NLCS Preview: War, Peace, Crime, Punishment, and Bullpen Management

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My epic-length preview of the Dodgers-Phillies National League Championship Series matchup is up at Baseball Prospectus. Whatever its merits or flaws, I’m reasonably certain it’s the LONGEST preview of its kind. Getting the chance to do a Playoff Prospectus is an honor, and I always try to pour myself into the project, word count be damned. To me, arriving at a prediction — Dodgers in six, in this case — isn’t as important as the analysis behind it, because I don’t go into the process with my mind made up. Admittedly, my knowledge of the Dodgers is deeper than that of the Phils, particularly because I already previewed their first-round series. I did the Phillies twice last year, which helped make up for seeing less of their first-round series than any of the others.

The key in this series is the bullpens:

Dodgers                  IP     ERA   WXRL   rFRA
RHP Jonathan Broxton    76.0   2.61   4.89   2.63
LHP George Sherrill*    69.0   1.70   4.30   1.83
RHP Ramon Troncoso      82.2   2.72   3.50   2.79
RHP Ronald Belisario    70.2   2.04   0.19   2.99
LHP Hong-Chih Kuo       30.0   3.00   1.10   2.32
RHP Jeff Weaver         79.0   3.65   1.75** 4.02
RHP Chad Billingsley   196.1   4.03   3.72** 4.38

Phillies                 IP     ERA   WXRL   rFRA
RHP Brad Lidge          58.2   7.21  -3.26   8.44
RHP Ryan Madson         77.1   3.26   2.32   3.08
LHP Scott Eyre          30.0   1.50   1.55   2.17
RHP Chan Ho Park        83.1   4.43   1.93** 3.00
RHP Chad Durbin         69.2   4.39   0.95   4.96
LHP Antonio Bastardo    23.2   6.46  -0.10#  7.06
rFRA: Relief-only FRA
*: Full-season combined statistics
**: SNLVAR + WXRL
#: SNLVAR

Let us not mince words: given the Dodger rotation’s limited stamina, this team’s post-season fate falls squarely on the shoulders of their bullpen. Fortunately, those are big shoulders, and [Joe] Torre demonstrated his knack for using his relief corps to shorten games in the Division Series. Their bullpen has such depth that they were able to withstand the early hook of Wolf, and to match up Broxton with Albert Pujols in the late innings of all three games, regardless of whether it was the eighth or ninth. Dodger relievers tossed 9 2/3 innings in the series, allowing eight hits and one walk while striking out seven, stranding four baserunners inherited from starters and yielding two runs, both in garbage time. Work like that wins championships.

Not that it should be a great surprise, given that the team led the league with 13.2 WXRL, and that Broxton not only led the league in that category, but led all relievers in strikeouts (114) and strikeout rate (13.5 per nine). The deadline addition of Sherrill was key, as it prevented Torre from burning out the likes of Belisario and Troncoso while offering him a hurler who smothers lefties (.163/.226/.261 career) and has experience closing; Sherrill put up a 0.70 FRA [Fair Run Average] in high-leverage duty after coming over. Fellow southpaw Kuo’s second-half return to form (2.19 ERA, 28/9 K/BB ratio in 24 2/3 innings) following elbow troubles provides the Dodgers with two chances to stifle Howard in the late innings. Elsewhere, Belisario and Troncoso generate ground balls by the bushel while steering clear of the long ball. The former was hell on righties (.157/.234/.252). The latter, who didn’t pitch in the Division Series after losing a bit of Torre’s confidence over the season’s final two months (a 4.87 ERA and 5.3 BB/9 will do that) nonetheless finished eighth in the league in WXRL. Weaver was a late addition to the playoff roster, and came up huge in relief of [Randy] Wolf, wriggling out of a bases-loaded jam and getting the win; he provides Torre with another situational righty, not to mention an unhappy reminder that the manager’s post-season record in handling bullpens is hardly spotless. Left out of the rotation, Billingsley’s ability to miss bats is yet another weapon.

