The New Joba Rules

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In last Friday’s Prospectus Hit and Run, I took a look at the Yankees’ “decision” to shift Joba Chamberlain to the bullpen to start the season, making some ballpark estimates as to his workloads in the rotation and in relief and how they fit in with the team’s plans:

So, the recent Yanks [2005-2007] have averaged about 123 starts per year from their top five, leaving 39 starts to be absorbed by the rest of the staff. Even if they were to play towards the high side of that time span, 136 starts, those extra 26 are more than one extra pitcher can be expected to absorb. Of that surplus, how many can we expect Chamberlain to make?

An aggressive estimate might put him at about 15 starts, leaving the Yanks to come up with another dozen or two from among the Jeff Karstens/Darrell Rasner/Kei Igawa/TBNL herd. Suppose Chamberlain pitches on a 180-inning pace as a starter for three months of the year, and takes the guise of a heavy-use 90-inning reliever for the other three months. In his starter phase, he could total 15 starts averaging six innings per start (90 innings) and as a reliever, he’d average an inning every other day (45 innings). That would put Joba at 135 innings, not far off from his Rule of 30 target. Of course, that wouldn’t leave a ton of headroom for October, if the Yankees get there. One can’t determine whether the team might want him to be part of their front four, or to return to the set-up role without knowing the rest of the staff’s strengths and weaknesses at that point in time. Either way has its merits so long as he can usurp a greater percentage of innings than the regular season, but both have their drawbacks as well.

From there I took a look at Chamberlain’s performance in relief last year using BP’s Reliever Expected Wins Added stat (WXRL), which measures the incremental impact, in wins, of a reliever’s performance based on the changes in score margin and game state (runners on base and number of outs) when he arrives and departs. Joba was 1.85 wins above replacement level in his 24 innings last year; on a per-inning basis, only Cleveland’s Rafael Betancourt had more of an impact, and all Betancourt did was set a record among the subgroup of nonclosers that I’m calling MISERs (Maximum-Impact Setup Relievers, crudely defined as pitchers with at least 1.0 WXRL and fewer than six saves in a season). The leaderboard for 2007: 

Pitcher             Team    IP     WXRL    WX/9
Rafael Betancourt    CLE   79.1   6.845   0.777
Joba Chamberlain     NYA   24.0   1.848   0.693
Hideki Okajima       BOS   69.0   4.429   0.578
Mike Gonzalez        ATL   17.0   1.079   0.571
Heath Bell           SDN   93.2   5.656   0.543
Brandon Lyon         ARI   74.0   4.357   0.530
Zack Greinke         KCA   53.1   3.114   0.525
Carlos Marmol        CHN   69.1   3.694   0.480
Rafael Perez         CLE   60.2   3.142   0.466
Pat Neshek           MIN   70.1   3.572   0.457
J.C. Romero          2TM   56.1   2.822   0.451
Bobby Seay           DET   46.1   2.303   0.448
Akinori Otsuka       TEX   32.1   1.566   0.436
Tony Pena            ARI   85.1   4.103   0.433
Ehren Wassermann     CHA   23.0   1.075   0.421
Henry Owens          FLO   23.0   1.051   0.411
Chad Qualls          HOU   82.2   3.608   0.393
Derrick Turnbow      MIL   68.0   2.752   0.364
Matt Herges          COL   48.2   1.927   0.356
Justin Speier        ANA   50.0   1.950   0.351
Scott Downs          TOR   58.0   2.260   0.351

By comparison, Mariano Rivera’s WXRL/9 was 0.467, which ranked 20th in the majors. Still, as good as Chamberlain’s performance was, 24 innings is a pretty small sample size to base many conclusions on, so when I retroactively computed leaderboards for the seasons 2001 to 2006, I raised the bar to 40 innings to allow the occasional LOOGY or midseason callup to sneak through. What the rankings show is that the Yanks have been fairly deficient in this department recently. Here are the qualifying Yankees dating back to 1996: 

Pitcher           Team   Year    IP     WXRL    WX/9   Rk
Mariano Rivera     NYA   1996  107.7   6.876   0.575    1
Mike Stanton       NYA   1997   66.7   3.541   0.478    2
Ramiro Mendoza     NYA   1999   84.0   2.385   0.256   27
Mike Stanton       NYA   1999   58.3   1.480   0.228   34
Jason Grimsley     NYA   1999   75.0   1.608   0.193   41
Jeff Nelson        NYA   2000   69.7   1.534   0.198   35
Mike Stanton       NYA   2001   80.3   3.333   0.373   10
Jay Witasick       NYA   2001   40.3   1.037   0.231   32
Ramiro Mendoza     NYA   2002   91.7   1.621   0.159   44
Chris Hammond      NYA   2003   63.0   1.954   0.279   21
Tom Gordon         NYA   2004   89.7   6.438   0.646    1
Paul Quantrill     NYA   2004   95.3   1.546   0.146   51
Tom Gordon         NYA   2005   80.7   3.269   0.365   11
Scott Proctor      NYA   2006  102.3   1.833   0.161   49
Luis Vizcaino      NYA   2007   75.3   2.081   0.249   35
Kyle Farnsworth    NYA   2007   60.0   1.142   0.171   51

Since Mo ascended to the closer role, only Mike Stanton and Tom Gordon have cracked the majors’ top 20 in a given season. For a team spending as much money on its bullpen as the Yankees have, that’s no relief. And it’s yet another reason why sending Chamberlain to the bullpen for at least part of the year makes sense.

