Preview Redux

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The SportsIllustrated.com version of my NLCS Preview is up now, complete with, like, three grammatical corrections even. Talk about a value add. I actually had no idea how long the piece was, word-count-wise, but ESPN’s Rob Neyer counted it up in the service of giving me a nice shoutout in a blog entry($) today: 5,408 words. Dunno if that includes all those little numbers, but damn, I outdid myself. Anyway, here’s Rob:

In my last post, I picked the Phillies to beat the Dodgers.

Then I read about the Diamond Mind simulation, in which the series was played 2,000 times and the Dodgers won 62 percent of them. Then I read Jay Jaffe’s in-depth (5,408 words!) analysis of the series and learned some things I didn’t already know.

For one thing, the Phillies depend on home runs for their offensive punch. Actually, I knew that already. What I didn’t know is that the Dodgers are exceptionally skilled at preventing home runs, giving up only 123 all season, fewest in the majors. And it’s across the board. All three of their top starting pitchers gave up only 13 or 14 homers this year. The Phillies won’t find a soft underbelly until Game 4, when they face Greg Maddux or Clayton Kershaw; Maddux gave up 21 homers in 194 innings this season, Kershaw 11 in 108.

…Meanwhile, the Phillies’ top two starters — Cole Hamels and Jamie Moyer — are lefties. Who do the Dodgers want to face?

Lefties.

I’ll spare you the odd self-referentiality of quoting him quoting me on the Dodgers’ lefty splits, and instead cut to the end of the piece. Referring to the headline of his previous post, he closes with the following: “The Dodgers are the trendy pick, and the Phillies are the better team. But sometimes being better isn’t good enough. There seem to be some pretty good reasons for Jaffe to pick the Dodgers in six, and for Diamond Mind to make the Dodgers overwhelming favorites.”

Very cool.

Meanwhile, there were plenty of Dodger-flavored questions in my chat at BP today, and also some good ones on the Brewers and on pitching prospects:

pestevez (Miami): Do you see Dewitt as a semi long term answer at 2B for the Dodgers? I don’t recall their having an upcoming 2B in the system.

JJ: Gonna double up this question with one my friend Nick keeps trying to submit: “Who is the real Furcal? The .814 OPS from 2006? The .688 in 2007? Should this year’s injury issues give the Dodgers pause about resigning him?”

[Rafael] Furcal is a fantastic, MVP-caliber player when healthy, which is about two months a year lately. I think his injury should definitely make the Dodgers think twice about signing him. I’m not opposed to it (perhaps overly jazzed about what he’s shown in the last three games) but if they do I’d like to see another shorter-term deal (3 years max) with some incentive clauses or vesting options in there.

As for [Blake] DeWitt, the Dodgers have him, Chin-Lung Hu and hopefully Tony Abreu as up-and-comers, and as I said in last week’s roundtable, that leaves them many options to fill their infield in a post-Kent, post-Blake (and post-LaRoche) world. It’s too obvious for them to try to let all of those young ‘uns have jobs, so they’re likely to sign/acquire/retain at least one of the Furcal/Kent/Blake lot and then let the others battle it out for two positions.

I’m not entirely convinced DeWitt’s a good enough fielder at 2B. I’m also not convinced his bat can carry 3B yet. I think the chances of one of those two coming through in the next couple years is decent, but I don’t know which one, and I’m not sure the Dodgers do either.

• • •

HRFastness (MKE): So, if your Doug Melvin, are you trading JJ? Moving him to 2B and Weeks to Center? Essentially, the question is this: If you’re Dough Melvin, what trades and positional moves are you making for the Brewers this winter?

JJ: I’d think about moving Hardy to 2B or 3B to accommodate Escobar (or maybe he moves, I don’t know without talking to somebody more knowledgeable about his defense), I’d think about moving Weeks to CF or another team.

I think Prince Fielder may be a more tradable/replaceable commodity than Hardy. I know one of the big media wags proposed a Fielder/Matt Cain swap, which makes sense given the Brewers’ need for pitching in a post-Sheets, post-Sabathia world. The Brewers would hear about it from their fans, though.

• • •

mattymatty (Philly): Going into this season Phil Hughes and Clay Buchholz were widely considered to be two of the best young pitchers in the game. Both had what might kindly be termed lost seasons. Were we wrong to think they were so good? What do you think about them going forward? Thanks!

JJ: As we like to say around these parts: TNSTAAPP. There’s no such thing as a pitching prospect, because pitchers don’t develop in orderly fashion. Injuries happen, mechanical flaws manifest themselves, crises of confidence occur, hitters adjust, and suddenly guys don’t look like the ones in the catalog.

Both Hughes and Buchholz had lost years, but it’s way too early to give up on them given the promise they’ve shown and the health of their arms. Most pitchers who are anointed top prospects have faced little adversity over the course of their careers to get to that point – they’ve dominated just about every level. Figuring out how to cope with failure, adversity and opponents’ adjustments is all part of the learning curve, and some guys take longer to do that than others.

As usual, there’s plenty more where that came from — each of those topics had at least one follow-up in the chat, but rather than spoil the fun here, please go read for yourself.

Go Dodgers!

Clearing the Bases: Chitter Chatter Pitter Patter

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A few things:

• The 12-minute spot I recorded on Wednesday morning for “The Young Guns” show on Boston’s WWZN 1510 AM is available here. Hopefully now that the show’s got a blog they’ll be archiving all of my appearances so I can share them here (you can listen to a web stream if you’re not in the Boston market but that’s live).

As for the clip, once you adjust for the fact that I’d been awake for about seven minutes and was trying to force enough coffee down my gullet to sound coherent, it sounds fine. Though the emphasis is on the Red Sox, there’s lots of talk about both LCS matchups.

• I’ll be hosting a chat at Baseball Prospectus on Thursday at 2 PM Eastern to discuss both series and anything else you may have on your mind. Those of you looking for something to do after getting home from Yom Kippur services can get a head start on next year’s atonement slate by stopping by; that’s my plan, at least.

