Welcome to my web log, published via Blogger Pro. Below are some links to recent baseball-related articles I found of interest, with my own two cents thrown in. Feel free to chime in via the comments link at the bottom of each post (powered by YACCS), or use my Contact page, or my email address, jay@futilityinfielder.com.
Here are the weekly archives of this blog, assuming Blogger hasn't screwed up again. If an archive appears to be missing, you can try hunting for it via the subdirectory. Please note that because of repeated difficulties I've had with Blogger, I no longer recommend their service and will be taking steps to switch to a new one in the near future.
USA Today writer Steve Gardner chooses the best player ever to wear uniform numbers 1-50. One could quibble with his choices (mine starts with the lack of a 56 to award Jim Bouton), but it's a fun little list.
So long as Gardner filled out spots with managers, he should have at least mentioned the only man I ever think of wearing #1: Billy Martin, five-time ex-Yankee manager, who's probably running a great ballclub down in Hell right now.
Ray Ratto's columns for ESPN have made him one of my favorite writers. His satire tends to be wittier and less ham-fisted than many of the other ESPN writers (Jim Caple, I'm looking in your direction). This piece on Jose Canseco isn't satire, though.
Canseco's ups and downs since his salad days with the Oakland A's have made him an easy target every time he goes on the DL or switches teams. Road rage, 'roids, and that awful haircut are usually the first places to start. But rather than roasting Canseco, Ratto cuts to the heart of his appeal: "[S]ome folks are just naturally gifted enough to convince others that their gifts can still be mined... All he needs is to get untracked, to find the swing that launched a lot of pitchers' next careers. At least that's the theory the White Sox are clinging to..."
There is something incredibly magnetic about Canseco, like Darryl Strawberry before he reached the Last Straw phase. Both were humbled by health difficulties and the consequences of their arrogance. Both went down to the minor leagues to prove that they still had the ability, on a good day, to hit a baseball further than most of us can even dream about. Both have the charisma to make you believe in them again, even when the rational part of your brain tells you otherwise.
It remains to be seen whether Canseco can do for his new team, the Chicago White Sox, what Darryl did while wearing pinstripes (emphasis on wearing, please). For what it's worth, Canseco did manage to get a hell of a lot more out of his talent than the Straw--his failure to get into the Hall of Fame would set a new benchmark for the most homers without enshrinement (he surpassed Dave Kingman's 442 last season, and is holding at 446). And his life is nowhere near as tragic as Darryl's, a lesson I'm sure is not lost on the man after his tour of duty with the Yankees.
So, cheers to Jose Canseco if he can hit a few more big flies without getting a swollen head. And cheers to Ratto for taking a thoughtful high road when the low one would have been so easy.
This is a good one. It wasn't enough for two Cincinnati Reds coaches, Ron Oester and Tim Foli (both scrappers in their playing days), to go at it after a loss. They took their fighting back to the schoolyard. Oester "had Foli in a headlock and Foli bit Oester on the leg," according to the article. Now Foli can truthfully tell manager Bob Boone that he has bad taste in 3rd Base Coaches.
Oester, it may be recalled, turned down the job as Reds' manager because the Cincinnati organization lowballed him. Oddly enough, he did agree to stay on as a coach, presumably drawing even less salary. Boone, desperate to prove once again that he could over-manage, took the job. But he wasn't even allowed to choose his own coaches, except for Foli. It always amazes me how penny-pinching teams would rather suffer through their own incompence of their own staff decisions rather than firing a guy and paying him NOT to do his job.
Oester wasn't even the first guy to turn the job down because the money stank; Yanks coach Willie Randolph was. Randolph's gotta be smiling right about now...
Salon's Allan Barra weighs in with an interesting piece on Barry Bonds. As we all know, Barry is well ahead of Mark McGwire's 1998 home run pace, having tallied 37 home runs (unless he's hit another since I had my morning coffee) in 70 games. But Barra proposes that Bonds may be on his way to the best season ever, based not on home runs but on another stat.
