It was nice to watch the team play as I wrote the Team Health Report. It should be, if not successful, at least more interesting to watch the Mets in 2004. As the team moves away from a Phillips Era that led to one World Series and much woe, and into what could probably be best described as the Wilpon Era, the team begins to turn over what was an old, fragile lineup.
It’s an accepted, but not always true, tenet that younger teams are healthier. Clearly, young pitchers are more at risk in terms of workload, but in fact, there are significant changes in the body over the normal range of ages in a baseball career. Young players tend to have more tears and trauma, while older players tend to have problems of muscles and bone. Like most things, there are too many factors involved to say that there is any one rule. Team health, like players, is very individual.
The two yellows at the top of the rotation aren’t terribly concerning to me. Both Leiter and Glavine have operated for the last several years as “crafty left-handers,” rarely having problems even when taxed. Leiter especially recognizes the dangers of Dallas Green-style workloads, having the scars to prove it. Pitchers of this age are already nearly singular and have to be special to make it this far. There’s a point where the aches and pains destroy their effectiveness and it usually comes in a hurry.
There’s dumb, there’s really dumb, and there’s leaving $35 on the table.
In Tuesday’s column, I wrote about the Rotowire Staff League auction. Coming off a second-place finish in 2003, I went into it with a solid pitching staff at relatively low cost. Based on my own analysis and the great feedback I got from readers, I planned to target hitting with the $109 I had available. But despite having every intention of blowing a big chunk of my budget on two slugging outfielders, I ended up spending no more than $22 on any player, that one being Adam Kennedy, who is neither slugging nor an outfielder.
I was involved in the bidding on Manny Ramirez (who went for $46), Barry Bonds ($42), and Jim Edmonds ($40), but bowed out each time, eyeing the remaining players and telling myself I’d get one of them at a price I was comfortable with. When the last top-tier outfielder was called, I went all the way to the high 40s, but in the end, couldn’t bring myself to pay more than that for Magglio Ordonez, who ended up going for $57.
So to understand the methods we use to analyze pitcher usage, it’s important to appreciate that while every team in baseball today employs essentially the same usage pattern–starting pitchers work in a five-man rotation, with four or five days of rest between starts, and never relieving in between–that usage pattern is far from the norm historically. As recently as 30 years ago, starters were expected to start every fourth day, with only three days of rest between starts. This does not appear to have had a detrimental effect on the pitchers of that era; in fact, over half of the 300-game winners of the live-ball era were in the prime of their careers in the early 1970s. There is no definitive proof that pitching in any kind of rotation is a necessary ingredient for successful pitching staffs. Through the 1950s, starting pitchers would routinely get six or seven days off to pitch against a team they matched up favorably against, then return to the mound on just two days’ rest for their next start. There is no evidence that starting pitchers who relieve on their days off between starts suffer adversely for doing so. Starting pitchers routinely made 10 or 15 relief appearances a season for the better part of half a century.
So, with no discernible plan and playing in the toughest division in baseball, can this team at least stay healthy? Over the past three seasons, the medhead numbers have not been kind to the Orioles. In addition to questions surrounding the death of Steve Bechler, the Orioles medical staff has had a difficult time with injuries. Injuries to players like Segui, B.J. Surhoff, Chris Richard, and Omar Daal leave them in the bottom quartile in most measures. Once again, the top three teams in the AL East trump the Orioles, and Tampa Bay is fast becoming a medhead team, led by their top-notch staff.
I wrote a piece in the Baseball Prospectus Basics last week (“How to run a bullpen.”) I got a lot of feedback that ran like this: Hey, that table you ran shows that it’s good to generally use the best reliever in tighter situations, rather than to protect three-run leads in the ninth…Facing a tie game in the eighth, wouldn’t it make sense that a manager would save his best pitcher for the ninth, which would be even more important? This is a fine question, and one I think deserves to be answered in some depth.
No news is good news for the Orioles this spring. The Rockies’ decision to move Shawn Chacon is equal parts puzzling and silly…or is it? And finally, the Mets look to be considering some trades. All this and much more news from Baltimore, Colorado, and New York in your Wednesday edition of Prospectus Triple Play.
Comerica’s change in fence dimensions make it easier to hit homers, but it changed what, in the previous two seasons, was a terrific park for triples. Comerica’s triples factor in 2003 was 126, but from 2001-2002 the figure was a whopping 209. Kauffman Stadium’s homer factor for left-handed batters last season was 94, but for right-handed batters it was 120. That’s in keeping with the previous three seasons. Network Associates Coliseum was quite rough on lefty power hitters last season; it yielded a home run factor of 75, while right-handed batters enjoyed a factor of 114.
Pedro could help himself and the Red Sox by airing it out this season. Can Brandon Larson be a viable option for the Reds at third base? Kevin Towers predicts good things for the Padres offense. These and other news and notes in today’s Prospectus Triple Play.
Last year, I solicited help for the inaugural auction in the Rotowire Staff League. The league, into which I was invited because of some writing I did for the Rotowire Fantasy Baseball Guide, marked the first time I’d ever participated in a perpetual fantasy baseball set-up.