• Familiar faces Joe Sheehan and Cliff Corcoran have nice little wrapups of the Division Series at SI.com on the topic of “What We Learned,” in five bite-sized chunks. Cliff’s piece covers the AL; here’s what he had to say about the Rays:

4. The Rays are an extremely well-rounded team

The Rays aren’t going to crush their opponents. They don’t have a shut-down ace (though they might when David Price is ready for his close-up). They don’t have a don’t-let-him-beat-you masher in their lineup (though Evan Longoria could quickly mature into such a hitter). They don’t really even have a closer (though curse-spewing Aussie Grant Balfour could assume the role before the postseason is over). They scored just 4.78 runs per game in the regular season, which was a lowly ninth in the AL, and didn’t score more than six in any game of the ALDS. They aren’t going to beat their opponents into submission; they’re just going to out-play them.

The Rays were second in the AL in walks, led the league in stolen bases with a respectable 74 percent success rate, and were the best team in the majors at turning balls in play into outs. Speed, patience, and defense are perhaps the must undervalued skills in the game, and the last has a very large effect on pitching, which is a large reason why the Rays allowed 1.7 fewer runs per game this year than last. The Rays were also second in the AL in one-run wins (to the Angels, who ironically fell one-run short last night) and led the league in extra-inning victories.

One way to look at those stats is to say that the Rays are a team balancing on a razor’s edge. Another is to say they’re a team that wins games on the margins by being one step faster on the bases and in the field, by tracking down one extra out, and extending their own half of the inning by one extra at-bat, and by not allowing their opponents to plan around their one big bopper or their ace starter. Akinori Iwamura, Dioner Navarro, and Carlos Peña were the top Tampa hitters in the ALDS, but Longoria and Upton both had multi-homer games. Their bullpen allowed one run in 11 2/3 innings while striking out 13. James Shields, Scott Kazmir, and Matt Garza are each capable of a dominant pitching performance. The Rays are dangerous because, while none of their players is going to single-handedly destroy their opponent, they’re all capable of hurting them, and the opposing team never knows where the blow are going to come from on any given day.

Joe’s piece is on the NL, and his point about the Brewers reflects a change in tune from his thoughts a couple days earlier, perhaps reflecting the enthusiasm he saw in Miller Park last weekend even as the Brew Crew went down in defeat:

4. Despite the early exit, the CC Sabathia trade was worth it for the Brewers.

They may miss Matt LaPorta down the road, as not having him limits their options for future trades, but the Brewers would not have made the postseason without Sabathia, and making the postseason has been a great moment for this franchise. After such a disappointing 2007, in which they blew an 8 1/2-game lead in the NL Central, there was a risk that another such season would jade a fan base just as the products of the farm system were coming together.

By winning a tight wild-card race, bringing October baseball back to Milwaukee and generating towel-waving, Thunderstick-banging excitement for a weekend, owner Mark Attanasio and GM Doug Melvin showed the fans that the Brewers could take the next step, a decision that will resonate for years.

Amen to that.

• Speeking of that, Sheehan’s Yankee Stadium Memory for the Bronx Banter series is a fine piece about what must have been a great time — a doubleheader from 1983, with extra innings in the second game. For a kid that’s like ice cream forever.

Emma Span’s piece is another worth recommending. Going against the grain, she chooses the infamous Bloody Sock Game (2004 ALCS Game Six) and captures a spirit of camaraderie among the ballpark’s infamous hecklers. I bust a gut laughing at her NSFW account of the game, which felt cathartic even after all these years.

All of which prompted me to go looking for my own account of attending the game with Cliff. I wrote it up as a guest piece for All-Baseball.com, which has since merged with MVN.com, orphaning my post. It took me awhile to find it via Archive.org, but I did. Not exactly the most pleasant memory, I’ll admit, but I’m proud of the piece and amazed I was able to churn out a nearly 4,000-word opus in less than 24 hours.

Those were the days.

NLCS Preview

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My National League Championship Series preview is up at Baseball Prospectus, and it’s free (it’s supposed to be mirrored on SI.com as well, but that link will have to wait). In the intro, I included a hat-tip to one of the storied rivalries of my youth. I don’t remember the 1977 wildness (recounted here and to even better effect via a column by the late, great Jim Murray at Dodger Thoughts), but I vividly remember “The Penguin” Ron Cey waddling home on Bill Russell’s pennant-clinching hit in the 1978 LCS and the announcer telling the audience that Russell was a clutch hitter, a new concept to me. Anyway:

Adding color to what already appears to be a competitive series, the Phillies-Dodgers matchup is one steeped in LCS history. The two teams battled three times for the NL pennant from 1977 to 1983, with the Dodgers taking the first two series in memorable and sometimes bizarre fashion but the Phils getting the last laugh. Echoes of that matchup reverberate with the presence of representatives from that era on the coaching sidelines here; ironically, it’s former Phillies pepperpot Larry Bowa coaching third base for the Dodgers in his inimitably aggressive style, and former Dodgers base thief extraordinaire schooling the Phils in the fine art of baserunning as the Phillies’ first base coach. More recently, Phillies center fielder Shane Victorino was astutely plucked from the Dodgers’ system via the Rule 5 Draft in 2004, and right fielder Jayson Werth spent three years in LA before landing in Philadelphia. Finally, we’d be remiss if we didn’t note nearby Norristown, PA native (and Phillies’ free-agent signing circa 1945) Tommy Lasorda’s long-standing grudge against the Phillie Phanatic.

Further down, I’ve got some numbers on the Dodger offense pre- and post-Manny: 

Period    Games  RS   R/G   HR (LgRk) RHR  %RHR (LgRk)  AVG/ OBP/ SLG
Thru 7/31  108  450  4.17   74 (15)   106  23.6  (15)  .256/.321/.376
From 8/1    54  250  4.63   63  (3)    93  37.2   (7)  .281/.355/.443
Total      162  700  4.32  137 (13)   199  28.4  (13)  .264/.333/.399

Percentage of runs on home runs is a favorite stat of my colleague Joe Sheehan; it tends to characterize the potency of an offense. The Phillies were second in the league and third in the majors in this category at 42.6 percent, and the Dodgers, wiht the trade, moved up from a rate that would rank 15th in the league before the trade to seventh in the league (slightly above the 34.5 percent average) after. With Rafael Furcal now atop the lineup again in front of Ramirez and company, the importance of that stat grows even more.

Anyway, I went into the piece thinking that once again I’d be picking against a team I’m rooting for, but the closer I looked, the more I analyzed, the more I came around to the idea that this matchup could favor the Dodgers:

Despite the difference in full-season records, this is a relatively even matchup. Hamels is possibly the best starter on either team in the series, but the Phillies’ reticence towards bringing him back on three days’ rest may neutralize that if the Dodgers shorten their rotation and opt for Lowe to start Game Four. If that’s the case, Philadelphia’s only clear advantage in the matchups would come in the opener, whereas a Hamels/Billingsley Game Five could be a tossup (note the extra day off in between Games Four and Five that will keep the latter on normal rest), and Lowe-Blanton or Lowe-Moyer might be expected to tilt the Dodgers’ way, tilting the series as well.

Otherwise, Torre’s got a couple of decisions that may put him on the spot (Maddux/Kershaw for Game Four and Kuo on/off the roster), something he generally tries to avoid. Either way, that Game Four pairing could still favor the Dodgers by a hair, but the rest are tossups, with Hamels’ and Billingsley’s advantages over their opponents canceling out. What it may come down to in that case are the Dodgers’ staff’s stinginess in surrendering home runs (they led the NL with the fewest allowed at 123, 24 fewer than any other club) and their tactical advantage in being able to counter the Phillies’ concentration of lefty threats with one pitcher as compared to the Dodgers’ more dispersed lineup may prove the deciding factor.

In the end (and with the caveat that I’m a Dodger fan, albeit one who’s proven comfortable with picking against my own strong rooting interests in such past previews), I’m willing to go out on a limb and call this for the Dodgers in six.

As I noted in the comments to that pice, adjusted for ballpark, the ability of the Dodger staff to limit home runs stands out even more starkly. Only Greg Maddux and Chan-Ho Park allowed homers at an above-average rate, and neither appear to be central to the Dodgers plans. By contrast, Brett Myers and Joe Blanton both allow homers at an above-average rate, and Cole Hamels is right at the average. Furthermore, as one Dodger Thoughts comment pointed out, Maddux and Clayton Kershaw are the only two pitchers active for the series who allowed home runs to the Phillies this year.

I’m still waiting to see how the various roster decisions fall regarding Hong-Chih Kuo (potentially on) and Takashi Saito (potentially off) before I adjust my analysis there. But I do think this is a winnable series for the boys in Dodger blue.

A Nice Saturday

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On Saturday I watched the Dodgers win their first playoff series in 20 years. I watched the Brewers win their first playoff game in 26 years. And I welcomed home my wife after an eight-day business trip, just in time to join me on the couch for the latter as I waved my Brewers towel along with the 43,992 fans packed into Miller Park for the stadium’s first-ever postseason game. Not a bad Saturday.

I was a college freshman when Orel Hershiser struck out Tony Phillips to complete one of the biggest World Series upsets in history. As upsets go, these Dodgers’ sweep of the 97-win Cubs, owners of the NL’s best record, rates pretty highly on the Upset-O-Meter as well. I don’t know of anyone who predicted it, but via a discussion with a few of my Baseball Prospectus a quiet consensus emerged about the Dodgers’ sleeper potential given their revamped lineup and the two teams’ late-season play.

If Hershiser and company beating the A’s seems like more than half a lifetime a go (and for me, it is), it makes my head spin even more to think that when Harvey’s Wallbangers went up 3-2 at old County Stadium to send the 1982 World Series back to St. Louis, I was still about two months shy of my bar mitzvah. My brother-in-law and sister-in-law, Aaron and Jame, not only managed to snag a pair of tickets for the first postseason game in Miller Park history, they wound up on TV thanks to the TBS-friendly sign they made (picture 1, picture 2). Not a bad memento.

The season’s final Hit List is up today; glad to retire that wordy beast for another winter. Thanks to my editors for their eternal patience with it, and to my readers for making the column such a popular one.

Predicting Playoff Success

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Considering I spent about 10 hours on my couch watching baseball on Wednesday — admittedly a good portion of it working on a couple different projects — it was an exhausting day. The Brewers couldn’t touch Cole Hamels, who looked better than I’ve ever seen him pitch. The more baseball I watch, the more I’m convinced that a high-quality change-up is the key to pitcher dominance. Pedro Martinez in his prime, Johan Santana, Greg Maddux… C.C. Sabathia the other day… and certainly Hamels are a few examples. Sabathia will have to bring his A-game today if the Brewers are to get back in this series.

Things worked out better in Chicago, where the Dodgers doubled their post-1988 postseason win total by beating the Cubs 7-2 on the strength of a grand slam by James Loney and solo shots by Manny Ramirez and Russell Martin. BP’s Christina Karhl called the series for the Cubs in her preview, but between the conversations I’ve had with her and Joe Sheehan there’s a consensus that this may actually be a stealable series for the Dodgers, who are fielding a much better club now than at any time during the season — they’ve got Rafael Furcal and Takashi Saito back from injuries to go with Manny Ramirez and the absence of Juan Pierre and Andruw Jones. Hopefully they can push the Cubs to the brink with another win tonight.

In handicapping the various playoff series, mainstream pundits and barstool jockeys alike are apt to cite the contrast between teams’ overall won-loss records in picking a favorite. As it turns out, going on overall record alone is a fool’s errand. In the history of postseason baseball dating back to the dawn of divisional play in 1969, the team with the better record has won the series just 44 percent of the time. This alarming finding was something I discovered while doing some research earlier this week, and it forms the starting point of today’s Baseball Prospectus column. As it turns out, projected records based on runs scored and runs allowed do a better job of predicting series winners, but even so are only right about 50 percent of the time. What turns out to be the most reliable indicator is a team’s third-order discrepancy. In plain English, that’s the difference between their projected record after adjusting for run elements, park, league, and quality of competition and their actual record. Teams with the larger discrepancies win postseason series about 53 percent of the time:

 Series       Period      #    W0    W1    D3
All 2-Div    1969-1993   72  .403  .417  .486
All 3-Div    1995-2007   91  .473  .560  .560

All 5-Game   1969-2007   82  .439  .476  .573
All 7-Game   1969-2007   81  .444  .519  .481

All Non-WS   1969-2007  126  .444  .516  .563
All WS       1969-2007   37  .432  .432  .405

All          1969-2007  163  .442  .497  .528

Any resemblance to the NL West standings is entirely coincidental, though it does make for a convenient metaphor. The data underscores the utter futility of using actual records to predict playoff series; that .442 winning percentage is a nearly exact match for the actual record of this year’s Giants (.444). The success rate is considerably higher using first-order records, over .500 in some blocks but not all of them, enough to suggest that even using those is pretty much a crapshoot. It’s at its highest with the third-order discrepancies, a little higher than the actual record this year’s Dodgers on the whole (.519), and at times about as high as those big, bad Phillies (.568).

I don’t want to overstate the claims about what all of this tells us given the sample sizes, but it’s worth laying out the inferences we can draw:

1) Projected records appear to be solid indicators of series success in the Wild Card era, much moreso than in the two-division era.

2) Those projected records appear to do a much better job in the intermediate series than they do in the World Series (the smallest sample here).

3) Third-order discrepancies appear to be the strongest indicators in five-game series, and they match up well across the entire Wild Card era.

The first and third points have the current era in common, and when we consider the difference between this period and the two-division one, one factor that stands out is the evolution of the bullpen’s importance. Recall that Nate Silver found closer quality (as measured by WXRL) to be a significant enough predictor of postseason success that he incorporated into what he termed the “Secret Sauce,” and add to this my own reported finding of a modest correlation (r = .42) between team WXRL totals and third-order discrepancies across the 1954-2007 Retrosheet era, a correlation that edges up to .49 in the Wild Card era. What we appear to have stumbled upon is some further evidence of a link between regular season over- or underachievement, bullpen quality, and postseason success, one that merits further exploration.

W0 is a team’s actual winning percentage, W1 is their first-order winning percentage (a/k/a Pythagorean winning percentage, as projected by runs scored and runs allowed) and D3 is the aforementioned gap between their adjusted projection and their actual performance. Anyway, while hardly definitive, I found it to be interesting stuff worthy of further inquiry.

Around the horn:

• For Wednesday morning’s appearance on Boston’s “The Young Guns” radio show (1510 AM “The Zone” at 8 AM every week), co-host Chris Villani asked me how often the team that wins the opening game of a five-game series prevails in the series. I didn’t have the answer at the time, but during yesterday’s slate of games, the TBS teams showed the data, which carries an alarming split. NL teams that win the opener have gone onto a 23-4 record (.852 winning percentage) in their five-game series. AL teams that have done so have gone 12-14 (.462). There’s no inherent reason for the split, but it’s worth noting that the Yankees bucked the trend in losing the openers in 1996, 2000, 2001, 2003 and 2004 but going on to win, and in winning the 1997, 2002, 2005 and 2006 openers but going on to lose. Only three times during the 12 years of the Joe Torre era did they follow the trend — 1998 and 1999, when they swept the Rangers, and 2007, when they got blown out of the first game and lost the series.

Take that combined 3-9 record of first-game winners in Yankee seriess out and the AL’s record is 11-5 (.688), which is close to the overall combined record of the two leagues, 35-18 (.660). Given the sample sizes, that last is the number I’d cite the next time the question arises.

• Speaking of Manny Ramirez, I stopped reading Bil Simmons at precisely the point where the balance of AL East power tipped from the Yankees to the Red Sox, but I’ve found something to dig into today with his epic piece on Manny Ramirez’s departure from Boston. Annotated with a generous serving of footnotes that might have cheered up the late, great David Foster Wallace, Simmons is with me when it comes to seeing the influence of high-powered Boston media personalities on his eventual departure from Boston:

I thought of that story when Manny began acting up again this summer. Boston’s brain trust had decided to dump him. Again. We were doing this dance for the fourth time in six years. There were two crucial differences this time, the first being Manny had canned his old agents and hired Scott Boras, one of the worst human beings in America who hasn’t actually committed a crime. Manny’s contract was set to expire after the 2008 season, with Boston holding $20 million options for 2009 and 2010. Boras couldn’t earn a commission on the option years because those fees belonged to Manny’s previous agents. He could only get paid when he negotiated Manny’s next contract. And Scott Boras always gets paid.

The second difference? The guys running the Red Sox felt like flexing their muscles this time around. They had renovated Fenway Park, turned the team into a cash cow, captured two titles and become local celebrities on par with Denis Leary and the creepy guys from Aerosmith. They didn’t feel like dealing with Manny anymore. Although it’s usually impossible to jettison a popular star without a backlash from fans, the Red Sox wield unprecedented sway over nearly every relevant media outlet that covers them. One of the team’s minority partners, the New York Times Company, happens to own Boston’s signature newspaper (The Globe). The team owns a cable channel (NESN) that shows every Sox game, pregame show and postgame show. The Sox signed cushy deals with Boston’s signature sports radio station (WEEI) and sister station (WRKO), and since those rights always can be shopped to a competitor down the road, you’ll see CC Sabathia hit an inside-the-park home run before a Red Sox owner gets ripped to shreds on WEEI. They even have good relationships with every relevant national writer, including Peter Gammons, the face of baseball for ESPN, a beloved figure in New England and a longtime friend of general manager Theo Epstein.

Why is this important? As Manny Ramirez’s memorable Red Sox career began to crumble for good, two people were to blame (Manny and Boras), and yet we only heard about one of them. Had the identity of the second villain been revealed, maybe Boston fans wouldn’t have been so eager to downgrade from a first-ballot Hall of Famer to Jason Bay. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. We know for sure that, heading into the last year of a $160 million deal that seemed lavish at the time and turned out to be money well spent, Boston’s hierarchy (Epstein and owners John Henry, Tom Werner and Larry Lucchino) basically told Manny and Boras, “We aren’t giving you an extension after the best offensive stretch in Red Sox history that didn’t involve Ted Williams, and we’re also not deciding on our 2009 and 2010 options yet. Let’s see how you do this season.” In other words, welcome to no-man’s land! By not making a decision, the Red Sox did make a decision: They turned the situation over to Boras and expected his most impressionable client to handle himself with professionalism and class. Like that would happen.

Once Manny shifted into sulk mode, the Red Sox wasted no time painting him as a malcontent. After Manny berated the team’s 64-year-old team employee and shoved the poor guy to the ground, the team did everything but hire actors to re-enact the incident on www.redsox.com.7 After Manny skipped a crucial game against the Yankees, claiming he had a sore knee, management made a point of getting MRIs on both knees and telling reporters he was fine. Did the team ever suspend him? Of course not. That would have made too much sense. Once the old school baseball writers started hissing that Manny didn’t respect The Game, for many Boston fans, that was the final straw. And maybe they were right — after all, it’s indefensible to quit on your team just because you don’t like your bosses, especially in November when you’re about to make crucial trades and free-agent signings.

(Whoops, I’m getting my “Guys Who Quit on the Red Sox” confused! I’m thinking of Epstein, who ditched them after the 2005 season because he was tired of dealing with Lucchino. Sorry about that.)

I haven’t read the entire piece, and I don’t buy the article’s conclusion that Manny will wind up wearing Yankee pinstripes once he hits free agency this winter; I’m hearing that the Dodgers will offer him a big package which includes vesting options, and I can see the Mets being a player for him before the Yankees are, particularly given Brian Cashman’s press conference remarks regarding the Yankees’ aging lineup and the Mets’ need to make a splash in the market.

Short Rest

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Waking up before 7 AM in each of the past two days to do early morning radio hits has me bleary-eyed as the playoffs begin, particularly given how late I was up working on my preview of the Phillies-Brewers series for Baseball Prospectus. Monday’s makeup game and Tuesday’s Game 163 playoff certainly didn’t help my cause when it came to buckling down to get work done.

Like the other BP series previews (Christina Kahrl on Dodgers-Cubs, Joe Sheehan on Red Sox-Angels, with White Sox-Rays still pending) it’s mirrored over at SportsIllustrated.com. For those of you that simply want to cut to the chase and avoid the numbers, here’s the payoff. I don’t think it’ll make my in-laws happy, but I gotta call ‘em like I see ‘em in this racket, and anyway, I hedged my bets:

This is a more even series than it might appear to be at first glance given the state of the Brewers’ pitching staff. That the Brewers might face southpaws three times in a five-game series helps their cause just a hair due to two of those starts being taken by Hamels. The biggest difference between the two clubs appears to be at the front end of their bullpens, where the Phils enjoy a considerable advantage, and the feeling here is that unless the Brewers can find a way to get Sabathia a second turn on the hill for a Game Five, that bullpen edge may prove decisive. I’m predicting the Phillies in four, but if the Brewers can force a rubber game, my money’s on the big man.

Also, the flip side of my not-so-happy take on the closing of Yankee Stadium is up at Bronx Banter. It’s a top ten countdown of my favorite memories of attending games at Yankee Stadium. A small taste that won’t give away too much:

7. The sweltering Sunday afternoon in the summer of 2000 when my friend Julie and I practically peed ourselves laughing at the sight of a young Hasidic Jewish man who somehow fell out of the stands, far enough down the left field line to where the wall starts to slant upwards, a good six or eight foot drop onto the field. Visibly dazed and confused, perhaps even with a broken arm, he was escorted off the premises. His pain was our comedic gain, an eternal reminder of the rough justice of the Bronx.

6. The night of August, 8, 2000, when Oakland closer Jason Isringhausen came on to protect a 3-2 lead in the ninth inning but lasted only two pitches, surrendering solo homers to Bernie Williams and David Justice. The Yankees of the Joe Torre era made routine sport of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, but never did they do so with more surgical precision than that.

I could easily have expanded the list to 20, and once things cool off, I’ll run a countdown of the best of the rest here.

Moving along:

• The New York Sun, an occasional outlet for my writing via a syndication deal with BP, has closed up shop. I won’t miss their neoconservative politics at all, but their baseball coverage was something else entirely, with Steven Goldman and Tim Marchman appearing regularly, and several BP authors (myself included) getting their first chance to reach the daily newsstands. Christina Kahrl eulogized the sports page.

Apparently, my piece from last week was the final one from our BP syndication agreement. When you folks and your robot monkeys get around to building me the Wikipedia fan page I so richly deserve, please be sure to include that tidbit.

• Alex Belth had something to add about the Sun as well, along with discussing Goldman’s last piece and the latest Neyer-Jaffe throwdown. On the latter, so did the good folks at YanksFanSoxFan. Thanks, guys.

• Finally, I haven’t had time to write about it anywhere, but I’m elated to hear that Brian Cashman has decided to remain with the Yankees for another three years. I suspect that the dearth of job openings had something to do with that; currently the Mariners have the only GM vacancy. The Dodgers, whom Cashman grew up rooting for and who might be an attractive destination given their payroll and the obvious Joe Torre link, are likely to keep Ned Colletti on after winning the division; that Manny Ramirez trade saved his hide.

Interesting in its own right is that former Yankee and current Dodger assistant GM Kim Ng appears to be the leading contender for the Mariners job. She was the first woman ever to interview for a GM job back in 2005 when the Dodgers tabbed Colletti (ugh) and she’s held in such high esteem within the game that it’s likely only a matter of time before she lands in the big chair.

Today

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Cutting through the metaphorical hangover of a thrilling day of baseball to go straight to the bullets, because I’ve got about 5,000 more words to deliver over the next three days:

• I’ve got a Brewer-centric article on Sunday’s action:

I don’t know how many times I’ve seen the clip. Big Pete Ladd delivers to Rod Carew, who grounds to Robin Yount, who throws over to Cecil Cooper, who clutches the ball in his glove and raises his outstretched arm as he heads towards the dogpile on the mound where the Milwaukee Brewers celebrate their 1982 pennant. That final out has stood as the pinnacle of the Brewers’ success for over a quarter of a century, a moment to savor for a franchise that has enjoyed more bad times than good in 40 seasons of existence across two cities and two leagues. It defined not only the success of a pennant captured, but the failure to top that with a World Championship, and the epic, playoff-free drought that the franchise endured during 25 years of frustration and occasional humiliation.

All of that changed on Sunday. The Brewers didn’t capture a pennant on the final day of the 2008 season, didn’t even capture a division crown, but the pairing of their come-from-behind victory over the Cubs with a loss by the Mets earned them the NL wild-card berth. Furthermore, it guaranteed that if nothing else, the next generation of Brewers fans will have a new highlight reel to etch into their collective unconscious, one featuring Ryan Braun’s towering two-run eighth-inning homer and CC Sabathia’s bear hug of Jason Kendall after sealing the victory by inducing Derrek Lee to ground into a game-ending 4-6-3 double play. A new chapter has been written in Milwaukee baseball, and it’s about damn time.

I know that 1982 clip by heart, not only because I was one of many baseball fans across the country who climbed onto the bandwagon of Harvey’s Wallbangers, but because I married into a family of Brewers fans, a long-suffering bunch for whom that now-ancient pennant remains a touchstone.

I can’t tell you how elated I am that the Brewers made it. I was as absorbed in their quest for the playoffs as I’ve ever been for any Dodger or Yankee run, and I had just as much fun. As to whether I get to worry how things might shake down if the Dodgers and Brewers were to meet, the long odds suggest that won’t be a problem.

• Further down in that piece, I take on something Rob Neyer wrote the other day:

Over the weekend, ESPN’s Rob Neyer noted the supportive comments of former Orioles great Jim Palmer, who thinks Mussina is Hall-worthy. “I always said I thought he was every bit as good as I was,” Palmer told the Baltimore Sun’s MASN Online’s Roch Kubatko. Neyer begged to differ: “He wasn’t. Jim Palmer won three Cy Young Awards and finished with 268 wins and a 126 career ERA+. Mussina’s got 269 wins, zero Cy Young Awards, and a 122 career ERA+.”

With all due respect to Neyer, he’s off base here. Mussina may lack Palmer’s hardware, but over the course of his career he’s been more valuable than Palmer was, and not by a little. Over the course of 19 seasons, Palmer pitched 3,948 innings and was 151 Pitching Runs Above Average and 1,064 Pitching Runs Above Replacement, worth 99.6 WARP3 according to Clay Davenport’s system. Mussina, in 18 seasons totaling about 400 fewer innings, was 312 runs above average — more than double Palmer, in other words — and 1,302 Pitching Runs Above Replacement, good for 132.4 WARP3. Palmer’s best seven seasons (his peak, in JAWS terms) were worth 64.3 WARP3; Mussina trumps that with 66.5 WARP3. Mussina’s also got a considerable edge in career VORP (860.7 to 752.9) and a slight one in SNLVAR (99.7 to 96.2). Properly adjusted for the context of a more difficult work environment, he gains the advantage.

Jim Palmer was a great pitcher on some ballclubs that are regarded among the best of the ’60s and ’70s. The matinee-idol good looks, the underwear ads, and the public feuds with manager Earl Weaver make for a colorful public persona that rounds out out his Hall-worthy credentials to the point of legend. Mussina bore the burden of spending the first half of his career pitching in the shadow of that legend on ballclubs that weren’t the equal of those Weaver squads, and he developed a public persona that, while thoughtful, was far more reserved than that of the outgoing Palmer. Accompanied by the evolution of the starting pitcher’s role over the last three decades, those differences dramatically distort the perceptions of the two pitchers, but props to Palmer for recognizing that and for speaking up on Mussina’s behalf. Even if he never throws another pitch, Mike Mussina is worthy of a spot in Cooperstown.

Neyer responds. The traditional stats are on his side in that Palmer had more wins, a higher winning percentage, and the second-best ERA+ of the decade among pitchers with at least 2000 innings. But the stat I called upon, Pitching Runs Above Average, is designed to separate pitching from defense. Moose’s strikeout rates relative to the league (a translated rate of 6.9 EqSO/9) made him much less reliant on his defense than Palmer (5.2 EqSO/9), so he’s rewarded by getting a larger share of the credit for each run saved on his watch, and thus generated more value. Put another way, Palmer owes more of his standing to perennial Gold Glovers like Brooks Robinson, Bobby Grich, Mark Belanger and Paul Blair (36 Gold Gloves between them, not all concurrent with Palmer’s tenure) than Mussina does to his fielders.

In the grand scheme, it matters more that Neyer and I and anyone else who reads either of us agree that Moose is Hallworthy than it does as to how he rates relative to Palmer. Still, it’s always fun to go mano a mano with Rob.

• I was also part of an epic roundtable for the White Sox-Tigers play-in game (including the rain delay):

Jay Jaffe (11:46:43 AM PT): Ford Frick (D.C.) asks: “Has there ever been a study that suggests whether one team’s regular season record against another’s is a predictor of playoff success/failure. For example, if the Rays had been 3-8 vs. Boston and 8-2 vs. the Angels during the regular season, is there any empirical data to indicate they would have a better chance of defeating the Angels (as opposed to the Red Sox) in a 5- or 7-game playoff series? Thanks.”

I don’t know of any published studies towards that end but I strongly suspect Nate Silver and Dayn Perry took a look at that among untold other stats and metrics for the playoff-related chapter in our Baseball Between the Numbers book. While we’re at it, it’s worth mentioning that Nate and Dayn found no statistically significant relationship between records after September 1 and playoff success, or between previous postseason experience and playoff success.

