The Call-Up

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Oy vey, it’s been far too long since I updated this space, easily my longest stretch of silence here in over nine years of blogging. Needless to say, I’ve been extremely busy, delivering content for Baseball Prospectus and Pinstriped Bible through the postseason and into the Hot Stove season, diving into the Prospectus annual and the Fantasy Baseball Index winter work, and dishing out the shorter reactions to the news of the day via Twitter instead of this blog. That’s been a matter of self-preservation, because as I’ve re-learned in blogging at Pinstriped Bible, it’s nearly impossible for me to keep anything brief. Why say in one paragraph what you can say in five?

Though my tendency towards verbosity is not my strongest trait when it comes to self-preservation — ask anyone who’s ever had the burden of editing me, most notably colleagues Steven Goldman and Christina Kahrl — it’s an extension of my belief that if you’re going to find the time to read my work in whatever venue, you deserve something substantial, well-composed, and distinct from what’s being offered elsewhere. Anybody can react to the news of Adrian Gonzalez being traded to the Red Sox, but how many people who wrote about the story over the last 48 hours linked it to his career-long shadowing of Mark Teixiera while also parsing the various rumors of his contract extension?

I don’t wish to sound as though I’m patting myself on the back, but today, I do owe myself a pat on the back. Shortly after 10 AM, Christina Kahrl called me from the Winter Meetings in Orlando to relay the news that I’ve been voted into the Baseball Writers Association of America, the professional association of baseball journalists writing for newspapers, magazines and qualifying web sites — and the people whose votes on year-end awards and the Hall of Fame I’ve spent a great deal of time critiquing and occasionally ridiculing over the years.

Now I’m one of them — one of somewhere between 700 and 800 in the entire country — which means that I’ll have credentialed access to major league press boxes and clubhouses just like the beat writers and columnists of the New York Times and ESPN and so forth. I’ll be able to vote for a postseason award, and if I reach 10 years doing this, I’ll be able to vote on the Hall of Fame, provided I haven’t already gone joyriding up to Cooperstown with Jonah Keri to burn it to the ground over the exclusion of Tim Raines — who will still be eligible at that point, so long as he doesn’t slip below the five percent mark in any vote between now and then.

But I digress. Fucking hell, I always digress…

In getting to this stage of my career, I’m standing on the shoulders of giants… giants, at least, within this little niche of web-based baseball analysis. Because for so long, our sliver of the industry has been outside the gates of the BBWAA. It wasn’t until 2007 — three short years ago — that the organization voted to open its membership to web-based writers at all, and even that first wave consisted mainly of ESPN, Fox Sports, Sports Illustrated and Yahoo writers who had lost their memberships by moving from print publications to web ones, among them Peter Gammons, Ken Rosenthal, Buster Olney, Jayson Stark, John Heyman, Tom Verducci — a Murderer’s Row of industry veterans.

Left outside in the cold at that point were ESPN’s Rob Neyer and Keith Law, the only two of the 18 web-based writers whose applications which were turned down. Neyer’s work at ESPN was one of the main drivers of just about every early baseball blog that sprung up, helping to bring the teachings of Bill James (for whom he was an assistant) to a new audience. Law, a longtime writer at Baseball Prospectus, was a pioneer in making the leap into a major league front office (that of the Blue Jays) before departing four years later to take a job at ESPN. Fortunately, both gained entry the next year (2008), as did the first two of my BP colleagues, Christina Karhl and Will Carroll. With arrivals and departures, BP’s BBWAA contingent now includes Karhl, managing editor John Perrotto, Brad Doolittle, fellow 2010 entrant David Laurila and myself. I’ve known that my application was in process for almost exactly a year, but only a few people closest to me were aware of it as well.

The new kids on the block have found controversy, particularly when it came to the 2009 NL Cy Young vote, when both Carroll and Law caught flack in some quarters for leaving the Cardinals’ Chris Carpenter off their ballots in favor of Dan Haren and Javier Vazquez, respectively. Both made choices informed by non-mainstream statistics, breaking some amount of ground by tossing around acronyms like VORP, WARP, FIP and SNWP as voting members of the BBWAA rather than interested bystanders, and both defended their votes rationally against an angry mob while withstanding more scrutiny than most mainstream writers get — or at least used to get — over their picks. The controversy even resulted in a rule change; the so-called Keith Law Rule now provides for five spaces on the Cy Young ballot instead of three. (I’m told Keith isn’t crazy about being singled out in such a manner, but it only points to the disproportionate level of scrutiny to which he and the other members of this small minority have been subject.)

In any event, sometime late next season I’ll find out what award I get to vote for next year. The more immediate result is that I will have consistent access to major league press boxes and clubhouses, and will thus find myself at Yankee Stadium, CitiField (and perhaps other venues) more often as a result. After years of being denied credentials via various circumstances — most particularly the Mets’ spectacular folds in 2007 and 2008, those after BP had painstakingly arranged postseason credentials for me — I finally got a taste of access last year. It’s a different world than being at a ballgame as a fan; there’s no cheering in the press box, as Jerome Holtzman’s book title reminds, and on a couple of occasions I caught myself having to stifle the urge to whoop it up. On the other hand, I had an extremely hard time getting myself to ask questions in press conferences and pre/postgame clubhouse visits, stifling the urge to nitpick Joe Girardi’s bullpen usage down the stretch or to secure a post-game quote from Alex Rodriguez when I was standing three feet from him as he asked, “Anyone else have a question?” I was a green rookie then, up for my cup of coffee. While I’m still a rookie, I’ve tasted the Show now, and have a better idea of what to expect.

In reaching this point, I have so many people to thank that I’m in danger of leaving some of them off. Most notably I owe a huge debt of gratitude to BP colleagues past and present, particularly Christina, Will, Kevin Goldstein, John Perrotto and Joe Sheehan. Huge thank yous to BP/PB colleague Steven Goldman and Bronx Banter’s Alex Belth as well, two fantastic pals inside the baseball writing racket who have encouraged me to keep pushing down this path; Nick Stone and Issa Clubb, two incredible friends who’ve put up with my daily yammerings on baseball and the rest of my life since years before this blog was invented; my family and other loved ones too numerous to name; and those to be named later.

And thank you, dear readers. My most heartfelt thanks and gratitude for nearly 10 years of checking in here, at Baseball Prospectus and at Pinstriped Bible, whether it’s on a daily basis hoping that I’ve got something new to say or just from time to time to follow my progress around the web and around the world. Without your feedback and encouragement, I’d have never gotten very far down this path, never left the relative security of my job as a full-time graphic designer to test the waters with my writing. In the few hours since breaking the news over Twitter and Facebook, I’ve been reminded by so many of you that you’re out there and that you care, and I’m incredibly touched by your well-wishes. Rest assured that so long as I am a member of the BBWAA, I will remember the humble roots from which that privilege sprouted, and the examples of those who blazed this unlikely trail.

Friday’s Child: Pre-ALCS Edition

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Whew, it’s been a busy couple of weeks for yours truly covering the Yankees and their march into the postseason at both Baseball Prospectus and Pinstriped Bible. Since I last touched base here, I wrote 5,000-word Playoff Prospectus previews for both the Division Series against the Twins and the League Championship Series with the Yankees. I also covered all three of the Yankees’ ALDS games for BP, and delivered the year-end Hit List as well as a tome on A.J. Burnett’s penchant for disaster starts (and a more Yankee-flavored angle here).

Over at PB, I wrote about how the Twins were the more favorable matchup for the Yankees in the ALDS, covered a few pre-series roster and rotation decisions, delved into the possibility of the Yankees carrying second lefty Royce Ring, noted three keys to the ALDS, penned a Carl Pavan0-inspired retrospective of ex-Yankee hurlers facing the Yanks in postseason, took a look at how the Yanks were winning the battle of the lefties in the ALDS, figured the Rays as the more favorable matchup for the Yankees in the ALCS, provided three keys to the ALCS, and spun “A Two-Step Tale of Texas Turnaround,” about how pitching and defense turned the Rangers into contenders. Somewhere along the way, I also took time out to give a hearty plug to friend Alex Belth’s book, Lasting Yankee Stadium Memories,  culled from the Bronx Banter series he curated in late 2008 and featuring yours truly as well as numerous other writers of much bigger name.

With the Twins series now ancient history, I’ll stick to the matchup with the Rangers for a few excerpts. From the PB keys:

1. The Rangers’ lineup is well-constructed to battle the Yankees.
In CC Sabathia and Andy Pettitte, the Yankees could throw as many as four high-quality left-handed starters at the Rangers. Luckily for Texas manager Ron Washington, he’s got no shortage of quality right-handed bats to counter that. In fact thanks to a multi-position platoon involving the outfield corners, the Rangers can field a lineup with just two lefties, Josh Hamilton, who hits third, and first baseman Mitch Moreland, who will hit eighth or ninth. Lefty outfielder David Murphy is most likely to start in left field versus righties, with Nelson Cruz in right field, but against southpaws, the much-maligned ex-Met Jeff Francoeur starts in right, with Cruz sliding over to left. Frenchy (who incidentally got off a nice dig at the Mets today: “I always wanted to know what it was like to play meaningful baseball in New York and I’m going to have the opportunity.”) is absolutely clueless against righties (.256/.296/.403 career), but he’s quite playable against lefties (.299/.343/.481 career), something neither Braves manager Bobby Cox nor Mets manager Jerry Manuel ever bothered to figure out…

Revising the back-of-the-envelope calculations I ran the other day, the Rangers’ lineup comes out with a composite .312/.377/.460 line and a 123 OPS+ against lefties based upon their 2010 splits, compared to a .287/.348/.456 line and a 113 OPS+ against righties. By comparison, the Yankees are basically even against both hands (.274/.363/.455 with a 117 OPS+ versus lefties, .274/.357/.465 with a 118 OPS+ versus righties). For the Rangers, leadoff hitter Elvis Andrus showed no platoon advantage in 2010, but every one of the Rangers’ two through eight hitters except for Hamilton are stronger against lefties, with batting averages above .300 and OBPs above .360.

On the Yankees’ rotation, from the BP preview:

The Yankees had planned to return with Sabathia on three days’ rest for Game Four of the Division Series, but here they’ve decided to go with a four-man rotation rather than asking the big man to work on short rest twice in a row for Games Four and Seven. That means a start for Burnett, whose 2010 season has seemingly been one disasterpiece after another. The good news is that he fared relatively well against the Rangers, throwing seven shutout innings against their early-season lineup (including Borbon, Chris Davis and Taylor Teagarden), on April 17, tossing another seven solid frames against a more representative lineup in a losing cause on August 10 (Murphy took him deep), and throwing four innings and allowing two runs before a 58-minute rain delay forced him from the game on September 11. Burnett was pummeled fairly equally by hitters from both sides of the plate (.286/.376/.444 versus lefties, .285/.355/.473 versus righties). For some reason, he’s had a touch more trouble against same-handed hitters over the last few years than opposite-handed ones; call us when you figure out why, because we’re as baffled as anyone.

