I looked at the standings page of my local sports section for the first time this weekend, having watched games with only a general sense of team success. I was looking to see the Cubs under Baker, the reloaded Phillies, and a couple of other easy stories. My how things have changed.
One of the stathead tenets is that there’s a ton of freely available talent floating arouns out there: guys you can pick up for minimal cost who will do a servicable job. Granted, these aren’t All-Stars or anything–they’re replacement level, or just good enough to be on a major-league roster. This fact is expressed in all the good player valuation stats, and it’s generally applied as “If you can field the Tigers for $5 million, any money spent over that should make you better than the Tigers.”
That said, the Pirates this season are providing an interesting study in stathead application. Faced with a bad team and declining attendance at PNC Park, the Pirates front office decided to make playing .500 ball an organizational priority to try and attract fans. They brought in free agents on one-year deals fix their worst problems–like Kenny Lofton to play center field–but in the process they’ve pushing back their best young hitter, Craig Wilson, to the point where he’s now fighting for playing time.
In his second major-league season and first year as a rotation regular for the Montreal Expos, Zach Day has emerged as one of baseball’s biggest early-season surprises. The right-hander, who turns 25 next month, has posted a 2.63 ERA so far this year, eighth-best in the National League. Day’s bread-and-butter pitch, the sinker, has helped him put up the highest groundball-to-flyball ratio in the majors at 3.74 (well ahead of second-place Derek Lowe’s 3.16). Day recently made headlines after getting ejected Saturday in Colorado for putting superglue on his fingers in an attempt to cover a blister. Day recently chatted with BP about Gluegate, the challenges of being a sinkerballer, and the keys to keeping hitters off balance.
There’s an awful lot of stuff in baseball analysis that’s just a complete waste of time. Some people love doing studies that take a look at something either esoteric, rare, or with no potential practical application when it comes to the actual game of baseball. That’s great; there’s nothing wrong with those kinds of diversions. We’ve all got those kinds of activities in our lives. But in terms of practical application on a real life baseball team, a “sabermetric” biography of the 1952 Yankees isn’t particularly useful. That sort of stuff has never spun my wheels, and it’s one reason I tend to yell and scream at BP writers who mention ballplayers from before Kristy Swanson was born.
Historians and fans of sepia tones will undoubtedly pipe in with: “Of course you can learn something from history!” (Derisively insert sound of adults in Charlie Brown cartoons here.) No one’s saying that’s not the case. But we prefer to focus on ideas that actually have practical applications on the field, and can directly and visibly translate into more wins, which means more championships, more money, etc. We’ve taken a fair amount of flak over the years for not making more things public, and not fully embracing an academic model for the serious study of baseball. Some of the criticism is well-deserved, some of it’s simply a disagreement over what people in the field are really doing. We like the idea of innovating to gain a competitive advantage and beat the snot out of opponents, rather than having the material published in some peer-reviewed journal.
When Rany Jazayerli came back from a Pizza Feed a few weeks back and mentioned that he had talked to a couple of front office guys about a different kind of platoon, my chin hit the virtual floor. The idea he had mentioned, and which was apparently perceived as novel, was at least 20 years old, and Gary Huckabay had been approached about studying the idea by a major league club back in 1998. (Even more surprising is that the club that wanted this issue studied is not largely perceived as a progressive organization.) This supposedly novel idea had also been mentioned in one of the old Elias Analysts, but was never really fleshed out in those pages.
What kind of platoon are we talking about? Using the groundball/flyball tendencies of pitchers and hitters to determine and acquire the most favorable possible matchups.
The Expos bench has helped fuel the team’s best start in history. The Giants bullpen’s suffering through the PTP curse. Vernon Wells is earning his pay. Plus more news and notes out of Montreal, San Francisco, and Toronto.
Jerry Hairston’s injury lets the Orioles be creative–too bad they’d rather play Deivi Cruz. The Royals’ young starting rotation starts to show signs of wear. Jose Contreras is Spanish for Ed Whitson. Plus news, notes, and Kahrlisms from nine major league teams.