Barra uses a stat called SLOB, which is Slugging Percentage times On Base Percentage. He details the history of the stat, which was independently developed by two researchers in the '70s. Then he goes on to claim that SLOB "does a remarkable job of calculating actual team runs". So remarkable, to Barra at least, that he moves straight to an assertion that Bonds' SLOB of .4418 means, roughly speaking, that he has "created" .4418 runs per at bat, or 44.18 per 100 at bats.
Whoa, hoss! Let's back up. Over the past two decades, many statistical ways to accurately measure offensive contribution have sprung up. The best of these do a very good job of projecting how many runs a team will score based on certain offensive factors, such as hits, walks, and total bases.
Bill James devised a formula called Runs Created which is probably the most famous, thanks to James's role as a pioneering sabermetrician (sabermetrics, an acronym derived from the Society for American Baseball Research, is, in James's definition, the search for objective knowledge about baseball). Other formulas include Pete Palmer's Batting Runs, Paul Johnson's Estimated Runs Produced, Jim Furtado's Extrapolated Runs, Clay Davenport's Equivalent Runs, and Keith Woolner's Value Over Replacement Player.
Some of these are formulas are easier to understand than others. I've always been partial to James' system for a number of reasons: they are easy to calculate, their methods demonstrate an implicit understanding of the mechanics of offense (getting on base and advancing runners). James's published work always took the time to clarify the details of his methods. But the recent work in the field seems to have moved past James's formula, and even the man himself conceded the limitations of his work.
SLOB actually turns out to be something of a shorthand of James' formula; when you multiply SLG * OBP * AB (the number of at bats) you get a pretty decent estimate of the number of runs a team will score. Looking at the two leagues last season:
SLOB Runs Actual Error 2000 AL 12039 11995 3.6% 2000 NL 12958 12976 1.7% 1999 AL 11798 11725 6.2% 1999 NL 12983 12966 1.3%
As I have a day job which I'm supposed to be doing right now, I'm not going to take this much further except to say that it works pretty damn well for a lazy person to calculate on a lunch break. It's not the most accurate estimate, just a very easy one to deal with, and it also meshes very well with another stat growing in popularity, OPS, which is OBP + SLG. OPS has entered the mainstream thanks to the work of writers such as ESPN's Rob Neyer. It's a handy metric, but this appears to be even better and no more complicated.
So anyway, Barry Bonds, at .4418, is right now second only to Babe Ruth's 1920 season, at .4506. The only other person besides the Babe whose SLOB is in the ballpark is Ted Williams, with .4049 in 1941. That's some pretty good company—the two greatest hitters ever, in fact. It's not likely Bonds can maintain his pace, in which he's hit almost twice as many home runs as singles, but he's got a clear shot at a season for the ages.
The Yankees' tentative deal with the Montreal Expos for reliever Ugueth Urbina has fallen through, based upon the failure both of Urbina and Yankees prospect Brandon Knight to pass physical exams.
The deal would have brought the Yankees some much-needed relief help, at the expense of a pitching prospect they've already given up on once (Knight) and an infielder only a year-and-a-half removed from breaking a bone in his neck (D'Angelo Jiminez). Jimenez is a legitimate prospect, with better plate discipline than current Yankee rookie Alfonso Soriano but less speed. Had he not been injured, in a car accident, "The Dangler" (as a friend of mine calls him) would have started the 2000 season on the Yankee roster.
It's tough to get too heartbroken about the deal falling through. Urbina was once a top closer in the National League, but he's recovering from two elbow surgeries for bone chips, has performed unspectacularly (0-1, 4.45 ERA, 9 saves), and still can't pitch back-to-back days. Additionally, his agent reported that Urbina would be less than thrilled with accepting a setup role (excuse us, Oogie, but they don't call it the World Series just so they can invite Canada). Help like that isn't too tough to live without.
