The Chicago talk radio circuit was pounding Kerry Wood after a sub-par performance on Saturday. News of Wood’s back injury came out and got slammed. Some were branding him a pouter or someone looking for an excuse, but people are looking at the wrong words in that quote. The injury is a minor one, more of an annoyance than anything that truly affects Wood’s normal pitching motion. Still, Wood is following the Nolan Ryan career path, minus the no-hitters and longevity…so far.
David Wells and the Yankees will make a decision about his scheduled start on Thursday after a bullpen session on Monday. Wells had been Eckersleyesque this season with his control until his back altered his motion and forced him to do what one scout called “arming the ball” more. Wells may be the pitcher most helped by the return of Jose Contreras in a couple weeks (and perhaps Jon Lieber) if he can get some extra rest in the first half of September, then two or three starts to shake things loose for October.
Doug Mientkiewicz had something that sounds unusual on the surface–two cortisone shots in one session–but it makes more sense once you know that he has two different problem areas in the same wrist. Mientkiewicz’s wrist is so problematic at this stage of the season that even after coming off the DL, a routine play forced him out. The Twins will look to Matt LeCroy in the short term and Justin Morneau in the long term, once he’s recalled from Triple-A.
Friday’s column never happened.
Had I written a Friday column, I definitely wouldn’t have talked about how MLB hadn’t rescheduled a Diamondbacks/Royals rainout yet, because they have (September 4), travel nightmares be damned. I certainly wouldn’t have alluded to a Marlins/Braves matchup in the Division Series, which can’t occur. There’s no way I would have insinuated that the Mets and Rockies wouldn’t play Friday night, because that would have been silly.
But I didn’t write a Friday column, so none of that happened.
Having played the first half of his career before the Second World War, Joe DiMaggio is not eligible to be on Albert Pujols’ PECOTA comparables list. However, there’s little doubt that the Yankee Clipper would place high atop the table if he had been born just 10 years later. The similarity scores at baseball-reference.com listed the pair as the best age-based likenesses for one another entering the season, and the events of this year are only likely to enhance the comparison.
DiMaggio won his first batting title and his first MVP award in 1939–at age 24, he was one year older than Pujols is currently listed. DiMaggio, unlike Pujols, had been heralded as a top prospect from the time he was a teenager playing in the PCL, and was coming off of a fine triplet of seasons in the big leagues. But 1939 was his coming out party, much like 2003 has been for Pujols.
Conveniently enough, DiMaggio, limited by a foot injury that he suffered in April, played in just 120 games that season, almost exactly the total that Pujols has accumulated up until now. Compare DiMaggio’s ’39 against Pujols’ current campaign, and the similarities are striking.
The White Sox need to drop their ticket prices. A closer look at the Cardinals bullpen. The Rangers have a slew of options for the outfield and first base. These and other news and notes out of Chicago, St. Louis, and Texas in today’s Prospectus Triple Play.
The DiSar Awards haven’t been clinched just yet–I’ve learned better than to make an official announcement before the season is over–but they do appear to be in safe hands, at least in the American League. And no, it’s not Rocco Baldelli’s mitts holding the Golden Crutch.
I announced the contest to pick the 2003 award winners this spring a little bit late, not getting to it until a few days into the season. Because of that, the vast majority of the entrants selected Baldelli, the free-swinging Devil Rays rookie, as the eventual AL award winner. Baldelli made a nice run, reaching 60 at-bats before his first walk, but he only held the top AL mark for a few days, getting caught by Deivi Cruz soon afterwards.
Cruz didn’t hold on, either; his 70 at-bats were passed by Matt Walbeck in July, but The Walbeck couldn’t even garner this much glory. A week ago, he, too, saw his total of 75 walkless at-bats to start the season eclipsed. Walbeck was passed by a player who received no votes in the preseason balloting, although his brother was one of the most popular candidates after Baldelli.
J.P. Ricciardi doesn’t like giving away outs. Maury Wills thinks speed is underrated. Lloyd McClendon thinks he’s victim of an injustice, and that doesn’t even count having to manage the Pirates. Tom Martin just does his job, and Julian Tavarez likes ’em old, fat, rich, and dirty. All this and many more quips in this week’s edition of The Week In Quotes.
The Astros’ farm system has started to dry up. The Brewers’ future could take a while to unfold. The A’s made a puzzling move by designating Adam Piatt for assignment. These and other news and notes out of Houston, Milwaukee, and Oakland in today’s Prospectus Triple Play.
Terrible performance and tons of playing time has made Endy Chavez a giant drag on the Expos’ offense. The off-season’s Ortiz-for-Moss deal wasn’t as bad as you think for the Giants. Kevin Cash is the latest catcher-of-the-future for the Blue Jays. These and other news and notes out of Montreal, San Francisco, and Toronto in today’s Prospectus Triple Play.
Yesterday’s Giants/Mets game almost certainly will not be made up, given that the Giants have a big lead in the NL West and the Mets won’t need to play the game to determine their draft position. The cancellation does bring to mind that one game that appears very relevant has yet to be made up. The Diamondbacks and Royals have an interleague contest that hasn’t been rescheduled yet, and share just one highly inconvenient off day for the rest of the season.
I like chaos, and the idea that the two teams might have to play on September 29 to determine who does or does not go to the playoffs–or better yet, who goes to a one-game playoff, or who’s in a three-way tie–is just a delicious notion. I’m picturing the Marlins watching the game in an airport bar, bags packed, with plans to fly to Arizona if the Snakes win, and Atlanta if they don’t.
