Eric Gagne goes from slapshots to the consecutive saves record. Dusty Baker loves Tony Womack. Ron Santo loves Dusty Baker. Kerry Robinson isn’t impressed with Mark Prior. Lou Piniella doesn’t think Japanese players should be Rookie of the Year candidates–unless they play for his team. George Steinbrenner isn’t in the mood for hugs. These and other notable quotables in The Week in Quotes.
If I hear Andy Roddick called “A-Rod” one more time, I’m probably going to puke, but it does bring forth an interesting question. Here’s this up and coming tennis star, dating a singer/actress, and what’s he get for marketing? The already-used nickname of an undermarketed baseball player. Roddick hasn’t approached the popularity or consistency of Alex Rodriguez, so attaching himself to that image helps. I’ll leave the baseball business stuff to Doug Pappas, but without the Lords of Baseball doing their anti-marketing, baseball–even on the day when the football freaks teed it up–is running a close second. Pennant races and good baseball create fans.
Powered by more of the fabulous Beringer White Merlot and my new kick-ass corkscrew, on to the injuries…
You can read Wednesday’s column for a longer discussion of the principles behind this research, but the general idea is that you have to dig deeper than just looking at seasonal stats to see what a team has going for it down the stretch. That piece addressed the quality of rotations; this one looks at the quality of bullpens. As I wrote Thursday, I orginally researched this using Adjusted Runs Prevented (ARP). I had to throw out that data, though, because using a value stat distorted the results. I went back and used Runs Responsible Average–the rate equivalent of ARP–to generate the lists below. I determined each team’s current core relievers by looking at game logs; most teams had six, but some had as few as five or as many as eight. The point is to pull out the pitchers whose performances show up in the seasonal numbers but who are no longer pitching, or pitching much, for their teams. This correction should give us a better idea of who has the best bullpens in baseball for the stretch drive.
Hideo Nomo gets bonus points for admitting he was hurt, but not as many as he would have gotten had he said something when it first started hurting. The Dodgers on the other hand are…well, I don’t want to say that word. We’ll say obfuscating, how’s that? Calling inflammation of his rotator cuff the result of fatigue is…what’s the word? Crap. Pure crap. Inflammation comes from irritation and overuse. While fatigue might have something to do with poor mechanics, calling it the cause is insulting to medheads. Frank Jobe’s legacy deserves better than the current problems in the Dodgers training room.
Sixty-three. Sixty-four. Sixty-five. Sixty-six. Sixty-seven. At last count, 67 of you kind souls let me know that Derek Jeter would be out this weekend with a strained oblique. He’ll miss the Red Sox series. Allow me to refresh your short-term memories–look at what I said on Wednesday regarding Jeter. Good thing they signed Luis Sojo, eh?
If you’re avoiding watching the Tigers, you’re missing out on some interesting baseball. Among the more interesting parts is Danny Patterson, a former Ranger that came over in the Juan Gonzalez deal and has been injured seemingly ever since. Patterson has picked up some saves, but he’s been phenomenal out of the bullpen since returning. He’s definitely one of those guys you want to have in any pen or if you’re looking at names at the end of your 2004 fantasy draft, Patterson’s isn’t a bad name to call out.
One of the best things about being involved with BP is the people you meet. Since we started doing Pizza Feeds a couple of years back, I’ve been fortunate enough to meet several hundred people who trudge their way to a Feed, all of whom have an intense interest in baseball, and all of whom are very generous with their time and support. It’s pretty common for people to hang out and talk after the main event’s over. Sometimes, someone will have an in-depth topic they want a long answer on, or they want to talk about available positions with BP or in a front office, or they want to argue with me about Derek Jeter’s defense.
The most common question I get after the end of the feed is about books. Some recurring themes come up during the evening, and one of them is often: “What skills does a general manager really need?” The question that inevitably follows is: “What books do you think a GM should read when they first get the job?” It’s a good question, so I thought I’d make some suggestions here. I’m going to stay away from baseball books, including our own, and focus instead on the first books anyone should they read if they’re going to be serious about their business. Many of these books are applicable to a number of industries, but I believe they’re particularly relevant to running a major league club. So, in no particular order:
There has never been a season when Barry Bonds was obviously the league’s best player that he did not win the MVP award. Were he to lose the award this season (he is currently leading in VORP by 17 runs over Albert Pujols) it would be his first real injustice. If Bonds has not been mistreated by MVP voters though, several stars of the past have been. Although it has been 80 years since anyone has hit like Bonds has the past few years, there have been occasions when a player has dominated his league for several years and been ill-served by the voters. The rest of this article briefly discusses a few of the more famous cases. Ted Williams’ problem was that he played in a time when it was difficult to win the award without winning the pennant, and his team finished second every year. From 1941 through 1954, Williams led the league in VORP every season that he wasn’t either in the military (five years) or hurt (1950). He won two awards: 1946, when the Red Sox finished first, and 1949, when they finished one game behind. Let’s run through a few of the more interesting losses:
Milton Bradley wants to start running more. Eric Gagne is a legitimate part of the Cy Young discussion. And Mariners keep making the Devil Rays look like a race of supermen. All this and much more news from Cleveland, Los Angeles, and Seattle in your Friday edition of Prospectus Triple Play.