For Those Who Like This Sort of Thing, This is the Sort of Thing They Like

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Back from my three-day Baseball Prospectus 2008 media tour of Washington, DC and Philadelphia. The TV appearances didn’t pan out; in DC the station only wanted either Steve or myself, and so I graciously deferred to my editor regarding the opportunity to taxi across town to do a three-minute hit at 6:45 AM (swell guy that I am), and in Philly they decided to devote our five minutes to some 64-team basketball hoedown that I’ve never heard of. The radio stuff went well; we went to the XM studio and did half an hour live with Jeff Erickson (remote from California) for the Rotowire Fantasy Focus show, then did an hour-long season preview with Mike Ferrin for MLB Home Plate that will air next week, plus some five-minute bumpers devoted to topics like “best offseason trade” that will be used prior to early-season. Both shows were a lot of fun, and particularly by the time we got to Ferrin’s show, I was in the zone. Between the radio and the fantasy updates, I’m ready to talk about any team, any time. Let me tell you about the Nationals’ rotation, the Reds’ outfield, and the Tigers’ bullpen…

The bookstore events were tremendous fun. We drew over 100 people to DC’s Politics and Prose, which might be the biggest crowd I’ve played in this guise, with the possible exception of the Yogi Berra Museum and the now-defunct Coliseum Books here in NYC. Steve, Clay Davenport and I fielded questions from guests ranging from pre-teens to septuagenarians for a little over an hour, then signed books while munching on some pretty decent pizza and even partaking in a cold beer (gotta love those indie bookstores and their rogue promotional ways). Clay and I did P&P last September on the It Ain’t Over promo circuit, and I recognized some familiar faces; Clay and Steve, who’ve been hitting that store as part of BP’s regular circuit for the past five years, recognized even more. The Philadelphia Barnes and Noble on Rittenhouse Square was a smaller crowd of about 40, but again, there were some familiar faces, including that of their events planner, Lee, a devoted fan of BP and baseball (if I recall, her husband works for the Phillies). We did well over 90 minutes there, then dashed across the square for a quick bite at Rouge, a great restaurant we hit just about every time through Philly. Fun stuff.

My work demands were such that I didn’t get to do any sightseeing beyond the Mitchell and Ness store in the latter; I had to prepare this week’s Fantasy Baseball Index update in an array of hotels, coffee shops, and trains. This wasn’t so bad, considering that at any given moment I could lean over and pick Steve’s brain about the minutiae of Oakland’s rotation, the Padres’ outfield and whatnot. As the editor of the annual and columnist about seven different venues, he’s in the same season preview mode as I am. Even if he appears to be sleeping or grazing, some part of Steve’s brain is always working on that next deadline. To wit:

The Pinstriped Bible comes to you from a railroad car moving between Baltimore and Philadelphia, or what those of us who rarely find a reason to venture off of I-95 between New Jersey and Washington refer to as “terra incognita.” “Here there be dragons,” the maps say, and one suspects that what they refer to are not literal dragons but bad Chinese restaurants secretly staffed by goth college dropouts from the Midwest who have parlayed an interest in hair-straighteners and black dye into semi-lucrative careers in ethnic impersonation and culinary counterfeiting, passing off Indiana corn and Arkansas chicken parts as Moo Goo Gai Pan. It could be some intestinally corroding experiences with off-coast Asian foods has made me paranoid, or maybe it was two days amidst the striped-tie boys of occupied Washington. Maybe they’re all working together out of the CIE, Culinary Institute of Espionage. The latest briefing says that the Iranians won’t have the George Foreman Grill for at least five years, but we may go to war anyway.

I enjoy traveling by train between short-hop destinations like New York and Washington. In the age of the interminable airline delay, it really is the smarter, faster way to travel, and indeed, as soon as (if) the United States ever gets a true high-speed train system up, airline travel between Boston, New York, and Washington will wither and die. Similar effects have occurred in Europe, where they bullet along similar inter-city distances at roughly 200 mph in more or less perfect safety. With no grade-level crossings, there are fewer opportunities for Jereboam to park his poultry truck on the tracks and cause a major disaster.