Thanks in no small part to the advice I got from BP readers, I finished second in the league, which I thought was a heck of a feat for someone who went into it as a fantasy novice. Of course, that fact never came up when talking to Jeff Erickson, Pete Schoenke, Chris Liss and the rest of the career roto guys over in Culver City, all but one of whom spent the year looking up at my fantasy rookie behind. Nope. Never. Not once.
(OK, maybe once.)
Later today, the league gathers for its second auction, again putting me in uncharted waters. See, I understand that there’s such a thing as “inflation,” but I understand it the same way I do the idea that there are dishes in the sink. I’m vaguely aware of it, but unsure what, if anything, I’m supposed to do about it. I picked some people’s brains and made some guesses as to what this would mean for both protection lists and the price of talent made available, but in the end, they were just guesses.
In the beginning, there were no rotations. There were no relievers. There was only one pitcher, and the term “everyday player” had no meaning. In 1876, George Bradley started all 64 games for the St. Louis Brown Stockings, completing 63 of them; his teammates combined to throw four innings all year.
Of course, in the early days of the National League, the task performed by the pitcher bore little resemblance to what we call “pitching” today. At various times in the first two decades of professional baseball, the distance from the pitcher to home plate was less than 50 feet; a walk required nine balls; bunts that landed in fair territory before skidding to the backstop were considered fair balls; hitters could call for a “high” or “low” pitch; pitchers could throw the ball from a running start; and curveballs and overhand pitches were illegal.
The game changed quickly, and it quickly became impossible for a team to rely on a single pitcher for its entire season. And once that point was reached, the question of how best to maximize each pitcher’s usage was born.
The Red Sox are in trouble if Johnny Damon succumbs to injury. The Cubs open the vault for Kerry Wood and Derrek Lee. The Devil Rays take Josh Hamilton off the 40-man roster as he works through off-field problems. These and other happenings in today’s Transaction Analysis.
Freddy Garcia was coming off a down year, but you chose to bring him back at a considerable salary. What was behind that decision? What will it take for him to back to where he once was? Bavasi: How will it happen? Greater focus on his part, and more focused instruction working with the pitching coach. This is a young guy who’s a good pitcher who’s had good years and only had one down year. His stuff is good, his strength is good, physically he’s fine. There’s no reason he can’t come back and be better than he was last year. How much better is open to discussion. Our approach to him in the off-season–considering him as a possible non-tender–as we went through that decision, thinking about throwing him into the pile of non-tendered players, we would have his salary to spend. Having analyzed potential players in the group of remaining free agents and potential non-tenders, if you threw all those guys together and threw Garcia in that pile, the best guy in there was going to be Freddy Garcia. Once Lee made the deal with his agent, to bring him back at the same salary, it was a no-brainer.
Paul DePodesta takes the helm in L.A. Dusty Baker is not a government agent. Turk Wendell apparently has spy cameras in every clubhouse in baseball. Bob Melvin saw Eddie Guardado taking magic closer pixie dust. These and other notable quotables in The Week in Quotes.
It is one of the most suspenseful moments in a baseball game. There’s a smash to the second baseman, he slides, knocks it down, picks up the ball, throws from his knees, and the first baseman can’t dig it out. The crowds waits, and then the message appears on the scoreboard “On the last play, the official scorer has ruled: HIT.”
Many of the problems inherent in evaluating defense are evident in the situation above. The first, and most crucial, is the fact that one of the most basic statistics involved in defense, the error, is assigned by one of baseball’s loosest rules, left to the interpretation of the various official scorers. While the league has struggled for the past few seasons to remove the subjectivity inherent in calling the strike zone, it has done nothing to remove the same from the assignment of errors. Rules 10.05.a-e discuss in detail what is to be considered a “base hit”–essentially any ball that could not be fielded with “ordinary effort,” a phrase that is never defined or clarified. In any field, statistics are only valuable if they are consistent and accurately reflect the action on the field. Errors, especially recently, have become assigned in such an ad hoc fashion as to relegate the statistic to nearly unusable status.
Pay attention, folks, because I’m about to reveal the identity of the 2004 world champion. Two years ago, in a column titled, "No Hope, No Faith," I pegged the Anaheim Angels as one of eight teams who had no chance of being competitive during the 2002 season. Last year, in a non-BP article (not online at this time), I reprised the concept by naming the Florida Marlins as one of just seven teams whose fans should have no hope for the 2003 season. As you might recall, the two teams did all right for themselves. I didn’t start out trying to make a fool of myself. The idea behind the annual column listing the teams with no hope and faith for the upcoming season stemmed from Bud Selig’s catchphrase during the 2001-02 labor negotiations. He insisted that "hope and faith" was lost for fans of as many as 18 teams, and the media picked it up and ran with the concept. I was just trying to find the teams that, looking out from early spring, legitimately looked as if they did fit that description. I suppose the fact that my conservative listing of just seven or eight teams each year has included the eventual world champions two of three times is an indication that even the most overmatched team can surprise. That should given hope and faith to all but the most destitute of organizations.
Miguel Cabrera has a bright future ahead of him–at least according to PECOTA. Bernie Williams had a bit of a tummy ache; luckily Kenny Lofton is there to pick up the slack. And the Pirates have a slew of questions to answer regarding their pitching staff. All this and much more news from Florida, New York, and Pittsburgh in your Monday edition of Prospectus Triple Play.