My Favorite Baseball Quilt

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I’ve never attended a perfect game, but back in the summer of 2003, I attended “A Perfect Game,” an exhibit at the American Folk Art Museum devoted to baseball. I was so taken with it that I wrote a lengthy review, which included this bit about the image above:

One of the most prominent pieces of the exhibit is a 7′ x7′ quilt called “My Favorite Baseball Stars,” created by Clara Schmitt Rothmeier, the daughter of a minor league ballplayer. (This photo of the quilt and the other photos I link to for this article were generously provided by Susan Flamm of the AFAM for the purposes of this review). Over a ten-year period from the mid-Fifties to the mid-Sixties, Rothmeier drew pictures of her favorite players, traced them onto fabric, appliquéd and embroidered each one, then sent them to the players for their autographs. Once a panel was returned, she would add it to her quilt, embroidering the signature as well. Midway into the project, she added a border of cloth baseballs, each featuring another signature that she’d collected. The finished quilt contains forty-four panels and about three hundred autographed balls. There are some heavy hitters among those portrayed: Ted Williams, Stan Musial, Yogi Berra, Roy Campanella, Casey Stengel, Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, Robin Roberts, Al Kaline, and a sleeveless Ted Kluszewski. Among the signed and embroidered balls are even more legends: Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, Jimmie Foxx, Frankie Frisch, Dizzy Dean, Joe DiMaggio, Jackie Robinson, Satchel Paige, “Cool Papa” Bell, Bob Gibson, and Sandy Koufax. Yeah, some of those guys could play ball.

Born in 1931, hailing from Gerald, Missouri, Rothmeier was certainly no stranger to the diamond. From her bio in the exhibit catalog, The Perfect Game:

Rothmeier was an accomplished baseball player as well as a quiltmaker. Her father played minor league ball in the Pittsburgh organization, and her five brothers and four sisters had all played on traveling baseball and softball teams. Rothmeier herself played first base for a traveling softball team from Springfield, Illinois. While on the road, she started sewing to keep busy. Her “favorite stars” quilt took more than 10 years to complete. She has also made quilts commemorating the 1951 and 1956 St. Louis Cardinals (her favorite club), the major league teams of 1948, and Jackie Robinson’s 1955 World Champion Dodgers.

Last night, I received an email from a woman named Elizabeth Hixson informing me that Rothmeier, her great aunt, had passed away this week due to cancer. “She was a great artist [and] she was a great person,” wrote Hixson.

My deepest condolences to Rothmeier’s family and friends.

The Week’s Work

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Stuff from my latest three pieces at Baseball Prospectus:

• In “Conquering the Cubs,” the latest edition of my “Pair Up in Threes” series, I examine the Brewers, Cardinals and Reds, all of whom are atop the Cubs in the NL Central race, a major surprise given that our PECOTA projection had the Cubs at an NL-best 95 wins. Here’s a bit on the Brew Crew:

The Brewers stumbled to a 4-9 start, but since then, they’ve put up the league’s second-best record even with a recent 2-6 skid. Their turnaround largely coincides with the arrival of 41-year-old Trevor Hoffman, the former Padres closer who spent the season’s first three weeks on the disabled list. Since returning, he’s yielded one run in 20 innings, converting all 16 save opportunities while allowing just 13 baserunners, a performance good enough for seventh in the league in WXRL. LOOGY Mitch Stetter and a pair of free-talent pickups who’ve worked their way into meaningful roles, Todd Coffey and Mark DiFelice, are in the league’s top 30 as well. As a unit, the Brewers’ bullpen fourth in the league in that category, a major reason why they’ve exceeded their third-order Pythagenpat record by 4.8 games, the league’s second-best mark. Though they’ve lost five straight one-run games to fall to 10-12 in that category, they’re 16-8 in games decided by two or three runs.

While the rotation’s been shaky (more on that momentarily), the staff as a whole is getting plenty of help from a defense which two seasons ago ranked third-to-last in Park-Adjusted Defensive Efficiency. Their impressive ranking is nothing new, actually; they were 10th last year with virtually the same lineup, the outcome of a chain of events which saw the arrival of center fielder Mike Cameron, the move of Bill Hall from center to third base and of Ryan Braun from third to left field. The sudden loss of Rickie Weeks for the season hasn’t changed things much; this remains a quality unit that’s been helped by the fact that the pitchers are allowing the league’s third-lowest line drive rate as well as the third-highest groundball rate. Whether they can keep that up remains to be seen, but it’s certainly easier to do so than maintaining a high Defensive Efficiency in conjunction with a high line drive rate.