By contrast the Phillies’ bullpen rates as a serious concern, even after [Charlie] Manuel successfully navigated it through the Colorado series. One year after converting every save opportunity en route to a World Championship, Lidge blew 11 saves and set a record for the lowest single-season WXRL. The Phils mulled various options during the season’s final weeks, but ultimately Manuel gave him the ball to close out the final two games, albeit with a caveat. Reintroducing a cut fastball into his repertoire against lefties, Lidge worked around a pair of walks while pitching the entire ninth inning in Game Three, and came on with two outs and two on in Game Four—following Manuel’s situationally-based choice to start the inning with the lefty Eyre—to strike out Troy Tulowiztki, closing out the series.

Part of the reason Manuel wound up returning to Lidge is because of the rest of the bullpen’s limitations, primarily due to injuries. Madson remains his top set-up man, capable of missing bats and getting more than three outs when the need dictates. The most obvious choice to supplant Lidge — he saved 10 games this year — Madson’s move to the ninth leaves a vacuum that the Phils couldn’t fill. The Phils had hoped Brett Myers could assume a high-leverage role, but he remains less than 100 percent following hip surgery. Trouble finding the strike zone in his sole Division Series appearance, as well as doubts about his ability to pitch consecutive days, have cost him a roster spot in favor of Park. The team’s second most effective reliever (2.1 WXRL, 3.00 FRA, 9.4 K/9 after moving from the rotation), Park hasn’t pitched in a game since September 16 due to a hamstring strain. Durbin’s a lower-leverage righty who walks far too many hitters for his own good (5.8 UIBB/9); he nonetheless saw eighth-inning duty in Game Three, after Manuel used Madson to put out a fire lit by Eyre in the seventh. Eyre, of course, is now the top lefty due to J.C. Romero’s torn flexor tendon; he doesn’t stifle lefties to quite the extent of most specialists (.240/.321/.396 career), nor does he miss many bats. Bastardo is a rookie who showed little platoon difference during his June in the rotation, but he did whiff 7.2 per nine.

How Manuel will use Blanton and Happ, his two options to start Game Four, remains to be seen. Blanton served in middle relief in Game Two and as the long man in Game Three, surrendering a run each time. Happ faced one batter in Game Two, gave up a hit, and served up a dud of a start (three innings, seven baserunners, three runs) under frigid conditions before departing due to a comebacker off of his shin. The summer’s rotation savior scuffled down the stretch, with a 4.83 ERA and zero quality starts after August 27.

Admittedly, I’ve got plenty of emotion wrapped up in this series, but that’s one of the reasons I’m so thorough with my analysis. And in the end, I can’t help but conclude that the Dodgers’ righty-heavy lineup and deep bullpen sets them up to attack the Phillies’ weaknesses — and counteract their strengths — better than the Phillies can do same, plus they have the benefit of home-field advantage. Here’s hoping they can seize the opportunity and avenge last year’s loss.

All A-Twitter

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With a mixture of ambivalence, curiosity, and concern for the battery life of my iPhone, I’ve dipped a toe into the next frontier of social media blah-de-blah by signing up for a Twitter account. It’s handy for disseminating tidbits of information that are too tiny to merit a blog post, and I’ve found the ability to carry on instant message-length discussions with my BP colleagues and fellow writers during the playoffs to rise to the level of entertainment at least a few times. More importantly it’s come in handy for mundane work reasons such as getting a jump on how the Dodgers will line up their rotation for the NLCS (Kershaw, Padilla, Kuroda and Wolf, according to MLB.com beat writer Todd Zolecki) so I can meet the deadline for my Playoff Prospectus.

That said, your mileage may vary, and if Twitter ain’t your thing, there’s absolutely no need to join the rest of us twits.

Everything’s Coming Up Milhouse

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Everything’s coming up Milhouse thus far in the playoffs, at least from my standpoint. The Dodgers swept the Cardinals, the Yankees swept the Twins, and the Angels swept the Red Sox, with each of the series more or less turning on a ninth-inning flub by the eventual losers — a harsh reminder that there’s almost no margin for error in such a short series.

