As the Red Sox fight both the Mariners and the specter of the Yankees, they’ll do it with a fully-loaded Pedro Martinez. Quotes today from Red Sox Nation include tidbits that Pedro’s recent longer outings were part of a master plan. If the plan is to be believed (and color me somewhat skeptical), Pedro’s extra days of rest, short outings, and conditioning program all built up to this. This bears watching as some sort of modern version of the “Sunday Pitcher.” If it works, like anything successful in sports, it will be imitated. The Sox are also dealing with the limited availability of Bill Mueller, out with back spasms. Adding in Johnny Damon’s problems and a bullpen that seems to be missing only J. Irving Bentley, and the Sox, like every other playoff team, have an Achilles heel. Speaking of teams that are dealing with injury problems and overcoming them, the A’s seem to be the masters. With Keith Foulke likely to be back on Friday, but the back spasms quite possible to recur, the bullpen in Oakland will need to be watched closely and set up for the playoffs. I don’t think Foulke’s injury should be a major problem, but the chance of his unavailability in even one close game could be the tipping point in a playoff series. As the China Trust Whales discovered this season, even one game lost can make the difference between the playoffs and making tee times. On the good news front, Chris Singleton and Billy McMillon should be back, perhaps as early as Friday after treatment to Singleton’s back and McMillon’s finger reduced symptoms.
Could Milton Bradley be on the move? What are the chances of the Dodgers making the playoffs? And exactly how erratic has Freddy Garcia been this season? All these questions, their answers, and much more news from Cleveland, Los Angeles, and Seattle in your Friday edition of Prospectus Triple Play.
Nine days ago, the Twins were up against the wall. They’d dropped the first two games of a four-game series in Chicago, falling two behind the White Sox in the AL Central. They’d be sending their ace, Johan Santana, to the mound for the third game, but that wasn’t without its perils–the heavily right-handed White Sox were slugging above .480 against southpaws. Even if the third game went their way, the Twins would be facing Esteban Loaiza, Cy Young contender, in the fourth game. They seemed certain to leave Chicago with a hill to climb, the only question was how big. Now, nine days ago seems like nine years ago. Last night’s 5-3 win over the Sox was the fifth game in a row the Twins had taken from their chief rival, and it extended their AL Central lead to 3.5 games over the Sox. With seven of their last nine games against the Tigers, and a magic number of seven, it seems like just a matter of time before the Twins become–you taking notes, Bud?–back-to-back AL Central champions.
There have been massive overhauls of the internal structure of baseball
over the last 10 years. Major League Baseball expanded to Colorado and
Florida in 1993, realigned and added the Wild Card in 1995, introduced
interleague play in 1997, and expanded to Arizona and Tampa Bay in 1998.
Each of these changes necessitated a change in major league baseball’s
scheduling, but in each of these changes a balanced schedule was maintained;
the schedule made sure teams played every other team in the league an almost
equal number of times. There was no such thing as strength of schedule.
Starting in 2001, MLB implemented an unbalanced
schedule with the usual amount of fanfare and fan disgust that usually
accompanies such changes. The change increased games between teams in the
same division while decreasing the number of games against other teams in
the league. The reasons behind the change were many, but certainly one of
the most prevalent was that increasing the meetings between divisional
rivals would pique fan interest and peak attendance and, subsequently,
revenue. Who wouldn’t want more games between the Red Sox and Yankees? Or
the Cubs and Cardinals? Or the Devil Rays and Orioles?