The Drew Henson Saga, of course, is more than that; it’s one of the most interesting stories in Prospectdom. He may not be six-year, $17 million interesting though, which is the contract the Yankees gave him to give up football. And now we’re off to the races with what is one of the most-debated topics of prospect analysis: Can plate discipline be taught? Can someone like Henson, who’s extremely strong, shorten his swing, get the bat around faster so he can make more contact? Can he learn to recognize the curve and hit it? And will that help him stop swinging at bad breaking pitches, draw some walks, and get better pitches to drive? Are humans inherently good or evil? I was the lone voice in favor of including Henson in BP’s Top 40 Prospects list, at least in the Honorable Mention section. The only thing that’s changed is that he’s had a repeat year, the highlight of which was that for a brief while we heard he was catching on and had a better approach at the plate. His defense at third is still bad. What kind of improvement would have been required for Henson to be adequate, or even considered a good prospect again?
There’s something about baseball that makes you feel a part of it. Sure, I know football is more popular because it’s easy and it’s marketed well. The thing is, football requires no commitment and just becomes a big party you go to every week, if you’re really into it.
Baseball, on the other hand, requires a certain level of personal investment. “We” is a term I often hear-–and say–when watching baseball. Greg Rakestraw always gets on me when I do SportsDesk because I start saying “We just need to get rid of Antonio Alfonseca” or “Every time Prior’s on the mound, we win.” I yell at the screen, make calls to friends, and generally agonize over a team that I have little to no effect on.
But I’m convinced I have this personal power over the team. I’m sure that you think you have it at times. I sit on the couch in front of the big screen, WGN glaring green and the little box at the top left taunting me with a Cardinals lead. I yell at umpires, scream at players, plead with Dusty, and in the end, begin watching Black Hawk Down because I just can’t take it anymore. Naturally, my powers kick in after a while, and by not watching I help the Cubs make an amazing comeback–just the kind that makes me wish I’d seen it, but like Schroedinger’s cat, it’s dead when you look. I’m sure fans of every team know that psychic surety. Come on, Baseball–market that passion.
I promised a second part to the study in which I would analyze team bullpens in the same manner, and I spent a good chunk of Wednesday doing the research and preparing the data. I used Michael Wolverton’s Adjusted Runs Prevented, and separated team bullpens into current core relievers (five or six per team) and everyone else.
Now, even as I was doing the work I kind of thought ARP might not be the best tool for the job, because it’s not a pure rate stat. It is a value metric that has performance, context and playing time components, the latter two of which make it a poor analogue for Support-Neutral Winning Percentage. Nevertheless, I went ahead with the research because I thought using ARP would still be useful while being a much simpler calculation than Runs Responsible Average, the rate stat from which ARP is derived. (Calculating RRAs for the core relievers and the others is a manual task, and no small one.)
I was wrong. The playing-time effect dominates everything, so much so that using ARP in this manner only really tells you which teams are using pitchers who they haven’t used all season. It’s a worthless data set that clouds, rather than illuminates, the issue of which teams have the best bullpens right now.
The Diamondbacks’ Brandon Webb should be a lock for Roofie of the Year, and a contender for Cy Young. The Royals add Rondell White to their All-Boy Power Lineup. The Phillies have overcome Jose Mesa’s awful season. These and other news and notes out of Arizona, Kansas City, and Philadelphia in today’s edition of Prospectus Triple Play.
I’ve been thinking about the way I use advanced performance metrics such as Michael Wolverton’s Support-Neutral pitching statistics. In evaluating a team, I’ll often quote aggregate data such as their relievers’ Adjusted Runs Prevented or their starters’ Support-Neutral Value Added as a way of showing how effective they’ve been, and as shorthand for what we can expect them to do going forward. This can be deceiving. Of course I know that past performance isn’t an exact predictor of future results, and that a group of players can be over or under their heads in the short- or medium-term. That’s not necessarily the problem; the problem is that the aggregate totals have been compiled by a group of players who are not necessarily representative of the team at the present time. For example, just last week I mentioned that the Expos’ starters ranked sixth in the National League in SNVA. That’s true, but it’s past performance, and it includes six wretched starts by four pitchers who aren’t going to be used again, as well as the good pitching of Claudio Vargas, who may not take the mound again this year due to a shoulder injury. The SNVA figure is useful in letting us know how the Expos’ rotation has performed to date, but to get an idea of its current quality, it’s best to look at the pitchers taking the ball every fifth day. Isolating the performance of the current five Expos starters yields an SNPct of .569, 20 points higher than the team’s seasonal .549 mark. The Expos aren’t special in this regard. Twenty-five of the 30 major league teams have current rotations with better SNPcts than their seasonal numbers, which you’d expect in a game so fiercely Darwinian.