My only regret about this one trip is being cautioned by the Norman Lloyd look-alike across the aisle (for photo reference see, appropriately enough, Alfred Hitchcock’s “Saboteur”) not to speak. Jay Jaffe, my traveling companion, and I inadvertently ensconced ourselves in the “Quiet Car.” The Quiet Car, to quote the sign hanging above the aisle, requires that you, “Please refrain from loud talking or using cell phones in this car.” When Jay whispered a question at me about — well, I never did get to find out what he was asking — I am hopeful that he had not just discovered that he was on fire — Norman jumped up and shouted, “Could you guys not TALK? It’s really disturbing.” I briefly considered shouting back, “Hey, Himmler, this is the Quiet Car, not the MUTE car. This is not the Maharishi’s Meditation Caravan or the Prior Restraint Choo-Choo. Maybe you’d be more comfortable in the Corpse Car. Are you disturbed now? How about now? Wait until I tell you my theory about Chinese food imposters in off-highway Delaware. Then you’ll be sorry you stopped my friend from telling me he was on fire.”

Alas, I only mumbled a small fraction of that, not wanting to be forcibly relocated or removed. Principle was on my side, but after a few weeks of touring, I’m too fatigued to fight. That’s my story, anyway, and I’m sticking with it.

It was an honor to be a bit player in that little comedy, just as it’s an honor to spend time with Steve, who’s one of the best friends I’ve made in this racket. We’re separated by two hours of geography and don’t get to spend much face time except in the context of these promo gigs; most of our interactions tend to come via instant messaging in the wee hours as we pick apart something I’ve written for one of his book projects. As one of the hardest workers I know, he’s a great influence to be around, always reminding me that I can and should think bigger and do better, and — given the serious health woes he constantly finds himself up against — with a greater sense of urgency. More than that, he’s a constant font of ideas, with a tremendous breadth of knowledge and a wacky sense of humor, the ability to muster an apt and funny quotation that will find its way into a conversation several times in a given encounter (such as the Abe Lincoln one in the title of this post).

Baseball Prospectus is an odd, decentralized beast, with no home office or physical roundtable where we sit around and flick paper footballs at each other while vetting ideas and theories. If it were, I might be a better and more prolific writer just by spending more time in Steve’s orbit. Note to self: make do with the example he sets.

Marching On

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Halfway through my mad, mad month here. Thus far the spring update coverage for Fantasy Baseball Index has gone well. Though I’m actually less of a fantasy junkie than my intended audience, it’s one of my favorite projects of the entire year. Not only do I immerse myself in the familiar tropes of spring — job battles, injury comebacks, hot shot rookies wowing the scouts (“Cueto is the ace of that staff. Right now…”) and humbled veterans appeasing the gods with their sacrifices in an effort to eke out one more season (Hideo Nomo and Orlando Hernandez both junking their distinctive deliveries) — but I come out of it with a great picture of the strengths, weaknesses and narratives of all 30 teams, ideal for the upcoming Hit Lists as well as all of the preseason chatter I get to do on my various radio gigs. It’s my own spring training, whipping me into shape.

The BP promo-rama has gone well thus far. Last Thursday we packed 40-something people into the 18th Street Barnes and Noble here in NYC as Steve Goldman, Joe Sheehan, Derek Jacques and I took questions for well over 90 minutes, somehow managing not to trip over each other’s sentences. Saturday’s Long Island event was a smaller crowd, but one full of familiar faces, area friends who couldn’t make our previous gig. Our sole misadventure involved getting from the train to the venue (memo to the surly, constantly muttering cabbie: Barnes and Noble and Borders aren’t interchangeable if your name is on the marquee). On the docket next is a three-day trip to DC and then Philadelphia for appearances on the 17th and 18th. We’ll have some media as well — an XM Radio hit and even a TV spot, details forthcoming. Here’s the plan:

• Monday, March 17th, 7:00 pm, Politics & Prose, 5015 Connecticut Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20008. With Clay Davenport and Steven Goldman

• Tuesday, March 18th, 7:00 pm, Barnes & Noble, Rittenhouse Square, 1805 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103. With Steven Goldman and Joe Sheehan

Meanwhile, here’s the transcript of last Friday’s BP chat. More recently, on Thursday I followed up the work I’ve been doing on the way ballparks have evolved over the past 20+ years. Last time around I showed that contrary to popular belief, fence distances have not actually decreased over that time, they’ve increased, particularly on the left side. Even if we exclude Coors Field, they’ve increased: 

      2007  Coors  2007'  90-07  90-07'
LF   332.0   347   331.4   2.4    1.9
LCF  376.6   390   376.2   1.2    0.7
CF   404.9   415   404.9  -0.1   -0.4
RCF  377.6   375   377.7   1.6    1.7
RF   329.1   350   328.6   0.2   -0.5

2007′ is the average fence distance sans Coors, 90-07′ the change from 1990 to 2007 excluding Coors. Anyway, this increase to the left side appears to have an impact on the distribution of home runs. In 1990, according to data from the Baseball-Reference.com Play Index, 54.4 percent of homers were hit to left field and left-center field. Last year it was 50.8 percent. Sparing you my first-ever graph for a BP article, an ugly one that puts this graphic designer to shame: 

Year  % LF+LCF
1990   56.6
1991   53.6
1992   54.7
1993   55.0
1994   53.2
1995   51.2
1996   50.7
1997   48.4
1998   50.0
1999   46.3
2000   50.8
2001   48.6
2002   48.6
2003   46.7
2004   47.0
2005   48.3
2006   50.1
2007   50.9

As noted in the article, there’s a bit of intermediate squirreliness with the data in a few years; not every year are the home run locations equally well-recorded, but the trend is apparent: fewer hoemrs are leaving the yard on the left side than before.