I’ve complained a lot about broadcasts, but what do I actually want? As I’ve sat around watching every game I can down the stretch, I’ve given this some thought. I want insight, more than anything, and failing that, I’d like not to be insulted. I don’t want to have the screen read to me: I can read. If I couldn’t, wouldn’t having the dude say “as you can see from the scouting report…” only rub in the pain of illiteracy? There’s so much to talk about in a baseball game–from pitch to pitch, what’s the sequence? How does this fit into a batter’s strength and weaknesses, or the pitcher’s? What kind of strategic possibilities exist, and how does each manager handle that situation? Instead, according to the announcers, every hitter is a first-pitch, fastball hitter who likes his pitches out and over the plate, and every pitcher needs to put the heat right in on their hands (an expression Jim Bouton used to ridicule). With runners on, it’s always a good idea to put the game in motion, I’m told. Put pressure on the defense. Nothing’s this simple. I’d love to see some real debate in the booth. I’ve argued before that the best thing baseball could do would be to copy wrestling and have one announcer (the play-by-play man would be best) who’s a bit of a homer, and the other announcer who’s the critic, and rankles the home fans a little. With the right people, you might find that while fans didn’t like the crew, they were much more involved in the broadcasts and tuned in to see what would happen next.
Brandon Webb gives the Diamondbacks three aces at the top of their rotation. The Royals’ Angel Berroa deserves the AL Rookie of the Year award. Mike Lieberthal should be hitting between Jim Thome and Bobby Abreu for the Phillies. These and other news and notes out of Arizona, Kansas City, and Philadelphia in your Thursday edition of Prospectus Triple Play.
I’d like to thank everyone for all the feedback on yesterday’s UTK. I went into a bit more depth than I normally do, and since there was such a reaction–many being “Jeez, Will, what’s with you using numbers and stuff? Are those BP Math Bullies kicking your butt in the playground?”–it’s something I’ll try to do more of in the future.
In fact, while many of you wrote in to enlighten me with background information on a number of the pitchers who made “the list,” even more you reminded me that the topic was addressed directly in one of the best books on baseball ever written, The Diamond Appraised. In TDA, Craig Wright and Tom House took a close look at the topic of pitcher workloads, introducing a number of ideas that were revolutionary for the time, and are still causing debate today. If you haven’t read this book, do so immediately.
Speaking of books, it’s time for my “big announcement.” I’ve reached an agreement in principle to write a book this off-season on pitcher injuries. I’m excited about the project, which will bring together some of the greatest minds in sports medicine to try and shine a bright light on the problem of pitcher health. More on this project in the future.
Powered by hope of an October beer at Clark & Addison, on to the injuries…
In the 1988 Baseball Abstract, Bill James introduces what he admits to being a “garbage stat”–the game score. For the uninitiated, the game score is a number, generally ranging from zero to 100, that’s used to evaluate a starting pitcher’s performance in any given outing. It’s scaled so that 50 is roughly an average start, 90 or higher is gem status and anything below, say, 15 is in Jaime Navarro territory. Like the man said, it’s a junk metric, but it’s an entertaining one. That doesn’t mean, however, that it can’t be improved upon. Game scores, as mentioned, were conceived 15 years ago, and in the intervening period we’ve learned a great deal about how much control pitchers exert over certain events. In light of this, perhaps it’s time to roll out Game Scores 2.0, with an eye toward what we now know about the art of pitching. As many of you know, semi-recent research has found that pitchers don’t have as much control over what becomes of balls in play as previously believed. Voros McCracken’s initial findings suggested that pitchers had almost no control over the fate of a ball once it left the bat (provided it stayed in the park). Subsequent research by Keith Woolner and Tom Tippett found that while pitchers didn’t have a great deal of influence over whether balls in play were converted into outs or fell as base hits, they did have a modicum of control over these events. Whoever’s right (I side with the latter position), pitchers appear to have much less influence with regard to hit prevention than we once thought. This principle–separating what pitchers control absolutely from what they control only partially–is where the rubber hits the road for GS 2.0.
Once upon a time, a long time ago, September was a cruel month for baseball. The weather dampened, the children went back to school, the nation’s attention turned to the Second-Best Sport, and many teams soldiered on with only pride and the next season’s paycheck to play for. Year after year, attendance slumped badly, with nothing to bridge the gap between the long, baseball-and-B-B-Q evenings of summer, and the crackling drama of the post-season. It was, like the moment just after intimacy, a time of unspeakable melancholy.