• In “Another Mile-High Miracle?” (which also ran at ESPN Insider), I examine the Rockies’ 14-5 surge under interim skipper Jim Tracy, and whether the Rockies have enough to contend that they should consider buying instead of selling:

Only a week ago, the rumor mill was abuzz with the future destinations of Brad Hawpe, Jason Marquis, Ryan Spillborghs and Huston Street, but the streak has allowed the Rockies to defer such decisions. To the credit of Tracy and GM Dan O’Dowd, they’ve quickly made moves which help their chances of sustaining some momentum, starting with the replacement of third baseman Garrett Atkins with Ian Stewart, who’s now out of the way of Clint Barmes at second. In a lineup that’s second in the league in scoring but just seventh in EqA (.262) — taking stock of the Rox starts always starts with letting the air out of their offensive stats — Atkins (.210 EqA) has been the lineup’s only real sinkhole; he recently went five weeks without a homer or a multi-hit game, a tough task for an everyday player. Barmes (.270) has been the team’s hottest hitters over the past month (.345/.405/.560). Stewart (.262 with a team-high 12 homers) is hitting .314/.357/.667 this month after fighting through a prolonged slump.

As Joe Sheehan pointed out recently, the Atkins shuffle should bear fruit for a team that’s 10th in the league in Park-Adjusted Defensive Efficiency (-1.05 percent below average) and last in raw DE (.677); Atkins is a lousy third baseman, Stewart a natural one, and Barmes is better at the keystone than the latter. Also helping the defense is the recent promotion of Carlos Gonzalez, a toolsy former top prospect with the ability to play center field. He spent the first two months of 2009 in a Triple-A refresher course following his acquisition in the Matt Holliday trade and a none-too-impressive half-season in Oakland (.242/.273/.361 with an 81/12 UIBB ratio). Tracy’s slotted him in left, previously the domain of an unstable but not wholly unproductive cast of righty Spillborghs, lefty Seth Smith and redheaded stepchild Matt Murton.

…When it comes to making any deals, thanks to their streak the team has the luxury of playing both sides of the fence in the six weeks between now and the trading deadline. If they continue to play well, they should have few glaring weaknesses to shore up aside from their bullpen, and may have a spare outfielder to deal if Gonzalez clicks. If this latest burst is simply a mirage, they can gain salary relief and/or restock their larder by flipping Street, and selling high on the none-too-cheap Marquis ($9.875 million this year) and the relatively affordable Hawpe ($13 million total in 2009-2010). Perhaps they can even offload Atkins ($7.05 million); as discussed yesterday, the Cardinals need a third baseman, and the Reds could use one as well to hedge against Edwin Encarnacion’s continued wrist problems.

As an aside, I was sorry to see Clint Hurdle’s recent firing. While by no means a great skipper, he showed a ton of class in leaving the stage, reminding me that the former phenom is the author of one of baseball’s great quotes: “There’s two kinds of people in this game — those that are humbled and those that are about to be.”

• And in the spirit of former Dodger manager Tracy’s revival, I’ll stick with the (ex-)LA theme in excerpting this week’s Hit List:

[#1 Dodgers] The Dodgers continue to sit pretty even as their offense has cooled off in Manny Ramirez’s absence thanks to the strong performance of their bullpen. They’re 37-8 when leading or tied after five innings, second in WXRL and first in Fair Run Average, with Jonathan Broxton leading the league and Ramon Troncoso — who’s saved four games while giving Broxton the night off — ranked fourth. The team is winning more than its share of the close ones: 16-6 in one-run games and 10-7 in two-run games.

[#2 Red Sox] Penny for Your Thoughts: Brad Penny tosses 11 innings against the Yankees and Marlins without allowing an earned run, but even so, he’s only put up a 4.94 ERA and a .465 Support-Neutral Winning Percentage. That’s mainly due to his 40.5 percent groundball rate, about 10 percent lower than last year. With the June 15 deadline for trading last winter’s free agents without their permission having passed and John Smoltz slated to debut next Thursday, Penny’s the subject of trade rumors, but for the moment, the team will cycle through a six-man rotation.

[#8 Rangers] Ruw the Day? Released by the Dodgers in the spring, Andruw Jones exacts a modicum of revenge by homering twice against them — one less than his 2008 total — though the Rangers drop both games and thus the series. Jones is hitting .245/.355/.504 but is just 4-for-30 in June; he’s started in the field just 12 times, none in center, even with Josh Hamilton missing so much time.

Jose, Can’t You See?

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Jose Canseco’s stupidity is America’s most renewable natural resource. Check this one:

Jose Canseco plans to file a class-action lawsuit against Major League Baseball and the players’ association, saying he’s been ostracized for going public with tales of steroids use in the sport.

Canseco said Wednesday that he has discussed the suit with lawyers and intends to enlist Sammy Sosa and Rafael Palmeiro to join in the suit.

Canseco said the basis of the suit would be “lost wages — in some cases, defamation of character.”

“Because I used steroids and I came out with a book, I was kicked out of the game, but I have not been inducted into the Hall of Fame,” Canseco said in a telephone interview.

“A lot of these players have not been inducted into the Hall of Fame: Mark McGwire and so forth. They’re losing salaries, because obviously when you’re inducted into the Hall of Fame, you get asked to do certain, you know, appearances and shows and so forth, which incorporates income. So there is a major income loss.

