Baseball Prospectus: One risk that you took last year was an unorthodox relief strategy. In retrospect, do you think it would’ve been more prudent to just go ahead and try it, rather than announcing it beforehand? Theo Epstein: In retrospect, if I could do last year’s bullpen over again, for starters I hope I’d do a better job putting together quality relievers. I didn’t do a very good job. No matter what we said about it, I didn’t have the right guys in here to get the job done. I think both sides of the debate missed a big issue. The general public and traditional media thought we were trying to do a “bullpen by committee,” a revolutionary idea. They decided to just blame the whole thing on Bill James, and got it all wrong. On the other side, the new school guys like yourself thought, great, they’re not going to overpay for saves, and they’re going to try to apply what Bill wrote about the ace reliever and unconventional usage to create the “optimal bullpen.” The truth was really somewhere in the middle.
“Who of us would not be glad to lift the veil behind which the future lies hidden, to cast a glance at the next advances of our science and at the secrets of its development during future years? What particular goals will there be toward which the leading sabermetric spirits of coming generations will strive? What new methods and new facts in the wide and rich field of sabermetric thought will the new years disclose?” Here at Baseball Prospectus, we’re not completely immune to the general fascination with the recent turn of the world’s odometer. So, with this edition marking the final year of the second millennium, let’s take a look forward at what the third holds for us seamheads. Our inspiration comes from a similar effort nearly 100 years ago. In 1900, a mathematician named David Hilbert addressed the International Congress of Mathematicians in Paris and delivered what was to become history’s most influential speech about mathematics. Hilbert outlined 23 major problems to be studied in the coming century. In doing so he expressed optimism about the field, sharing his feeling that unsolved problems were a sign of vitality, encouraging more people to do more research. The above quote is, in fact, a bastardization of the opening statements of Hilbert’s speech. Hilbert referred to mathematics instead of sabermetrics and spoke in terms of “centuries” instead of “years.” Given the relative youth of sabermetrics and baseball analysis compared to math, it’s appropriate to use a period of smaller scope than Hilbert. The quotes that appear periodically throughout this essay are similarly taken from Hilbert’s speech and altered to refer to baseball analysis.
Theo Epstein became the youngest general manager in major league history when he was hired, at age 28, as GM of the Boston Red Sox. Epstein, who turned 30 one month ago, now has 14 months under his belt as GM and 11 years in professional baseball. He also has three decades of experience with the Red Sox; Epstein grew up in Brookline, Mass., within walking distance of Fenway Park. As GM, he still walks to the ballpark every day. (Hours after this interview, the Red Sox re-acquired veteran designated hitter Ellis Burks. Burks, when he came up as a rookie with the Red Sox in 1987, was patrolling center field in front of his 13-year-old future GM.) Baseball Prospectus spoke with Epstein at his office inside a snow-covered Fenway Park.
There’s a new bit of conventional wisdom that’s gaining traction in the media. It says the Oakland offense will be so bad in 2004 that they’ll have trouble besting the amped-up Angels for the division title. I should know; I myself indulged in this bit of convention in a recent column I wrote for FoxSports.com, the gracious purveyors of my primary day job.
The question I should’ve asked before pontificating on the subject at hand is this: is it actually true? Is the Oakland offense really in such desperate straits. First, let’s acknowledge is no longer a team built around its run-scoring capabilities. Ever since the Moneyball furor, some observers haven’t enjoyed pointing out that the A’s are in fact a pitching-and-defense outfit. Pointing this out is no longer breaking news, and it never really was all that subversive. It’s just true; Oakland hasn’t ranked in the top half of AL in runs scored since 2001, but they’ve ranked second and first, respectively, the last two seasons in fewest runs allowed.
Nevertheless, runs are runs, and the A’s appear poised to lose quite a few of them on the offensive side of the ledger. Consider that shortstop Miguel Tejada and catcher Ramon Hernandez are both elsewhere. Tejada, among AL shortstops, finished third in Value Over Replacement Player (VORP), while Hernandez ranked fourth among AL catchers in VORP. Tejada and Hernandez also ranked second and fourth, respectively, on the team in VORP. That’s a serious hunk of production lost by the team that ranked only ninth in the loop in runs scored.
