All props to Rob Neyer for his sabermetric efforts but, really, is this the first wrong-headed thing he's uttered about the Yankees, whom he admits he loathes? Remember that halfway through last season he called Alfonso Soriano the biggest bust of the AL rookie class [he's been curiously silent about Sori this season ;-) ] based on nothing but his own bias against everything pinstriped. Remember that he's the standard bearer of the belief that Derek Jeter is "the worst fielding shortstop in baseball." When Michael Kay asked Neyer how many actual games he had seen Jeter play, he first admitted that he barely sees a handful of Yankee regular season games a year, then, of course, pointed to stats like range factor and zone rating that he himself at times has questionned. Kay's point was that "range", "hands", and "arm strength" could not be determined by simply reading a series of numbers that didn't account for the type of pitching staff (fly ball/strikeout vs. ground ball/contact) and the strengths and weaknesses of the infielders around him (which affect positioning, DP opportunities, etc.). Neyer sneered at Kay and actually alluded to this interview in a column the next week as an example of how the New York media was biased. As with Bill James, his mentor and one-time employer, Neyer suffers too deeply the failures of the Royals against the Yankees in his formative fan years. And that's something you couldn't glean from any stats.
John C.
No, John, this wouldn't be the first time Neyer was wrong about the Yanks, and yes, he's been slow to give Soriano his due, but let's remember that Soriano's glaring weakness, namely BALL FOUR, lowers his On Base Percentage considerably (right now it's a rather pedestrian .334 despite a .306 batting average) and keeps him from being a truly devastating offensive force the way Alex Rodriguez or Jason Giambi are.
I don't think the Neyer vs. Kay matchup is as one-sided as John makes it out to be, particularly if the topic is Derek Jeter's defense. And before we go down this road, let's just acknowledge that if Neyer is biased, then Kay, a Yankee employee who rubs most non-Yankee fans the wrong way, is even more so. Now, those of us who watch our team 100+ times a year (as I do, and perhaps you do too) have a tendency to believe "our guy is the best" if we see the great plays he makes over the course of all of those games. But when we look at the stats, we find that isn't always the case.
So long as we're on the subject... on Saturday, NY Times writer Tyler Kepner, who covers the Yankee beat, touted Jeter for the Gold Glove. This would be a laughable suggestion if it weren't so appalling. It IS a topic that Neyer has addressed before, and more than once.
Jeter isn't, by any objective measure, a great shortstop. In fact, most of the data we have says he's Not Good. Jeter makes a lot of spectacular plays, and he makes them at times when everybody seems to be watching (playoffs, etc). He's got tons of anecdotal evidence on his side. Michael Kay thinks he's great, Tim McCarver thinks he's great, and several millions of viewers who listen to them think he's great. Joe Torre, George Steinbrenner, and every female in the tri-state area between the ages of 5 and 35 give him a hearty thumbs up as well, along with the occasional shreik when he comes to bat (really, it's not pretty when George does this). But by any statistical measure, he is nothing special defensively. While no one fielding stat is definitive, and all of them contain biases, Jeter tends to be at or near the bottom by just about every measure.
Here is a chart showing Jeter's ranking in 2001 and 2002 among other AL shortstops in four major statistical categories: Fielding Percentage, Range Factor (total chances per 9 innings), Zone Rating (percentage of balls fielded by a player in his typical defensive "zone," as measured by STATS, Inc.), and Double Plays.
The number in parentheses after the year is the number of qualifying shortstops in that particular season (those playing in 2/3 of their team's games). So Jeter is dead last out of 13 in three of the categories, and below average in the other one. The picture is the same in 2001--dead last out of the 10 qualifiers in 3 out of 4 categories.
Now, even these stats have their biases, as John noted. They don't account for the type of pitching staff Jeter's playing behind (groundball/flyball/strikeout tendencies), or the strengths and weaknesses of his surrounding fielders. Examining the second consideration first, here's an expanded version of that chart which includes Jeter's neighbors in each of the past two seasons, again with the number of qualifiers in parentheses:
If we were to award points based on a reverse ranking order (so that placing 1st out of 13 would get 13 points, and 13th would get 1; ties split the points between the two spots), and then compute the percentage of points each of these seasons has "earned" out of the total possible score... well, we'd have a very crude system that didn't tell us a whole hell of a lot, but what it would say is that of these six player-seasons, only Robin Ventura's 2002 looks to be above average.