“Not even that, baseball blackballs you from their family, meaning you can’t have a future proper reference from them, a job, no managerial jobs, no coaching jobs, nothing. They completely sever you.”

Let’s see, the posterboy for bad behavior in baseball broke the game’s steroid rules (however poorly enforced) and the clubhouse code of silence, created a firestorm of negative publicity (but alas, was right about so many that he fingered), served jail time and two years of house arrest due to battery charges stemming from a nightclub brawl (a term which he violated by using steroids, natch), pled guilty to a misdemeanor offense of trying to bring a fertility drug from Mexico into the USA, revealed himself to be not just a total assclown but a flat-broke one, and then suffered every public speaker’s second-worst nightmare (showing up without pants being numero uno). And he wants to be MLB’s latex salesman? Thinks he’s entitled to be considered for employment — not to mention untold riches — given that track record?

Don’t stop believin’, Jose. Without you we’d have much less to laugh about.

Holy Toledo!

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For the past two years, I’ve been appearing nearly every week on a Toledo, Ohio ESPN affiliate, WLQR 1470 AM, as the guest of Norm Wamer for the show “The Front Row.” It’s my favorite media hit of the week, as Norm and I have a great rapport, and generally at some point during our freewheeling conversations we’ll crack each other up while talking about the Tigers (whose Triple-A affiliate is based in Toledo), the Indians (who are geographically closer), the AL Central race, obscure and lousy players from the Seventies and Eighties, or whatever else is at hand in baseball.

I’ve long wished the station streamed or archived the segments so that those outside that local market could hear them, and finally, it appears that they do both. This week’s segment, which was done with fill-in host Joe Rychnovsky, is here. The opening question, which somehow got trimmed, was along the lines of “What’s going on with the Nationals and their supposed firing of manager Manny Acta?” We discussed that, Sammy Sosa, the Tigers’ pitching staff and more.

Last week’s episode, which was done with Wamer and led off with a bit about the draft and first pick Stephen Strasburg (two weeks in a row leading with the Nationals?), is here (skip to 2:30 in), and the one from two weeks ago — which by my count was the 100th time I’ve appeared on the show — is here (skip to 1:45 in). Enjoy!

Update: and here is the Young Guns show from Boston’s WWZN 1510 AM.

An Unexpected Stop for the Ryan Express

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Back when the Futility Infielder site was merely a twinkle in my eye, a time when my friends and I were still reveling in our dumb good fortune to climb aboard the Yankee ticketholder bandwagon en route to a 114-win season, an issue of the Brown Alumni Monthly landed in my mailbox. Now, I rarely give the alumni mag much more than a passing glance, but this issue’s cover story was right in my wheelhouse. In “How I took the Ryan Express to Brown,” research professor Jim Blight entertainingly recounted his late-Sixties career as a minor league pitcher in the Tigers’ chain, one that included more than its share of futility — not to mention a brush with the legendary Nolan Ryan.

Blight’s self-deprecating style and skill as a raconteur made for a winning combination, so I circulated the article among friends, who found it as hilarious as I did. One of his best anecdotes still pops up in our conversations. With the alumni magazine having recently digitized its archives, I’m finally able to share Blight’s piece with a wider audience, augmenting it with data from Baseball-Reference’s recent expansion into older minor-league stats.

After attending Michigan State, the 19-year-old Blight was chosen by the Tigers in the 19th round of the 1966 draft, the 374th overall pick. It was not a round brimming with major-league talent. Ron Cey, who was selected by the Mets to start the round but who wisely chose to attend Washington State before being drafted by the Dodgers two years later, was the only pick from that round to ever reach the bigs. Three future major leaguers were chosen in the prior round, while five, including Dave LaRoche, were chosen in the following one. Such was the crapshoot nature of the amateur draft, which was only in its second year. Hell, that year’s overall number one pick, catcher Steve Chillcot, never even made the majors. The Mets chose him while passing on Reggie Jackson, who was snapped up by the Kansas City A’s with the second pick, apparently because they were concerned the latter was dating a white woman (actually a Mexican-American, and Jackson’s future first wife).

A 6-foot-3, 180-pound righty, Blight didn’t draw rave reviews from scouts (“decent heat but not much movement on it, real good overhand curveball, good control…”), and he drew guffaws when he went into duck-and-cover mode while pitching batting practice to Tigers’ big-leaguers like Willie Horton during spring training. He soon discovered that his lack of heat and movement made him “the perfect natural batting-practice pitcher. That was not a compliment: “In the jargon of the pros, I threw watermelons. Coming from my hand, the ball looked big and easy to hit.” Ouch.

Blight’s mediocrity would soon help him carve a spot in the record books:

As one of my catchers indelicately put it, I didn’t just suck, I “swilled.” … Even my brushes with baseball immortality were of the “swilling” sort. I am, in fact, represented in the baseball record book for one accomplishment. It happened in 1967, during a game in the Florida State League. I was the starting pitcher for the Lakeland Tigers against the Miami Marlins, which at the time was the Baltimore Orioles farm club. After the manager, “Stubby” Overmire (at five-foot-two, possibly the shortest pitcher in modern Big League history when he pitched for the Tigers in the 1940s), gave me the ball and I took the mound, he did what he always did: he walked down to the left-field foul pole, ducked into our makeshift clubhouse, and lit a cigarette, smoking being prohibited in the dugout. The details of what followed blur in memory, but this much is clear from the record book: the lead-off man for Miami, Moses Hill, hit a solo home run to start the game. The same man, Moses Hill, also hit a grand slam later that inning during his second at bat, bringing in runs seven, eight, nine, and ten. There was still nobody out. The usual crowd of several dozen drunks, whores, and pimps was, on this particular night, joined by a couple dozen prisoners from the local road gang. State troopers brought a group once a week, in chains, clanking into the stadium, and whenever our team fell behind, the prisoners clanked their chains rhythmically. After the grand slam, everyone was screaming, clanking, and getting generally unruly as they shouted for Stubby to come and get me the hell out of the game.

After Moses Hill took me deep for the second time, Stubby at last put out his cigarette and headed to the mound, accompanied by the boos and the clanking. I watched him all the way in, and thought, Jesus, at last he’s coming to get me out of here. Stubby reached the mound and, as a former pitcher, he (as usual) picked up the resin bag with his left hand and tossed it down. But this time he just stood at the bottom of the mound and looked up at me with a big grin on his face, which reached roughly to the height of my belt buckle. When I bent down to hand him the ball, he handed it right back, and said, “If you think I’m going to waste another pitcher on this game, you’re crazy. Man, you are in for nine. Good luck. I’ll be down in the clubhouse suckin’ weed.” And so he left, to more booing and clanking.

I did eventually get someone out, then someone else, and someone after that. At the end of nine innings, I had given up twenty-two earned runs on thirty-one hits. As far as I know, no pitcher has before or since, in the recorded history of baseball, given up two home runs to the same player in the same inning. The reason is obvious: in every case but mine, the manager removed the incompetent pitcher before such a feat became possible. In their way, my teammates understood the significance of the evening. As they filed into the clubhouse after the game, each, in turn, looked me solemnly in the face and then began to laugh uncontrollably. So did I. So did Stubby. So, I imagine, did Mo Hill. Even the prisoners must have yucked it up as they clanked back to the state prison. I was beginning to see the implications of being a natural batting-practice pitcher. I didn’t suck, my catcher said, and I didn’t even swill. Tonight, he said, I “chugged.” For the remainder of my brief career in the minors, Chug became one of my nicknames.

“If you think I’m going to waste another pitcher on this game, you’re crazy,” has since become a touchstone of conversation any time my friends and I have seen a pitcher enduring an interminable shellacking, not an infrequent occurrence in this slugfest-heavy age. The irony, in fact, is that in the same month that Blight’s article was published, on April 23, The Cardinals’ Fernando Tatis bashed two grand slams in the same inning off the Dodgers’ Chan Ho Park.

Even moreso than Park, Blight’s plight recalls that of Aloysius “Allan” Travers, the poor schlub who was torched for 24 runs, 14 earned, in an eight-inning performance while pitching for the Tigers on May 18, 1912. Travers was one of seven St. Joseph’s University players whom the Tigers recruited to fill out their lineup for a game against the Philadelphia A’s after Ty Cobb had been suspended (for beating a leather-lunged heckler who’d lost both hands) and his teammates had gone on strike in protest of the decision. For a $50 fee, Travers dutifully took his pounding — manager Hughie Jennings hadn’t recruited any relievers — and faded into oblivion, never to play in the majors again.

Thanks to the recent addition of pre-1990s minor league stats to Baseball Reference, we can now see Blight’s minor league record in its full glory. He went 2-9 with a 4.96 ERA for Lakeland in 1967, striking out just 40 hitters in 78 innings, but if the numbers recounted from his legendary beating are accurate, that would leave a 2.79 ERA in his other outings, not too shabby in a league with a combined 3.61 ERA. Furthermore, he gave up just five homers for the year, so aside from Hill’s two, he allowed just three more in his remaining 69 innings. Not that his record was exactly sterling; for his career he went 11-22 with a 4.23 ERA, never making it higher than a five-game stint in the High-A Carolina League and in fact spending most of his three seasons in the Florida State League.

While making the Florida scene, Blight was forced to bat against a 20-year-old, heat-throwing Nolan Ryan, hardly a fair fight for a career .085 hitter. Ryan had gone a combined 17-4 with a 2.36 ERA and 307 strikeouts in 202 innings with two Mets farm teams in 1966, and had even gotten a cup of coffee in the majors, but he was limited to just four appearances in 1967 due to a elbow troubles and a six-month stint in the Army Reserve. While the details Blight recounts (such as facing Ryan in the ninth inning of a meaningless game) don’t square with the fact that Ryan’s sole official FSL appearance was a four-inning start, there’s no doubt that he speaks the truth about his harrowing experience:

…I saw absolutely nothing, other than Ryan’s arm coming toward me. I heard a faint whoosh, then a pop behind me that sounded like gunfire, followed by “Steeee-rike one!” from the umpire. My knees started shaking. My palms began to sweat profusely. I will never forgive Nolan for the next pitch. It was a slider or curve or something like that. It started out behind me, or so it seemed, and then broke hard over home plate for strike two. As the ball crossed the plate, I was flat on my back on a pile of dirt, in a needless effort to avoid being hit.

The notoriously contact-shy Blight understandably reached an epiphany at that point, surrendering his major league dreams for a different path, one that led him to settle in as a research professor at Brown’s Watson Institute and author a dozen books on U.S. foreign policy, most notably The Fog of War: Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, later turned into a documentary directed by Errol Morris. Blight’s expertise brought him face to face with the likes of Fidel Castro and North Vietnamese leaders, but quite understandably, nothing ever scared him as much as facing Ryan did.

Nuf Sed

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Choice cuts from this week’s Hit List, including about as much as I have to say about the Yankees’ recent sweep by the Red Sox:

[#1 Dodgers] Riding high in April (.306/.423/.553) but shot down in May (.211/.306/.295), Andre Ethier has picked himself up and gotten back in the race. Collecting walk-off hits on back-to-back nights against the Phillies, then bashing a pair of homers—his second two-fer in three days—against the Padres, he’s hitting .400/.417/.914 with five jacks in June. That’s a welcome power surge for an offense that’s averaging 4.6 runs per game and hitting just .271/.341/.380 since Manny Ramirez’s suspension, though they still lead the league in batting average and rank second in OBP.

[#2 Red Sox] Papi Pop? David Ortiz quadruples his season home run total by connecting three times in five days. with the middle shot kicking off the scoring in Boston’s three-game sweep of the Yankees, against whom they’re now 8-0. That Ortiz is hitting .310/.394/.655 in June may be cause for optimism, but until Thursday night he was still below the Mendoza Line overall, and his numbers since his celebrated mid-May benching (.195/.262/.403) aren’t much better than what proceeded them. Also interesting: Ortiz is hitting better against lefties (.233/.284/.425) than righties (.187/.306/.291) despite a career platoon split that’s 139 points of OPS higher against the latter.

[#7 Yankees] We Searched All of Recorded History But Couldn’t Find Anyone Who Sucked Worse: Chien-Ming Wang fails to escape the third inning against the Red Sox amid a three-game sweep in Fenway. The Yankees are now 0-8 this year against the Sox, their longest season-opening losing streak against their rivals since 1912; they’ve been outscored 55-31 in those games. On the subject of pre-World War I factoids, Wang’s 21.61 ERA through five starts is the highest since 1913, when baseball began tracking the stat. He’s on a short leash as far as remaining in the rotation, with Phil Hughes awaiting another turn.

[#26 White Sox] We’ll Meet Again: Ozzie Guillen erupts at his team’s lack of execution and threatens plenty of face time: “Good teams win games. Horse**** teams have meetings.” Alas, things only get worse for the Sox amid a 2-8 skid as Carlos Quentin is diagnosed with a tear which will sideline him through the All-Star break. He’s hitting just .229/.325/.458 and hasn’t homered since April 29.

God bless Ozzie Guillen for making the White Sox Hit List entries among the more enjoyable to compile.

Subterranean Home Park Blues

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If all you watched was baseball pertaining to that Bronx team — and let’s face it, that describes a certain portion of this blog’s readership — you’d think that home run rates were off the charts this year given the major league-leading 1.81 homers per game that are being hit at Epic Fail Stadium. That’s not the case, as I point out in today’s Hit and Run:

When we last checked in on 2009 home-run rates, April was just about in the books, and was providing a strong indicator that this year’s overall home-run rate would finish ahead of last year’s. But while the performances of Adrian Gonzalez (22 homers) and Raul Ibañez (20), and the frequency with which balls continue to fly out of Yankee Stadium (1.81 homers per team per game) suggest a homer-happy season, the reality is that rates have slowed considerably.

Through April 25 — the cutoff point for the data used in my previous piece — batters were homering in 2.79 percent of their plate appearances and averaging 1.082 home runs per team per game. By the end of the month — a period shortened by the World Baseball Classic having pushed Opening Day back a week — those figures had dropped to 2.71 percent and 1.051 per game. Thanks to a May where the fences seemed to move outward (2.58 percent and 0.999 per game), the overall rates are now ringers for last year’s numbers, and would be among the lowest of the post-strike era if the season had ended on June 9: 

Year  HR/PA   HR/TmG
2009   2.61   1.009
2008   2.60   1.005
2007   2.63   1.020

The numbers are more revealing once they’re broken down by league, with the two new New York parks excluded:

Lg    2009   2008-td   2008-f
AL   1.032    0.858     1.002
NL   0.946    0.989     1.003
ML   0.986    0.928     1.003

Eliminating the New York parks from both years, we find that per-game home-run rates are up 6.3 percent over last year at this time [2008-td, for “to date”], but that the current figures would still finish 1.6 percent below the full-season 2008 rate [2008-f] because of a June-July uptick (1.073 per game) that pushed things back toward normalcy.

