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…
You’ve stumbled into the midst of a series on this year’s minor league All-Stars. These aren’t, part and parcel, 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.
Last week, I cobbled together my Low-A All-Star Team, and if you’d like further ruminations on my methodology for making these selections you should go check out that article. I’ll wait here.
Otherwise, here’s my High-A All-Star ballot. And by “High-A,” I mean the best of the California, Carolina and Florida State Leagues…
Michael Lewis’ Moneyball and the fallout from the best-selling book have given rise to what some have deemed the great statheads vs. scouts debate. While some reactionary members of each camp have assumed their battle stations, by and large it’s a false argument.
“The goal is the same in either case–identify players who’ll help you win at the big league level,” said Joe Bohringer, amateur scout for the Seattle Mariners. “Both methods will help you make your evaluation.”
Every team relies on scouting of some kind. Scouting budgets and tie-breaking decisions may vary from team to team, but every club relies on scouts, in some form, to evaluate talent. Likewise, every team uses performance analysis to shape its decisions. Statistics are simply a record of a player’s performance. Even the most tools-informed scout on the planet won’t throw out results entirely.
Oftentimes injuries take a bit of time to affect a team. Statistics like MLVr and DLDL (dollars lost to disabled list) tell a part of the tale, but the Cubs/Cards game Tuesday night summed things up in a way that only a baseball play can. Ray Lankford ran a good route, as fast as he could, towards the ball that Aramis Ramirez dropped in for a double. The winning runs came racing home while Jim Edmonds watched from the bench. A groin strain kept Edmonds out of the lineup and away from a ball that he likely would have reached without drama. To further rub salt in the Cardinals’ wound, Edmonds popped out to end the game. The groin strain isn’t considered serious, but he will be limited for the next few games. It will be treated much like Albert Pujols’ hamstring strain, buying the center fielder rest as a DH when they head across Missouri this weekend.
The Marlins will push Josh Beckett back in the rotation to give his back a bit more time to heal. His normal side session was halted due to pain, but sources say that Beckett insisted that he stay on schedule with his throwing program. Cooler heads prevailed and he’s now scheduled to start Saturday. That start is in doubt, however. Beckett will need to prove he’s healthy in a side session Thursday or Jack McKeon is making noises that Beckett will go back to the DL. Beckett is remaining quieter this time around, but clubhouse sources say he’s growing more frustrated with the way he’s being handled by McKeon.
The White Sox unload Billy Koch. The Rockies’ injured outfielders are returning to action. Jose Reyes’ return gives the Mets some interesting lineup options. Justin Lehr tries to plug a hole in the Athletics’ bullpen. The Cardinals wrestle with a modest catcher surplus. These and other happenings in today’s Transaction Analysis.
The Devil Rays are the biggest story in baseball.
(Yeah, it looks weird to me, too.)
The D-Rays have snapped off an 11-game winning streak, entirely against the
National League, and moved to within two games of .500, leaping into third
place in the AL East in the process. The Rays have scored 67 runs and allowed
37 during the streak, so it’s fair to say that they’ve dominated their
opponents, although there’s no way to win 11 in a row without outperforming
your Pythagorean projection.
The run prevention has been the key to the streak. I mentioned yesterday that
the Devil Rays’ outfield had really been able to show its stuff while playing
in Petco Park last week. Jose Cruz Jr. has a Gold Glove on
his resume, Carl Crawford has a center fielder’s range while playing left, and Rocco Baldelli is an above average center fielder with a good arm. The line about sweeping the Gold Glove awards may
have seemed like hyperbole–and Ichiro Suzuki’s outsized
reputation makes a sweep unlikely–but I’d take any two of these guys over
Torii Hunter, and he’s the only other Gold Glove holder still
playing outfield in the AL.
As if labrum tears weren’t bad enough, research from one of the top hip doctors is about to make us change our vocabulary and our thinking. According to an NATA presentation by Dr. Marc Phillipon–a University of Pittsburgh professor and consultant to the Marlins–groin injuries may be a misdiagnosis. He believes that many injuries described as groin strains are actually hip injuries, most likely acetabular labrum tears. Yes, the hip joint has a labrum, just like the shoulder. Beyond the medical research, is there other evidence that this might be true? Just last season, Ricardo Rodriguez was diagnosed with a groin strain and placed on the DL. After he was traded to the Rangers, he was examined and it was determined that he had a torn acetabular labrum. Rodriguez is coming back well, pitching at Triple-A, so this injury doesn’t appear as serious as a glenoid (shoulder) labrum.
In other words, for all these years, it’s possible that we’ve been treating the symptoms, not the cause. Phillipon is getting good results in his practice, and he’s someone I’m trying to get for BPR.
I would have bet real, actual cash money that more 1931 teams would have made the top 10 given that the entire league fell off by 61 points from 1930, but only the Pirates made the cut. Every National League team dropped by at least 44 points. Four Pirate regulars slugged over .500 in 1930; the high man the next year was Hall of Famer Paul Waner, at .453.
On the other hand, we have the Tigers, a team that finished 116 points behind the Red Sox last year in slugging. They have closed that gap to just 11 points through this juncture of the season.
Largest improvements in team slugging, 2003-2004:
Tigers: +62
Dodgers: +60
Cubs: +40
White Sox: +32
Reds: +27
Earl Weaver in Weaver on Strategy presented a set of guidelines for running a team. The book is the best on managerial strategies and roles I’ve come across, and the respect accorded it is well earned. Don’t play for one run unless it’ll win you the game–James Click’s series on bunting should be required reading for managers. Browsing any day’s box scores shows you examples of managers bunting early, or for no good reason at all.
Weaver’s Fourth Law, from the book: Your most precious possessions on offense are your 27 outs.
This leads to a short rant about bunts, particularly early in baseball games. The concept behind the rule runs throughout the book, though, and underlines the single biggest conflict in the game of baseball: The defense wants to get outs without giving up runs, and the offense doesn’t want to give up those outs.