With Todd Walker in the lineup, Dusty Baker’s bench on
most days consists of Todd Hollandsworth and four guys who
are 13-for-87 with three doubles and six walks this year. Not that Baker needs
another reason to leave his starting pitchers in, but at least three of them
are better hitters than the available pinch-hitters, save Hollandsworth.
I was hyping Ryan Wagner in the offseason, so I should
point out that he’s the worst
reliever in baseball this year, with an ERA of 11.25, and just eight
innings pitched in 10 appearances. The league is hitting .488/.520/.707
against him, and at this point, he needs to be demoted before the words
“David Clyde” start seeping into stories about him. He’ll be back,
though.
There has to be some category for what Hee Seop Choi is
up to: nine homers, no other extra-base hits. Choi, by the way, is at
.277/.405/.692 so far. Derrek Lee is a good player, but the
Cubs could have had Ivan Rodriguez and Choi for what they’re
paying Lee and Michael Barrett. That they don’t is a cost of
employing Dusty Baker.
There’s a lot going on in the world of baseball. Most of it is on the field, but there’s too much happening off the field for my comfort. The ongoing BALCO controversy took on a new, potentially frightening turn when it was announced that the Federal Government is in position now to match all test results to names–putting the identities of the 87 people who tested positive last year at risk of being publicized. It remains unclear to me if those who tested positive are aware that they did test positive. As well, the re-tested samples seized just a few weeks ago in Las Vegas could come public at any time. While I’ve written very little about the case in the pages of BP, I am monitoring the situation closely. When there are important and substantive issues to discuss, we’ll be ready.
Powered by Monster Lo-Carb, on to the injuries…
Very quietly, with almost no fanfare whatsoever, one of the most significant developments of the year just occurred in Denver. As reported in Denver Post, the Rockies are switching to a four-man rotation.
Let me repeat that: the COLORADO ROCKIES are going to a FOUR-MAN ROTATION. In one stroke, Dan O’Dowd has mixed together two of the most compelling issues in baseball analysis today–how to win at altitude, and how to optimize the usage of your pitchers.
Last night, the Rangers added a few more people to their growing bandwagon
with a 4-1 win over the Red Sox. The victory completed a sweep and allowed
them to maintain sole possession of first place in the AL West. They have the
best record in the majors at 16-9, and that’s no fluke; BP’s Current
Adjusted Standings have them atop their division, and also with the game’s
best mark.
There’s something of a
groundswell developing around this team, with two storylines that have
nothing to do with their performance taking over the coverage. One is that
this hot start was made possible by the Alex Rodriguez trade, and the second, that they’re playing so well because of great chemistry.
As with any part of baseball, injuries are visually deceptive. What our eyes tell us may not necessarily be the truth, and is subject to the tests of objectivity and science, with the occasional fallback to experience and educated guesses. Things that appear serious can be nothing, things that appear innocuous end seasons, and things we don\’t even notice add up to disaster. Sports medicine is often more art than science, but we should never feel like we can use a simple formula; there is no 1+1=2 for a medhead. The equations are far more complex, the data often flawed, and the platform ever-changing. It\’s just a reminder that while injuries are an overlooked part of baseball, it\’s still subject to the same vagaries that tell us never to trust our eyes.
I’ve been getting a fair share of e-mail asking whether Barry Bonds’ first few weeks of 2004 have been the hottest start to a
season any player has ever had. I’ve been hesitant to answer, in part because
the sample size was pretty small, and in part because that’s not the easiest
thing to research.
With April all but in the books, however, I think it’s safe to say that Bonds’
.472/.696/1.132 line is historic. It’s not only the best start anyone has had
in the past 30 years, it’s the best month any player has had in that
time.