Also noted in the article is the recent Accuweather report discounting the meteorologists’ earlier theory about the new Yankee Stadium creating a wind tunnel in favor of, um, closer fences due to less gentles curves (a point my BP colleague Marc Normandin already hit. You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

The Museum of Small-Sample Split Oddities

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Step right up and get your small-sample anomalies! That’s the subject of today’s BP/ESPN piece, which starts with a Yankee:

We’re just past a third of the way through the season, and it’s no secret that the new Yankee Stadium has played as a hitter’s park thus far. After 29 games played in the Bronx, teams are averaging an AL-high 5.7 runs and an MLB-high 1.8 homers per game, with batters hitting a robust .271/.354/.476. Alas, Nick Swisher’s invitation to the party must have been lost in the mail. Through Monday, he was hitting just .190/.390/.354 at home, and that after a long ball in each of his last two games there, just his second and third round-trippers at home. Meanwhile, he’s thrashing at a .313/.400/.708 clip on the road, where he’s hit nine home runs and 19 of his 26 extra-base hits.

The 363-point OPS difference between Swisher’s location splits constitutes the largest home-field disadvantage among hitters with at least 100 PA in both contexts, but it’s hardly the only sizable split, even among those spending half of their time in hitter-friendly parks. Three Phillies — Jayson Werth, Shane Victorino, and Ryan Howard — rank in the top 20 in that category. Werth’s OPS is 308 points lower at home, “good” for fifth, while Victorino’s 239-point deficit is eighth, and Howard’s 149-point deficit is 18th. With the minimal sample sizes in play, such anomalies shouldn’t be terribly surprising, nor should Werth’s 2008 reverse split be (887 OPS on the road, 832 at home), since it takes years of regular at-bats before the sample sizes become large enough to yield reliably representative results.

Still, like bearded ladies and monkey boys, such early-season freak shows are fun to gawk at before the regression police shutter them for operating without a license.

From there, I go on to detail the biggest home/road extreme park reverse splits, the largest lefty-righty reverse platoon splits, the fattest Siamese pitching coaches of all time, and the two-headed cowwhom the Yankees just signed to help out in the bullpen. All in a day’s work.

Mending the Mets

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With Jose Reyes, Carlos Delgado and J.J. Putz on the disabled list for extended periods of time due to injuries, our New York-centric brethren over at ESPN asked a handful of Baseball Prospectus writers — myself, Will Carroll, Christina Kahrl, and Kevin Goldstein — to partake in a roundtable regarding what the Mets should do to navigate their current injury woes and remain in contention. They’re three games behind the Philies, who are no juggernaut, and currently in the Wild Card lead, but it’s tough to believe they can survive a race as constituted. Read here or here.

To me, pitching should still be their biggest concern:

If I’m the Mets, throwing Livan Hernandez and Tim Redding out there in the same rotation cycle, I’d start to sniff around the Mariners’ Erik Bedard and see what it would take to acquire him. Granted, he’s fragile, but he’s certain to be available this summer, and he’s pitching about as well as he ever has been. Better him than — to go back to the Indians, who are roadkill waiting to be picked over by vultures — Carl Pavano, because Bedard misses more bats.

If the price of Bedard is too steep — and let’s face it, the Mets aren’t brimming with blue-chip prospects — then Jarrod Washburn might be more attainable, particularly as he’s more expensive ($10.35 million this year) and the ability to take on salary is something the Mets will need to draw on at some point in this process, given that they’ve got more holes than a Jarlsberg wheel. Washburn’s not as good as his 3.22 ERA suggests, but he’s a viable fourth starter. While they’re at it, perhaps they can liberate Jeff Clement and throw him into the first-base mix. The Diamondbacks’ Doug Davis is another pitcher who comes to mind, particularly as that team is DOA and always looking for salary relief.

For the relievers, LaTroy Hawkins is a name that comes to mind. He was pretty much run out of town on a rail by the Yankees last year, but he’s done fantastic work with the Astros (47/13 K/BB in 43 2/3 innings, with just two homers allowed), and while he’s currently closing games in Houston, the Astros are going nowhere.

…Even conceding the point that Hernandez has been serviceable (and 4.29 FIP is certainly that), you’ve still got Redding, a very flawed [John] Maine, a broken [Oliver] Perez, and a Mike Pelfrey who’s pushing a 5.00 ERA, though that’s one bombing coming off five straight quality starts. Maybe they don’t break the bank for a Bedard, but they need another solid starter given that it’s Johan Santana and a whole lot more going wrong than right.