In the Dodgers series, it came via Matt Holliday’s dropped fly ball on the potential final out of Game Two; had the catch been made, the series would have been knotted at one game apiece as it headed back to St. Louis, but as it was, the Dodgers rallied against closer Ryan Franklin for the win. In the Yankees series, it came when Alex Rodriguez slammed a Joe Nathan pitch into the bullpen in the bottom of the ninth of Game Two for a game-tying homer. The Yanks won it in the bottom of the 11th on a Mark Teixeira walk-off, but only after the Twins loaded the bases with no outs in the top of the inning and failed to score, a situation somewhat marred by umpire Phil Cuzzi’s failure to see a Joe Mauer drive land in fair territory beforehand; Mauer would have gotten a ground-rule double, but he had to settle for a single. In the Red Sox series, Jonathan Papelbon came on to protect a 5-2 lead with two outs and two on base in the eighth inning of Game Three. He gave up a two-run single, then surrendered three more runs in the ninth, the last two on a single by Vlad Guerrero following an intentional walk of Torii Hunter (Joe Posnanski has a great rant about that one), and soon the Sox were packing up for winter. Riverdance that one, kid.

Meanwhile, the Dodgers will have to wait for their opponents to emerge from the other NL Division Series currently being played under frigid conditions in Denver between the Phillies and the Rockies. From a historic standpoint, a rematch with the Phillies would be more favorable, but the Dodgers’ chances at reaching the World Series are probably better against the Rockies, whom they beat 14 out of 18 times this year. Personally, though, I’m just hoping for a protracted, miserable series full of extra-inning games ultimately won by the Donner Party.

I haven’t had much chance to write about postseason action yet, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been busy. The season’s final Hit List is up at Baseball Prospectus, with the Yanks finishing atop the list for the first time since 2006 and the Dodgers, who led most of the year, winding up second. The latest installment of our “Kiss ‘Em Goodbye” series is up at Baseball Prospectus and ESPN Insider; this one, to which I contributed, covers the just-defeated Cardinals:

Key stats: 62 starts, 425 2/3 innings, 2.45 ERA, .650 SNWP
That’s what the Cardinals got from Carpenter and Wainwright, and after the pair combined for just 23 starts last year, it was their performances which were the main reason the Cardinals outdid their PECOTA projection by eight games. After pitching just 21 1/3 innings in 2007-2008 due to various elbow miseries, Carpenter rebounded to go 17-4 while posting the league’s top ERA (2.24) and SNWP (.673), with microscopic walk and homer rates (1.8 per nine and 0.3 per nine, the latter tops in the league) further underscoring the fact that he was back in Cy Young form. Wainwright, who missed two and a half months with a finger tendon injury in 2008, emerged as an ace thanks to improved command his curveball, which enabled him to smother righties (.217/.255/.290). He led the league with 19 wins and 233 innings while ranking fourth with a 2.63 ERA and 212 strikeouts.

The Bottom Line
With Holliday, DeRosa, Troy Glaus, and Rick Ankiel all free agents, the team will need to find a heavy hitter or two this winter to keep the lineup from feeling like “Albert and the Seven Dwarves” again. As the Cardinals fill their holes, they’ll especially need to emphasize plate discipline, given that Pujols and mid-season acquisition Julio Lugo were the only regulars to walk at least once for every 10 plate appearances. Furthermore, La Russa and Dave Duncan’s possible departure might present real problems for this franchise, given the skill both have shown at squeezing the most out of veteran rosters — and particularly rotations — assembled amid the limitations of a mid-market payroll.

Tough to believe that La Russa and Duncan might not be part of the Cardinals next year; they’ve been constants for so long it’s easy to forget they’re not surgically attached to the team.