In general, baseball won’t be affected by the power outage. The Tigers, Yankees and Blue Jays are on the road. The Indians are home facing the Devil Rays, a series that can be cancelled as a public service. The Mets face the Rockies at home. Now, the Rockies are a fringe wild-card candidate at best, and are scheduled to be in the city through Monday. It’s possible that the teams could make up cancellations tonight and tomorrow–I’d imagine powering up a ballpark is low on the priority list–with doubleheaders Sunday and Monday.
For those of you who haven’t noticed, we are debuting several new statistical reports this week that will be updated daily throughout the season. All of these reports are currently available as a free preview at our Statistics page. Some of these reports, however, will be offered as part of Baseball Prospectus Premium in the coming weeks and months.
Adam Riggs gets a well-deserved shot with the Angels. The Braves aim to avoid the mistake made by the ’93 Phillies. Neal Cotts could end up being the prize in the Koch-Foulke deal for the White Sox. The Royals and A’s designate Febles and Piatt for assignment, drawing mixed reviews. These and other transactions, Chris Kahrl-style, in this edition of Transaction Analysis.
Francisco Rodriguez has been lights out since June; the Cubs’ rotation has been one of the best in all of baseball; and Tigers have improved a bit since the All-Star break. All this and much more news from Anaheim, Chicago, and Detroit in your Thursday edition of Prospectus Triple Play.
In the July 25 edition of Transaction Analysis, Chris Kahrl critiqued the trade of reliever Mike Williams from the Pirates to the Phillies: There are other cranky topics, particularly the re-failure to acquire talent for Mike Williams in this year’s Williams deal. Certainly, if it reflected any new appreciation for the interchangeability of closers beyond the top few personalities in the field, that would be nifty, but instead, it seems that people (appropriately) don’t take Williams particularly seriously as a commodity, so the Pirates got things bad both ways, in terms of plugging in a replacement-level talent in the job, enriching him, and then not enriching themselves when the time came to deal him. Kahrl’s analysis could be applied to the entire trading history of the Pirates franchise, a three-handed process in which the hometown GM extends a good player with one hand, accepts his return with the another, and pinches his nose shut with the third. The top 10 list of best trades in the history of the franchise remains virgin territory, while the worst-10 list provides for an overstuffed buffet of empty calorie choices. This article is a compendium of self-inflicted wounds suffered since the acquisition of the franchise by Kevin McClatchy. After the institution of the amateur draft in 1965 democratized (at least on paper) talent acquisition, a broken franchise, particularly an impoverished broken franchise, could right itself through a combination of smart trading, free-agent signings, and the rewards offered to losing teams by the draft. Over a long span lasting at least since the waning days of Barry Bonds as a Buc, the Pirates have consistently failed at all three.
Tom Gamboa was minding his own business as the first base coach of the Royals when he was jumped by a father-son team who attempted to beat him up, before the bonding pair themselves got a lesson in stomping by players. Ligue asserts Gamboa gave him the finger in response to some heckling. I don’t think that qualifies as ‘fighting words,’ or is really even relevant.
William Ligue Jr. did not get sent to jail last week. The judge instead sentenced him to 30 months of probation.
Judge Holt: “The violence that baseball players are exposed to comes from within. What fan has not seen a pitcher intentionally hurl a baseball at a player’s head at 90 miles per hour? Who has not seen a batter leave home plate headed for the pitcher’s mound bat in hand bent on mischief and mayhem?”
I understand what he means. And yet, the issue of on-field conflict is something baseball has struggled to control. Intent is difficult to determine when pitchers throw inside, and baseball’s tried to strike a balance between letting the game play itself out and deterring on-field confrontations. You see this balance every time an ump decides to warn both benches, attempting to stave off further beanings at the cost of dramatically changing where pitches and even game strategy can go.
This is a bad argument, though.
Mark Armour and Dan Levitt turned a series of debates between friends into Paths To Glory, the stories of the building of several interesting baseball teams, published this spring by Brasseys, Inc. Paths looks at some of the greatest dynasties in baseball history, including the A’s of the early 1970s, as well as some of the most dramatic missed opportunities, including the Black Sox of the 1910s and early 20s. Armour and Levitt recently chatted with Baseball Prospectus about some of those teams, the men who built them, and the team-building strategies they used to make it happen.
Baseball Prospectus: What first inspired you to write this book?
Dan Levitt: Mark and I had become friends through SABR. Pretty soon we came to realize we were interested in the same thing: What made baseball teams win, and what didn’t? We started corresponding by telephone and e-mail, and started doing research as well. We came to realize that not there weren’t a whole lot of printed materials on the subject. There were a lot of books on great teams out there. But those books would rank them, or give day-to-day on seasons, stars, and the not-so-great players. But you’d have a really tough time finding a book on say, the 1915 Phillies, and how they won the pennant. We realized there was a void of this type of book. So we set out to put a book together that’d be interesting, about some great teams and some not-so-great ones. It’s really a different perspective: not the day-by-day heroics, but rather what were the decisions that went into assembling these teams.
You’ll recall that for the last two weeks we’ve looked at the divergent paths, in terms of power, of two distinct groups of minor-league hitters. The first, deftly named Group A, comprised the top 25 active leaders in slugging percentage who had at least 3,000 major league ABs as of the end of the 2002 season. Group B consisted of hitters who, despite putting up strong minor league power numbers, failed to bust out the lumber at the highest level. To populate Group B, I included anyone with a career minor league SLG of at least 0.490, at least a 10% decline in their SLG in the majors and at least 1,750 ABs in the majors.
I chose those in Group B specifically for their high minor league SLGs, so it’s neither surprising nor interesting that they would outslug those in Group A. What might inspire a spit-take is the fact that they also bested Group A in every peripheral power indicator. So what gives?
Maybe it’s command of the strike zone that forecasts power better than actual power indicators. Sounds counterintuitive, but, hell, I’m running out of ideas. So to test this theory, we’ll look at the following measures: