Oh, Manny

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I didn’t have much time for surprise yesterday when the news hit that Manny Ramirez had drawn a 50-game suspension for violating Major League Baseball’s drug policy. Before I could untangle my own emotions, catch my breath, dig into this week’s Hit List or get the full breadth of the rapidly evolving story, I’d been assigned a piece for Baseball Prospectus and ESPN Insider examining the cost on the field to the Dodgers, one that specifically re-evaluated a “reality check” piece I’d just published for the two sites examining the NL’s first month.

Here’s a taste:

Just as looked as though the Dodgers might run away with the National League West, they were hit with a bombshell on Thursday, namely Manny Ramirez’s 50-game suspension for violating Major League Baseball’s drug policy. Leaving the specifics of his violation to the reporters except to note that he won’t be eligible to return until July 3, the question is whether his absence will put the division in play. The answer — sorry, Diamondbacks fans and Manny haters — is probably not.

Despite haggling with the Dodgers over his contract into early March and suffering a hamstring strain during his second week of spring training, Ramirez had picked up where he left off last year, hitting .348/.492/.641 and leading the NL in OBP and walks. His performance has helped power the Dodgers to the majors’ best record (21-8), run differential (+55) and Equivalent Average (.286), not to mention a modern major league record 13-0 start at home. The team currently leads the Giants by 6.5 game and the Diamondbacks by 8.5 games.

At the outset of the season, our PECOTA projections pegged the Dodgers as a 93-win team with a 47.8 percent chance of winning the division and a 9.4 percent chance of taking the Wild Card, with the Diamondbacks at 88 wins, 34.7 percent, and 10.3 percent, respectively. Updating today’s “Reality Check” piece to include Wednesday night’s results and their ramifications in the PECOTA-based version of our Playoff Odds report, the Dodgers are projected to win 100 games (a .619 winning percentage), with an 84.1 percent chance of winning the division and a 4.7 percent chance of taking the Wild Card, while Arizona is projected to win 84 games (a .521 winning percentage), with 10.7 and 12.1 percent shots at the division and Wild Card. In other words, the Dodgers have widened the gap considerably on their closest rivals. The Giants, meanwhile, are still projected for just a 78-wn season, with a 3.4 percent shot at the division and 4.6 percent chance at the Wild Card.

After running through the Marginal Lineup Value Rate-based cost in runs of the Dodgers’ three in-house candidates to replace him — Juan Pierre, rookie Xavier Paul, and third baseman Blake DeWitt, who would force Casey Blake to the outfield — I suggested another means of calculation:

As an alternative way to gauge the impact of Ramirez’s absence, suppose we segment the Dodgers’ season into three unequal parts, namely the 29 games they’ve already played, the 50 games they’ll be without Ramirez, and the 83 games they’ll have left once he returns. For the first segment we pencil in the team’s actual scoring rates to date, and for the latter two segments, we use the team’s PECOTA-projected scoring rates, applying the worst-case “Manny Hit” (-0.568 runs per game) for the course of his suspension: 
Segment     RS     RA
First 29   5.55   3.66   Actual
Next 50    4.49   4.39   PECOTA minus 0.568 r/g offense
Final 83   5.06   4.39   PECOTA
Overall    4.98   4.26

Using Pythagenpat, that’s a .573 winning percentage and a 93-win pace, or right where we pegged the Dodgers at the outset of the year. While this math is effectively saying that the cost of losing Ramirez may be enough to undo the extra advantage they’ve gained with their quick bolt from the gate, that still leaves the Diamondbacks having to find about 10 wins to overtake the Dodgers.

The bottom line is that Ramirez’s absence likely won’t cost the boys in blue the NL West flag. It could tighten the race, but the only real certainty is that it will be less colorful.

Before the day ended, I wound up doing radio hits for ESPN’s Austin affiliate as well as my regular WWZN Boston spot, and this morning, like clockwork, I’m making the rounds on the Fox News Radio network. Catch me yakking with your local drive time host:

WJNO West Palm Beach, FL
0710AM ET

WSYR Syracuse, NY
0735AM ET

WTVN Columbus, OH
0742AM ET

WGIR Manchester, NH
0750AM ET

KTRH Houston, TX
0805AM ET

WOAI San Antonio, TX
0840AM ET

KCOL Fort Collins, CO
0935AM ET

KOGO San Diego, CA
1007AM ET

Back later with more.

Let’s Go Streaking!

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I’m riding a hitting streak — four straight days of publishing at Baseball Prospectus, a first for me:

• Tuesday’s Hit and Run explored April home run rates and found they were nothing remarkable within the context of the past decade and a half:

Excluding the strike-affected 1994-1995 years, the 2009 season ranks seventh out of 14 seasons no matter which rate you use. Within that context, it’s a run-of-the mill post-strike season. What’s throwing observers is that 2008 featured the lowest home run rate of that period, and 2007 the second-lowest. The 7.7 percent increase over the previous year, were it to hold, would be the largest climb since 1998-1999 (9.3 percent), just edging out the 2005-2006 increase (7.4 percent).

Of course, we’re still dealing with a relatively small sample size here—10.6 percent of the schedule, to be exact—as we haven’t even finished the April schedule in a season where Opening Day arrived late because of the World Baseball Classic. The question is whether a change observed in the cruelest month will continue to manifest itself over the course of the year. All signs point to yes: 

Year    April   Change   Season   Change
1996    1.150     n/a     1.094     n/a
1997    0.944   -17.9%    1.024    -6.4%
1998    0.976     3.4%    1.041     1.7%
1999    1.143    17.1%    1.138     9.3%
2000    1.281    12.1%    1.172     3.0%
2001    1.168    -8.8%    1.124    -4.1%
2002    0.953   -18.4%    1.043    -7.2%
2003    1.047     9.9%    1.071     2.7%
2004    1.087     3.8%    1.123     4.9%
2005    0.947   -12.9%    1.032    -8.1%
2006    1.154    21.9%    1.109     7.5%
2007    0.920   -20.3%    1.020    -8.0%
2008    0.896    -2.6%    1.005    -1.5%
2009    1.082    20.8%    1.082     7.7%

Since the post-strike 1995 season didn’t start until April 25, we’re confined to using 1996 as a cutoff, but the effect is clear: the small samples of April (and March) games can produce swings on the order of 20 percent, and while the magnitudes of such year-to-year changes aren’t sustained over the course of the season, without fail during this era, an increase or decrease in April home runs portends an annual change in the same direction. It’s a nearly bulletproof assertion to say that we’ll see more home runs hit in 2009 than 2008.

As to why, what’s interesting is that in the absence of any contemporary steroid scandals (A-Rod is sooo 2003), it’s ballparks and balls that are being discussed as the mechanism, which shouldn’t surprise anyone who read the chapter I wrote for Will Carroll’s The Juice or my follow-up.

• Wednesday’s work, which was featured in abbreviated form at ESPN as well as at greater length on BP, examined the positional concentration of young talent. While we don’t have the equivalent of the shortstop trinity, it’s a heady time for young catchers and center fielders.

• Thursday’s Hit and Run introduced what I’m planning to make a recurring feature, an analysis of a trio of teams called “Pair Up in Threes.” Thanks to Nick Stone for offering the Yogi-ism as a title after my initial suggestion was rebuffed. This time around, I looked at the three teams playing the furthest over their heads relative to our preseason PECOTA projections – the Pirates, Blue Jays and Cardinals. Here’s the Bucs:

Record: 11-9
Current Hit List Factor: .549
Projection: .400
Difference: +.149

Why They’re Flying High: The Pirates are allowing the league’s fewest runs per game (3.70) after finishing dead last in that category last year, and new pitching coach Joe Kerrigan is receiving a good deal of the credit. Where Paul Maholm was the only Bucs starter to finish the season with an ERA below 4.80 last year—a figure that essentially matches that unit’s projection—four of the Pirates’ five starters are below that mark this year, led by Zach Duke (2.43). Kerrigan’s use of video led Duke to review the form he exhibited in his stellar 2005 rookie campaign, prompting a tweak in his delivery, and the coach’s knack for preparation and use of statistics have helped the young hurlers improve their situational pitching. Where they were among the worst in the league in batting average allowed after getting ahead 0-1 (.251 AVG, T-15th) or 0-2 (.194, T-14th) last year, they’re now among the best (.214, 3rd on the former; .138, tied for first on the latter).

Why That May Not Last: The Pirates lead the majors with a .738 Defensive Efficiency after finishing 28th at .675 last year. That 63-point improvement is not only the largest jump of any team, it would top the 2008 Rays’ record-setting turnaround of 54 points. But where the Rays notably upgraded the left side of their infield via Jason Bartlett and Evan Longoria while shifting B.J. Upton and Akinori Iwamura to positions for which they were better suited, the 2009 Pirates are returning three-quarters of their regular infield, with Andy LaRoche swapping out for Jose Bautista at the hot corner. The outfield has seen some shuffling, but neither Eric Hinkse nor Craig Monroe, the two new faces in the mix, are known for their work with the leather.

Additionally, the staff’s strikeout rate (5.4 per nine) is the worst in the league, with Maholm and Ross Ohlendorf whiffing less than four per nine, and Ian Snell’s staff-leading 6.1 still lagging a full K behind the league average. Their strikeout-to-walk ratio (1.29) is also last, and ERA indicators such as their 4.76 FIP and 5.52 QERA suggest that when a correction arrives, it won’t be pretty.

Glimmer of Hope: Perhaps because of Kerrigan’s help, the pitchers are serving up fewer meatballs than before; the staff’s Line Drive rate has fallen from 19.2 percent to 16.7, the fifth-largest drop in the majors. Whether you’re using the simple LD% +.12 to estimate batting average on balls in play, or Brian Cartwright’s more advanced .15*FB%+.24*GB%+.73*LD%, both formulas herald BABIP drops of more than 20 points, so it’s possible that some of the early-season improvement in that department is real enough to stick.

The topic and format will change every week, perhaps being based on a trend, a problem or a bit of history as opposed to a statistical ranking, and it should increase the frequency with which I publish there given that I don’t have to grind my gears to come up with a whole new topic every time.

• Today’s Hit List, again topped by the Dodgers:

Nine-O? It’s only Seven-O: Roughed up on a road trip, the Dodgers return to, uh, Dodgertown 90090 to complete their first undefeated April at home (7-0) since 1947. Chad Billingsley ranks in the league’s top 10 in ERA, strikeout rate, fewest hits per nine and SNLVAR after reeling off his fifth straight quality start but the rest of the rotation is looking rather rickety. The team has otherwise gotten just four quality starts out of 18, three of them from Randy Wolf, and Clayton Kershaw’s been bombed (two starts, nine innings, 15 runs) since his 13-strikeout performance.

Back in a bit with the latest on you-know-who. With the day-long lag between posting and actually publishing (gee, thanks, Blogger), I’ve lost my appetite to go into much detail on the Alex Rodriguez situation – most of what I have to say about it (or really, about Selena Roberts’ muckracking and spotty credibility) has already been better said by Craig Calcaterra at ShysterBall — it’s a must-read.

Minor Things, Major Things

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Earlier this week, I had an epic-length free piece on Baseball Prospectus about the sudden flood of historical minor league data available online via the recently upgraded Baseball-Reference.com:

While I’m hardly an authority on the topic, I’ve always had a soft spot for minor league baseball, probably because my formative years were spent in minor league towns. I grew up attending ballgames in Salt Lake City, Utah, a city with a rich history as a minor league outpost dating back to the old Pacific Coast League and its 200-game seasons. During my childhood and adolescence it played host to the Triple-A affiliates for the Angels and Mariners in the modern-day PCL, and I got my fill of stars like Dickie Thon and Phil Bradley, high-altitude boppers like Ike Hampton, and future flops like Al Chambers. Additionally, every summer I would visit my grandparents in in Walla Walla, Washington, the site of the Padres’ Low-A Northwest League affiliate, where I watched Tony Gwynn and John Kruk take their first steps toward major league stardom.

As such, I’m hooked on the recent addition of the SABR Minor League Database to the already amazing collection of data at Baseball-Reference.com. This awe-inspiring mother lode provides access to the minor league records of over 175,000 players from over 4,000 leagues (majors, minors, and foreign). While a great deal of the data currently on B-R is incomplete, and some of it is redundant with the minor league data on The Baseball Cube, like Retrosheet this statistical horn of plenty holds the promise of delivering ever more down the road. As it is, it’s still a treasure trove, particularly when its information is integrated with other sources, be they Retrosheet, the wiki-based Baseball Reference Bullpen, or trusty old books, magazines, and newspapers.

My meandering journey through the new/old stats takes us past not only Hall of Famers but celebrities from other walks of life:

With the anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s breaking of the major league color barrier having recently passed, it’s worth examining the pioneers of pro baseball’s integration as they played on some of the most important minor league teams in baseball history. The 1946 Montreal Royals featured Robinson the year before his promotion to Brooklyn; he hit .349 and slugged .462 in 124 games while leading the Royals to the International League championship. Also on that team at various points in the season—in part to provide Robinson with a black roommate—were a pair of pioneering Negro League pitchers whom Dodger GM Branch Rickey signed but who never made the majors, John Wright and Roy Partlow. Wright, a star with the Homestead Grays, lasted only six weeks with the club and pitched just twice before being demoted to nearby Trois Rivieres of the Class C Canadian-American League. He was immediately replaced by Partlow, a 35-year-old Negro Leaguer from the Philadelphia Stars. Partlow spent two months with the team, pitching in 10 games but compiling a gaudy 5.59 ERA before joining Wright at Trois Rivieres, where he went 10-1 with a 3.22 ERA in 14 games. He resurfaced a few years later in the Quebec-based Provincial League, which at times was an independent league and others an affiliated one.

Concurrent with Robinson, Wright and Partlow’s Canadian adventures, Roy Campanella and Don Newcombe were playing for the Nashua Dodgers of the New Hampshire League. Managed by future Dodger skipper Walter Alston, Campanella hit .290 with 13 homers and a .477 slugging percentage, while Newcombe went 14-4 with a 2.21 ERA and helped his cause by batting .311. Campy spent 1947 with the Montreal Royals and the early part of 1948 with the St. Paul Saints before joining the Dodgers. Newcombe took a slower path to the majors, much to his chagrin; he returned to Nashua in 1947 and spent 1948 and part of 1949 in Montreal before getting the call. As for Alston, whose major league playing career consisted of a lone at-bat with the 1936 Cardinals, the details of his 13-season minor league career are here too; he hit .295 and collected 1,344 hits while beating the bushes in such long-forgotten circuits as the East Dixie League, Middle-Atlantic League, Western League and Interstate League.

…No list of bush-league authors would be complete without including screenwriter/director Ron Shelton of Bull Durham fame. He’s got not one but two pages on the site, apparently due to a database quirk that hasn’t been corrected. Drafted by the Orioles in the 39th round in 1966, he spent parts of two seasons as a pitcher, going 4-6 with a 4.23 ERA in 25 appearances before shifting to the infield. Switching his throwing arm from left to right, he spent four more years in the Orioles’ chain, primarily as a second baseman. He climbed as high as Triple-A Rochester, where he played with Bobby Grich, Don Baylor, Terry Crowley, Johnny Oates and future Orioles’ pitching coach and manager (but never major league pitcher) Ray Miller, among others. Shelton only hit .251 and slugged .315 during his minor league career, though he did steal 32 bases once.

Meanwhile, Shelton’s muse, the real Crash Davis has his own page, too. Lawrence Columbus Davis was a North Carolina native who starred at Duke University and went on to spend parts of three years with some dreadful Philadelphia A’s squads, hitting .230/.289/.279 in 148 games as an infielder. Drafted into the Navy during World War II, he spent his first year stationed at Norfolk, Virginia, where he played on a team with Dom DiMaggio and Pee Wee Reese. After being discharged, he played for seven seasons (1946-1952) in the minors, five of them in the Class B Carolina League and one (1948) with the real Durham Bulls, who were affiliated with the Tigers. Davis, a second baseman, hit .317 and slugged .476 while clubbing 10 homers and a league record 50 doubles for the Bulls. Shelton came across his name when thumbing through an old Carolina League record book for inspiration, and the rest is history. Davis even turned a brief cameo as Sam Crawford in Shelton’s movie Cobb.

Fun stuff, and like I said, free. The roll call of other players featured in the piece: Lou Gehrig, Lefty Grove, Art Rooney, George Halas, John Elway Sammy Baugh, Zane Grey, Pat Jordan, Eliot Asinof, Rocky Perone and friends, Bert Convy, Kurt Russell, Scott Patterson, Randy “Macho Man” Savage, Scott Boras, and Mario Cuomo. One of these days I’ll write a sequel with those long-threatened memories of Ike Hampton, but until then, this will have to do.

As an aside, writing the piece led me to watch Bull Durham again – I’ve had a shrinkwrapped DVD sitting in my collection for at least two years and it was high time to bust it out. The movie never fails to make me smile, and I’ve been particularly cracking up over this scene because it seemed to answer the rhetorical question posed in a recent BP headline:

Lollygaggers!

Anyhoo… elsewhere on BP, here’s this week’s Hit List, still topped by the Dodgers, and here’s my contribution to a staff piece I participated in for BP and ESPN about “What We’ve Learned” in the first three weeks of the season, even given the normal small-sample caveats:

While I don’t want to get too worked up as to the degree to which it will be true because of the impact of warm weather on a couple weeks of games, it certainly looks like this will be a year in which home runs increase. By itself, that’s not terribly interesting given the fluctuations we’ve seen over the past decade and a half, but it finally seems likely that whatever spike occurs won’t be blamed as steroid related.

I’ve been carping for years — since contributing a chapter to Will Carroll’s The Juice: the Real Story of Baseball’s Drug Problems that it’s the ball that’s juiced. Such a mechanism more easily explains the various peaks and valleys we’ve seen over recent years, and the continuous introduction of new ballparks has been a contributing factor as well. It appears as though both of those components are on display thus far, and by the end of the year we might actually have learned something about fluctuating offense levels that has nothing to do with speculation about who’s sticking needles into their butts.

I’ll be examining that topic more closely in an upcoming Hit and Run.

Update: Oh, and my latest radio appearance on Boston’s WWZN “Young Guns” show.

Here’s to You, Mrs. Olbermann

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One more loss to add to the list of those who have passed in the last week: Marie Olbermann, mother of former ESPN anchor and current MSNBC Countdown Keith Olbermann. In an episode whose roots connect directly with the genesis of my web site, Mrs. Olbermann was struck in the face by an errant Chuck Knoblauch throw back in the summer of 2000, exemplifying the Little Bastard’s descent into fielding hell while turning her into an overnight celebrity. She was no stranger to the ballpark, either, according to her son:

My mother was one of the best-known baseball fans in this country. She attended Yankees [games] from 1934 through 2004, and she watched or listened to every one she didn’t go to, up until last month. My guess is, she went to at least 1500 of them, most in Box 47E in the suddenly “old” Yankee Stadium.

…[T]rust me: Mom loved being famous in the ballparks.

Even if that fame had to be achieved in the way it was, on June 17th, 2000, when the sudden, and growing, inability of the ill-fortuned second baseman Chuck Knoblauch to make any kind of throw, easy or hard, to first base, culminated in him picking up a squib off the bat of Greg Norton of the White Sox and throwing it not back towards first, but, instead, off the roof of the Yankees’ dugout where it picked up a little reverse english and smacked my mother right in the bridge of her glasses.

Chuck was in the middle of losing his beloved father at that time and though I thought I “got” what that meant to him, I didn’t really understand it until today as I wrote this, and struggled to find the right keys, let alone the right words.

In any event, for three days in 2000, Mom was on one or both of the covers, of The New York Post and The New York Daily News and Newsday. She was somewhere in every newspaper in America.

And all this happened, while I was the host of the Game of the Week, for Fox. Literally sitting in a studio in Los Angeles, watching a bank of monitors with a different game on every monitor and recognizing instantly what must have happened (based on a lifetime of knowing the camera angles in the ballpark in which I grew up). I said, maybe too matter-of-factly, “that probably hit my mother.” The crew laughed and I repeated it. More laughs. Then the next shot was of an older woman being led up the aisle towards an aid station – my mother.

I actually got to do a highlight cut-in for the broadcast by Joe Buck and Tim McCarver of a game at Dodger Stadium, and said, as I remember it: “Chuck Knoblauch’s throwing problem is getting personal. He picks up Greg Norton’s grounder, bounces it off the dugout roof and hits… my mother. I’ve talked to Mom, she’s fine, she’ll be back out there tomorrow. Joe? Tim?”

Silence.

Olbermann credits his mom with being the one who stimulated his passion for baseball, not to mention providing the ham for his media persona. It’s a funny and touching piece, well worth reading. My condolences to the Olbermann family, and to the reclusive Knoblauch, who’d probably just as soon not be reminded of the whole episode one more time.

• • •

Speaking of the new Yankee Stadium and its crosstown counterpart, I’ve got brief bits on both ballparks — admittedly little of which may be new for those following my recent coverage of them — for BP and ESPN Insider.

Enough about those. The Dodgers top the week’s Hit List for the first time in nearly four years:

Dodger Dog: Orlando Hudson hits for the cycle, becoming the first Dodger to do so since Wes Parker in 1970, and helping the team beat Randy Johnson in LA for the first time in the Big Unit’s 22-year career. The O-Dog is hitting .366/.435/.659. Meanwhile, Clayton Kershaw (7 1 1 1 1 13) one-ups Chad Billingsley (7 5 1 1 0 11) against the hapless Giants’ lineup as the rotation holds opposing hitters to a .195 batting average through the first 10 games.

I missed Billingsley’s performance but Kershaw’s was dazzling; effortlessly and consistently, he kept dropping that big curveball — “Public Enemy Number One,” as Vin Scully calls it — in there for a strike against the Giants. More on that game — tangentially at least — in an upcoming post.

Here’s to You, Mr. Robinson

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Today marks the 62nd anniversary of one of the great days in American history, the day that Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier by taking the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers. While Commissioner Bud Selig has reached the reductio ad absurdum in attempting to honor Robinson by mandating that every player wear number 42 in his honor today, it’s nonetheless worth pausing a moment to reflect upon Robinson’s courage in battling racism and the impact his bold success had on this country. From the integration of the military to the Civil Rights movement to the election of Barack Obama to the United States presidency, Robinson’s actions changed the course of this country’s history in ways that are still being felt.

Though it’s just a five-minute walk from here, I didn’t make it over to the plaque at 215 Montague Street, the location of the Dodgers’ old headquarters where Branch Rickey signed Robinson to his first contract. I’ll share the photo of it instead, and pay my respects as I often do, by watching Chapter Six of Ken Burns’ Baseball tonight.

• • •

Today at Baseball Prospectus and ESPN Insider, I’ve got an article on strength of schedule which uses BP’s PECOTA-based Projected Standings and adjusts for the home field advantage (stay-at-homes win at a .550 clip) and the AL’s advantage over the NL in interleague play (the Junior Circuit wins at a .580 clip). I won’t give away the whole butcher shop by running the numbers for all 30 teams, but here are the opponents’ winning percentages for the AL East clubs, as well as a couple points from the article related to the full-season numbers and the monthly and half-season splits:

Team      Opp W%
Orioles    .514
Blue Jays  .513
Red Sox    .504
Yankees    .501
Rays       .500

Among contenders within the same division, full-season strength of schedule effects are overstated in the grand scheme of things. Only in the NL Central do the top two teams have more than three points (.003, or half a game over the course of 162 games) of scheduling difference between them; the nine-point advantage in that division equals roughly a game and a half over the course of the season. In the AL East, the difference between the Red Sox and Rays’ schedules is four points, roughly two-thirds of a game. The AL Central’s top trio are separated by three points, and the top pairs in both Wests are effectively even. The NL East’s top trio, who have the toughest schedules of any contenders, are separated by just two points. Like heart surgery, those distinctions aren’t minor if they pertain to your chances, but in the big picture, injuries, reliever leverage, and players dramatically over- or under-producing relative to expectations will go further to shape the final standings.

…As far as September/October schedules go — this year the season ends on October 4 — the Yankees have a slight advantage in the AL East at .507, compared to the Rays at .510 and the Red Sox at .512. Note that the Rays host the Yanks for the season’s final three games, while the Sox host the Indians. In the AL West, the A’s (.475) have a large advantage over the Angels (.495). In the NL East, the Phillies (.479) get the favorable draw relative to the Mets (.491) and Braves (.493), and in the NL West, the lights are with the Dodgers (.463) instead of the Diamondbacks (.496).

Meanwhile, it’s worth noting that because they play the top-rated Yankees six times as well as the Red Sox and Rays three apiece, the Mets wind up with the toughest interleague schedule (.611 with all the adjustments).

Elsewhere at BP, intern Ben Lindbergh, whom I had the pleasure of hanging out with in Washington, DC recently, takes the baton on an old book chapter and column concept of mine, the Replacement Level Killers, focusing on players whose ungodly awful performances may have kept their teams from the playoffs or at least contention. No Yankees make the first team, but Jose Molina, Melky Cabrera and a herd of pinstriped fifth starters — Sidney Ponson, Darrell Rasner, Phil Hughes, Ian Kennedy, et al — earn Dishonorable Mentions for their 2008 performances. As well they should have. Young Mr. Lindbergh, whom colleague Steven Goldman refers to as “Colonel,” has been doing strong work on catcher fatigue and defensive efficiency of late, and may have the inside track on Matt Wieters for Rookie of the Year.

Losing Streak: Three in a Row

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A senseless tragedy, the passing of a legend, and a bittersweet reminder of a Bird that flew too high — it’s been a miserable week for baseball mortality. I was barely 15 minutes into my chat on Baseball Prospectus on Monday afternoon when a chorus of readers posted to inform me of the passing of Harry Kalas, the longtime Phillies announcer, winner of the Ford C. Frick Award (for the broadcasters wing of the Hall of Fame), voice of NFL Films, and one of the great voices in the history of sports, period. You didn’t even have to know who he was to recognize that gravelly, booming, authoritative voice. It is the voice of history chiseling words in stone for all eternity. Words like, “Outta here!” for his signature home run call, or “Swing and a long drive, there it is, number 500! The career 500th home run for Michael Jack Schmidt!” for his most famous one.

As NFL Films president Steve Sabol, who worked closely with Kalas since 1975, wrote, “In many ways, Harry is the narrator of our memories. His voice lives on not only on film, but inside the heads of everyone who has watched and listened to NFL Films.” In a video clip, Sabol further elaborated on Kalas’ style: “There was no shtik with Harry. It was just a blend of crisp articulation, resonance and vocal dexterity. He could read the ingredients on a shampoo bottle and and make it dramatic or funny or poignant.”

Kalas’ last major hurrah, of course, was calling the final out of the Phillies’ World Series victory last October:

One strike away; nothing-and-two, the count to Hinske. Fans on the their feet; rally towels are being waved. Brad Lidge stretches. The 0-2 pitch — swing and a miss, struck him out! The Philadelphia Phillies are 2008 World Champions of baseball! Brad Lidge does it again, and stays perfect for the 2008 season! 48-for-48 in save opportunities, and watch the city celebrate! Don’t let the 48-hour wait diminish the euphoria of this moment, and the celebration. And it has been 28 years since the Phillies have enjoyed a World Championship; 25 years in this city with a team that has enjoyed a World Championship, and the fans are ready to celebrate. What a night!

Kalas was actually deprived of a similar opportunity to call the Phils’ 1980 World Series clincher, as the network agreements in place at the time prevented local broadcasters from calling the games. He did record a narration of that final out after the fact, and thanks in part to his popularity, the rule was amended the following year. Not even stuffy old Major League Baseball could resist that voice.

Several years ago, I was flipping through ESPN Classic and I came across an NFL Films-produced documentary called “Bush Leagues to Bright Lights,” devoted to pitcher Erskine Thomason, who pitched one inning for the 1974 Phillies. Narrated by Kalas, it followed the 25-year-old righty from spring training through his late season callup, but the footage of his lone appearance had to be staged, because the film crew showed up late and swapped in stock footage from a game filmed the next day. Still, Kalas’ voice made it worth catching.

MLB.com has a handful of clips of Kalas, including his call of the final out of the 2008 World Series. ESPN has a clip of Schmidt talking about what Kalas’ call of that famous homer meant to him. NFL Films has a brief tribute, and Baseball Prospectus Radio has a 2003 interview he did with Will Carroll.

• • •

Last week saw 22-year-old Angels pitcher Nick Adenhart die in a car crash just hours after he’d thrown six shutout innings against the A’s, his first success at the major league level. Though I never actually saw Adenhart pitch — he made just four big-league appearances — I followed his progress closely over the last couple of years, reading about him numerous times in BP colleague Kevin Goldstein’s columns and writing about him for the Fantasy Baseball Index and in particular, the Index’s weekly spring updates. Adenhart had come into the 2008 season as the Angels’ top prospect, but an ugly 9-13, 5.76 ERA season at Salt Lake City (my hometown, and a rough place for any pitcher who’s trying to get his stuff together) caused his stock to dip. Thanks to the combination of a strong spring and injuries to John Lackey and Ervin Santana, Adenhart broke camp in the rotation, and he gave every indication he was ready to fulfill his promise. For death to come calling as it did — particularly via a hit-and-run DUI which killed two of his fellow passengers — was a cruel, heartbreaking blow.

ESPN’s Jerry Crasnick chronicles Adenhart’s journey to the majors. BP has a poignant guest post by Shane Demmitt, an Angels’ employee with a special bond to the fallen pitcher. The Rev of Halos Heaven has a touching piece that begins by recalling former Angels outfielder Lyman Bostock, who died in 1978 — the first ballplayer death I ever confronted:

In 1978, Lyman Bostock was murdered, a few days before the end of the 1978 baseball season. He had only been with the Angels that season, but the pain for this fan was as real as if he had lived in our house… because in a way he had…

All the moments in which he had excelled had occurred in our house, the television light filling the room, the sound of the radio as much a part of a summer night as the cacophony of your brothers and sisters bursting through the front door just back from a late day at the beach.

These players we will never know are family, we know the illusion of them better than we know some of our own kin. We still tell stories about the time they did this great feat or that terrible blunder as if those curveballs and errors happened in the backyard.

So we had another guest in our house last night, he had just joined the family and we were excited to have him. These kids are so fantastic to have over in the living room, the game taking all of our attention except for a dinner break while they keep playing. It is always a quick run back to see how they are doing.

But a tragedy means he will never be back at our house, at your house, across the homes of this sprawling, tangled neighborhood, this nation, the world even as this sport we love grows in our hearts and imagination. He had an open invitation from every fan in every home, and that invite was a manifestation of the love and hope and competitive drive in each of us. We are sports fans because it allows us to spend time with the absolute best in their prime.

• • • 

Just hours after the news of Kalas’ death broke, word came that Mark “The Bird” Fidrych, the 1976 American League Rookie of the Year, died in a farm accident at the age of 54. Fidrych’s antics on the mound, which included talking to the baseball, were the stuff of legend, but arm injuries prevented him from even pitching in as many games over the rest of his career as he did in his fabled rookie season.

I’m too young to remember that magical season firsthand, but by all accounts, Fidrych was every bit the sensation that Fernando Valenzuela or Dwight Gooden were during their rookie campaigns. At the tender age of 21, he went 19-9 with a league-best 2.34 ERA and 24 complete games for the Tigers, and even started the All-Star Game. My sole memory of Fidrych as a player, alas, was on the downslope of his career, a brief outing in 1979. Shown on an NBC “Game of the Week” — this 1979 outing appears to fit the bill — it marked the first time I ever heard the phrase “pitch count,” as Fidrych was coming off the disabled list or up from the minors and was to be monitored closely and pulled after 50 pitches. Oh, the irony.

Cardboard Gods’ Josh Wilker, who’s a couple years older than me, remembered Fidrych as “the all time single season leader in joy.” Wilker actually launched his site back in 2006 with an entry on Fidrych’s 1980 card, and less than two months ago revisited the subject via a 1979 card:

I chose the first baseball card to ever feature on this site by reaching blindly into my unsorted box of old baseball cards. Amazingly, I pulled out the card I might have chosen if I had a lifetime to think about the choice: my one and only Mark Fidrych card. I tried to write about how happy he made me when I was eight years old, in 1976, and about how his card from 1980, the year I edged unwillingly from boyhood to something else altogether, seemed to suggest the feeling that the fleeting joy he’d authored over the course of one beautiful summer had slipped from his fingers for good.

…His lifetime ERA of 2.47 and his age (he was still just 24), gave the back of the card, despite the shrinking yearly stats, a small but undeniable aura of hope.

But the front of the card photo pushes that hope into something closer to desperation. Here is a guy just trying to hang on, banished to the far edge of the field, the screen thrown up to guard him from foul balls seemingly as flimsy and haphazardly placed as the sparse mustache on his face. You can see Fidrych breathing, his furred lips pursed, forcing the breath out instead of letting it come and go naturally, doubts tumbling in his mind.

Imagine being forced to leave it all behind. You’ll cling to the margins. You’ll try to throw a few pitches without wincing, a few pitches that might allow you to move back across that white chalk line, back into the only world you ever loved.

My condolences to those of you touched by the passings of Adenhart, Fidrych and Kalas. Excuse me now, I’m going to go pour myself a stiff drink and cry for awhile.

The Ocho

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Thursday found me at the News Corporation building for lunch with Rupert Murdoch (not really) and an appearance on the FoxNews.com streaming webcast “The Strategy Room” (yes, really). Given the number of media hits I’ve done in the service of promoting Baseball Prospectus 2009 over the past several weeks, I figured this would be a typically short promote-the-book spot where BP colleague Steve Goldman and I breezed through the usual topics — the book itself, PECOTA, the division races, the local nines, Alex Rodriguez and steroids, and the day’s headlines, which unfortunately included the tragic death of Angels pitching prospect Nick Adenhart. Not exactly territory to go on auto-pilot, but well within my comfort zone.

But no.

“The Strategy Room” turned out to be a frenetic hour-long roundtable discussion in which Steve and I were joined by host Brian Kilmeade as well as humorist (that’s what the chyron said) Geno Bisconte and one Richard “Big Daddy” Salgado, an insurance and estate planner for athletes (over the last five years, his company “has insured twenty-five 1st Round picks for disability and career ending insurance,” according to his website). As members of this motley crew, we were expected to hold court not only on baseball but also football, golf, and other sports (surprisingly little if any basketball was discussed), and for an entire hour at that.

The show was a bit of a free-for-all. While Kilmeade pitched us topics — giving the BPers first crack at the baseball questions, Big Daddy the football questions — we did have to compete for air time as we rolled through CC Sabathia, Joba Chamberlain, Jose Canseco, Joe Girardi, Ben Roethlisberger, Mr. and Mrs. Kurt Warner, Plaxico Burress, Tiger Woods, Jon Daly, the Greg Norman-Chris Evert power couple, and other topics. Seated between the high-energy Bisconte, whose gleeful mugging for the camera, tweaking of the host, and on-camera sending of text messages suggested he was a veteran of this setup, and the imposing but genial Salgado, a mountain of a man, on my left, I was in danger of disappearing into the woodwork. In this four-minute clip centered around the Yankees’ slow start (0-2!!!) and the possibility that Girardi might be fired, you can see my similarly slow start. I struggle to get a word in edgewise until finally seeing the opening and running to daylight.