Now, when I make a statement like that, you can be pretty sure it’s been
researched by someone smarter than myself. In this case, Keith Woolner put
together a list of the best months, by OPS, as far back as 1972…
One of the other cool things about having a knuckleballer–because, let’s face it, we all think knuckleball pitchers are cool–is that you can slate them for relief between turns, and then can usually roll with it when you do what the Sox just did in activating Kim and re-shuffling their rotation. It covered them through the doubleheader against Tampa, and their rotation is prepped to run in turn from Saturday on, after getting Arroyo one last start before he heads back to the pen. Add in that Kim’s a pretty good pitcher, and you’ve got the first of what ought to be a trio of important reactivations in the weeks to come that ought to help the Red Sox make tracks in the AL East. Plus, Kim gets his first two turns against the D-Rays and the Tribe, and past transgressions might even be forgotten. Well, you can always hope. I don’t think New Englanders have learned to turn the other cheek since Cotton Mather started wondering whether that whole innocence-guilt thing was crimping the justice of good ol’fashioned witch-burnings. Not that that stopped people where Dan Duquette was concerned.
I\’ve a long-running fascination with Magglio Ordonez.
As observed in his player comment in BP \’04, Magglio\’s consistent excellence since 1999 has been uncanny. As early as it is this season, he\’s once again putting up standard-issue Magglio rate stats: .291/.356/.582. But what engages me beyond his recent history is the seeming discontinuity between Ordonez\’s minor league and major league numbers. Check out these career rate stats:
Minors: .271/.328/.416
Majors: .307/.365/.528
He was, in some senses, a \”Hidden Hitter\”–one whose statistical bestowals on the farm didn\’t portend the greatness to come. Or did they?
Are the Kids Alright?: Rays fans may know that B.J. Upton and Delmon Young ranked eighth and 31st, respectively, on this year\\\’s Top 50 Prospects List. Rays fans may also be wondering how they\\\’re faring so far. As always, we\\\’re built to please…
Upton is toiling for Double-A-Montgomery of the Southern League, and thus far the shortstop is hitting like a house afire. In 70 plate appearances, Upton has drawn nine walks and put up a line of .344/.429/.525. Sample-size concerns abound, but what\\\’s encouraging, even in the early going, is that Upton is showing power. Prior to this season, he\\\’d drawn walks and hit for a career average of .297, but the second overall pick of the 2002 draft had yet to show the power stroke he\\\’d displayed as a prep in Virginia. He\\\’s still appears to be terribly error-prone (nine in 13 games thus far in 2004 after recording 56 last season), but on balance he\\\’s faring very well for 19-year-old in the high minors.
As for Young, he\\\’s off to a less encouraging start in the Sally League: .237/.247/.355 in 77 plate appearances. Those numbers are ugly, but it\\\’s early. Still, Young\\\’s drawn only a single walk against 76 at-bats, which is troubling to say the least. The thing to keep in mind is that, other than a strong showing in the Arizona Fall League, this is the first professional stop for Young, and the Sally League is a fairly high starting point for a high-school trained ballplayer. It\\\’s far, far too early to begin casting aspersions at his promise.
This is the second installment of my six-part survey of how much fans can actually expect to pay for tickets to major league games. I choose a mid-week game, then shop for tickets on MLB.com a few weeks in advance. First I look for a block of casual fan seats: ideally, four behind the plate and towards the front of the upper deck. These are usually, but not always, cheaper than the average price ticket used by Team Marketing Report to calculate the Fan Cost Index.
Then I repeat the process three more times. Twice I look for the best available seats, as determined by the MLB.com ticket computer–once for a family of four and once for a single fan. The seats available for the family of four serve as a rough proxy for the club’s season-ticket and advance sales, while the best single-seat option shows where a fan who doesn’t care about the cost can sit without paying scalpers’ prices. Finally, I look for the cheapest seats to find the lowest a fan using MLB.com could pay to get into the ballpark.
To complete the survey, I check the club Web sites for promotions that could reduce the cost of my hypothetical fan’s attendance, scan the club’s promotional schedule for unusual events, and put it all together in the form below…
Dayn Perry did some great work last week. His Can \’O Corn column pointed out
how much of the difference between MLB and NFL \”competitive balance\”
is really a function of the shorter schedule. Sixteen is a very small number
of games, and serves to increase the amount of turnover in the playoffs each
year. There\’s just not enough time to recover from slumps, while luck and
injuries are much greater determinants of success and failure.