Amid another typically strong season (first in the AL in wins at 21, sixth in strikeouts at 197, seventh in ERA and SNWP), Sabathia showed a rather atypical reverse platoon split (.232/.295/.354 vs righties, .261/.318/.360 vs. lefties) due to a BABIP against lefties that shot up more than 100 points (to .361) beyond his 2009 rate. Pettitte’s platoon splits were more extreme than usual, likely due to the smaller sample size; he smothered lefties with a zeal rarely shown before (.186/.226/.256) while getting a bit knocked around by righties (.283/.346/.434). He still hasn’t gone beyond 88 pitches since July 8, but he looked plenty strong against the Twins while effectively mixing in his four-seamer, two-seamer, cutter and curveball. Despite his long history of Game Two successes, he’s being pushed back to start Game Three this time around, which lines him up for a potential Game Seven. That gives Hughes a bit more room to work, ballpark-wise, though despite concerns about his homer-prone nature in the Bronx, he rarely allowed a hard-hit ball against the Twins, spotting his fastball effectively while backing off his initial plans to use his changeup and cutter. He was much more homer-prone against lefties than righties (one for every 23 PA, compared to one for every 43), particularly from late June onward, when he began relying more on his curveball than the cutter, though his overall platoon differential wasn’t all that wide (.253/.292/381 vs. righties, .235/.311/.417 vs. lefties).

From the Two-Step piece:

The turnaround began last year, when the influence of team president and Hall of Fame hurler Nolan Ryan began to take hold. The Rangers took a page from the 2008 Rays’ blueprint and made a significant commitment to upgrading their defense by promoting 20-year-old shortstop Elvis Andrus directly from Double-A. The team’s Defensive Efficiency, their rate of converting balls in play into outs, rose from .670 (last in the league) to .699 (second), a 29-point jump that took a backseat only to similar plans by the Mariners (who improved by 30 points) and Reds (32 points) and ranked among the top 10 year-to-year turnarounds ever.

This was particularly important because the 2008 and 2009 Ranger pitching staffs put tons of balls in play, as they ranked 13th and 12th in the league in strikeout rate, respectively. Even with just a total of 31 starts from two pitchers (swingman Dustin Nippert and rookie Derek Holland) with K rates above the league average (6.9), the Rangers jumped from 79 wins to 87, and they remained in contention until mid-September. The improved defense helped Kevin Millwood (5.6 K/9) post his first ERA under 5.00 in three years, turned Scott Feldman (5.4 K/9) into a 17-game winner, and gave Tommy Hunter (5.1 K/9) a foothold in the rotation for the first time. Of course, it didn’t hurt that they poached one of the most respected pitching coaches in the game, Mike Maddux, from the Brewers to oversee their staff.

Pitchers who don’t miss many bats aren’t great bets for long-term success, while those who do more often are; one need look no further than all-time strikeout king Ryan, who pitched until he was 46 and was still striking out a hitter per inning until his injury-abbreviated final season. For that reason, the Rangers still sought to upgrade their rotation. They traded Millwood to the Orioles and decided to convert C.J. Wilson, their top lefty reliever and sometime closer (2.81 ERA, 10.3 K/9 and 14 saves in 2009), into a starter. They took a free-agent flier on oft-injured by occasionally electrifying Rich Harden, and signed one Colby Lewis to a two-year, $5 million deal.

…The Harden move was a flop; the 28-year-old righty was rocked for a 5.58 ERA while making just 18 starts in an injury-laden season. But the Wilson and Lewis gambits paid off big-time. The two power arms ranked among the league’s top 25 in SNLVAR while tossing more than 200 innings, with the former leading the staff in both (4.7 SNLVAR, 204 innings) while putting up a 3.35 ERA, tops in the rotation. Though Wilson led the league in walks (93, or 4.1 per nine), he whiffed 170 (7.5 per nine), and generated plenty of ground balls while yielding just 10 homers (0.44 per nine, second in the league). Lewis notched 196 strikeouts (8.8 per nine, fifth in the league) while walking just 65 in 201 innings (a K/BB ratio of 3.0) en route to a 3.72 ERA.

Amid those excerpted pieces, I also wrote bits for both BP and PB about the Rangers’ chances of winning the series being damaged by the fact that they won’t get to pitch ace Cliff Lee until Game Three and not again until a potential Game Seven because unlike the Yankees’ big man, Sabathia, Lee won’t pitch on short rest. Never has before, wasn’t asked to by the Rangers, and didn’t volunteer, either. Some people have taken stabs at explaining, with or without fancy probability-based math, why this is or isn’t a big deal to the Rangers’ overall chances of winning the series, though for my money nobody has answered the question definitively.

I think it matters, based upon the following logic:

  1. The Rangers’ best chance of winning the series is in getting two starts out of their best pitcher, Cliff Lee.
  2. As the rotation lines up, their unwillingness to place Lee in the position of pitching on three days’ rest — which could bring him back for Games Two and Six if he does it once, or Two and Five if he does it twice, with the slight possibility of being available out of the bullpen for Game Seven — means they’ll get just one start from Lee in the first six games.
  3. In the Wild Card era (1995 onward), only about one in four seven-game series have gone to seven games. Wild Card era ALCS have averaged 5.8 games in length, with six ending before six games, and only four going the distance. Include the NLCS and the average is 5.73, with 12 ending before six games and only eight going the distance. Include the World Series during that timespan as well and the average drops to 5.6, with 20 of the 45 ending before six games and only 11 going the distance, 24 percent.

Independent of anything involving the actual abilities of the two teams, the odds strongly favor something less than a seven-game series, and I have to think that works in the Yankees’ favor. They’ll have their hands full with the Rangers — there’s a reason I tabbed the Twins and Rays as the more favorable matchups, though at Pinstriped Bible I was distinctly in the minority on the ALDS front — but I think they’ll prevail.

Changin’ It Up

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I’m off to a running start this week, with new stuff up at Baseball Prospectus and Pinstriped Bible today. The BP piece assembles a bunch of take-home points from the three games I spent at Yankee Stadium over the past week, watching the Yanks duke it out with the Rays and Red Sox. I’ve got notes about the Yankees’ chances at making the playoffs (99.93 percent) and winning the division title (22 percent), the rotation struggles of all three teams, the fine work of Phil Hughes on Sunday night, and the odd season arcs of David Ortiz and Alex Rodriguez. But the single most important point I tried to make comes from a piece I did a year ago:

While there are reasons to be concerned about the specific circumstances of any playoff-bound team’s late-season struggles—particularly with regards to injury availability—there’s virtually no correlation between a team’s September performance and their playoff fate.

Bless Joe Sheehan for reminding me that I’d written this piece a year ago. With the help of Eric Seidman, I examined the September/October performances of all the playoff teams in the wild card era, 112 in all. For each team, we recorded their record over the final seven, 14, and 21 games, as well for all of September and whatever fragment of October remained. The result was, as I termed it then, “a whole lot of nothing.” None of the correlations between September interval performance and first-round series outcomes even reached .05 in either direction, and six of the eight were actually negative.

Looking beyond the first round, the correlations between those September performances and series won or “playoff success points” (doubling the value of the LCS and quadrupling the value of the World Series such that the same number of points were awarded each round) only got as high as .137, and they were negative at that. If anything, there’s an ever-so slight inverse relationship between success in the final weeks and in the postseason, perhaps because some playoff-bound teams rest their regulars more often, or simply regress to the mean after a summer of beating up on opponents.

Furthermore, I went back and looked at performance over four-week intervals during the regular season, using not only actual record but also our suite of ordered Pythagenpat records from our Adjusted Standings page and found only minimal correlations between those performances and those of the next “month.” Using actual or projected records, the correlation between the four-week splits and the following month were always smaller than if we’d used year-to-date records to project the following month’s performance; roughly speaking, the correlations were around .2 and .3, respectively.

The bottom line is that short-term performance intervals don’t tell you anything reliably useful from a predictive standpoint. As the great Earl Weaver liked to say, momentum is the next day’s starting pitcher.

Yankees manager Joe Girardi reiterated Weaver’s point at Saturday’s postgame press conference:

“We haven’t gotten a whole lot of distance out of our starters,” he said after Saturday’s game. “One [Burnett’s outing against Tampa Bay last Wednesday] was due to a rain delay, and there’s not a whole lot that you can do about that. And we’ve gotten behind in games, which always changes the complexion of the game… We’ve always talked about how momentum starts with your starting pitching. And sometimes when one facet of the team is struggling, the other guys have to pick ‘em up. Sometimes the offense is struggling and they’ll shut the other team down, and vice versa… The bullpen, you use one way if you have a lead and you get distance from the starter. And when you don’t, you use it a different way.”