But that's a pretty crude system which doesn't take into account the biases we've discussed, nor does it prioritize any of these rankings, or distinguish between very small differences and very large ones (Jeter is two successful chances away from an exact tie with David Eckstein for 8th place in fielding percentage; he's also 30 points worse in Zone Rating than any other shortstop). It's not quite garbage, but I won't get rich by selling these rankings either.
So let's take a look at a system that DOES take those biases into account, namely Bill James' Win Shares system. Now, Win Shares was introduced to the public less than a year ago, and it's far from perfect. But Bill James has spent the past 25 years studying stuff like this, and his system is vastly superior to what I have to offer. James uses a 4-category weighted system (40-30-20-10) which starts from the team's defensive performance and works down to each position and each player's performance. It accounts for strikeouts, for flyballs/groundballs, for lefty/righty pitching balance, for park effects--you name it, and it's in there somewhere.
The four categories James uses to evaluate shortstops are Assists vs. Expected Assists (40 percent), Double Plays vs. Expected Double Plays (30 percent), Error Percentage (20 percent), and Putouts as a Percentage of Team (10 percent).
I don't have a category-by-category breakdown for Jeter's numbers, but in the Win Shares book (which covers through 2001), we can compare Jeter versus hundreds of other shortstops throughout history. The currency which James uses to rank is Fielding Win Shares per 1000 innings, which he then converts to a letter grade. Derek Jeter averages 4.11 FWS per 1000 innings, a low total; a D+ in fact. For some not-so-random comparisons, Joe Tinker is at 7.28 (the highest), Phil Rizzuto at 7.14, Ozzie Smith at 6.42, Rey Ordonez 6.32, Cal Ripken Jr. at 5.69, Nomar Garciaparra at 5.16, Alex Rodriguez at 4.77, and Jose Offerman at 2.85.
Looking at it another way... Jeter ranks 103rd in career innings at shortstop. Of the 102 players above him, only two have lower rates of Fielding Win Shares per 1000 innings. Of the 290 shortstops who make the 3000 inning cut to appear on the list (the equivalent of just over 2 full seasons playing every inning), only 50 had rates lower than Jeter. By any of these measures, Jeter is well below average.
Again, I'm not claming James' system is perfect, but Jeter's performance doesn't look too pretty through that lens. It corroborates the data we already have, as well as other sophisticated measures (Baseball Prospectus puts him at -28 runs below average in 2001 and -27 in 2000, for example). No amount of anti-Yankee bias on the part of Bill James or Rob Neyer will explain that away.
Jeter has a strong arm which allows him to make some spectacular throws, and he's a heady player, which puts him in the right place at the right time for plays like The Play against Oakland in Game Three of the ALDS. But really, he doesn't have much range. He's slow to react to grounders, particularly to his left, though he has improved considerably this season compared to last, probably thanks to being healthier. That doesn't mean he's not an extremely valuable player; anytime you can get that kind of production out of a middle infielder it's a big plus, and anytime you get that combination of leadership, smarts, and durability from a ballplayer, it's an even bigger plus. But the list of Jeter's best qualities doesn't start with his defense, and while I Heart Derek, I won't argue that he's a good-fielding shortstop. Maybe not "the worst fielding shortstop in baseball," but nobody worthy of a Gold Glove either.
Postscript:Though I beat him to the punch by a few hours (not that it matters, because he's likely NOT reading this), Rob Neyer gives his take on the NY Times Gold Glove piece today, and his conclusion is the same: not great. Neyer also notes that it was John Sterling and not Michael Kay (Sterling's radio partner for the last few years) who tried to humiliate Neyer on the air. Though he's a homer, I'll defend Kay to a degree because the man can actually write very coherently. I won't waste my breath defending Sterling though. Even his "Theeeeeeeeeeeeeee Yankees win!" radio call grates on my nerves, and that's about all that distinguishes him.