The Bambino in Action

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A note from somebody at the New York Times alerted me to this new-found footage of Babe Ruth swinging a bat and playing Yankee Stadium outfield circa 1928. The footage comes via 90-second silent 8-millimeter clip shot recently unearthed by a New Hampshire man from his grandfather’s home movie collection. It won’t win any awards for clarity, but the Bambino’s distinctive swing and gait are apparent, and the expert researchers at the MLB Network archive have verified it.

From the accompanying story:

Babe Ruth has struck out looking. Displeased, he leans on his bat, right hand on his hip, and looks back at the umpire. He utters something that can only be imagined. Lou Gehrig, on deck, leans on his bat, too, as if he has seen this act before. Ruth finally shuffles away, head turned to the umpire, dragging his bat through the dirt.

…The newly arrived Ruth film is part of the video collection of Major League Baseball Productions, the league’s official archivist, which spans more than 100 years and includes about 150,000 hours of moving images. Most of the collection is stored in plastic cases that line metal shelves of a room labeled “Major League Baseball Film and Video Archive.” The overflow rests in storage a few miles away, in Fort Lee, N.J.

…He is shown in right field, hands on his knees, glove on his right hand. To a casual fan, it appears unremarkable. But it represents the archive’s only game action of Ruth playing in the outfield — where he spent more than 2,200 games — other than a between-innings game of catch.

Nick Trotta, baseball’s manager of library licensing, took a look at the newly arrived Ruth clip first. He quickly realized it was something he had not seen before.

When others saw it, it was “wow, wow, wow,” Mr. Trotta said.

Wow, wow, wow indeed.

Talking Strategy

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For the third time this year, I’ll be appearing on a Fox Strategy Room webcast. I’ll be part of the “Clubhouse Report” show hosted by Brian Kilmeade today at 1 PM at this link. It looks as though the panel will feature a few other recognizable names:

Rick Cerrone – Sr. Director of Media Relations for NY Yankees 1996-2006, RickCerrone.com

Jay Jaffe – Baseball Prospectus

Geno Bisconte – Comedian, Youtube.com/GenosPicks, GenoBisconte.com

Marty Appel – PR Director NY Yankees 1968-1976, Author of 17 books, including the best-selling baseball book: “Munson: The Life and Death of a Yankee Captain.”

Not sure how I wind up with second billing in that group. Appel and Cerrone always used to pop up in newspaper reports regarding the Yankees and baseball in general; I really enjoyed Appel’s Now Pitching For the Yankees book from several years back. Bisconte is the yukster who’s animated the other two appearances I’ve made on the Strategy Room. Should be plenty of baseball talk about the Yankees and day one of the playoffs.

It sure was a long day. I spent at least 10 hours on my couch watching the tripleheader, though I’d be lying if I said I had an easy time following Phillies-Rockies during my BP chat. The Yankees’ win over the Twins was satisfying, with Derek Jeter’s towering home run, CC Sabathia’s gritty performance, and Alex Rodriguez’s two RBI hits helping them pull away slowly in the later innings.

The Dodgers’ win over the Cardinals was much more nerve-wracking, as Randy Wolf loaded the bases in the first inning before recording a single out, and Ronnie Belliard collaborated with Matt Kemp on missing a blooper into shallow center that scored the game’s first run. Luckily, the Dodgers escaped that jam without further damage and Kemp bopped a two-run homer off Cardinal ace and Cy Young candidate Chris Carpenter in the bottom of the first. Neither Carpenter nor Wolf were on their games. Wolf gave up six hits, five walks (two intentional, both to Albert Pujols, and with good cause) and a hit-by-pitch in 3.2 innings before Joe Torre pulled him for… Jeff F’ing Weaver! Now I don’t know about you, but I’ve already gotten the course credit for Jeff Weaver 101, Jeff Weaver 201, and Jeff Weaver 301 courses, and I’m not really going for my master’s degree there. Torre appeared to mistake ol’ Wevo, who admittedly did a credible job on mop-and-bucket duty this year for the Dodgers to resurrect his career, for David Cone c. the 2000 World Series, and I nearly had to cover my eyes. Luckily it didn’t blow up in his face, as Weaver extricated them from another bases-loaded jam with a weak grounder by Ryan Ludwick.

Men left on base were the theme of the game; the two teams set a postseason record by stranding 30 men, 16 by the Dodgers, who chipped away at Carpenter for four runs in five innings but could never really break the game open. Meanwhile, both managers battled for every single out with their corps of relievers, each using five of them. The Dodger bullpen — Weaver, Ronald Belisario, Hong-Chih Kuo, George Sherrill and Jonathan Broxton — gave Torre 5.1 of five-hit ball, striking out five without walking anybody, and surrendering just one garbage-time run. The Cardinal bullpen looked like a shakier proposition, yielding four walks in four frames. Portly lefty specialist Dennis Reyes yielded a double to Andre Ethier, the only Dodger really worth the trouble of manager Tony LaRussa’s incessant bullpen machinations, and came around to score on a bases-loaded HBP when Kyle McClelland drilled Russell Martin. He was the only Dodger starter who failed to collect at least one hit, with Rafael Furcal looking like the guy in the catalog by collecting three, including a triple that went for naught.

How big a win was that for the Dodgers? I no longer can count the number of postseason victories they’ve accumulated since my freshman year of college on one hand. Huge.

Dodgers-Cardinals Prospectus

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The Playoff Prospectus I wrote for the Dodgers-Cardinals series is up at BP. It’s epic in length, which somehow explains why I didn’t get to see the final inning of the Game 163 play-in, because I didn’t set my TiVo to record more than an extra hour of the game, and by the time I got a chance to watch — starting at 11 PM, though I’d seen the first few innings while making dinner — it was already in the books. FML, as the kids say.

Anyway, as for the Dodgers and Cardinals, here’s the rotation segment as an excerpt:

Dodgers                  IP     ERA  SNLVAR  SNWP
LHP Randy Wolf         214.1   3.23   6.0   .564
LHP Clayton Kershaw    171.0   2.79   6.5   .600
RHP Vicente Padilla    147.1   4.46   3.1   .508*
RHP Chad Billingsley   196.1   4.03   3.8   .502

Cardinals               IP     ERA  SNLVAR  SNWP
RHP Chris Carpenter    192.2   2.24   8.0   .673
RHP Adam Wainwright    233.0   2.63   8.5   .630
RHP Joel Pineiro       214.0   3.49   4.6   .532
RHP John Smoltz         78.0   6.35   0.5   .414*
RHP Kyle Lohse         117.2   4.74   1.1   .436 
* Full season statistics

Though the Dodger and Cardinal rotations finished tied for third in the National League in SNLVAR (23.2) and among the top four in ERA — L.A.’s 3.58 was second, St. Louis’ 3.66 was fourth — the two teams differ greatly in how they got there. The Cardinal starters absorbed a league-high 69.7 percent of their team’s workload, an average of 6.20 innings per start. They did so by being efficient, posting the league’s lowest walk and homer rates (2.4 per nine and 0.7 per nine, respectively) to counteract having just the 11th-best strikeout rate. Dodger starters, by contrast, shouldered the fourth-lightest workload among NL starters at 62.5 percent, though that owes something playing an MLB-high 21 extra inning games. Their 5.68 innings per start was the sixth-lowest in the league, a byproduct of a high strikeout rate (7.5 per nine, third in the league) and a high walk rate (3.5 per nine, fourth). Unquestionably, it’s the Dodgers who enter the postseason with the greater number of concerns about their rotation, as their top four starters all missed time down the stretch.