The AL Central is close enough–or rather, mediocre enough–that a small factor could make a big difference. It could be a breakout performance, a smart mid-season acquisition, or a key injury. The Twins have dealt with quite a few injuries, seeing their Redbook numbers creep up each year. Some may be the result of playing more “important” games, since the numbers suggest that poor teams have fewer injuries due to end-of-season replacements and ‘coasting.’ While any team can have a bad year injury-wise, this three-year trend is disturbing since there have been no significant changes in the park or even in the personnel. The Twins, you’ll notice, have a distinctly “green” tint here in the THR. Does this mean their injury woes have turned? Perhaps. At the very least, two of the riskier players–Eric Milton and A.J. Pierzynski–were moved, and even the riskiest of Twins aren’t terribly risky.
Drew Henson, after a six-year baseball career, has elected to go back to football. He’s walking away from $12 million owed to him over the next couple of years, although he’s likely to make most of that up in a football contract.
I take no pleasure in this. My objection to Henson’s baseball career had more to do with the outsized expectations placed upon him by the scouting community and the Yankees. It was very clear that Henson, despite his size and strength, lacked the skills necessary to be a productive baseball player. He was pushed to Triple-A despite considerable evidence that he didn’t belong there. His prospect status as a baseball player was almost entirely a function of his ability as a football player; had he not had that particular trait, he would have been just another guy.
Credit Henson for how he managed his career. Two-sport athletes should always choose baseball first, because the skills required to play the game–to hit, specifically–atrophy quickly if they go unused. You can fail at baseball and go on to a career in football or basketball much more easily than you can take a few years away from baseball and come back to it.
Aaron Boone will have exploratory knee surgery next Tuesday to determine how serious the tear of his ACL is. MRIs are notoriously difficult to read, so it makes perfect sense for Lewis Yocum to peek around before deciding what course to take. This does let us know that the tear is likely not complete, a definite positive for Boone’s assertions that he will be back in August. Tyler Kepner also reminds us that Boone had the same surgery in 2000 and made a full recovery.
Scott Erickson is back, and reports from his workouts–public and private–are reasonably positive. No one is predicting that he’ll be a top starter, but he’s recovered sufficiently from a series of surgeries on his pitching arm to make a contribution at the back of the rotation. His stamina is going to be more of an issue than his stuff, especially early in the season. At least Mets fans can look forward to some Lisa Guerrero sightings this season.
The Mets are also hoping that Cliff Floyd will be sufficiently recovered from late season Achilles tendon surgery to be a force in the middle of the lineup. Early signs are very positive. Mets team sources indicate that Floyd is running at full speed and will be ready for spring training. Floyd may be injury-prone, but the tendonitis should be in his past.
Brian Sabean has brought a fair amount of criticism on himself with his low-key approach to this off-season, creating the world’s largest chapter of the lunatic fringe in the process. So it’s no surprise that he faced his share of skeptical questions from Giants fans during his live chat on mlb.com earlier this week. But it was his answer to a fairly innocuous question that raised the most eyebrows among the “fringers”:
Q: Did you ever make an offer for Vladimir Guerrero?
Sabean: In a word: No. If we had signed Guerrero or [Gary] Sheffield, we would have been without [Jim] Brower, [Scott] Eyre, [Matt] Herges, [Dustin] Hermanson, [Brett] Tomko, [A.J.] Pierzynski, [Pedro] Feliz, [J.T.] Snow, [Jeffrey] Hammonds, [Dustan] Mohr and [Michael] Tucker–obviously not being able to field a competitive team, especially from an experience standpoint, given our level of spending.
This time I’m going to turn my attention to the reigning World Champion Florida Marlins. I’ve seen it proclaimed in more than one corner that last year’s model was mostly the fine work of Dave Dombrowski, with his successor, Larry Beinfest, adding only a complementary tweak or two. So let’s find out whether that’s true. You may recall that I performed a similar exercise with the ’03 Red Sox last year. The methodology will be the same this time around. Using Value Over Replacement Player (VORP), let’s see how much Beinfest’s acquisitions contributed compared to Dombrowski’s.
In the first part of our winter leagues study, we looked at what the player performances said about each league’s level of quality. In Part II, we’ll look at what player performance in these leagues say about a player’s future.
In our last report, the Round Robin playoffs were in the first week of action and the surprising Cibao Gigantes led the pack with a 4 and 1 record, with the weakening Azucareros in last place with a reversed record of 1 and 4. Meanwhile, the heavily-favored Aguilas and Licey were 3-2 and 2-3 respectively, but both were seemingly moving in opposite directions at the time. The Aguilas had won their last two games against Licey, and Licey had lost their last three, looking flat on the field and on the verge of a prolonged losing streak.