The first one is about Mets co-owner Nelson Doubleday's accusations that baseball cooks its books to hide profits. Doubleday is attempting to sell his half of the team to co-owner Fred Wilpon based on a provision of their longstanding partnership in which one party can buy out the other at a value determined by an appraiser. The hitch is that the valuation placed on the franchise--by a crony of Commissioner Bud Selig--is out of line other estimates of the team's worth (previous offers for the team, Forbes Magazine's estimate, and the price the Boston Red Sox fetched when sold over the winter, for example). The story is being widely covered, but it was the Post's back-page headline, "END IS NEAR FOR SELIG" which reeled me in. Man, that tabloid shit is STRONG.
In the Post article, Tom Keegan speculates--perhaps a bit breathlessly--that this controversy couild spell the end of Selig's reign. He writes:
Driving one more nail - no, not a nail, this one is a spike aced with arsenic - into the coffin of Selig's reign as commissioner, an outgoing member of the Old Boy Network let the whole world know that, guess what, the owners do cook their books.
In what has the appearance of an old boy leaving the Old Boy Network and thereby feeling as if he can finally tell the truth, Mets co-owner Nelson Doubleday fingered baseball yesterday in papers filed Tuesday in federal court for Doubleday's lawsuit against co-owner Fed Wilpon.
Doubleday maintains the commissioner was "in cahoots" with Wilpon and Arthur Andersen accountant Robert Starkey to "manufacture phantom operating losses" in baseball's books.
While this might get ugly, it just as easily could disappear like smoke if Doubleday is able to wring another $50 to $100 million out of Wilpon for his half of the team. Far more promising, in my opinion, is the RICO suit brought by the former Montreal Expos owners, because Selig is actually a defendant in that case. But either way, and even with the fantasy that a deal with the Players' Association might arrive in time to avert a strike, a few more vultures are circling around Bud.
A sharp writer named Dan Lewis, who keeps a sports blog of his own, dlewis.net, as well as writing for various other online publications, does a nice, quick dissection of the Doubleday matter as well as related economic issues surrounding the game. Lewis runs down "The Seven Deadly Disputes" at the heart of baseball's labor war. The 60/40 rule (in which a team's asset-to-debt ratio may not exceed that arbitrary balance), he writes, "is 100% a salary cap." Add this man to your reading list.
• • • • •
The second Post piece is about the still-struggling Mike Mussina and the Yanks' pitching woes as a whole. On Tuesday, Moose allowed a career-worst 14 hits to the Kansas City Royals, who have the league's lowest batting average. Joel Sherman summarizes Mussina's futility:
In his last 19 starts, which stretches to late April, Mussina has pitched to a 5.48 ERA. Since June 1, the AL is hitting .315 off him. Over his superb career, Mussina always has possessed the moxie and arsenal to escape jams. But the Royals were 7-for-15 with men on base against him, and for the season his average against in those spots is .311 and worse (.324) with runners in scoring position.
This data meshes nicely with the situational OPS breakdowns I ranted about a few days ago. Here is a revised version showing Mussina's OPS (On Base Percentage + Slugging Percentage) allowed with no baserunners (0), runners on base (1+) and runners in scoring position (RISP):
0 1+ RISP
Before last night 648 893 930
Last night vs. KC 933 1118 1000
After last night 656 914 934
It takes a lot of work for a single outing to raise an OPS 21 points; Mussina's performance last night was really that bad. Upon examining these numbers after his Texas start, I suggested that Mussina's ridiculous stretch move (a.k.a. the Goddamn Drinking Bird) may be part of his problem, as the move may be inhibiting the control or velocity of his pitches. But in examining last night's outcome, a few other possibilites have reared their heads:
• Mussina could be tipping his pitches. This possiblity was suggested to Mussina after last night's outing, but he dismissed it, at least publicly. However, as NY Times writer Jack Curry notes, "Mussina said batters were hitting different pitches while he was ahead in the count, which sounds like a description for tipping pitches. To that, Mussina said: 'I should just tell them what's coming then. Maybe that will make it easier on me.'"