It's worth noting that Urbina's salary of $4.2 million is considerably more than the Yankees would have had to pay Jeff Nelson ($3 mil). Nelson, the Yanks' top right-handed setup man the past three seasons, signed with Seattle as a free agent after a fine season which nevertheless featured a series of high-profile spats (or what passes for them in today's Bronx Petting Zoo) with Joe Torre and George Steinbrenner. If the balance of power in a league can swing around a setup man, this may be the case; Nelson has bolstered an already strong Seattle bullpen on a team whose torrid start threatens the 1998 Yankees pace, while the Yankees have overused Mike Stanton and Mariano Rivera while watching a parade of lesser lights (Carlos "Extra Crispy" Almanzar, Todd Williams, and a less-than-full-strength Ramiro Mendoza) flop in the righty setup role.
This article reports that the Yanks are trying to move 1B Tino Martinez, who is almost literally on the eve of becoming a 10-5 player and thus able to veto a trade. Martinez is in the midst of a 15-for-103 slump, but the market for underproducing 1Bs isn't too robust these days, and Nick Johnson, Tino's heir apparent, still needs some AAA seasoning.
So it's back to the drawing board for Brian Cashman and company. Hey Brian, call Billy Beane about Jim Mecir, and while you're at it, ask about Jason Giambi...
With Clemens' victory over Detroit, he now leads the league in victories, with nine. And since July 2 of last season, when he was activated from the disabled list, Clemens is 18-3. I can't stand Mr.-Texas-vs.-Oklahoma-Every-Fifth-Day, but there's no denying he's getting the job done. In a season where the blueprints for a dream rotation are all but crumpled in the corner waste basket, Clemens is the difference between the current Yankee model and a .500 ballclub. He's gutted out a fair number of wins—three of his nine victories and seven of his 14 starts don't qualify as Quality Starts (three or fewer runs in six or more innings).
The ability to win without one's best stuff is the mark of a great pitcher. Clemens, much as I dislike him, is pitching like one. He's the winningest pitcher on my favorite team, and on my first-place ESPN Fantasy League team. (Sigh) I guess I'm going to have to learn to live with him.
I was a preteen baseball stat-head. I actually read the backs of baseball cards, and learned to calculate batting averages before the concepts of fractions or long division were introduced in school. I scored the games I watched on TV, and God help me, I kept stats on simulation games that I played, from a dice game I invented to a computer game into which I programmed entire leagues.
My obsession with baseball statistics was encouraged by my father, who taught me how to decipher the morning box scores. His own active interest didn't go much beyond that, but several times, he mentioned the name of Allan Roth, the Dodgers team statistician (a definition of dream job which still falls just a notch below "major league ballplayer"). I didn't know much beyond the name, though.
As it turns out, Roth is credited with being the first modern baseball analyst. Roth was hired by Branch Rickey, the general manager of the Dodgers, in 1947. Rickey, always a good step ahead of the curve, had already invented the modern farm system and signed the ballplayer who broke the color barrier, Jackie Robinson. Rickey and Roth broke the ground for the analysis of baseball statistics. They invented the On Base Percentage and devised systems of rating ballplayers. Rickey used those findings to build his next team, the Pittsburgh Pirates, who won a championship with the foundation he laid.
But back to Roth. He kept meticulous pitch logs. He tracked individual hitters against each pitcher—a recent book recounts how Roth just shook his head sadly when asked, as Dodgers pitcher Ralph Branca entered the game, about his matchup against the Giants'next batter, Bobby Thomson, one fateful October day. He presented his data to ballplayers as a means of improving the team. Roth is credited with helping Sandy Koufax change his style of pitching to left-handers by altering his curve ball.