But on January 9th, second baseman Luis Castillo (Marlins) rejoined the club and D’Angelo Jimenez (Reds) was moved to shortstop for the injured Cristian Guzman (Twins), and that night Licey started a nine-game winning streak that virtually catapulted the team to the final series. The streak tied the longest in the history of the Round Robin playoffs, also established by Licey in 1998. The team had solid offensive performances from Eric Byrnes (Athletics) (.375/.434/.563, and a new playoff record 20 RBI), José Offerman (.338/.423/.500), Castillo (.442 OBP), Jimenez (.403 OBP), Timo Perez (Mets), Izzy Alcantara, and at the end of the series, Carlos Peña (Tigers) and Henry Rodriguez, each hitting key home runs in the middle of the winning streak.
On the pitching side, José Jimenez (Indians) won his four starts with a 1.13 ERA, Vladimir Nuñez (Rockies) had a 1.35 ERA in 21 innings, and veteran Rafael Roque was moved from the bullpen to the starting rotation and didn’t allow a single run in two starts. These three pitchers were key, because the Tigers lost Juan Cruz (Cubs) after just two starts with an injured non-throwing hand, and Salomón Torres (Pirates), who battled a severe case of the flu, and managed to pitch just two innings in the semifinals.
Today BP debuts the second season of Will Carroll’s Team Health Reports. Over the next few weeks, Will will cover all 30 teams, rating each team’s lineup, starting rotation and closer on a three-color scale: red light for significant injury risk, yellow light for light to moderate injury risk, green light for minimal injury risk. First installment: the Philadelphia Phillies.
Under new owner Frank McCourt–who has about as much of his own cash invested in the team as you do–the Dodgers have embarked on a search for a general manager. Current GM Dan Evans, who has held the job since October of 2001, hasn’t been fired, and has been told he is welcome to interview for his job, which is awfully nice of McCourt.
I can’t even begin to describe how angry this whole thing makes me. It shouldn’t; I have no emotional attachment to the Dodgers or Evans. However, the idea that Evans, who inherited a nearly impossible situation and has put the franchise on much more solid ground than it was when he arrived, could somehow find his job in danger just as his work could begin to bear fruit strikes me as patently unfair.
The Dodgers have been contenders in both seasons under Evans, and their two-year record of 177-147 is fifth in the NL in that time. The Dodgers have achieved that mark despite the crushing weight of former GM Kevin Malone’s worst mistakes. In both seasons, the Dodgers got next to nothing for more than $20 million of their money. Darren Dreifort took home nearly $22 million over two years, and threw a grand total of 60 2/3 innings, all in ’03. In ’02, Kevin Brown made $15.7 million while throwing just 63 2/3 frames (to the tune of a 4.81 ERA). This past year, Andy Ashby closed out his three-year deal by providing 78 innings of 5.18 ERA ball, while cashing in for $8.5 million.
Still, by this standard the Tigers could be as much as 11 wins better just based on these upgrades. Keeping in mind that they were a "true" 49-win team in 2003 (falling six games short of their projected, or Pythagorean record, based on runs scored and allowed), you can project 15-20 games of improvement even before considering the possibility that the returning players will get better. That’s certainly a worthy achievement, but it’s more important to evaluate the Tigers in terms of what they are now, comparing them not to their wretched performance of a year ago, but to their competition. Are the Tigers really comparable to the Twins, White Sox and Royals, or even the Indians?
Not long ago, a Chicago judge tossed out a lawsuit against the Cubs, who had set up their own company to scalp their tickets. They’d done so on the grounds that (essentially) by being two parts of the same company, it wasn’t like it was the same company doing it, as prohibited by the law. Explanations readers suggested for that finding ran from stark judicial incompetence all the way to the Tribune Company getting one of those Wrath of Khan creatures into the judge’s ear somehow.
Meanwhile in the gray, gray, gray state of Washington (contrary to our reputation, it’s only rained a couple of times this winter: October-December, then it snowed, December-January, then it snowed again, then January through today), where local government isn’t quite as corrupt as Chicago but is racing to catch up, judicial insight flared.
Who wants to be a Yankee third baseman? OK, so maybe that doesn’t have the same ring of a certain game show that gripped the nation a few years back, but it’s a question on many people’s minds right now. Incumbent starter Aaron Boone blew out his left ACL playing basketball and may be lost for the entire 2004 season. While Boone is basically a league-average third baseman, maybe a bit better due to his glove, he looks like Mike Schmidt compared to the available replacements.