Despite a paltry total of 11 wins — a figure sure to be remarked upon by the mainstream media — Wolf enjoyed something of a career year as he set personal bests for starts (34), innings pitched and ERA+ (129). Thanks in no small part to a league-low .254 BABIP, he finished a strong 11th in SNLVAR and tied for fourth in Quality Starts (24), a ranking which reflects his sheer consistency. In the second half, he delivered at least six innings in 17 straight starts; though he skipped a turn due to elbow soreness amid that stretch in early September, it doesn’t appear to be a lingering issue. There’s considerably greater concern for Kershaw, who made just two starts after September 4 after separating his glove-side shoulder shagging balls in the outfield, an injury which nonetheless kept the 21-year-old from blowing too far past last year’s combined minor and major league innings total. The kid misses bats; his 9.7 K/9 ranked fifth among NL ERA qualifiers, and his hit rate (6.3 per nine) was by far the league’s lowest. He matches up well with these Cardinals, who have collected nothing more harmful than three doubles off him in 100 PA over his short career.

After losing Hiroki Kuroda for the series and perhaps the remainder of the year due to a herniated cervical disc, Torre has settled on Padilla to start Game Three. The former Ranger pitched well (3.20 ERA, .553 SNWP and 8.7 K/9) after being picked up on waivers in early August, owing much to the easier league and the friendlier park. More interesting is that his start is guaranteed while that of Billingsley, who entered the year as the staff ace, isn’t. Though Billingsley led the Dodgers in wins (12) and finished just six strikeouts behind Kershaw, he struggled the second half, with a 5.20 ERA and six quality starts out of 13. His woes may owe something to a hyperextended knee suffered early in August, or simply a lack of stamina; he gave up 16 runs in the nine sixth innings he pitched during that stretch, including six against the Cards on July 28 after shutting them out in the previous five frames, a showing that almost certainly entered into Torre’s decision.

The Cardinals go into this series with two of the league’s top three pitchers in terms of Support Neutral Winning Percentage in Carpenter and Wainwright; the two placed first and fourth, respectively, in ERA as well. Carpenter’s comeback from two seasons in the weeds (four starts in 207-2008) due to elbow miseries has been so complete that it’s easy to forget what a question mark he was coming into the year. His stellar performance, which may culminate in a second Cy Young award, is the main reason the Cards outdid their PECOTA projection by eight games. While he doesn’t strike out as many hitters as he used to, his walk rate (1.8 per nine, third in the league) is microscopic, and his NL-best home run rate (0.3 per nine) even moreso. If he doesn’t win the Cy, Wainwright might; he led the league in wins (19) and innings while significantly boosting his strikeout rate thanks to improved command of his curveball, which enabled him to smother righties (.217/.255/.290), representing a real problem for the Dodgers.

Pineiro, who will start Game Three, enjoyed a strong rebound of his own this year thanks to the league’s fourth-best homer rate (0.5) and best walk rate (1.1 per nine); twice, he reeled off four-start stretches without walking a single hitter, and he hasn’t walked more than two in a start since April 15. As for the choice in Game Four, Smoltz pitched much better upon being picked up by the Cardinals (4.26 ERA, .508 SNWP, 9.5 K/9) than he did in Boston, though his final start was a dud. As the all-time leader in postseason wins (15), he’s likely to have the inside track on Lohse, who has posted a 5.40 ERA and 1.6 HR/9 since his forearm troubles emerged in late May, but neither pitcher is likely to have a very long leash.
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I’d have excerpted the part about the batting orders, except that it’s much longer and, because I didn’t have the Cardinals Game One lineup by press time, wrong. As if to spite me for the sarcasm with which I use the term “genius” to describe him, Tony LaRussa decided to start lefty-hitting Skip Schumaker at second after all, and he walked and came around to score the game’s first run, poor performance against lefties be damned. On the run-scoring play, Ronnie Belliard failed to catch a blooper into center field that one can only wonder whether Orlando Hudson — whose starting job he usurped — might have, but he also started an inning-ending double play.

Whoa, and Matt Kemp blasts one to straightaway center field to put the Dodgers up 2-1… I gotta get back to this game.

I’ll Show You the Bronx Banter Breakdown III

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The third installment of the series shot Monday with Bronx Banter’s Alex Belth, Cliff Corcoran and myself is now up at the SNY.tv video channel. This one discusses the Twins, the Yankees’ first-round opponents (given that it was shot before Tuesday night’s Game 163 play-in, we also shot a Tigers’ segment that will never air). The Twins come in having won 17 out of 21 including the play-in, but as I showed the other day, late-season performance has no reliable bearing on playoff performance. That was my key point here. Also a bit of talk about Alex Rodriguez.

Not surprisingly, I had lots of Yankees-Twins questions in today’s chat. A sampling of them:

David (Evanston, IL): Do this year’s Twins have one of the least intimidating starting rotations in postseason history?
JJ: It’s fairly unimpressive, for sure, and certainly belongs in the discussion. What I’d like to know is why Scott Baker wasn’t tabbed for Game Three instead of Carl Pavano, given that after throwing last night, he’d have four days of rest. You’ve *got* to guarantee your best pitcher a start in that series.

ssteadman (St. Louis, MO): Obviously it’s hard to predict because he is just 26, but are we potentially seeing the greatest catcher of all time (maybe excluding Josh Gibson) in Joe Mauer?
JJ: Mauer is great, but best catcher of all time is a tall order even for a three-time batting champion, because Johnny Bench was so incredible on both sides of the ball — his defense made Jose Molina look like Mike Piazza.

Eli (Brooklyn): As a Yankee fan, please talk me off the ledge Joe Girardi has me on. The Molina start is exactly the kind of over-managing that I’m terrified off all postseason — Jeter bunting in the fifth, Coke facing Mauer in the 8th, etc…
JJ: The Molina start is a pretty stupid thing that has me gritting my teeth, but the fact of the matter is that it’s a pretty small thing, too, and it’s not like it’s deviating from something Girardi has done all year by putting him into the mix. Last I checked, they won 103 games, so it worked out OK. 

I’m far more worried about the team’s lefty relief situation going into the playoffs than I am about the catching. Neither Coke nor Damaso Marte give me much confidence, and there are a fair number of key lefties they’ll need to get through to win another World Championship. Despite that complaint, Girardi has shown that he deserves the benefit of the doubt when it comes to handling that bullpen — it might be his strongest area as a manager.

William (Orange Beach, AL): What type of player with Delmon Young be 5 years from now ? If not for the 50 something games he sat out this year, its not crazy to think that he could have hit .290-18-80.
JJ: Yes, Young might have approached those Triple Crown numbers, but given his plate discipline (92/12 K/BB this year), all that would tell you is that Triple Crown numbers do a poor job of telling you what a disappointment he is. .284/.308/.425 isn’t remotely acceptable for a 23-year-old corner outfielder with his caliber of tools, and I don’t know if he’s ever going to fulfill the promise that the scouts saw in him a few years back. Five year’s from now we’ll be watching him hang on for dear life to a major league career.

Ballgame’s about to start, second game of the tripleheader to which I’m glued. Go Yanks!

I’ll Show You the Bronx Banter Breakdown II

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The second installment of the series shot Monday with Bronx Banter’s Alex Belth, Cliff Corcoran and myself is now up at the SNY.tv video channel. This one previews the Red Sox-Angels series, and finds me in motormouth form trying to squeeze in all my points about the Angels’ offense and the Red Sox shoddy defense.

More preview stuff to come later today. I’ll also be hosting a chat at Baseball Prospectus starting at 2:30 PM Eastern, during the Phillies-Rockies game. Stop by and drop in a question if you dare.

I’ll Show You the Bronx Banter Breakdown

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Earlier today, I shot a series of short video segments with Bronx Banter’s Alex Belth and Cliff Corcoran for their SNY.tv video channel in which we discuss the 2009 Yankees, their playoff chances, and the rest of the AL playoff slate. Yes, we had to shoot two segments because the tossup in the AL Central — and thus the Yanks’ first-round opponents — won’t be decided until Tuesday evening’s play-in game between the Tigers and the Twins.

In this first installment, we look back at the Yankees’ regular season performance, with Cliff mainly covering the hitting, me focused on the pitching staff, and Alex playing the ringmaster. It’s always fun for the three of us to banter about baseball.