Last night was a night full of team troubles–the type of night that separates the contenders from the pretenders. The good teams will deal with it by using their depth and remaining flexible, while the bad ones will fall apart and blame things like chemistry. I have to say, I’m beginning to root for a collapse for some teams, because at rock-bottom might come the desperation that could lead to a team being run by Paul DePodesta, a Brad Kullman, or a Josh Byrnes. If injury is the ruinous road to riches…well, I’ll be the tour guide. Onto the injuries…
Darin Erstad’s hamstring is not just failing to heal on a normal timetable, it’s actually getting worse. According to team sources, the strain (and remember that a strain of any type involves tearing) is near the very bottom of his hamstring. A cortisone injection is very uncommon for this type of injury and there may be no comparable injury in baseball. A physician from the UTK Advisory Board said: “They’re acknowledging that they’re going way out, that the tendon could be damaged by this injection, but the next step might be surgery. Given that, a bit of thinking differently is worth the chance.” Erstad is at best still weeks away and the chance continues to increase that he may lose a very significant portion, if not all, of the 2003 season. That extension he signed late last year is looking like a bad deal for the Angels.
Orioles fans haven’t had much to cheer for so far, but the play of Jerry Hairston Jr. has been solid in the leadoff slot. One foul ball to the foot later, Hairston is lost for eight weeks. The fracture of his fifth (outside) metatarsal bone should not affect him long-term, even with his speed game. In the scheme of things, a fracture is the most easily projected injury –bones heal properly in almost every case and unlike muscles, tendons or ligaments, they leave little changed in their wake.
The Dodgers won yet another close game last night, holding the Rockies to a pair of runs in a 3-2 win. That’s an offensive explosion by the recent standards of Dodger opponents: The Blue Crew had given up just one run in five
consecutive games dating to May 14. Thanks to Keith Woolner’s latest creation,
“Team
Records and Streaks,” we know that they lead or are tied for the lead
in the number of games won when scoring two runs or four runs, and trail only the Braves in winning games in which they score three runs.
Overall, the Dodgers have allowed a freakishly low 137 runs, 36 runs fewer than the Expos and 18 fewer than the A’s. According to Michael Wolverton’s analysis, which factors in the very good pitcher’s park in which they play half their games, the Dodgers have the fourth-best
rotation and the fourth-best
bullpen in the game.
Don’t get too crazy about this idea, but the Dodgers are on pace to allow just 482 runs this season. That just isn’t done. In fact, just three teams in the last 10 years have allowed fewer than 600 runs in a full season: the Braves of 1997, 1998 and 2002. The last team to break 500? The Orioles (430) and A’s (457) did it in the strike-shortened season of 1972. (The A’s missed
seven games and may have turned the trick anyway; the Orioles missed eight,
and would certainly have stayed under 500 in a full season.) Four teams–the
Cardinals, Mets, Orioles and Tigers–did it in the last year of the modern dead-ball era, 1968. Even if the Dodgers can’t maintain their pace, they’re well on their way to being one of the top run-prevention teams of my lifetime.
In my first Breaking Balls column, I wrote about how to run a team to avoid revenue sharing (and in the process, make your team a net drain on the system, rather than pay in). It didn’t take long for a team to find a way to do this that I hadn’t thought of.
The Chicago Cubs, who already do the undervaluing-your-media-rights thing for their superstation, have opened up a whole new avenue I hadn’t even considered.
The Cubs sell tickets at cost to “Wrigley Field Premium,” a ticket broker down the street. Premium sells these tickets for an outrageous mark-up. Greg Couch, of the Chicago Sun-Times, has written some great columns on this I’d recommend if you’re interested. He reported that while a Cubs-Yankees game was sold out (“Obstructed view only”) from the Cubs, Wrigley Field Premium was selling them for insane markups–$1,500 for a primo $45 seat.
