One of the baseball stories I managed to catch while on my vacation was Bud
Selig’s
announcement that he would not pursue a new contract after his current
one
expires. This means that his tenure as commissioner–one that began with
him
taking the job on an interim basis a decade ago–would end in December
2006.
It’s no secret that I’ve disagreed with how Selig has run the game, in
particular his anti-marketing strategies in pursuit of a favorable
labor
agreement. The short-term gain of a Collective Bargaining Agreement
that
benefited management wasn’t worth the years of damage Selig and his
cohort
did with their relentless bashing of what was a healthy industry.
Declines in
attendance, TV ratings and revenue, as well as fiascoes like contraction
and
the Expos situation, can largely be traced to Selig’s efforts to
convince
people that baseball wasn’t viable, wasn’t competitive, and wasn’t
worth their
time.
With a new CBA in place, though, and Selig setting his own exit date,
it’s
time to look forward and see what can be done between now and the end
of 2006.
What positive steps can and should be taken to ensure that Selig leaves
the
game in better shape than it’s in right now? Every now and then this
year, I’m
going to pick an aspect of the game and lay out what I think should be
done to
improve it. While I’ll isolate one level of the game in each column,
the ideas
I’m presenting need to be viewed as a whole, as one big plan to get
baseball
where it needs to be.
I’ll start with the game’s ownership, because I think everything grows
from
that. Over the past decade, baseball has brought in a number of owners,
both
individual and corporate, that have had a net negative effect on the
game.
From grandstanding over taxpayer-funded ballparks and inflated claims
of
losses, to taking short-term approaches in a long-term industry, the
most
recent set of “lords of the realm” have been a disaster.
The Rangers work through the pleasant dilemma of Blalock, Teixeira and not enough space to play them both. The Cardinals have Albert Pujols learning underhand throwing drills. And the White Sox hope to limit the crazy people running on the field to Morganna and Ozzie Guillen on Sox Alumni Day.
Thanks to everyone who emailed their congratulations on the one-year anniversary. As I told many of you, what makes this fun for me is meeting readers–both in and outside of baseball–and getting to know them. There are great people in baseball: People who love the game like Peter Gammons and Rob Neyer (who has a kicking new Modesty Panel website); people like Alex Belth, Lee Sinins, and Jamey Newberg; people like the guys at BP that I’ve read for years, not to mention new friends like Nate Silver and Ryan Wilkins. People like…well, I can’t name the various players, trainers, and doctors I’ve gotten to know, but you know who you are and I know you’re reading. So thanks to you…each one of you.
I said yesterday that people were reading this column, but I said nothing about everyone being able to learn the lessons. Jack McDowell certainly doesn’t get it, and we’ve known for a while that Jeff Torborg and Brad Arnsberg don’t get it either. I’ll say it again: There are certain factors that make a pitcher more likely to get injured, and when a pitcher exhibits signs of injury or overuse, it is the responsibility of the manager and pitching coach to use that pitcher in a manner which will keep him healthy while retaining the maximum amount of value.
That said, it seems quite apparent that both Torborg and Arnsberg knew that one of their players was injured, but rode him hard nonetheless. This is absolutely inexcusable, and both men are–flat out–to blame for the loss of A.J. Burnett. Scalies fans, your manager and pitching coach just cost you at least two wins in 2003 (per his PECOTA projection) and a staff ace for the better portion of two years. For a team with serious financial issues this is simply untenable, and if anyone in that front office has the remotest of clues, that person needs to fire both men. Do it now, before Josh Beckett or Brad Penny gets badly hurt.
Burnett looks like he’s headed for Tommy John surgery, though the final determination won’t be made until Jim Andrews has his elbow open. Count A.J. out for the year.
“Derek,” people sometimes ask me, “you drink a lot of beer. And I by that I mean a frightening amount of beer. What should I, the casual beer drinker, enjoy while I sit at home and watch my Rangers get their ass handed to them game after game?”
So at great personal expense which, my accountant tells me, I will unlikely be able to deduct as a cost of business, I took the time to drink a lot during baseball games so that I could offer this report to you in the hopes that it enhances your enjoyment of this season.
Rich Harden’s hot start fills not one but two teams’ farm news. Daryl Clark may have just earned the only mention of his career alongside Barry Bonds. And Craig Biggio’s showing little with the bat and hurting his team in the field, surprising no one but his employer.
I’ll start today with thank you. It’s been a year since I started publishing UTK, first as a stand-alone and now as a part of BP. I’m nothing without my readers and–love me or hate me–people are reading.
In one year, I’ve covered an average of 12 injured players per day, written an average of 1900 words per day, had my first radio appearance, started my own show, gone from three subscribers–who really didn’t ask for it in the first place–to over 3000, gone from an email I hoped I could get 100 people to read to a spot on the Baseball Prospectus’ staff. I’ve gone into clubhouses, met players, GMs, doctors, trainers, and even some of the hangers-on that populate the world of baseball. I’ve made mistakes, said things that were stupid and things that bordered on prophetic, and everything in between; but the one thing I’m proudest of is that I’m starting to hear people talk about injuries. They discuss them as something similar to on-base percentage–that if we teach the players the right things, the game can be improved.
Kevin Millwood celebrates his no-no, Todd Helton lobbies for Mark Prior Boulevard, A.J. Burnett becomes Brad Arnberg’s latest injury victim, and Juan Pierre laments pro wrestler Buff Bagwell…er…Fernando Vina’s 20th inning single.