Momentum Is the Next Day’s Starting Pitcher

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With the Dodgers nearly backing into the playoffs and the Yankees still waiting to find out whether they’ll play a streaking opponent or a slumping one in the first round, today at Baseball Prospectus I took a look at the link between late-season momentum and postseason success:

Against long odds, the final week of the 2009 regular season wound up producing down-to-the-wire excitement in both leagues, though for the most part, that excitement had nothing to do with stellar play. The Dodgers used a season-high five-game losing streak to keep the suspense regarding the NL West flag and home field advantage building for an entire week, with the Phillies and Cardinals failing to capitalize and the Rockies falling just short of overcoming a lackluster two-week stretch prior to their final sprint. Meanwhile, the AL Central has produced its second consecutive Game 163 play-in, this time due to a mad rush by the Twins and a collapse by the Tigers that may yet prove to be historic.

Against this backdrop, viewers have been treated to writers, broadcasters, and in-studio pundits admonishing such slumping teams to pull themselves together as they pontificated on the importance of heading into the playoffs with momentum. The oft-cited example remains the 2007 Rockies, who won 13 of their final 14 regularly scheduled games, then a play-in and ultimately the NL pennant. Forget the fact that just one year prior, the Cardinals dumped nine of their final 12 before becoming the team with the lowest victory total ever to win the World Series—these experts certainly did. The question obviously arises as to whether there’s truth to such conventional wisdom about whether late-season performance carries over into the playoffs. The answer is a fairly resounding no.

With the help of Eric Seidman, I pulled late-season records for every playoff team of the Wild Card era from 1995 through 2008, 112 teams in all. For each team, we recorded their record over the final seven, 14 and 21 games as well for September and whatever fragment of October remained. The results of Game 163 play-ins initially weren’t included in either the “week” records (which didn’t always coincide to weeks, but which were somewhat easier to gather) or the “month” records; including them didn’t change the results substantially. Here are the correlations between the interval’s winning percentage and first-round success: 


Interval      Corr162   Corr163
Final 7         .019     .016
Final 14       -.020    -.021
Final 21       -.042    -.043
Final Month    -.028    -.028

That, folks, is a whole lot of nothing, an essentially random relationship between recent performance and first-round success. None of the correlations even reached .05 in either direction, and six of the eight were actually negative… Here are the correlations between those winning percentages and overall playoff success as measured by number of series won: 


Interval      Corr162   Corr163
Final 7        -.043    -.049
Final 14       -.097    -.101
Final 21       -.119    -.121
Final Month    -.112    -.115

That’s still nothing to write home about, and the slate is now uniformly negative, suggesting that, if anything, there’s an ever-so slight inverse relationship between success in the final weeks and in the postseason. Perhaps that’s because some of these playoff-bound teams are resting their regulars more often, or simply regressing to the mean after a summer of beating up on opponents. Even if we create a points system, doubling the value of winning the League Championship Series and quadrupling that of the World Series such that the same number of points are awarded per round, the magnitude of the largest correlation—for the final month, 163-game version—still doesn’t get any bigger than .137, and it’s negative at that. It’s still essentially nothing.

From there I go on to illustrate the striking similarity in recent records between the teams that won the various rounds of the playoffs and those that didn’t; the two differ by one win over 784 games when it comes to their records in the last seven games. I also go on to cite a quick-and-dirty study I did regarding the limitations of using recent won-loss records on future won-loss records, arriving at the none-too-controversial conclusion that full-season records are better for divining the future, and that Pythagorean records, which rely upon the underlying performance, are even better for that job.

The bottom line is that as the postseason unfolds, it’s good to remember that for all the talk about momentum and its importance to a ballclub, the conventional wisdom that a team’s recent performances foreshadows their playoff fate is generally wrong. As Earl Weaver’s famous maxim states, “Momentum is the next day’s starting pitcher,” and if you’re trying to analyze what’s going to happen in a given series — which is itself a crapshoot — you’re better focusing on the strengths and weaknesses of the various matchups than on some notion of who the hotter team is at the moment.