By the end of the hour, I had loosened up and might have even strained my jaw from laughing. It turned out to be ridiculous fun, even if I was a little out of my element, and I wish there were more clips to share. Instead you get screenshots:

Anyway, it made for an enjoyable afternoon, but not until I was back home later in the evening, signing off from recording a segment with Mike Ferrin of XM’s “MLB Home Plate,” did I realize the day’s significance: eight years ago I laid the cornerstone for this site with a clumsy but heartfelt piece on the passing of Willie Stargell. When I started out jotting down reminiscences of my childhood baseball heroes and opinions on the action of the day, who knew that years later I’d reach the point where being on TV, radio, newsstands and in books and even bookstores — to say nothing of multiple times per week on Baseball Prospectus and occasionally on ESPN.com — while talking about or writing about baseball would become almost routine? It’s not all about FutilityInfielder.com anymore, it’s about being lucky enough to occupy this niche with so many other writers I admire and friends that I’ve made.

Every time I pass this milepost I’m reminded of what a fantastic ride it’s been, and how much fun it continues to be. I’m deeply grateful to all you for sharing it with me.

I’ll Show You the Bronx

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In recent years, my wife has developed a passion for architecture, and in particular New York City architecture. She’s taken a pair of classes taught by architecture historian Barry Lewis at the New School over the past couple of years, along the way assimilating more information on the entire discipline than I ever have. Having attended the Yankees’ recent stadium-opening exhibition against the Cubs (she was with a childhood friend who used to work for the team, while I was in the bleachers), she’s been on an extended rant about the architecture of the new park, a rant whose vitriol surprises even me.

She’d get a kick out of Mark Lamster calling bullshit on the coverage the new stadium has received in the design press. Lamster, in addition to weighing in on the eternally partisan scrap that is the AL East at YanksFanSoxFan, is a true Renaissance man. He’s the author of a terrific book about the most ambitious baseball barnstorming expedition of all time, Spalding’s World Tour and a forthcoming book on 17th century painter Peter Paul Rubens (mmmmm, Reubens…). He’s also an editor-at-large at Princeton Architectural Press. In a piece for ID magazine, he takes some of the architects of the puffery surrounding the stadium to task:

The problems with these new ballparks go far beyond mere questions of style; they strike at the essence of what it means to create good design.

The new Yankee Stadium, for instance, is costing American taxpayers several hundred million dollars and the local community a cherished park. In exchange, we’re getting a stadium with fewer seats, a dramatically higher percentage of which will be at luxury price levels. Gone is one of New York’s great public spaces: the vast upper deck of the much-maligned old stadium, which was rebuilt in the 1970s. Perhaps that building was not an architectural showplace, but when it was packed with fans for a big game, there was no more electric place in the city.

Sadly, as is so often the case in the public discourse on architecture, the debate about this new ballpark and its cousin in Queens defaulted to questions of superficial formalism. The New York Times critic Nicolai Ouroussoff set the tone in his initial critique of the Bronx park, panned for its “faux historical” envelope. Destruction of the standing building, however, was not at issue. “There are those, no doubt, who will complain about the loss of the site of some of the most memorable moments in the history of sports,” he wrote. “I am not one of them.”

I am, but perhaps that’s not the point either. New York has lost one of its great public spaces, the experience of the average fan has been compromised, and the community has been asked to pay astronomical sums for a work of (mediocre) architecture. Aren’t these the real design issues at stake?

In a blog entry, Lamster further elaborates on the Times article, noting that Ourossouff “does not mention any of the controversy surrounding the stadium’s financing, its appropriation of public land, or the fact that the average ticket is 76 percent more expensive than last year, according to a recent study,” and taking issue with The New Yorker‘s recent take as well. Smart stuff.

Happy Opening Day

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A belated Happy Opening Day to you all. I’ve spent much of the past 48 hours half-watching games while I worked against my deadlines, a less-than-entirely satisfying endeavor offset by the fact that at least I was watching real baseball. Sunday night’s Braves-Phillies contest, Monday’s Mets-Reds, Yankees-Orioles and Dodgers-Padres tilts offered their novelties (touted Braves phenom Jordan Schafer homering in his first major league at-bat, CC Sabathia and Mark Teixeira in pinstripes, a Cesar Izturus home run, Manny Ramirez with even longer dreadlocks, and the Reds’ diminutive hurler Danny Herrera, who’s listed as 5’7″ but looks “barely bigger than a roasting chicken,” as my BP colleague John Perrotto quipped) and familiar pleasures (Derek Lowe putting up zeroes, Johan Santana working out of jams, Michael Kay’s exaggerated home run calls, Vin Scully smooth like butter).

At Baseball Prospectus we’ve got the staff picks of a dozen contributors, myself included. Here are mine:

AL Standings

AL East       AL Central       AL West
Rays          Indians          Angels
Yankees *     Tigers           Athletics
Red Sox       White Sox        Rangers
Orioles       Twins            Mariners
Blue Jays     Royals

AL MVP
1. Evan Longoria
2. Mark Teixeira
3. Dustin Pedroia

AL Cy Young
1. CC Sabathia
2. Zack Greinke
3. John Danks

AL RotY
1. Matt Wieters
2. David Price
3. Rick Porcello

NL Standings

NL East       NL Central       NL West
Mets          Cubs             Dodgers
Braves *      Brewers          Diamondbacks
Phillies      Reds             Rockies
Marlins       Cardinals        Giants
Nationals     Pirates          Padres
              Astros
NL MVP
1. Albert Pujols
2. Manny Ramirez
3. Hanley Ramirez

NL Cy Young
1. Tim Lincecum
2. Brandon Webb
3. Chad Billingsley

NL RotY
1. Cameron Maybin
2. Colby Rasmus
3. Jordan Schafer

Interestingly enough, the staff consensus is that it will be the Rays left on the outside looking in come October as far as the AL East is concerned; I was one of only two ballots out of 12 that predicted them for first place.