Sometimes, the game loves you back.
I spent last week on the road, first on a trip with my wife, Sophia, then off to see an old friend from the East Coast who was out on this one. I didn’t see much baseball from the 19th through the 26th, even missing the highlight shows most of the time. It was a good break; I remarked to Sophia on Tuesday, as a game aired on a television in the back of a restaurant, that I was really starting to miss the game. While I was enjoying our trip, I was also looking forward to getting back to “normal” life a little, immersing myself in the game and writing again.
With my travel complete, yesterday was the first time in a while I’d had a chance to follow a day of baseball the way I usually do, watching games on television and following the untelevised ones online. I picked a pretty good day to return, because almost as if the game missed me and wanted to show me just how much, baseball provided a ridiculously entertaining day of highs and lows.
Welcome to Part 2 of our look at the importance of hot starts. If you haven’t already, read Part 1 first. We’ll wait for you to get back.
Last time, I looked at how teams fared at season’s end after starting the season with a particular record, varying the data by looking at starts of varying lengths. While I pointed out general trends in the data (as well as the exceptions that proved the rule), I did not sum up the data concisely into a single, coherent formula to predict a team’s final record. That’s what today’s article is about. In Part 3–yes, there will be a Part 3–I want to examine how the interaction between a team’s record at the start of the season, and its record the previous season, affects its final winning percentage.
Yesterday, Commissioner Bud Selig announced his intention to retire when his current five-year term expires on December 31, 2006. I’ll believe it when I see it.
Selig claims never to have wanted the Commissionership. Less than a month after becoming Acting Commissioner on September 9, 1992–after leading the insurgency which forced his predecessor Fay Vincent to resign in midterm–Selig told Hal Bodley of USA Today that he planned to remain in office “two to four months.” In December 1992, he assured Claire Smith of the New York Times that he had “zero interest in the job.”
Jose Vidro is The Man in Montreal–or wherever the Expos are calling home these days. The best hitter on the planet might also be the fastest man on the Giants roster, and that fits right in with manager Felipe Alou’s baserunning philosophies. Frankencatcher is a valuable Jays contributor, while Kelvim Escobar might be a double-agent. Quick updates on minor-leaguers of note for each team.
If Dr. Tim Kremchek sends me a bill for the two hours he spent out of surgery today–discussing everything from his love for the game to the ins-and-outs of building a world-class medical facility with everything from an MRI on site to an indoor field where Bill Doran and Tom Browning offer instruction–I’ll be more than happy to fork over the cash. (Well, not really, but you know what I mean.)
That said, my talk with Dr. Kremchek was really enlightening. There will be a feature coming next week, but I’ll say in this forum what I said to Dr. Kremchek today: much of what I’ve written about him may have been an incorrect interpretation of information. Given the proper context, Kremchek’s work can be taken a completely different way without changing the basic facts.
Major-league third catchers face adversity. Appier, Fogg, and the Big Unit hit the DL. The brand-spanking-new bereavement list begins to see some action around the league.
Garret Anderson takes aim at the Earl of Doubles while playoff heroes John Lackey and K-Rod struggle in the early going for the Angels. Mark Prior Cy Young, Hee Seop Choi Rookie of the Year, Mark Bellhorn benchwarmer? Could happen. And the Tigers try to avoid making history while Alan Trammell works Ramon Santiago, Omar Infante and other kids into the league’s worst lineup.
Even when I try to be “short and sweet”–tough for a guy who’s six feet tall and arrogant as hell–it seldom works. What I don’t say in UTK often ends up in emails, and since I have this near pathologic need to answer every email, I skipped some yesterday. (I apologize if one of yours was one of them.) One reader challenged me to expand on my “Tony Gwynn is full of crap” statement–and I’ll agree, what I said was abbreviated and had the bare minimum in the way of explanation. To fully say what I think, though, I would have to deviate further from my format as a Gammonsesque “notes” column, and end up with literary loose bowels.
Now, does the situation deserve a more full account? Yes. The drug situation does not need knee-jerk reactions. When I helped write the piece on Steve Bechler’s death, I stayed as far away from the mainstream coverage as possible, trying to take as many factors as possible into account to get to the facts of the situation. I’ve taken on the use/abuse of creatine since the genesis of this column. Now, my take on drugs in baseball is moving from something I can’t ignore to a feature and potentially something in a longer format. Ideally, it will come out later this year or even perhaps as a BP2K4 piece. Yes, the issue demands a proper response…so please give me time to do it right.
Looking at outfield defenses, I found that the difference between the best and the worst outfield defenses worked out to around 150 hits, given an average pitching staff and equal chances. These are the fly balls that skip past Carl Everett and are devoured by Darin Erstad.
For purposes of this column, figure 33% of those go for doubles. Generally, doubles are about 20% of all hits, including ground-ball hits, so if anything, that’s a little conservative. And also for purposes of this example, we’re playing in an average park with an average pitching staff backed up by an average infield. The average AL team last year hit .264/.327/.424, while the average NL team hit .259/.327/.410.
Let’s say that you’re in the NL, with an average outfield, and you replace those players with all-stick immobile outfielders and punt outfield defense–we’ll call these guys the Kahrls. What happens to your pitchers?