The Red Sox could be in a dogfight with the Yankees all year long. Dunn and Casey are carrying the Reds’ offense. Akinori Otsuka has been a steal for the Padres. These and other news and notes out of Boston, Cincinnati and San Diego in today’s Prospectus Triple Play.
Jimy Williams’ deployment of Astro relievers has been
a source of consternation for many of us here at BP.
Not long ago, he declared that he would begin using
his closer and best reliever, Octavio
Dotel, to protect four-run, ninth-inning
leads from time to time. Suffice it to day, that’s
about as efficient as your garden-variety
doobage-addled record store clerk. Calling on your
closer to protect three-run leads in the ninth is a
bad idea, so clearly what’s being referred to as a
“Jimy Save” runs even further afoul of common sense.
As Joe Sheehan observed in a recent group e-mail, this
practice reached its nadir last week when Williams,
unwilling to go to Dotel, who’d worked the three
previous days (twice logging eminently undemanding and
wasteful Jimy Saves), saw inferior relievers fritter
away a ninth-inning lead to the Braves and eventually
lose it in the 10th. Thanks to the Jimy Save, the
Astros’ best reliever was a feckless observer to the
conflagration unfolding on the field.
All of this leads me to wonder just how poorly
Williams has managed the Houston bullpen.
BALTIMORE ORIOLES
This year’s Yankees are an exception to the unrecognized truth that bullpens aren’t bought or made, but found. In any given season there are about 12 actual closers, relievers who are consistent enough to earn their pay, and a bunch of other guys who earn their share of saves by virtue of the way their managers use them. Add in the 20 or so really reliable middle relievers and you have the total population of relievers worth building around. At present, the Orioles don’t have any of those guys–even the indefatigable Buddy Groom generally gets smacked around, not that that’s anything new. The O’s have an aggregation of no-names who happen to be pitching well at the moment. This may or may not continue, but it had better, as the starting rotation looks like something that was dreamed up by Wile E. Coyote. Meanwhile, all bets on offense have panned out with the exception of Luis Matos. That’s about to change as Lee Mazzilli makes Jerry Hairston Jr. the DH, a huge misapplication of baseball’s version of Free Parking. “Sometimes you look for the prototypical DH who’s a power-type guy, but with our lineup and the way I like to run the guys, Jerry fits in fine for me,” said Mazzilli, who doesn’t quite recognize he’s giving up the initiative to teams with DHs who can hit for power–that is, the teams in front of and behind him. In a productivity contest in which the winner gets to eat the loser’s DH, it’s going to be a barbecued Hairston every time. Then again, it could be a showcase. If this fustian writing leads to Custian time/ you’ll forgive the bad writing, and even this rhyme. There’s a better chance of hell freezing over, on both counts. GRADE: B
The wheels are in motion for the Marlins to build a new, retractable-roof stadium in south Florida. The Yankees have had success despite one of the worst up-the-middle combinations in baseball. And the Pirates lost Raul Mondesi for the entire season on Tuesday, though it’s not quite clear why. All this and much more news from Florida, New York, and Pittsburgh in your Wednesday edition of Prospectus Triple Play.
Philadelphia Phillies
Average ticket price: $26.08 (3rd in majors). 2003 attendance: 46.9% of capacity (24th in majors).
Ongoing promotions:
All season: “We’re Finally Out Of The Vet.” No discounts, but plenty of reasons to celebrate.
The miracles of modern medicine amaze me. A couple seasons ago the incident where Rich Aurilia had bone chips removed from his elbow and returned in the 15-day minimum seemed to me to be about the most serious injury a player could recover from in 15 days. I stand corrected. Austin Kearns may come back from a fractured ulna in the minimum. Think about this: Two weeks ago, I said “While three to four weeks is the public prognosis by some, six weeks is more likely.” No one could have predicted such a recovery, and this is one of those moments where we may have to adjust timetables due to improving medical methods.
Bret Boone has taken to wearing a brace under his uniform. This isn’t a normal brace or even one designed for some medical purpose. According to published reports, Boone is wearing a weight-lifting belt to help support him. I hope the Mariners trainers think this is a better idea than it sounds. The Mariners can ill afford losing Boone for any period of time without some sort of return.