Beyond that, I took a look at the way the new ballparks may have had an impact on foul outs, and whether that impact results in more home runs. Short answer: foul territory is tough to get a handle on, and tremendously boring.

Foul territory area measurements aren’t recorded in any official manner (since publication of this article, one data source has come to light, but I’ll wait until my next installment to discuss that). Backstop distances don’t make a great proxy; while such distances appear to have decreased, there’s little correlation between them and foul out rates. Foul out rates actually appear to be a bit higher in the newer ballparks than the older ones — contrary to the views of my readers, whose lines of questioning sent me trudging methodically down this rather bleak path — but the problem with my finding is that the stadium changes I note are based on fence distances (which are well-documented) rather than foul territory adjustments (which aren’t).

It’s all just about as much fun as a field trip to the box factory, but I may have to take another swing at this if I get some better data. Still, if there’s one take-home from of my recent articles, it’s that it’s time to retire the notion that parks have gotten smaller over the past two decades, thus driving up home run rates. Except when it comes to meat in the seats, parks aren’t getting smaller.

You have my permission to swear at your TV the next time you’re told otherwise.

The Madness Begins

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Most sports fans associate March Madness with the NCAA college basketball tournament, but for me, the month is a crazy one due to the demands of my various writing positions as they pertain to spring training. For the third year in a row, I’m handling Fantasy Baseball Index‘s spring update coverage, delivering camp notes for all 30 teams plus updated depth charts, projections and dollar value rankings. The first batch, which is free to buyers of this year’s Index, went out on March 1; subsequent updates are available via a weekly subscription newsletter starting March 12. See here for details.

In conjunction with a long-weekend ski trip to Salt Lake City that had my lungs searing due to an onslaught of fresh powder, said update kept me from checking in here to note my two most recent Baseball Prospectus pieces. The first took a look at some recent work done by Tom Tango over at the Hardball Times, work which provided some support for what I found in my contribution to Will Carroll’s The Juice, namely that new ballparks and expansion can’t explain the rise in home runs that’s typified baseball’s so-called Steroid Era:

Now the estimable Tom Tango has added some support for that viewpoint, at least with regards to parks and expansion. Comparing matched sets of head-to-head plate appearances between hitters and pitchers in the same park against all other pitcher/hitter/park combinations, Tango found virtually identical changes in home run frequency (HR per contact PA) from 1987 to 1988, and from 1992 to 1994. That is, both the matching combo and the unmatched combo saw their homer frequencies change at comparable rates during the same periods, first from 1987 to 1988, when a one-year home run spike came and went, and then from 1992 to 1994, a span in which homer and scoring rates escalated to levels that would be common over the next decade.

Like me, Tango then turned his attention to the baseball itself as an engine for the rise in home runs, and to evidence found via the University of Massachusetts-Lowell’s series of tests back in 2000. But it appears he was a little off base when he tried to connect the ball’s compositional changes with some data pertaining to fly ball distances:

In Tango’s piece, he turns his attention to the ball as well, and to the UMass-Lowell testing in particular, focusing on testing director Dr. James Sherwood’s report of an 8.7-foot difference in flight distance between tested major league balls and minor league ones, which differ in the compositions of their cores. Extrapolating from data provided by Greg Rybarcyzk of HitTracker Online, Tango finds that, lo and behold, an 8.7-foot decrease would reduce home run rates to almost exactly where they were in the decade prior to the surge. A tidy little explanation for where those extra long balls might have come from, right?

Not quite. Tango implies that what took place may have been as simple as MLB and Rawlings, the ball’s current manufacturer, replacing balls made with a pure cork center (as specified for the minor league balls) with ones made with a compressed-cork center (a composite of cork and ground rubber, known as cushion cork or cushioned cork, which is part of MLB’s official specifications for the ball). In actuality, the cushioned cork center ball is decades old: according to information provided by the Spalding company (which manufactured the balls up through 1976), it was officially adopted in the major leagues way back in 1926. Oddly enough, the words “cushioned cork center” imprinted on MLB balls were removed in 1999, the year before the UMass report was published, although the report notes that rubber continues to be added to the pill, the innermost element of the ball…

Though rubber and cork are still in the pill, its exact composition appears to have changed over the past couple of decades. A team from Universal Medical Systems confirmed this last summer, when they compared computerized tomography (CT) scans of baseballs from different eras. Whether simply due to technological advances incorporated into the manufacturing process or a calculated desire to produce more home runs, the pill has increased in size and density over the years. And that’s without considering the aforementioned synthetic ring, or the increasingly synthetic composition of the yarn used to wind the ball, something a University of Rhode Island study identified back in 2000. While Sherwood and company continue to test balls on an annual basis for MLB and have even shown some teeth by criticizing the outdated specifications of the testing, they’ve remained conspicuously quiet as to the impact of the composition changes, to say nothing of MLB bulldozing its own published specifications.

Take a picture, kids — it’s not often a hack like me can legitimately find fault with the work of one of the field’s top researchers. Then again, Enrique Wilson did get a few hits off Pedro Martinez, and D.J Houlton has struck out Albert Pujols in their only two encounters. It happens.

On the subject of The Juice, elsewhere in the piece, I re-visited some data from my chapter regarding the evolution of ballpark fence distances during the 1990-2004 period. Updating through 2007 and combining the two leagues:

MLB   1990    2007  Change
LF   329.6   332.0   2.4
LCF  375.5   376.6   1.2
CF   404.9   404.9  -0.1
RCF  376.0   377.6   1.6
RF   329.1   329.3   0.2

With the exception of the teensiest of fractions for straightaway center field, fence distances have actually increased during the wave of building that’s put 21 clubs (including four expansion teams) into new ballparks. What has decreased during the time period in question — indeed, what may be confusing the issue — is smaller park capacities. In 1990, the average ballpark held 53,057 patrons; last year it was 48,219, a drop of about 10 percent. So yes, parks are smaller, but not in a way that carries any ramifications for home run levels.

Since this article’s publication, several readers have pointed out that while the fair territory of playing fields aren’t getting smaller, a decreasing amount of foul territory may be contributing to the rise in homers and scoring in general. That’s something I’ll be examining in my next take on this subject.

Whew. My second recent piece at BP is a pinch-hit job on the Texas Rangers’ Team Health Report, since Will Carroll’s commitments prevented him from taking a swing. I wasn’t able to bring quite the amount of background to the Rangers that I did to the Brewers’ THR, since I didn’t cover the former in the now-shipping Baseball Prospectus 2008, but I did discover that the Rangers led the majors in number of trips to the DL last year (23) and number of same which were pitchers (14). Those injuries didn’t cause the team’s 19-35 start in April and May; four missed Kevin Millwood starts didn’t hurt nearly as much as a 6.44 ERA from the rotation, but it sure didn’t help. Anyway, the Rangers’ THR is free if you’re inclined to check it out.

• • •

The other element of my personal March Madness is promotional appearances for BP08. My ski vacation cost me a trip to the Yogi Berra Museum, but I’ve still got a handful lined up for this month:

• Thursday, March 6th, 6:00 pm, Barnes & Noble, 105 Fifth Avenue (at 18th Street), New York, NY 10003. With Steven Goldman, Derek Jacques, and Joe Sheehan

• Saturday, March 8th, 2:00 pm, Borders Books, 1260 Old Country Road, Westbury, NY 11590. With Derek Jacques and Joe Sheehan

• Monday, March 17th, 7:00 pm, Politics & Prose, 5015 Connecticut Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20008. With Clay Davenport and Steven Goldman

• Tuesday, March 18th, 7:00 pm, Barnes & Noble, Rittenhouse Square, 1805 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103. With Steven Goldman and Joe Sheehan

If you’re nearby any of these, we hope you can make it out. Also, I’ll be hosting a chat at BP on Thursay the 6th at 1:00 PM for those of you burning to talk some baseball but unable to make it out.

Strange Brew

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I’m not an injury analyst, nor do I play one on TV. But five years of reading Will Carroll, a winter spent writing about the Brewers for Baseball Prospectus 2008, and a night at a Holiday Inn afforded me the chance to pinch-hit for my colleague as he stepped aside on the Brewers Team Health Report due to consulting interests (I’ll be doing the same for the Rangers in a couple of weeks).

The Brewers have become one of the best teams in the league in terms of managing injuries (they won the 2005 Dick Martin Award for best team health system), but as a small-market team, their margin for error is slim. While their rotation is eight deep at the outset of spring training, youngsters Yovani Gallardo, Manny Parra and Carlos Villanueva as well as nominal ace Ben Sheets all turn up as red lights under BP’s system, which uses an actuarial base to determine the likelihood of injury. A red player has at least a 45 percent chance at serving some time on the DL this year, though the system doesn’t distinguish between a torn rotator cuff and a blister. In other words, the Brewers will need some of that depth, a point underscored by Gallardo’s early-spring misadventures:

No sooner was I set to tie a bow around this THR and send it to our editors than the news broke that Gallardo would undergo arthroscopic surgery to repair a torn lateral meniscus in his left knee, something which will knock him out of action for a month. While this is a minor surgical procedure, the real danger is if his return compromises his mechanics, along the lines of Kerry Wood in 2006. Assuming Gallardo’s not rushed back and doesn’t encounter any mechanical hiccups, the injury may actually help by moderating his workload. Prior to the knee problem, Gallardo already turned up red; between Nashville and Milwaukee, he threw 188 combined innings last year, the highest total among 21-year-olds in organized baseball this side of Felix Hernandez. Intuitively, the Rule of 30 would suggest he’s got headroom to maintain or slightly increase his workload without excessive risk, but the hitch is that the Rule of 30 is based on major league innings, not a combination of major and minor league innings. Even using the Davenport Translations or a similar adjustment, those minor league frames just don’t bear the same predictable relationship to risk as the major league ones, all of which means that the risks increase for Gallardo beyond 140 big-league innings — a cap that suddenly doesn’t look too far out of line when you factor in some extended training and minor-league rehab.