• Baserunners could be stealing Jorge Posada's signs. Similar to the tipped pitch theory, this also meshes with Moose's woes with men on base. Either way, the Yanks ought to be checking their video for clues.
• Mussina could be hiding an injury. While Moose is considerably easier to communicate with and more forthcoming than Orlando Hernandez (the master of the concealed injury), he may have nagging minor injuries which are contributing to his woes. Recall that El Duque's seemingly minor toe problems contributed to his considerably more major pitching woes last season.
Noting a lack of velocity on Mussina's fastball and crispness on his breaking pitches, ESPN's Rob Neyer suggests that Moose is suffering from a lack of arm strength, and what he calls "the Yankees' laissez faire attitude toward the health of their pitchers' arms." While Neyer may be onto something about the arm strength, the latter accusation is absolutely unfounded given the Yanks' conservative approach to injuries. The organization has uniformly addressed injuries to Pettitte, Hernandez, Rivera, Clemens, Hitchcock, ad infinitum with the focus on making sure they were ready for the postseason. Not to get all indignant, but for Neyer to suggest otherwise shows that he's not paying very close attention. Still, he does have a point when he writes, "With luck, there's nothing wrong with Moose that a two-week vacation in Tampa can't cure."
• Sometimes, he just sucks. Slumps happen, and overthinking or pressing to shake them often tends to make matters worse. Mussina has conceded that he has a tendency to overanalyze his mechanics, but struggling like this is uncharted territory for him. All the more reason why the Tampa Cure might be in order, especially with Roger Clemens coming off of the disabled list.
Hopefully, Mussina and the Yankee organization can get to the bottom of this mystery before too long. And maybe Brian Cashman should talk to David Cone after all.
Last Friday night may qualify as the most surreal night I've ever had at a ballpark, even though it was one of the more short-lived. My co-worker Lillie had organized a trip to see the Brooklyn Cyclones play at Keyspan Park, a colorful little ballpark nestled in the middle of Coney Island's amusement rides. The Class A Cyclones, whom I visited during their inaugural season last summer, are sold beyond capacity this season, with only bleachers and standing-room tickets available on game day. Fortunately, Lillie had a friend willing to go out of his way and swing by Coney Island to pick up ten tickets at $5 a pop.
Now, group expeditions are always a dicey proposition at ballparks; the more people you have, the harder it is to get everybody to the same spot at the same time, especially when coming from the city an hour away during rush hour. Our plan to meet a half-hour before game time fell by the wayside. But nine out of our ten managed to find their way to the bleacher entrance of Keyspan Park as the National Anthem was being played, and we entered the stadium together.
Though Keyspan is oversold, it's not necessarily full to capacity, as on any given night entire rows of season-ticket holders may not show up. So as the top half of the first played out, we found our way from the bleachers down to the first-base side of the infield, staking out the better part of a row in section 14.
As the game began, the weather was questionable, with a rainstorm reportedly heading towards the park. A glance at the sky as we settled into our seats answered the question, as a black, arced cloud of doom loomed to the east. Uh-oh.
With the chaos of the rush-hour trip to the ballpark behind us and a potential storm ahead, the first thing on my mind was a quick bite to eat--a bite and a beer, actually. My girlfriend Andra took care of the beer portion, getting stuck in a long line in the process. By the time she was back, ominous gusts of wind--strong enough to blow one's cap off--were swirling, and the occasional thunderclap shook the stadium. I headed off to get a couple of hot dogs, but frustrated by getting stuck in the same concessions line as Andra had, I bailed out. Instead, I hurriedly scored a pair of Italian sausages at a less-crowded cart and returned to my seat. I quickly had to get up again to find condiments and napkins, neither of which was easy to find. The napkins were inconveniently being dispensed from stupid wall-mounted contraptions as if they were Kleenex; one good yank to pull a few out on them produced a wrinkled mess unfit for presentation to another human being.