My e-mail box was bursting when I got power back this morning, all wanting to know what I thought about the 130-pitch outing of Mark Prior. (Hey, Keith Woolner is the PAP expert around here!) One of my best Velocity Project sources sent me a stunning report and luckily, I had multiple sources (and a gun) on this one. Prior is establishing himself as one of those freaks that actually gets stronger as a game goes on. While he would hit 93 in the first couple innings, he was as high as 97–the highest I have him recorded–in the eighth. While I’m glad Dusty overrode Prior’s desire to complete the game, I’m not tremendously concerned with Prior’s health. I am more concerned about his short-term effectiveness, with short-term in this situation meaning the next two to three weeks. While flags fly forever, I think Kerry Wood should be required to stand in front of Dusty on every pitch Prior or Carlos Zambrano makes over 120. He doesn’t need to say anything, just point to that fading scar on his right elbow. I think Dusty will get the point. I think.
The Twins have been a problem area all year–banged up, poor roster construction, odd decisions–and yet they remain close in the AL Central. With Doug Mientkiewicz having a recurrence of his ongoing wrist problems and Jacque Jones dealing with a painful lower back (and Astroturf on his home field), the Twins will be juggling players around and making use of some of their callups, like Michael Cuddyer. They are closer to getting Eric Milton back–he’s made his first rehab start in Ft. Myers, a team in the FSL playoffs–but his effectiveness remains a big question mark.
As I sat in the upper deck at Jacobs Field last Saturday, taking in the Indians-Blue Jays tilt and shivering in the Lake Erie breeze with our Cleveland Pizza Feeders, the conversation turned to Texas Hold ‘Em. Poker is a natural fit for baseball fans, especially the sort that are likely to attend our events. Like baseball (or at least the ‘game’ of baseball management), poker is a game that’s grounded in mathematics, and in optimizing the use of limited information. Like baseball, it’s also a lot of fun–at least when you’re winning. Just a bit of background here, which will be unnecessary for some readers and inadequate for others (if you’ve never played poker at all, this probably isn’t your column). Texas Hold ‘Em is a variant of poker in which each player is dealt two ‘hole’ cards face down, and makes the best five-card hand he can between his own cards and five common cards that are dealt to the entire table. The ‘face down’ part is the key: a player’s hole cards are never revealed until the last round of betting has been completed. In fact, in a tight game, the hands are often not revealed at all–every player but one will have folded before the showdown occurs. I’ve always found that last bit fascinating: players are willing to risk (sometimes large) sums of money on hands that they’re never able to see. While a good player can pick up plenty of information between observing the table’s betting patterns, running and rerunning the odds of particular hands occurring, and observing the other players’ “tells,” there’s always the lingering possibility of a bluff, which as a game theorist can tell you, will occur just often enough to keep a bettor on his toes. Lest you think this is a Bill Simmons-style off topic diversion, there are lessons that can be drawn from Hold ‘Em and applied to baseball. Let’s take a break from the usual dose of number crunching and look at those this week.
The Braves’ post-season roster looks already to be set. The Brewers experience one of the first brights spot in their season with a 10-game winning streak. The Twins have finally decided to act in their own best interest, putting Grant Balfour in the rotation. And the Rocco Baldelli is no longer running away with the AL Rookie of the Year–surprise, surprise. All this and much more news from Atlanta, Milwaukee, Minnesota, and Tampa Bay in your Wednesday edition of Prospectus Triple (uh, we mean, Quadrupule) Play.
This is something I like to call the All-Surprise Team. By surprise, I mean the pleasant variety as opposed to, say, an IRS audit or a trans-Atlantic plane ride seated next to Bronson Pinchot. Now to classify something as a “surprise,” you’re wallowing in the subjective. It’s a bit like calling someone “underrated” or “Democratic presidential candidate”–loosely defined and perhaps without any value at all.
In order to apply a standard more firm than my own capricious notion of the word surprise, I’ve turned to Nate Silver’s PECOTA projection system. In isolation it’s enough to give a liberal-arts buffoon like me that monkey-opening-coconut feeling, but fortunately it’s laid out right here in all its easily digestible glory. Know that it rawks, and that I’m leaning heavily on it for this little ditty.
In any event, with a shout-out to PECOTA, here’s my 2003 All-Surprise Team…