Here is a great piece by Branch Rickey, reprinted from Life Magazine in 1954, which demonstrates the findings of Rickey and Roth, including their formulas for On Base Average, Extra Base Power (slugging percentage minus batting average), a clutch factor (percentage of runners scored) and a good look at pitching stats on a per-nine-inning basis. Rickey outlines his blueprint for building his Pittsburgh team; concluding their ability to get on base is sufficient, he pledges to focus on raising their clutch factor through power hitting. The results may seem elementary, in light of what the world of baseball statistics has taught us, But in a day when baseball executives such as Oakland's Billy Beane are celebrated for coming around to a new way of thinking based upon the analysis of baseball stats, it is illuminating to find one of the game's all-time trailblazers led the way once again. [A good analysis of the Rickey article, written by Baseball Prospectus's Keith Woolner a few years back, is here.]
Here is a great glossary on the definitions of baseball statistics. I'll add this to my links page when I get a chance.
The relationship between a pitcher's workload and his tendency toward injury is perhaps the most controversial area of inquiry among those who study baseball statistics. The studies haven't proven much, but lots of blood has been spilled among researchers over the matter. The argument has been rather impassioned, primarily because of what's at stake: protecting young pitching arms from overuse and injury.
The prevailing school of thought is that throwing beyond a certain threshold in a single game increases the risk of injury. A study published in Baseball Prospectus 2001 and cited by Don Malcolm in this Baseball Primer piece suggests that above 122 pitches, there is a "moderate risk". The link between correlation and causation seems to be the bone of contention. I'm in no position to summarize the arguments here, being a late-comer to the party. But the anecdotal evidence, especially with regards to young pitchers and repeated abuse, is compelling.
Pitcher workloads, based on number of pitches per game and innings pitched per season, have been in decline for a long, long time. The rise of the relief specialist and the switch from a four-man to a five-man rotation are the two biggest factors in this trend, which results in fewer complete games and fewer innings pitched among starters. It used to be that a superstar starter completed more than half of his starts; today, even pitchers such as Pedro Martinez rarely do. And when a pitcher of his magnitude does, it's generally when he's pitched a relatively economical game.
This piece by Don Malcolm at Baseball Primer suggests that managers and other baseball folks have been taking the research that's been done in the field over the past decade or so to heart. Malcolm compares a handful of recent seasons with regards to the distribution of games of 100+, 110+, 120+ and 130+ pitches. The results indicate a steady downturn in the number of high pitch count (120+) games. In 1988, according to Malcolm's numbers, around 20% of all games fell into this category. By 1998, it was below 14%, and last season around 11%.
Malcolm also compares this season's data with the first ten weeks of the other seasons he's examining. Early in the season, pitch counts tend to be lower; managers don't extend their pitchers to the max as often. This season, high pitch counts make up just 5.7% of all games, compared with around 10% during the same portion of last season, and over 15% in 1988. Malcolm suggests that the redefined strike zone may have something to do with this dramatic decrease, and illustrates a similar one year abberation from an earlier strike-zone change season—in this case, 1963.
The Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers employed a statistician named Allan Roth from 1947 to 1964. Roth is considered to be one of the titans of baseball statistics. You've heard of On Base Percentage? That's his. Roth kept track of batter vs. pitcher breakdowns and is credited with helping Sandy Koufax to change his style of pitching based on his data. Way ahead of his time, Roth kept meticulous pitch logs of Dodgers games. More on him another time. Anyway, Malcolm summarizes Roth's data from the 1962-1964 seasons, and notes a dramatic dip in the 1963 season, when the strike zone was changed. High pitch count games went from 33% to about 26% and then back up to 34% during these three seasons (note how much higher these rates are than current ones). Malcolm proposes that this season may present a similar aberration.
Whether it is or not, there's no denying that pitch counts are definitely falling. The mere frequency of the phrase "pitch counts" on the lips of managers, players, agents, and even the mainstream baseball media shows that somebody has been paying attention. Somewhere amid the considerable amount of data is an idea whose time may have come.