Darin Erstad hits the DL, improving the Angels almost immediately. Losing Alex Gonzalez might have some ill-effects on the Cubs. Angel Berroa is signed to a four-year deal, hopefully enticing Carlos Beltran to stick around. Joe Thurston gets his last shot to make a mark in Los Angeles. James Baldwin gets a shot with the Mets, for reasons we’re not quite clear on. And losing Placido Polanco will, unfortunately, give Larry Bowa fewer roster options over the next couple weeks. All this and much more news from around the league in your Tuesday edition of Transaction Analysis.
“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.
The data for all regular players from 2000-2003 still shows that sacrifices are almost never a good idea. Putting the 2001 version of Ichiro–the player with the highest breakeven point for Batter One’s AVG–in front of every batter, the minimum expected runs lost by sacrificing over swinging away is 0.018, when Ichiro bats in front of Chris Truby in 2002 and his massive .199/.215/.282 line while he was in Detroit. Using other batters who are also highly adept at taking advantage of a sacrifice for Batter Two yield no situations in which run expectation increases by sacrificing, at least when there’s a runner on first and one out.
Expanding the results to look at other sacrifice situations does not change these conclusions. Looking at the second situation–a runner on first and no outs–and using the same plan of attack, the smallest difference between sacrificing and swinging away is again Truby and Suzuki, but this time the difference is .085 runs. Other players who come close are Craig Paquette in 2002, Alex Gonzalez in 2000, and Pat Meares in 2001 with .100, .107, and .114, respectively. (Not surprisingly, the three players who should never sacrifice as Batter One are Barry Bonds 2003, Barry Bonds 2001, and Barry Bonds 2002, costing the team .466, .481, and .518 runs respectively.)
Bob DuPuy says there’s nothing wrong with putting ads on the bases. Fay Vincent disagrees. Barry Bonds couldn’t care less what’s on the bases, as long as he gets to round them. Mike Mussina wonders what the future holds. Manny Ramirez is prepared to help help keep Pedro around. Larry Bowa is confused as to why his team isn’t hitting well with RISP. Lloyd McClendon thinks MLB needs to market itself better. And Darin Erstad doesn’t count last year in his mind. All this and many more quips from around the league in your Monday edition of The Week In Quotes.
Early word on the knee and ankle injuries suffered by Jose Guillen is pretty negative. Guillen injured himself sliding into second and needed to be carted from the field. Tests on Monday will reveal the damage. With Darin Erstad and Garret Anderson already on the DL for extended periods, the Angels will have an outfield that has only one of their expected powerhouses, while prospect Casey Kotchman will be asked to man Erstad’s position at first. The depth that once looked like overkill has turned out to be necessary. Erstad’s hamstring injury will keep him out much longer than originally expected, and may be as bad as a Grade 3 strain. He’s looking at missing at least a month, potentially not returning until the All-Star break. With Anderson, the Angels and their medical staff still have no idea what is causing the pain. They’ve ruled out disc problems and arthritis, but until they have a cause, Anderson has been completely shut down.
Let’s leave the Angels and their fans with some good news: Tim Salmon should be back by next week. Brendan Donnelly may actually beat Salmon back to Anaheim. He’ll make a couple of appearances in Salt Lake City, then return to his setup role.
I was disappointed that baseball backed off its plans to put Spider-Man 2 logos on bases in order to bring more kids into the game. What’s baseball coming to when you can sign an agreement with those guys and they back off it over a little negative publicity? Isn’t a deal a deal?
It’s bad enough that MLB turns out to be so cowardly that it’ll turn its back on the children they were trying to help, but what about the other outreach campaigns to widen baseball’s appeal? Once they’re putting ads in the field of play, it’s open season: We can change the field, the game, whatever we want, in order to reach new audiences by running advertisements that they’ll identify with.
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.
Jose Contreras was banished all the way down to A-ball. The Mariners finally euthanized that dying animal known as Kevin Jarvis, while extending Bob Melvin’s contract for 2005. The Brewers signed Scott Podsednik for another two years. All this and much more news from around the league in your Friday edition of Transaction Analysis.
The calendar has flipped, we’ve all celebrated that strange Mexican holiday by cramming fruit in our beers, and power bills around the country are preparing for the arduous climb that will face them in the coming months. Clearly, it’s time to prematurely hand out (a split infinitive… for the people!) awards for the 2004 season. Here’s my hardware for the season’s first checkpoint. For my criteria, I’m using the dread “If the season ended today…” qualifier that leads to so much analytical white noise. Five months from now, these picks may be as relevant as Justin Guarini circa 2007, but, nevertheless, here they are…