Then, one day, the Commissioner made the Wild Card. The Commissioner was a wise man, and he knew that the self-styled defenders of tradition would not like his creation. But they had complained about westward expansion and night baseball and the Designated Hitter and too many other things to count, and every time they had come back, first to queue in line when the gates opened in spring. Tradition wasn’t marketable anyway, not in the way that a tense battle for fourth place between the Marlins and the Phillies was.
The Wild Card, in fact, was a remarkable success. The Commissioner, never known for his fondness for crowds, became omnipresent in those Septembers, maintaining a furious itinerary, shaking hands with awestruck fans at every ballpark from Yawkey Way to Elysian Fields. The Commissioner took no credit for the Wild Card; he had created it, after all, in the Best Interest of Baseball, and what reward did a man deserve for the mere execution of his duty? It was, he said, remarkable only that it had not been thought of earlier, but that was the hallmark of all great inventions, like post-it notes and garage door openers.
And they lived happily ever after.
Ryan Smith writes: I’m a Cubs fan, and one of the more interesting stats that I remember about their promising 2001 campaign was Eric Young’s 43 doubles and 42 RBI. I thought it would be near impossible for a player to have as many as 25 doubles and fewer RBI than doubles. However, after a bit of research (nothing extensive), I learned that there had been a few guys to do it. Indeed, it is rare. Since 1901, there have been only 45 players with 300+ AB who had more doubles than RBI. The record for most RBI with more doubles is held by Mark Grudzielanek, who had 54 doubles, but just 51 RBI in 1997. Grudzielanek also holds the record for most AB in such a season with 649. Three other players have had 600+ AB and more doubles than RBI: Don Blasingame for the 1959 Cardinals (615 AB, 26 2B, 24 RBI), Sparky Adams for the 1931 Cardinals (608 AB, 46 2B, 40 RBI), and the aforementioned Eric Young. The fewest doubles that exceeded a player’s RBI total was done by Dick Howser playing for the 1965 Indians. In 307 AB, he hit just eight doubles, but had just six runs batted in (one of them on a home run). J.L writes: Interesting new statistical reports. I’m piqued by Pitchers Counterpart Profile. Why should I care how the opposing pitcher has pitched all season when looking at my pitcher’s record? All that matters is how opposing pitchers performed on the particular day they “faced” my pitcher. Unlike PQBF and BQPF, the two pitchers do not really “face” one another, therefore the results need not be filtered by considering their average performances. Counterpart quality is interesting to investigate questions like whether teams juggle their rotations to get their aces facing each other, or whether good run support came from a pitcher’s teammates having an unusually good day (better than you’d expect given who they are facing), or if a team was beating up on weak pitching. It may not have predictive value, but it has some explanatory power.
Can we really call the Braves a dynasty? The Twins have reached at turning point in the season, no doubt. And the Devil Rays finally ink the first pick in the 2003 draft, Delmon Young. All this and much more news from Atlanta, Minnesota, and Tampa Bay in your Wednesday edition of Prospectus Triple Play.
I’ll get right into the heart of this because Mark Prior’s 124 pitch performance tore me in two. As I’ve mentioned before, Prior tends to throw harder in later innings, and that held true last night as well, as he was reaching 96 mph in the 8th. For the first time, however, Prior lost velocity in the 9th, topping out at 93. Adding in the elbow drop, and you can imagine how I was hyperventilating and speaking to the TV in harsh tones. (Does it make even less sense to talk to the TV when you’re TiVoing the game, and you’re about a minute behind?)
Prior may have had a birthday last week, but he’s still in the heart of the injury nexus. Future owner Steve Stone rightfully pointed out in Tuesday’s broadcast that Prior was in “unchartered” territory, nearing 200 innings pitched–and that the collision with Marcus Giles may have been, in the long run, the best thing for him. Prior, as well as teammates Kerry Wood and Carlos Zambrano–who is even younger than Prior–are all near the top of the PAP charts. Comments from Dusty Baker seem to indicate that he’s more than willing to keep his young pitchers working down the stretch. While flags do fly forever, and the ineffectiveness of the Cubs’ bullpen should factor into his decisions, Baker also needs to remember that his young pitchers’ arms might hang limp–like the flags do on a windless summer day–if he keeps working them so hard.
The last 13 days of the season kick off in a big way tonight, with two series that pit teams locked in head-to-head battles for playoff spots.
White Sox at Twins
With just a half-game separating the two teams, this is effectively the first round of the playoffs, a nearly must-win three-game set for both. The Twins were on the brink just seven days ago after dropping the first two in Chicago, but bounced back to win behind Johan Santana (not a surprise) and against Esteban Loaiza (big surprise).
The Twins won’t have their best pitcher, Santana, who started last night against the Indians. That leaves them one bullet down against a very good offense. Working for them is that they’ll be starting two right-handers who can be tough on righties in Brad Radke and Kyle Lohse, against what is still a fairly right-handed Sox lineup. Watch Radke tonight: he threw 126 pitches in his last start, and Keith Woolner’s PAP3 research indicates that pitchers who exceed 121 pitches can see some negative effects over their next three starts.
Carlos Lee has cut down on his strikeouts and boosted his walks, fueling a second-half surge for the White Sox. Rickie Weeks zooms from top draft choice to the big leagues with the Brewers. Edgar Renteria and the Cardinals infield appear out of gas. These and other news and notes out of Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Louis in today’s Central-riffic edition of Prospectus Triple Play.
BP: What’s the number one skill the Giants look for in their players? Colletti: It’s our view you can never have enough pitching. If you’re short in another area, you can always trade pitching, because it’s the toughest commodity to find. Our drafts have been pitching-heavy. The last couple of years we’ve started drafting more position players, but the percentage is still high on the pitching side. We’ve seen this year how it’s paid off, with (Jerome) Williams, (Jesse) Foppert, (Kevin) Correia, (Kurt) Ainsworth…Joe Nathan is one of our own, we used (Ryan) Hannaman to get (Sidney) Ponson, (Russ) Ortiz for (Damian) Moss. BP: Which do the Giants favor, high school or college pitchers? Colletti: We prefer college pitching. College pitchers are further along in terms of maturity and life experience. That doesn’t mean we haven’t taken high school kids. But when you’re 18 years old and you’re going away from home for the first time, it can be tough–there are a lot of different things that occur in a young person’s life. If a pitcher goes through the right college program though, we’ll know that he hasn’t been misused, and that he’s also been taught well. We do as much research as we can to make sure we don’t get a pitcher coming out to the draft who’s misused and might be injured. And that can easily happen at the high school level, sometimes the college level too. A major league club has a different level of investment in a player, to where you wouldn’t have used him the way he might otherwise get used at the high school or college level.
Elsewhere on this Web site, Joe Sheehan has often promoted TINSTAAPP, or “There Is No Such Thing As A Pitching Prospect.” To this we must add a second acronym, TINSWTBAPS–There Is No Sure Way To Build A Pitching Staff. Even just decent pitching staffs require an element of luck to come together. The 1984 Tigers required Willie Hernandez to pitch approximately twice as well as he had in any other season to make up for almost every other pitcher on the staff being just average. The 1933 Yankees had two Hall of Fame pitchers, Lefty Gomez and Red Ruffing, at the peak of their careers, plus a couple of other very good starters in Johnny Allen and Danny MacFayden. They were terrible. When Joe Torre put Mariano Rivera in the bullpen in 1996, he had no idea that the skinny righty would be one of the most valuable pitchers in the American League that season. You cannot plan these things.