Elsewhere, the team’s young infielders, particularly Rickie Weeks, carry some risks as well. But while it certainly looks as though the Brewers are carrying a lot of red lights — more than any other team in the NL Central — a peek at the THR spreadsheet available to BP subscribers shows them in relatively good shape among the NL Central contenders. The spreadsheet lists the projected starting lineup, five-deep rotation, closer and top setup man for each team. Taking yellow as a default equal to zero, green as +1 and red as -1, the Brewers net out at zero (as many greens as reds), while the Reds come in at +2, the Cardinals and Cubs both as -2 by this crude analysis. Still, the bottom line is that winning always takes some luck in the health department, and the Brewers will be no exception.

The Rocket Gets Smoked

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My piece today at Baseball Prospectus covering Wednesday’s Congressional hearing will have a familiar ring to anyone who’s been following along in this space. While there’s plenty to debate about the propriety of such a dog and pony show in Congress, not to mention the credibility of the Mitchell Report and of Brian McNamee, I focused on the hearings as a product of Roger Clemens’ public quest for vindication:

In any event, Wednesday’s hearings weren’t so much about the House Committee on Oversight and Governmental Reform’s interest in the culpability of the commissioner, the union, or the owners as they were about Roger Clemens’ decision to challenge the findings in the Mitchell Report in an attempt to clear his name. Without Clemens’ vehement campaign to discredit the work of the Mitchell Commission while denying the charges that he used steroids and human growth hormone, there would have been no hearing. But given his goal of vindicating himself, it’s difficult to conclude that Clemens did anything but fail miserably on a grand stage.

…Clemens came into the hearings needing to cast doubt on the Mitchell Report, on Pettitte, and on McNamee, and at best, he went a weak one-for-three. The proceedings raised credibility questions about his former trainer, demonstrating that McNamee basically fits the profile of someone desperate who gets backed into corners like these — allusions to a Florida rape case where the charges didn’t stick, a fake diploma and some shady misrepresentation, a seriously ill son, and a sudden desire to set things right for the youth of America so as to avoid jail time. His accounts appear to be in a constant state of evolution, which opens him up to facile charges of lying but which are, as Souder pointed out, characteristic of people forced into such deals. For certain, McNamee is no prize pig, something we’ve known for months; Clemens and his allies on the committee didn’t get very far beyond that, and in fact Clemens created new problems for himself while dealing with the body blow of the other major revelations.

Indeed, experts suggest the probability of a Department of Justice perjury investigation versus Clemens, though I’m skeptical there’s enough evidence to convict him. Meanwhile, there’s much less to suggest McNamee is in danger of being proven as lying about the Mitchell-related allegations and thus in violation of his proffer agreement, or that Clemens’ defamation suit against McNamee will gain any traction. Had Clemens simply copped to using HGH (and only HGH) as Pettitte did after the report came out, this sordid saga would likely be over. Clemens and his legal team look foolish for not recognizing that unless the Rocket was absolutely spotless — and here, the unchallenged information about Debbie Clemens’ HGH use looks especially bad — he was going to be hung out to dry.

Roger Clemens was very good at intimidating batters for over 20 years, but his brawn and bravado simply don’t work in a legal or pseudo-legal setting. He’s gotten far more than he bargained for in his quest for vindication. Instead of throwing smoke, he’s simply been smoked.

Today’s headlines have brought some new information into the mix. According to this New York Times piece, committee chair Henry Waxman now regrets that the hearing took place, and reveals that on the Republican side, only Tom Davis and Mark Souder even bothered to read the depositions. It’s telling that Souder came off as one of the few Congressman on either side to cross the partisan divide:

Souder was also one of the few committee members who refused Clemens’s request for a private meeting before the hearing. And it was Souder who stood out from his Republican colleagues by stating during the hearing that the depositions were “fairly devastating” against Clemens.

“I don’t think, quite frankly, that they anticipated quite the solid wall on the Republican side, the defense of Clemens,” Souder said Wednesday of the Democratic members of the panel. Speaking of Clemens, he added, “It wasn’t an accident that word got to me that he’s a Republican, or he said that President Bush called him.”

Meanwhile, much more information about McNamee’s debriefing by investigators from the Clemens camp is coming to light. If you thought this saga was over, think again.

I Forgot to Misremember to Forget About the Time You Injected My Wife

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Once again, it was a very surreal scene to see baseball hauled in front of Congress for the purposes of posturing about steroids. From where I sat in the Fox News Radio Studio, where host Dave Anthony and I were joined via phone by Jim Bouton, it was a pretty bad day for Roger Clemens. Andy Pettitte’s testimony stating that Clemens told him of his HGH use, the revelations that Clemens discussed HGH with Brian McNamee, who injected his wife, and Clemens’ potential tampering with a witness, the family nanny, who placed Clemens and family at the Jose Canseco house despite Clemens’ claims to have been playing golf — all of those things made the Rocket’s testimony look less than credible.