I want to look at that issue from a slightly different perspective. Consider,
if you will, the MLB standings as they would have looked through everyone\’s
13th game this year…
[Ed. Note: The Expos have scored 40 runs in 22 games through Wednesday, and are now 5-17]. That\’s not just league-worst, that\’s in the running for all-time worst. Thirty-six runs is a run-and-a-half a game in a season where normal teams are averaging five runs a game. They\’re hitting for a team line of .201/.283/.254. There are maybe–maybe–10 players qualifying for the batting title who are hitting worse than the Expos as a team. That\’s tough.
They would have to almost double their run-scoring to move up one spot in the standings (Tampa Bay, at 67, is second-worst). Of their five wins, one was 2-0 and the other four were one-run wins. They\’ve been shut out six times. Over a quarter of the time, they score no runs at all.
And that\’s just run-scoring. They\’re dead last in walks. Dead last in home runs. They\’re in the middle of the pack in strikeouts, which I\’m sure is small consolation to Frank Robinson. Their best regular, Jose Vidro, is down on the hitting leaderboard below the century mark, right alongside notable sluggers like Bobby Higginson and Omar Vizquel.
You might have noticed some construction going on around these parts. There\\\’s some dust and a bit of confusion, but I hope everyone is as psyched about the new design. Lots of work has been going on behind the scenes for months now, prepping to make BP a better experience. Bear with us as we work on things to give you more of what you pay your hard-earned money for.
One of those things lost in the shuffle of mail servers was UTK. It happens sometimes; no one\\\’s to blame, we just supersize and move on. So, after a night out with Christian Ruzich and TFD, I realize that I could talk baseball for hours. I got to do my Indy radio gig, talked with guys who stopped by for another hour, then beverages with two great guys after that. Life is good, and better now that the XM is installed in the Volvo. I\\\’m ready for next week\\\’s big trip. Let\\\’s get on to the injuries…
Can they keep it up?
At this writing, the Dodgers, at 12-6, are tied with the Red Sox for the second-best record in baseball. To be sure, it\’s terribly early, but it does make me wonder how likely the Dodgers are to continue playing well. They were already contenders in the relatively lusterless NL West, but most observers had L.A. tabbed for third place or worse.
There isn\’t a whole hell of a lot to do in Lansing, Michigan. There aren\’t any mountains, and there isn\’t any seacoast. The nearest amusement park is 400 miles away. There\’s a minor league ball team there now, but there wasn\’t when I grew up. There\’s a college there–a big, state university–with lots of college parties, and lots of college girls, and a lot of kids from Lansing start behaving like college students long before they really should. But even those with precocious synapses manage to sneak in a few years of relative innocence before learning what sororities and beer bongs are, and my synapses were late to the party. There\’s a big city not too far away, but to paraphrase W.C. Fields, the prevailing sense that one has when one is in Detroit is that, all things considered, one would rather be in Lansing.
So what you do a lot is drive. You drive past the cow farms and the meadows and rolling hills or whatever the hell they\’re called in the TripTik and the dilapidated country town with the antique store that your mother likes so much. You drive with your dad in an American-made sedan and you listen to Ernie Harwell and the Tigers. You drive at 62 m.p.h. past a shuttered-up farmhouse with peeling gray paint and a half-working windmill, and Steve Balboni stands there like a house by the side of the road and watches Frank Tanana\’s fastball go by, or that\’s what Ernie tells you. You drive and you listen and you daydream and you talk about baseball.
Given a discrepancy between \”Pythagorean Wins\” (what you\’d expect from a team given a specific runs scored/runs allowed set) and actual wins leads to all kinds of investigation, chin-scratching, nose-picking, and navel-gazing. Some people will say a team is \”stronger\” than its actual record because it\’s underperforming the formula, and so forth. Suspects for the gap typically include: Strength of bullpen Managerial use of bullpen Clutch hitting Clutch pitching Chemistry Managerial strategies in tight games Luck This leads to interesting observations and theories (team x is 12-0 in one run games, manager Joe\’s teams consistently outperform their Pythagorean record except when they don\’t) but rarely insight. It\’s not as bad as putting a couple of stats into a blender, pressing the \”pulse\” button a couple of times, and claiming the resulting undrinkable smoothie is some kind of innovation. But it\’s still a waste of time.