That Bedard is a fragile injury case and Hawkins a guy who’s as notable for his spectacular crashes and burns as for his above-average stretches only goes to show what a crapshoot the in-season trade market is. Personally, I’d fire Jerry Manuel before I’d invest to heavily in a deal, because I think he’s one of the more ineffectual managers out there, and that the problems of Perez and Maine owe something to the manager’s usage and ability to deal with them. Not that I think Omar Minaya, who failed to stock their corner outfield and rotation with adequate depth over the winter, should be let off the hook, but GMs generally don’t get fired in-season.

The Big Unit Gets Loose

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Randy Johnson won his 300th game on Thursday, waiting out an outburst of ark-building weather before getting down to business. Though he entered the game with a 5.71 ERA, the highest of any pitcher going into his 300th win start, he dominated the Nationals for six innings, throwing just 78 pitches and allowing two hits and an unearned run. He depart in part because he bruised his shoulder making a fantastic defensive play. Impressive.

On the local front, Johnson didn’t fare tremendously well during his two years in Yankee pinstripes. Though he won 34 games in 2005-2006, his 4.37 ERA was right at the park-adjusted league average, and his 6.92 postseason ERA during that time was a big reason the Yanks didn’t make it out of the first round in either year.

The irony, of course, is that the pinnacles of Johnson’s career prior to reaching 300 came at the Yankees’ expense. The combined tally, as I noted years ago: 5-0 with a 1.64 ERA and 35 strikeouts in 27.1 innings facing them in two postseason series. First, he came out of the bullpen on a day’s rest to close out the thrilling 1995 Division Series for the Mariners. “To this day,” I wrote back in 2003 of rooting against the Yanks in that series, “the hair on the back of my neck rises when I recall the cameras panning to the Seattle bullpen as one of the announcers excitedly exclaimed, ‘The Big Unit is getting loose!'” Any Yankee fan bitter about that one need only recall that it was the series loss which triggered the firing of Buck Showalter and the hiring of Joe Torre. Things didn’t work out too badly over the next few years.

At least until the heartbreaking 2001 World Series, where pitching for the Diamondbacks in the godawfulest purple-and-teal atrocity of a horseshit uniform ever devised by man, he collected three wins, two as a starter and one in relief, the latter on zero days’ rest in Game Seven. That one wasn’t so fun from where I sat, but that it was Johnson delivering the coup de grâce makes it slightly more bearable, at least in retrospect. As Cooter and Spud — the Simpsons’ carny folks who might pass for Johnson’s kin — would say, “We were beaten by the best.”

In any event, the ugly 6’10” goober with the mullet and the meanest goddamn slider you ever saw has stuck around into his 46th year, doggedly fighting his way through multiple back surgeries since leaving the Yankees, generally effective when he could get to the mound, which wasn’t especially often (51 starts in 2 1/3 seasons). Take note, because it’s going to be a long time before we see another 300-game winner. That’s the subject of one of my pieces up today at ESPN and Baseball Prospectus:

At this writing, the only pitcher within 80 wins of the magic 300 is 46-year-old Jamie Moyer (250), whose own 7.62 ERA suggests that he’s on his last legs. Of the three other active pitchers above 200 wins, 37-year-old Andy Pettitte (220) has annually threatened retirement since 2006, 37-year-old Pedro Martinez (214) is currently unemployed after three injury-filled seasons, and 42-year-old John Smoltz (210) is rehabbing his way back for a final go-round in Boston. Just three other active players are even halfway to the milestone: 42-year-old knuckleballer Tim Wakefield (184), 36-year-old perpetual rehab case Bartolo Colon (153, but just 14 since 2005), and 34-year-old palooka Livan Hernandez (151), the game’s most hittable pitcher.

Of course, not everybody does care these days, as pitcher wins ain’t what they used to be thanks to the rising offensive levels, deeper lineups, longer at-bats, and increased reliever specialization which have made the complete game a relic from the increasingly distant past. In 1972, the year before the designated hitter’s introduction, starters completed games 27.1 percent of the time, collected decisions 78.5 percent of the time, and lasted an average of 6.7 innings in their starts. In contrast, last year they went the distance 2.8 percent the time, collected decisions 69 percent of the time, and averaged 5.8 innings. Against this backdrop, the win has come to be understood less as the product of an individual pitcher’s brilliance or intestinal fortitude on a given day, and more as the confluence of the right amounts of support from the offense, the defense, and the bullpen. That’s true both in sabermetric circles, where pitcher value is preferably measured in isolation of such factors, and in the dugout, where a manager cares less about who collects the W and more about bridging the gap from starter to closer, inning by inning or batter by batter.

