazayerli, Jonah Keri and Jonah’s lovely wife, Angele. The BOB becomes my first new ballpark since I hit Fenway last June, and I’m fairly excited. I’ll be more excited if Byung-Hyun Kim comes off the DL and throws well, as my roto team needs him to get healthy fast. (ed note: sorry Joe, looks like Miguel Batista or Andrew Good will more likely get the start tonight)
There are cabs to be caught and sheer terror to be had–I’m not a good flier–but before that happens, I wanted to throw out one question:
What the hell is up with Nate Cornejo?
In Baseball Prospectus 2003, we introduced a new rate metric in lieu of Equivalent Average (EqA), which graced the pages of previous editions. This metric, Marginal Lineup Value Rate (MLVr), measures how much offense a player produces compared to an average player. Since the publication of BP 2003, one of the most common questions I’ve received concerns what the scale of MLVr is, or in other words, what a “good” MLVr is.
As a new and unfamiliar metric, MLVr lacks the built-in recognition factor that something like EqA had, which was designed to follow the familiar batting average scale. The tradeoff, however, is that the “units” of EqA don’t measure anything–one point of EqA doesn’t equate to one run, or a tenth of a run, or a fraction of a win, or anything else that’s tangible. Equivalent Average is essentially a dimensionless index that follows offense production, but does not, by itself, measure it. Instead it’s made so that the “installed base” of baseball fans can understand it.
MLVr takes the opposite tack, choosing to express results in terms of runs per game, (and more specifically, runs per game above or below a league average player), rather than a more familiar scale. This makes it more useful for quantitative analysis, at the expense of being more opaque to casual baseball fans.
I swear I’ll quit talking about Moneyball at some point, but I honestly think it’s the Ball Four of my generation. It’s really that good. Anyway, I spoke with a friend yesterday who works in baseball, and he said something that absolutely stuck with me: “The whole book is an indictment of what we see.” And that includes injuries too–perception and accepted wisdom are sometimes tough to fight.
Something as simple as sliding is a good test. You’ll remember a couple weeks ago, I came across some research that showed head-first slides had a lesser rate of injury and an equivalent level of severity than feet-first slides. Again, what our eyes tell us is different. Tonight we have two players in key defensive positions–guys that scouts would almost universally have “great hands”–injuring their best, perhaps only, tools by sliding headfirst.
While he hasn’t done it just yet, it appears that Mike Piazza will be spending at least some time at first base this season. The Mets’ initial fumbling of the decision will push things back a couple of weeks, but the transition is coming. Piazza has fought such a move for years, but a combination of factors–including the Mets’ loss of Mo Vaughn and recent surgery that kept an otherwise healthy Piazza out of the lineup because he couldn’t squat–appear to be breaking down his resistance to the idea.