Also up at BP yesterday was the always-controversial preseason version of the Prospectus Hit List, derived from our PECOTA Projected Standings. The Yankees top the list, while the Dodgers rank fifth and the Brewers 12th:

1. Yankees (99-63, .606 Hit List Factor, 800 Runs Scored/635 Runs Allowed)
A $441 million spending spree brought the Yankees the winter’s biggest haul, but their self-loving $300 million slugger—a former steroid user, in case you hadn’t heard—starts the year on the DL as the team moves into its charmless $1.3 million new ballpark, the House That Ruthlessness Built. This is the third consecutive year the Yanks top the preseason Hit List, but money guarantees nothing in the top-heavy AL East.

5. Dodgers (93-69, .568, 820/710)
Fresh off their first NLCS appearance in 20 years, the Dodgers pared payroll significantly while raising expectations as the spring has progressed. Since our initial PECOTA-driven projections, the NL West race has swung 12 games, thanks largely to the signings of Orlando Hudson and Manny Ramirez. The offense projects to have the league’s second-best OBP, not to mention fewer corners for Joe Torre to back himself into, while young studs Chad Billingsley, Clayton Kershaw and Jonathan Broxton forecast to be part of the league’s top run prevention unit.

12. Brewers (83-79, .515, 778/754)
After tasting Oktoberfest suds for the first time in 26 years, the Brewers kept their mugs on the table as CC Sabathia and Ben Sheets departed. Yovani Gallardo should help offset that loss, though he’ll be capped around 150 innings, and Braden Looper, their most prominent offseason acquisition(!), is nobody to pick up that slack. Nonetheless, with six productive regulars between ages 25 and 29, the Crew retain a respectable outside shot at the Wild Card if not the division.

Both articles are free, and there’s plenty to argue with, as usual. But it’s also worth remembering that our PECOTA-based system tops the field in accuracy as far as these things go. It’s had the smallest average error (RSME) in three of the past four years (barely missing in the fourth) and over every multi-year range since 2005. As you can see from comparing my predictions to the Hit List, I don’t necessarily believe that every single placement on the list is as accurate as the next, but — for those who need a late pass on this topic — what’s presented on the list is what’s being produced by our complicated formulas and systems, without any manual intervention; where I differ significantly is noted in the accompanying analysis. We at BP are not hive-minded robots; we’re allowed to think critically about what our tools are telling us and to bring more information to the table than what even our most sophisticated models can incorporate. As my guru, Homer Simpson, would say, “Blame me if you must, but don’t ever speak ill of the program!”

So what I’d really like to see is the snippy critics of the Phillies’, Marlins’ and Rangers’ rankings — a few teams whose fan bases have been especially vocal of their placements — step up to the plate and lay down their own predictions so we can compare notes in October. How many games are those teams going to win, and where are the corresponding losses going to come from? Which Rangers’ starters are going to break a 5.00 ERA in a significant number of innings so the team can avoid allowing 900 runs, punk? Inquiring minds want to know.

• • •

Over at Field of Schemes, Neil deMause has an excellent roundup of several first impressions of the new Yankee Stadium, both from professionals (the Post‘s Joel Sherman: “a fake place designed to manipulate my emotions and get into my wallet”) and bloggers (New Stadium Insider: “The Grandstand evokes memories of Shea Stadium – don’t count on a baseball, fair or foul, ever reaching there”). Generally negative, with the exception of Lisa Olson’s ecstatic take on the cupholders. WTF?

Hearty congratulations to Cardboard Gods‘ Josh Wilker, the man who unlocks existential secrets from the shoeboxes full of old baseball cards which clutter his mind. According to this New York Times piece, he recently got a well-deserved contract to write a literary memoir. Count me in for a copy.

Mall Rats in Sensurround

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With the preseason Hit List and the final Fantasy Baseball Index Spring Update both raging out of control on my front burners, I don’t have time for a full writeup of last night’s trip to the new Yankee Stadium for the unofficial opening game against the Cubs. I will say that it feels as though the team put some idealized hybrid of Yankee Stadiums I and II on a steroid regimen, then stuck it in the middle of Times Square. Pure sensory overload — bright flashing lights with sound surrounding you from every angle, and a ginormous scoreboard video dominating the action on the field even when you’re sitting in the bleachers, as my friend Julie and I were.

It’s a mallpark, and an absurdly expensive one at that. All the bells and whistles in the world could do nothing to alleviate the ambivalence I feel about the venue. To my mind, the Yankees need a new park more than ever.

As big and bold as the scoreboard is, it offers a dearth of real information; nowhere did the names of the pitchers appear, so because we arrived in the middle of the first inning due to subway havoc — just in time to see Derek Jeter step into the box — I went the entire evening without figuring out who actually started for the Cubs (it was Ted Lilly). In fact, I had a hard time paying attention at all, in part because it was an exhibition wrapped in a spectacle and in part because sitting in the bleachers makes one feel as though anything that happens in the infield is a distant rumor even under the best of circumstances. The new bleachers do have a steeper pitch to them, which at least makes seeing the outfield a bit easier.

Undoubtedly the highlight of the game came when Robinson Cano smacked a home run in the third inning, the first in the new park’s history. It landed three rows in front of us, and soon afterward, stadium security came down to ask the gentleman who recovered the ball if he’d be willing to make a deal. He and his female companion left with them while their friends looked on with concern, but they came back a couple of innings later still clutching the ball: no deal.

As it turns out, Julie and I wound up visible on the brief NY1 highlight loop featuring the home run:

You can see me stand to applaud at the end of the clip here, for whatever that’s worth.

Alex Belth weighs in with a more substantial take on attending the game, while Neil deMause has a pair of articles regarding the stadium’s opening and the impressions gleaned from attending Thursday’s workout, one at the Village Voice and the other at Baseball Prospectus.