Down by the old mainstream, however, the attachment lingers. The Baseball Writers Association of America hasn’t elected a starting pitcher to the Hall of Fame since 1999 (Nolan Ryan), and hasn’t elected a starter with fewer than 300 wins since 1990 (Fergie Jenkins). With the disappearance of the 300 clubbers on the ballot, the writers have barred the door for the eminently worthy Bert Blyleven, almost solely due to his missing the mark by 13 wins, and they never came close to inducting Tommy John (288 wins) or Jim Kaat (283), pitchers with shakier credentials. Though Roger Clemens, Greg Maddux, and Tom Glavine have reached 300 this decade, the Rocket’s raging steroid-related controversy suggests that it will take until 2014, when Maddux is eligible, for another starter to earn election to the Hall.

As for the Big Unit’s successors, the current field’s distance from 300 wins leaves us lacking a rigorous methodology for forecasting. PECOTA, which looks “only” seven years into the future, foresees just 81 wins for both Johan Santana and CC Sabathia from 2009-2015. The annual totals, which dwindle into single digits, put Santana at 190 through his age-36 season, and Sabathia at 198 through his age-34 season. Less scientifically, Bill James’ aptly named Favorite Toy method identifies nine pitchers with at least a 10 percent chance at 300 wins in The Bill James Handbook 2009, estimates that are based upon weighted three-year averages of each hurler’s win totals. James’ notion of an “established win level” is rather dicey because of the teammate-dependent nature of the stats — pitcher wins don’t predict future pitcher wins very well.

I took a look at the field of contenders who are at least one quarter of the way there, using James’ toy as well as what I called the Jaffe Blind Optimism Method, which “generously assumes each pitcher will average 15 wins annually through his age-42 season, unfettered by injury or bad luck, and with the bonus of not having his 2009 total to date counted against this year’s allotment.” Uh-huh. The three pitchers who emerge looking as though they have some kind of shot are Sabathia, Santana, and Roy Halladay, with the latter possibly reaching the halfway mark by year’s end.

Meanwhile, in this week’s Hit List, I noted of Johnson, “[C]onsider that with a JAWS score of 89.0 (110.5 career, 67.5 peak), he’s in the mix with Warren Spahn (122.4/62.7/92.6) and Lefty Grove (110.6/68.7/89.7) as the top lefty hurler of all time.” Here’s a few more tastes:

[#1 Dodgers] Opening Day starter Hiroki Kuroda makes a solid return to the rotation after missing nearly two months due to an oblique strain, and while the Dodgers fall in that game, they continue to hold the majors’ widest division lead. That the Dodgers are where they are despite Kuroda’s injury is a surprise; they’re 14-5 in games started by Eric Stults, James McDonald, Jeff Weaver, and Eric Milton despite a .490 combined Support Neutral Winning Percentage and a 4.83 ERA because they’ve supported those hurlers with 6.8 runs per game of offense.

[#11 Brewers] Hoff Time: The Brewers share the top spot in the NL Central, and their bullpen (save for a meltdown-and-out by Jorge Julio) is a major reason why, as they’re third in WXRL and first in reliever Fair Run Average. Trevor Hoffman is 14-for-14 in saves while tossing 16 scoreless innings and allowing just seven baserunners. He’s fourth in WXRL, while free-talent pickups Todd Coffey and Mark DiFelice are also in the top 25.

[#26 Astros] Breaking the Wandy? After allowing just one homer in his first 70 1/3 innings, Wandy Rodriguez is blitzed for four over his next 2 1/3 frames, including two by Garrett Atkins, who hadn’t hit one since Colorado attained statehood. After yielding a 1.83 ERA and 6.6 hits per nine through his first nine starts, Rodriguez has been lit for 29 hits and 18 runs (12 earned) over his last three turns (13 2/3 innings). The loss snaps Houston’s season-high four game winning streak and quashes their hopes of an undefeated June, but they can still root for the Tooth Fairy to show up.

[#27 Diamondbacks] In a performance that surely confuses senile Angelenos, Billy Buckner blanks the Dodgers for six innings en route to one of the team’s two victories on the week. Demoted during the season’s first week with a 15.75 ERA compiled in relief, Buckner’s put up a 2.95 ERA over three starts since being recalled…

I don’t know why, but at 1 AM on Friday morning I was especially proud of that opening line in the latter entry; those confused need look no further.

In any event, I write this while watching Jamie Moyer befuddle the Dodgers through his first six innings, perhaps on his way to 251. I won’t be happy if he adds this particular notch to his belt, but at this rate, he may get there yet. [Late note: nope, as the Dodgers rally in the ninth at the expense of a Pedro Feliz error and the none-too-perfect Brad Lidge. See how hard 300 is?]

Meanwhile, because Alex Belth didn’t get to it today, I’ll link Pat Jordan’s excellent New York Times magazine profile of Johnson and Curt Schilling, “The Odd Couple.” It’s a doozy mainly for what it says about the latter, but it’s also a teling portrait of the man of the hour, and one of the best lefties of all time. Enjoy.