One more thing, and this is something I looked at over the weekend and may publish in an article format if it actually turns into something interesting upon further investigation: at least with regards to first-round matchups, actual Won-Los records are less predictive than Pythagorean records. Of the 100 first round contests (League Championship Series from 1969-1993 excluding 1981, and Division Series from 1995-2007), only 42 of them were won by the team with the better raw record. 49 of them were won by the team with the better Pythagorean (first-order) record, 47 by the team with the better third-order record. Limiting it to just the five-game series of the Wild Card era, the numbers are 24/52 for actual, 29/52 for first-order, and 26/52 for third-order. The take-home message is that short series are mostly tossups in which anything can happen, and that looking solely at teams’ raw records (and probably head-to-head records) isn’t a great way to judge these matchups.

I’m hoping to revisit that data before the playoffs get underway.

Paul Newman, RIP

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By all rights it should be a happy day in my household this morning with the Brewers opening a one-game lead on the Mets in the NL Wild Card race, but I was bawling in my coffee when I found out that Paul Newman had passed away at age 83, the latest big-name celebrity death in a year all too full of them. A fantastic actor who did stellar work from the late 1950s to the early part of this millennium (much of it in the world of sports, a dedicated philanthropist who turned his fame and fortune towards worthy causes, a good lefty, and an icon whose incredible staying power made him a heartthrob across multiple generations — he was all of those things and more. We lost one of the great ones.

From Oregon Live:

For a half-century, on screen and off, the actor Paul Newman embodied certain tendencies in the American male character: active and roguish and earnest and sly and determined and vulnerable and brave and humble and reliable and compassionate and fair. He was a man of his time, a part of his time, and that time ranged from World War II to the contemporary era of digitally animated feature films.

…Although Newman was a World War II veteran who didn’t become a bona fide star until he was in his 30s, his choices in movie roles could make him seem like a younger man; the iconoclastic individuality of his anti-hero characters resonated with the social upstarts of the ’60s, who were the same age as his children. At the same time, he bore a cast of honor and manliness with him on screen that was so unquestionably real that he simultaneously retained the respect of older audiences. In a sense, he combined the rebelliousness associated with the likes of Marlon Brando and James Dean with the rock-solid decency exuded by such stars as Henry Fonda and James Stewart. Fittingly, he entered movies as one of the last Hollywood contract players and then became one of the first independent superstars, commanding more than $1 million per film as early as the mid-1960s.

Newman made nearly 60 films, originated three classic roles on Broadway, delivered memorable performances in some of live television’s finest dramas, served as president of the Actors Studio, won championships as a race car driver and racing team owner, started a food business on a whim and used it to raise nearly $400 million for assorted charities, founded an international chain of camps to offer free vacations and medical care to sick and deprived children, and participated in politics as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention, as a delegate to a United Nations conference on nuclear proliferation and as part-owner of (and occasional guest columnist for) “The Nation” magazine.

From the AP obit:

With his strong, classically handsome face and piercing blue eyes, Newman was a heartthrob just as likely to play against his looks, becoming a favorite with critics for his convincing portrayals of rebels, tough guys and losers. “I was always a character actor,” he once said. “I just looked like Little Red Riding Hood.”

Newman had a soft spot for underdogs in real life, giving tens of millions to charities through his food company and setting up camps for severely ill children. Passionately opposed to the Vietnam War, and in favor of civil rights, he was so famously liberal that he ended up on President Nixon’s “enemies list,” one of the actor’s proudest achievements, he liked to say.

From Slate:

For his part, Newman put it all down to luck. In his 1992 introduction to our book about the camp [for seriously ill children], he tried to explain what impelled him to create the Hole in the Wall: “I wanted, I think, to acknowledge Luck: the chance of it, the benevolence of it in my life, and the brutality of it in the lives of others; made especially savage for children because they may not be allowed the good fortune of a lifetime to correct it.” Married to Joanne Woodward, his second wife, for 50 years this winter, Newman always looked at her like something he’d pulled out of a Christmas stocking. He looked at his daughters that way, too. It was like, all these years later, he couldn’t quite believe he got to keep them.

…In an era in which nearly everyone feels entitled to celebrity and fortune, Newman was always suspicious of both. He used his fame to give away his fortune, and he did that from some unspoken Zen-like conviction that neither had ever really belonged to him in the first place.

The Hustler, Hud, Cool Hand Luke, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting, The Color of Money and The Road to Perdition are some of his essentials and my favorites. Slap Shot has a case as the best sports movie ever, or at least the best sports comedy; if you’ve never seen it, crack a cold one and prepare to laugh for two hours. Salon has a great highlight reel of his best moments.

My wife actually met Newman, briefly. When summering as a nanny in New York City between high school years, she once found herself sitting in front of Newman and Woodward at a Broadway show. Starstruck, she asked for an autograph after the show as the crowd filed out. “I’m sorry, my dear,” he said, putting his arm around her shoulder momentarily. “I don’t sign autographs. But thank you so much for asking. It was nice to meet you.” He was so genuinely classy that his refusal actually increased his standing in her eyes.

He’ll be missed.

Front Page News

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Today my Baseball Prospectus column on the Mets’ bullpen woes is not only syndicated on SportsIllustrated.com, it’s on the front page of the site for the moment. For posterity’s sake, here’s the screenshot:

Cutting to the chase:

The sad fact is that through the first half of the season, even with [Billy] Wagner performing at a level far below his peak, the Mets actually had one of the league’s better bullpens; their 6.1 WXRL through the All-Star break ranked third in the NL behind the Phillies and Dodgers. Since then, they’ve been a league-worst 1.4 wins below replacement level as a unit. Fill-in closer Luis Ayala (-0.04 WXRL since coming over from the Nationals on Aug. 17) is an obvious culprit, but he’s hardly the only offender.

A quick peek at the individual numbers informs us that it’s not hard to recognize a systemic combination of overuse and ineffectiveness. Of the six relievers whom Jerry Manuel has called upon most frequently, five have second-half ERAs above 4.90: Ayala (5.54, including his Washington stint), Pedro Feliciano (6.38), Aaron Heilman (6.75), Duaner Sanchez (6.00), and Joe Smith (4.91); Scott Schoeneweis (4.50) is the exception. Excluding the late-arriving Ayala, that bunch has combined for 152 appearances in 63 games since the break, a breakneck 78-game pace for each over the course of a season. Feliciano (83 games), Ayala (80) and Smith (79) represent three of the six major league pitchers stretched to that exhausting plateau over the full season, with Heilman (77) not far behind. Overall the Mets rank second in the league since the break with 227 relief appearances, an average of 3.6 per game.

Driving such a frenetic pace is a massive platoon split that has Manuel chasing the “right” matchups, following a single-minded La Russa-style tactical orthodoxy at the expense of more important strategic imperatives such as conserving bullpen arms over the course of the long season. When they have the platoon advantage (righty on righty or lefty on lefty), Mets relievers have limited hitters to just .225/.299/.325; ranked by OPS, that’s an impressive fourth in the majors. However, when they don’t have the platoon advantage, they’ve been tagged at a .294/.375/.479 clip, worst in the majors. The 227-point OPS difference between situations is the highest by a wide margin; second-highest are the Brewers at 188 points, and they just whacked a manager over his platoon-related shenanigans and bullpen mismanagement. The take-home message is yet another reminder that chasing matchups can easily backfire on a skipper, either by exposing lefty specialists such as Schoeneweis (.333/.421/.509 versus righties) or Feliciano (.357/.453/.561) to the point where they face more righties than lefties, or by shunting a heavier workload to the second- or third-tier pitchers in a bullpen.

Yet for all of those woes, things might be different if Wagner were still around. Despite a superficially tidy 2.30 ERA, the five-time All-Star had accumulated just 1.5 WXRL in about two-thirds of a season, after compiling 3.8 last year and 5.9 in 2006 (second in the league). Depending upon which model of Billy Wags you use as a benchmark, that’s anywhere from one to four wins missing from his ledger. Even at its lowest, that margin may easily be the difference between a club playing its way into October and adding another season like their now-infamous 2007 collapse to give them a matched pair of late-season meltdowns.

Like just about everyone else out there, I had the Mets pegged to win last night once Daniel Murphy led off the bottom of the ninth with a triple. My one-man Ikea furniture assembly line came to a halt to watch Bob Howry strike out David Wright, and I could have sworn one of the Mets’ announcers — Ron Darling, Keith Hernandez or Gary Cohen — said something to the effect that “if Wright strikes out, this inning is over.” That’s optimism for you. Of course, Wright did strike out, and Howry escaped by intentionally walking Carlos Delgado and Carlos Beltran, getting a forceout at the plate, and then blowing away Ramon Castro. Unbelievable. I’m reminded of an expression by my friend and former coworker Lillie, a Brooklyn gal whose capacity for amazement at the ways she could be tortured by the Mets never ceases: “This fuckin’ team!” she’d say, drawing the F-bomb out until it’s longer than a mid-inning pitching change.

Meanwhile, the Brewers won behind a gritty effort by CC Sabathia, pitching on three days’ rest and striking out 11 Pirates over seven innings and 108 pitches. The race for the two NL spots tightened even more with a Phillies loss. The Postseason Odds Report says: 

Thru 9/24   Div   WC    Tot
Phillies   87.4  11.1  98.5
Mets       12.6  59.6  72.1
Brewers     0.0  29.3  29.3

Thru 9/25   Div   WC    Tot
Phillies   85.0  12.4  97.5
Mets       15.0  39.6  54.5
Brewers     0.0  47.9  47.9

Clay Davenport, who runs the Odds Report, published an estimate of the various tie-related scenarios:

The Mets and Phillies finish in a tie, ahead of the Brewers – 8.89% chance. If this happens, the Mets win the division and the Phillies win the wild card. No playoff.
Phillies and Mets tie for the division, Brewers win the wild card – 1.12% chance.
The Mets and Brewers tie for the WC, behind the Phils – 23.92%.

The Phillies and Brewers tie for the WC, behind the Mets – 1.29%.

Three-way tie for the WC – 3.13%.

So if you’re simply a fan of entropy rather than any of these specific teams, today’s math says you’ve got about a 29 percent chance of some extra baseball before the playoffs begin.

I Don’t Think Either of Them Can Win

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I’ve got an article in today’s New York Sun about the war of attrition being fought over the NL West and NL Wild Card playoff spots. As I conceived the piece, in thinking about the recent struggles of the Brewers and Mets I was reminded of a great old quote. Had I been able to source it immediately, I probably would have led off with it, but it took forever to find, even with the help of Steven Goldman. As it is, it closes the piece out nicely:

The struggles of both teams remind one of the immortal words of sportswriter Walter Brown. In analyzing the war-depleted rosters of the Cubs and Tigers before the 1945 World Series, he famously quipped, “I don’t think either of them can win.” Observers of this year’s NL races can certainly relate.

Flipping around between six games last night (thank you, Extra Innings package, and thank you, iPhone) as I assembled Ikea furniture, I watched considerable portions of both the Mets and Brewers wins while the Phillies lost, results that shifted the article’s cited Postseason Odds — the estimated percentage chance that they could gain entry to the playoffs — a bit; even with Prince Fielder’s walk-off homer, the Brewers lost gound: 

Thru 9/23   Div   WC    Tot
Phillies   95.5   4.1  99.6
Mets        4.5  60.9  65.3
Brewers     0.0  34.0  34.0

Thru 9/24   Div   WC    Tot
Phillies   87.4  11.1  98.5
Mets       12.6  59.6  72.1
Brewers     0.0  29.3  29.3

Of course, those numbers can change dramatically. As of September 1, the Brewers were at 14.8/81.2/96.0, and of course last year the Mets were at 98.8 overall prior to their collapse. Until they clinch, there’s no such thing as a lock — just ask the 2007 Rockies.

As for the Dodgers, they dodged a bit of a bullet last night. They came into the game against the Padres with a two-game lead over the Diamondbacks and a 91.5 percent shot at the division title, and while they were initially scheduled to face Jake Peavy, the ace’s absence from the team over the weekend to attend the birth of his son compelled Pad skipper Bud Black to push him back until Thursday. Instead the Dodgers scored six first-inning runs off replacement starter Your Name Here and rolled to a 10-1 win while the D-bags lost, raising the Dodgers’ odds to 98.0 percent and cutting their magic number to three. Aw yeah, baby.