If it sounds like I watched very little baseball up to this point, that's a correct impression. Our large group, late arrival, and lack of familiarity with the ballplayers had taken the option of keeping score out of my hands. Once that happens, my attention (not to mention my feet) tends to wander. But I began to tune in once the sausage returned my blood-sugar level to a more comfortable point. A close play at first base in which a Cyclones batter was called out had several fans in our section jawing back to the umpire. As the man in blue listened to the chatter coming from the Cyclones' bench, some of these armchair umps imagined he was paying attention to their complaint, resulting in an ever more boisterous display.
Play progressed very quickly; it seemed as if every batter swung at the first or second pitch with one eye on the forecast. Through this, the Brooklyn starter kept throwing zeroes up on the scoreboard. After six quick innings, he still hadn't allowed a hit. Unfortunately, the Cyclones had managed only two hits themselves up to that point, and the game was still scoreless. Meanwhile, the thunder clapped ever louder, and the sky grew blacker.
So there I am, in the middle of a no-hitter to which I've barely paid attention. I'm still hungry. I can't sit still. I don't have a scorecard. Hell, I don't even know the pitcher's name (Jason Scobie, as I soon learned). And I've got too many people to talk to while this is going on. I'm thinking to myself, "What sorry-assed excuse for a baseball fan have I become? Better I head to the kiddie pool beyond the outfield wall of the Arizona Diamondbacks mallpark than be caught without a scorecard at a no-hitter." Oh, the guilt.
In the bottom of the sixth inning, Oneonta brought in a new pitcher (Ross Koenig), who got one out, then hit the second batter, leftfielder Jonathan Slack, in the arm with a pitch. To the crowd's delight, Slack stole second base, then advanced to third on a wild pitch. With two outs, second baseman Joe Jianetti blooped a soft single, scoring Slack for the game's first run.
Scobie took the mound for the seventh, retiring the first batter. At that point, Lillie leaned over to me and broke the spell by uttering the dreaded words "no-hitter." Sure enough the next batter, Tigers third baseman Robert Watson, lined a double off of the leftfield wall. The appreciative Brooklyn crowd gave him an ovation, but several parents, with their eye on the weather, began decamping once their shot at history over. Lillie winced, and I shook my head. So much for our luck.
The top of the seventh ended with a series of violent thunderclaps, after which the umpires conferred and called the game. Momentarily, the sky erupted and the rain began to fall. As the groundskeepers unrolled the tarp, it was clear our baseball was done for the night. With the aid of a borrowed umbrella, we made the subway stop without getting too soaked. Our ride back to the city on the lead car of the F train was punctuated by flashes of lightning and the sight of rain pouring in through the train's front door. All in all, a surreal experience.
Whether or not you're a basketball fan, if you're a lover of the language of sports, you should note the passing of Chick Hearn, the Los Angeles Lakers' longtime play-by-play man. Hearn, who died on Tuesday at the age of 85, spent 42 years calling Lakers game (including an incredible 3,338 consecutive games), and even if you never got to hear him broadcast, you've heard his work.
Hearn's language added color not just to the sport of basketball, but to sports culture in general; terms he's credited with creating or popularizing include "slam dunk," "air ball," and "no harm, no foul." Several other phrases of his have also stuck: "Caught with his hand in the cookie jar," "He faked him into the popcorn machine," and my personal favorite, ""You can put this one in the refrigerator. The door's closed, the light's out, the eggs are cooling, the butter's getting hard and the Jell-O is jiggling.'" ESPN's obituary does a nice job of running down several "Chickisms" as well as the highlights of the man's career. The world of sports will miss him.
The Twins Geek (John Bonnes) pointed me and the rest of his readers in the direction of this article at Sports Central, comparing Minnesota Twins owner Carl Pohlad to that tent-fingered embodiment of animated evil, Montgomery Burns. "Who else could represent everything Pohlad stands for?," writes Ryan Noonan. "Mr. Burns is an old, bald, filthy-rich business tycoon who seems to take pleasure in other people's misery. He lives in a cavernous mansion by himself and would probably sell his mother if it meant he could make $2 on the deal. Except for maybe the cavernous mansion, if that doesn't describe Pohlad, I don't know what does." Excccccellent.
But so long as I'm riffing on the Simpsons, even that news isn't quite as excellent as the fact that my favorite show has inspired the naming of a minor-league franchise. The AAA team which will play in Albuquerque next season will be called the Isotopes, taking its name from an episode in which the Duff Beer Corporation, owners of the Springfield Isotopes, schemes to move the team to Albuquerque until Homer foils his plan.
Real-life Albuqueque was left without a franchise following the 2000 season, when the Los Angeles Dodgers ended their long working agreement with the city's team, the Dukes. The Pacific Coast League franchise moved to Portland, becoming the Beavers, but they still hold the legal rights to the name "Dukes." Meanwhile, the PCL's Calgary Cannons are moving to Albuquerque, and while traditionalists wanted to resurrect the Dukes name (even given the estimated $15,000 cost of buying back the rights), imagination--and perhaps a whiff of the green stuff--has won out. The 'Topes have secured the rights to trademark the name, though they haven't worked out anything with Fox regarding the use of Simpsons characters.
Meanwhile, the Dodgers' new working agreement is with a Las Vegas franchise called the 51s, after Area 51, the top-secret military facility associated with UFO tales and conspiracy theories. The 51s even have one of those alien heads (a schwa, as I believe it's called) as their cap logo. Given that Fox owns the Dodgers, this is all starting to make sense. New teams, new uniforms, new marketing opportunities... the truth is out there.
David Cone has had an interesting season on the fringe, but then David Cone has always kept things interesting--whether he's at the top of his game or the bottom. The New York Observer, that strange pink media-focused weekly, caught up with Cone in a front-page feature last week, discussing his whereabouts and his position on the game's current labor issues.
Recall that the articulate Cone was one of the most visible players in the game during the last labor war; his role as an American League player representative had him on TV every time there was news about the 1994-1995 strike. Cone, who is still close to Donald Fehr, the head of the Players' Union, offered glints of optimism about the present situation: "There is not as much rhetoric as there was the last time. I still think the framework is there for a deal."
After his well-chronicled, disastrous 2000 season with the Yanks (4-14, 6.91 ERA, and the subject of a Roger Angell book), Cone salvaged some dignity with a strong comeback with the Boston Red Sox last year. At his best, Ol' Coney was still capable of holding up his end of a tantalizing pitchers' duel, as he did against the Yankees and Mike Mussina when the latter came within one strike of a perfect game on September 2. For the season, Cone went 9-7 with a 4.31 ERA, helping to keep the Sox in the race in Pedro Martinez's absence before the inmates overran the asylum.
With the market for fragile 38-year-old pitchers a fickle one, the Sox chose not to re-sign Cone, who then spurned overtures from the Kansas City Royals and the Texas Rangers to wait for a call that never came from the Yankees. Still, he kept showing up--in Tampa, where he threw to stay in shape, and in the bleachers of both Fenway and Yankee Stadium, where he watched games among the variouis bleacher creatures.
Though Boss Steinbrenner hasn't seen fit to offer Cone a contract to pitch, he has let Cone get his feet wet in a new endeavor, as a game analyst on YES. Cone worked a game each round of the Subway Series between the Yankees and the Mets, and now he's literally plying his trade in the minors, doing a few Staten Island Yankees games. I tuned in to hear his work Monday night, and while he's definitely not polished yet, he shows potential. His voice is pleasant if a little flat, and he uses a few too many um's and uh's, but his observations on pitching are delivered with confidence and enthusiasm, and he's never been short of charisma or candor. Once again, he reiterated his optimism on the labor front, offering hard-won observations from his time on the front lines as well as more general insights about his playing days.
Cone's being given every chance to succeed in his new role, but he still hasn't ruled out another trip to spring training--to put on the pinstripes one more time and retire a Yankee, if nothing else. The bets are in that he's thrown his last pitch in a regular season game (and if that's the case, I was lucky enough to see it), but rest assured he'll be sticking around the game in some capacity. Which is good, because baseball at whatever level--a strike, a season from hell, a five-error Class A game, or a World Series gem--is always more interesting with him around.