The Cubs and WFP are the same company: A Cubs VP is the President of WFP. The Cubs are contracted to do the books for WFP. And WFP gets to return tickets they don’t sell.
The Angels have help waiting on the farm. Dusty Baker wrestles with pitch counts. Jeff Bower could hit cleanup for the Tigers and no one would notice. Plus more news and notes out of Anaheim, Chicago, and Detroit.
Holes isn’t just the movie you see begrudgingly upon discovering that The Matrix Reloaded is sold out on all 17 screens at the Springfield GooglePlex. No, “holes” are also one of the big concepts in Michael Lewis’ Moneyball, and not just as a part of Billy Beane’s vernacular. Rather, Lewis contends that every hitter (excepting Scott Hatteberg, Pickin’ Machine) has a hole in his swing, and that the hole will inevitably be discovered and exploited in repeated trials. Unless the hitter is able to make adaptations of his own–retooling his swing, standing in a different place in the batter’s box, taking more pitches–the hitter will not be able to survive in the big leagues for long, and will join Kevin Maas and Joe Charboneau in baseball purgatory.
It’s a nice concept. Game theory hasn’t been this sexy since Russell Crowe played the genius/lunatic somewhat resembling Princeton scholar John Nash in A Beautiful Mind. But is it real? Can it be tested? Does it hold its sabermetric water?
Let’s use Reds slugger Adam Dunn as a test case.
Ruben Mateo elicits crickets, Kevin Witt gets a nod from Ken Phelps, the Astros have rotation issues, and who the heck is Miguel Ojeda? News, notes, and witticisms on 21 major-league teams.
The injury is serious, but there’s an amazing amount of wrong-headed and ignorant information out there about the injury suffered by Mike Piazza. Even the AP report that ran on ESPN.com contradicted itself. As we speculated, Piazza has an incomplete, Grade III tear of his adductor muscles, commonly known as the groin. While one or more of the muscles is torn completely and has lost structural integrity, the description of “rolling up like an accordion” isn’t accurate.
Some might remember the injury to Dean Palmer’s biceps when the muscle did, in fact, retract. Had the muscle retracted, Piazza would be recovering from surgery about now. Where the serious concern is for Piazza going forward is what I’ll term the Ken Griffey Effect; will this injury be the beginning of a cycle that causes a major reduction in value?
If I knew this for certain I’d be the GM of a team, but we can make educated guesses based on position, age, injury history. Piazza’s at a point where his position tends to wear on players, but his injury history is a positive. According to PECOTA, Piazza’s attrition and decline rates are more-or-less inconclusive–yes, they progress, but that’s to be expected for any catcher in his mid-30s. It’s the comp of Johnny Bench that strikes me. At this age, Bench was barely hanging on to league-average status and just a year away from calling it a career.
With Piazza’s lifestyle, economic situation, and Q rating, all he lacks is a championship. He’s a sure Baseball Immortal, but we could be seeing the last of Mike Piazza. I hate to bring this up, but Piazza’s contract is insured.
The Orioles bullpen has been awful, the Rockies can’t hit the ball out of the park, and the Mets get to experience life without Mike Piazza. Plus more news and notes out of Baltimore, Colorado, and New York.
My American League All-Star picks were easier than my NL ones, which reflects
the lack of talent in the AL right now, at least relative to the NL. There are
four or five AL teams who don’t have any player remotely deserving of All-Star
consideration.
First Base: Carlos
Delgado. This was the toughest call. Jason
Giambi has established himself as the better player, but Delgado has
never been that far behind him. Delgado has been the best hitter in the AL
this year, while Giambi has struggled. I can see the argument for either
player; both fit the definition of “All-Star,” and this pick is
admittedly inconsistent with my thought process in filling out the ballot.
Derek Zumsteg chimes in with a handy, dandy guide to identifying your local sportswriter. Not to be taken internally.