As for the Congressmen we saw parading in front of the cameras, if it’s true that we get the elected officials we deserve, then we as a nation must have befouled some giant ancient burial ground to bring forth the grandstanding morons of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Yesterday’s proceedings mostly followed a partisan line, with Democrats going after Clemens and Republicans attacking McNamee, the latter with a high degree of histrionics (Dan Burton, Darrell Issa, Virginia Foxx and my old nemesis Christopher Shays being the most egregious). Blech.

Clemens came into the hearings needing to cast doubt on the Mitchell Report, on Pettitte, and on McNamee, and at best, the proceedings raised credibility questions about the latter, demonstrating that he basically fits the profile of the kind of desperate schmuck who gets backed into corners like these (allusions to a Florida rape case, a fake diploma, a sick son, and a sudden desire to set things right for the youth of America so as to avoid jail time). But I don’t think Clemens got very far beyond that, and in fact created new problems for himself while dealing with the body blow of the Pettitte testimony and the revelations about his wife.

Furthermore, I don’t think one can rule out a Department of Justice perjury investigation versus Clemens, though I doubt there’s nearly enough to convict him. Meanwhile, there’s nothing to suggest McNamee is in danger of it being proven that he’s lying and thus in violation of his proffer agreement. If Clemens had just copped to HGH (and only HGH) a month ago like Pettitte did, this sordid saga would probably be over, and Clemens is a dolt for not recognizing that unless he was absolutely spotless he was gonna get hung out to dry. He’s gotten way more than he bargained for in his bid for vindication.

Anyway, I’m in the midst of a heavy load of radio appearances this morning. Catch me if you can:

WCHV Charlottesville
0710AM ET

WHAS Louisville, KY
0715AM ET

WIMA Lima, OH
0739AM ET

WBUV Mississippi
0810AM ET

WRVA Richmond, VA
0822AM ET

WHJJ Providence, RI
0835ET AM

WTVN, Columbus OH
0842AM ET

KOA Denver, CO
0905AM ET

WOAI San Antonio, TX
0911AM ET

WOC Davenport, IA
0920AM ET

KFBK Sacramento, CA
1038AM ET

Mr. Clemens Goes to Washington

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Those of you who drop by here for Yankees-related coverage — not that I’ve had much this winter — have probably noticed that I’ve had little to say on the Roger Clemens/Mitchell Report story in this forum. I haven’t been entirely silent on the issue, however. I was part of Fox News Radio’s in-studio anchored coverage of the Mitchell Report’s release back in December and did two sets of Fox affiliate hits straddling the report’s release. I did another series of affiliate hits regarding Clemens the day after his 60 Minutes appearance in January, and I’ve just found out I’ll be part of Fox’s in-studio coverage of Clemens’ Congressional testimony on Wednesday beginning at 10 AM Eastern. See here to find the affiliate in your area or to listen to streaming coverage over the Internet.

As for writing about the Rocket’s ‘roids-related revelations, I covered the pinstriped angle of the Mitchell Report for Bombers Broadside 2008, a forthcoming book on the Yankees from Maple Street Press. This is the second year in a row I’ve contributed to Bombers Broadside. In this edition’s 112 pages of glossy, full color goodness you’ll also find editor Cecilia Tan and such familiar names as Mike Carminati, Vince Genarro, Dan Graziano, Derek Jacques, Tara Krieger, Dan McCourt, Sweeney Murti and Pete Palmer. The book will be available on newsstands in the Tri-State area on March 4, and can be ordered directly from the publisher now.

As for what I actually think about whether Clemens used? As skeptical as I am of the Mitchell Report and of Brian McNamee’s character, I’ve had a hard time believing the Clemens camp’s protestations from the beginning. Furthermore, every weird turn this case has taken — from the Mike Wallace softball interview to the taped phone call to Andy Pettitte’s admission and testimony to the needles and gauze to the naming of Debbie Clemens to the Rocket’s glad-handing up on Capitol Hill to Rusty Hardin’s down-home machismo — has further eroded my confidence in Clemens’ version of events. The only major point scored in Clemens’ favor since the report’s release was the revelation that he was not in fact named in the Jason Grimsley affidavit, contrary to the Los Angeles Times‘ previous reports.

Which isn’t to say that I particularly care whether Clemens used or not. Though his late-career accomplishments certainly fit a pattern not unlike that of America’s previous Public Enemy #1, Barry Bonds, I’m more skeptical than ever about what the drugs he allegedly took may have done to his performance. In the context of the hundreds of other players who allegedly used PEDs prior to baseball’s beefed-up policy, his case isn’t especially remarkable; it’s the denials which have amplified the coverage and given the story legs. What’s certain is that the public persona of Clemens that has emerged through this saga is even less charming than the one on display throughout his career. And while I have to admit that I’m not really prone to sympathizing with right-wing, redneck bullies, I fear that the cover-up — if this flurry of activity is indeed covering up for Clemens’ misdeeds — is worse than the crime.