ESPN has been running a feature on the best nicknames in the major professional sports. The baseball one was mostly a hodge-podge of the obvious ("the Babe," "Hammerin' Hank," "The Spendid Splinter"). Over at Baseball Primer, folks have offered up some more obscure and inspired choices.
I thought about doing a list myself, but never got around to it. But I awoke in the middle of the night with the name Lou "The Nervous Greek" Skizas stuck in my mind—nobody else had mentioned him, so I decided it was time to put together my own list. Not all of these are players I actually saw, but some of them, once absorbed from the Baseball Encyclopedia or another source, are unforgettable.
"Oil Can"—Dennis Boyd (1982-1991) "Three-Finger"—Mordecai Brown (1903-1916) "Downtown"—Ollie Brown (1965-1977) "The Louisville Slugger"—Pete Browning (1882-1894) "The Penguin"—Ron Cey (1971-1987) "Death to Flying Things"—Bob Ferguson (1876-1884) "Mudcat"—Jim Grant (1958-1971) "El Guapo"—Rich Garces (1990-present) "Eye Chart"—Doug Gwosdz (1981-1984) "The Human Rain Delay"—Mike Hargrove (1974-1985, manager 1991-present) "The Mad Hungarian"—Al Hrabosky (1970-1982) "Mr. October"—Reggie Jackson (1967-1987) "Penitentiary Face"—Jeffrey Leonard (1977-1990) "The Barber"—Sal Maglie (1945-1958) "The Wild Horse of the Osage"—John "Pepper" Martin (1928-1944) "The Crime Dog"—Fred McGriff (1986-present) "Losing Pitcher"—Hugh Mulcahy (1935-1947) "Stan the Man"—Stan Musial (1941-1963) "The Only Nolan"—Edward Sylvester Nolan (1878-1885) "The Nervous Greek"—Lou Skizas (1956-1959) "The Human Mosquito"—Jimmy Slagle (1899-1908) "Stan the Man Unusual"—Don Stanhouse (1972-1982) "Jigger"—Arnold Statz (1919-1928) "Le Grand Orange"—Daniel "Rusty" Staub (1963-1985) "Chicken"—Fred Stanley (1969-1982) "The Old Professor—Charles "Casey" Stengel (1912-1925, manager 1934-1965) "Doctor Strangeglove"—Dick Stuart (1958-1969) "Sloppy"—Hollis Thurston (1923-1933) "The Hat"—Harry Walker (1940-1955, manager 1965-1972) "Big Poison"—Paul Waner (1926-1945) and "Little Poison"—Lloyd Waner (1927-1945) "No Neck"—Walt Williams (1964-1975)
The Texas Rangers find themselves further out of first place at this point in the season than any team in the history of baseball, except the 1953 Detroit Tigers. The Rangers' record is a putrid 23-43, while the Seattle Mariners are 52-14. The cosmic beauty of this, of course, is that Alex Rodriguez shunned the Mariners in the offseason to sign a record-setting $252 million contract with the Rangers.
Pay-Rod isn't the reason the Rangers are struggling; in fact he's off to a fine start (.320, 19 HR, 57 RBI). Texas' woes can be summarized in three words: pitching, pitching, pitching. A staff ERA of 6.01, starting pitchers whose ERAs resemble Boeing airplanes, and a leaky bullpen illustrate the folly of Texas owner Tom Hicks' spending plan. The Rangers' offseason signings included graybeards such as Ken Caminiti, Andres Galarraga and Randy Velarde. Only Velarde has produced, but he's been laid up with a hamstring injury.
Washington Post columnist Thomas Boswell, in an excellent column a few weeks ago, opined that the Rangers struggles may have done the game a favor. The lesson is that nobody is worth the kind of money Rodriguez is making, no one player is bigger than a team when it comes to fiscal sanity.
Schadenfreude is the German word for "pleasure derived from the misfortune of others." Mariners fans, the rest of baseball is sharing that warm feeling with you right now.