That said, I doubt there will be enough evidence to convict Clemens of perjury, and I find the whole notion that Congress should be involved in this dispute to be patently ridiculous. Henry Waxman, Tom Davis and their colleagues — particularly my old nemesis Christopher Shays, America’s expert at Not Knowing Anything About Anything — are a bipartisan bunch of camera-hogging assclowns who ought to be doing something more important, like begging their constituents for forgiveness for wasting their time and taxpayer dollars on such relatively trivial matters.

Anyway, as ever I’ll try to impart a modicum of reason into the reportage.

Further Adventures in Bobbleheadhunting

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Slowly but surely, I’m settling into my new apartment in Brooklyn, but I’ve yet to unpack many of my baseball books or knickknacks, including my collection of about 20 bobbleheads. Among those is a special one I’ve been meaning to write about for over six months.

In the summer of 2006, in anticipation of Tony Gwynn’s induction to the Hall of Fame the following year, an employee of the Everett AquaSox of the Northwest League contacted me about a plan to commemorate Gwynn’s career with a bobblehead doll. Gwynn never actually played for Everett, but that franchise is the transplanted successor to the Walla Walla Padres club my grandfather took my brother and me to see back in the late Seventies and early Eighties.

By the time I found him playing for Walla Walla in 1981, Gwynn was already a familiar face to me. I’d seen him play basketball for San Diego State University against my hometown University of Utah as part of the annual Western Athletic Conference schedule. Gwynn was the Aztecs’ starting point guard (!), and he was a good one, setting school records for assists that still stand and earning all-WAC honors twice. Though he was a late-round pick by the NBA’s Clippers, by that point it was clear that baseball was Gwynn’s ticket to professional stardom. The Padres chose him in the third round of the 1981 draft and sent him to Walla Walla to start his pro career. He wasn’t long for the Northwest League, but he was still there when my brother and I visited our grandparents. He hit .331/.406/.612 with 12 homers and 17 steals in just 42 games before being promoted to Double-A Amarillo, where he hit .462 in 90 at-bats. By the end of the next season, he was a San Diego Padre, and he was still a Padre 3,141 hits later when he retired in 2001.

Anyway, the AquaSox employee had discovered via Google that I’d written about seeing Gwynn, and wrote to ask whether I had any pictures that they could use to find out his uniform number and other details. Though lacking a picture of Gwynn, or any color photos at all, I dig up his number (#3) off an old roster that also lists future major leaguers John Kruk and Greg Booker. Via a bit of supersleuthing though a couple of old programs and a copy of Mark Okkkonen’s Baseball Uniforms of the 20th Century (a database of which is now online via the Hall of Fame) I discovered that the 1981 Walla Walla team wore the 1979 big club’s uniforms. Handing down uniforms to the low minors clubs was still common in those days, and the position of the numbers on the front of the uniform and the piping around “Padres” enabled me to deduce the uniform in question.

As for the finished result of the Gwynn doll, the browns are a bit more reddish than I would have liked to see, but for a run of 1,000 that was apparently hand-detailed, it’s not too shabby. Good enough for me to add the title of “Bobblehead Consultant” next to “Sausage Race contestant” on my long and distinguished resume, and good enough for the Gwynn doll to sit next to the Tommy John Bobble-Arm (if not that elusive Jason Tyner) on my mantle.

Now, when are they going to make the damn Luis Sojo bobblehead?

Mr. Fantasy Pants

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For the third year in a row, I spent countless hours in November and December writing player capsules for Fantasy Baseball Index 2008, a magazine-style fantasy guide that should be making its way to newsstands and Amazon right about now (unexpected perk: my first author credit on Amazon, along with a brief bio).

As with the 2007 edition, I covered the pitchers in both leagues as well as creating staff depth charts for all 30 teams. Nearly 300 hurlers made the cut for the writeups, with projections for another 150 or so included in the alphabetical index. Alas, some of my best (or perhaps funniest) work writing about guys on the fringes wound up on the cutting room floor, but it’s tough to complain when those guys have no fantasy relevance whatsoever. “Cow tipping” is the term my BP editor, Christina Kahrl, uses for writing about bad pitchers. It’s easy and entertaining, if a bit cruel, to take the time to savage such defenseless beasts.

Anyway, this year’s Index contains 829 player capsules with 2008 projections, position-by-position rankings, the FBI signature pullout “Cheat Sheets” with dollar values for 4×4 and 5×5 single and mixed leagues, depth charts, and a bunch of good features, including an experts poll, John Sickels on this year’s crop of impact rookies and a piece that I wrote on ERA estimators (similar to last year’s). The mag goes for $7, which also gets you an electronic update featuring revised projections, depth charts and Cheat Sheets as well as camp notes and analysis at the end of February. Also for sale via the Index store where you can order your copy directly is a separate series of electronic updates that happen on a weekly basis through March; for the third year in a row I’ll be doing those as well. Get ‘em while you can.