As for Hughes, he initially wasn’t supposed to start Sunday night’s game, but Girardi changed his mind. The kid rewarded that faith. From PB:

As I joked first on Twitter and then in this morning’s column at Baseball Prospectus, I was initially willing to fake my own death to avoid watching the potentially plodding Sunday night matchup between Dustin Moseley and Daisuke Matsuzaka. Luckily, Joe Girardi decided the best way to shake the Yankees out of their 6-13 September doldrums and their second four-game losing streak in a fortnight was by starting Phil Hughes instead of Moseley. Matched against a suddenly stellar Matsuzaka, who hadn’t delivered a quality start since August 5, the kid gave the Yankees his best outing in more than a month.

…He’s now delivered two quality starts in a row for the first time since mid-August, and he owes it in large part to the fact that he’s finally integrating the changeup which helped him win the fifth-starter job back in the spring — but which may as well have spent the summer in the Federal Witness Protection Program.

According to the PITCHf/x data at TexasLeaguers.com, Hughes threw his changeup just 3.8 percent of the time against lefties (and just once to righties) from the beginning of the season through his September 5 start. In his three starts and one relief appearance since then, he’s thrown it 12.1 percent of the time against lefties (and not at all against righties). He’s throwing the pitch early in the count — 80 percent of the changeups come on 0-1, 1-0 or 1-1 counts according to the data at Joe Lefkowitz’s PITCHf/x Tool — and while those batters are taking the pitch about three-quarters of the time, using it to change speeds has borne positive results on his overall outcomes against lefties:

vs. LHB       PA  HR  UIBB%   K%     AVG/OBP/SLG   BABIP
Through 9/5  332  14   9.6   20.9  .249/.320/.431  .278
Since         54   3  13.0   14.3  .149/.259/.340  .111
vs. RHB       PA  HR  UIBB%   K%     AVG/OBP/SLG   BABIP
Through 9/5  315   8   5.1   18.7  .255/.293/.391  .294
Since         26   0   7.8   30.8  .250/.308/.292  .375

As noted in the writeup, those are small enough sample sizes that they may be a fluke, particularly given how Hughes’ recent success is founded in an unsustainably low BABIP while his strikeout and walk rates move in the wrong direction. If so, it’s been a timely fluke, as the Rays and Red Sox have stacked their lineups with lefties, and as Hughes has generated more swings and misses with his fastball and cutter against righties.

As for Ortiz, while he’s cut his strikeout rate since I buried him back in May, and while his overall numbers are his best since 2007, his performance against lefties has collapsed (.217/.270/.320, 29.1 K%), leading to a failure to deliver in high-leverage situations (.196/.304/.454). The Sox hold a $12.5 million option for 2011 on an aging, corpulent one-way slugger whose declining abilities may be masked by the sentimentality Red Sox Nation feels towards him — a combustible combination which could lead to a bad decision on Boston’s part. Ortiz has already begun agitating for an extension; how about a three-year deal?

As for A-Rod, I noted prior to Saturday’s game that since returning from the disabled list, he was already having his best month of the season since May. Since then he’s delivered two more homers, including the pivotal two-run shot on Sunday night which got them on the board against Matsuzaka and briefly gave them the lead. He’s hitting .333/.415/.710 with eight homers in September, more than any other month despite his abbreviated time in the lineup. The 2010 Yankees needed him as much as they ever have on Sunday night, and he came up big.

Friday’s Child: Losing it?

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Went to two Yankees-Rays games this week and they couldn’t have felt more different, nor could my writeups pertaining to them. On Monday, I sat in the pressbox as the team welcomed Joe Torre and Don Mattingly back to Yankee Stadium for the first time since their unseemly departures and unveiled their massive, ostentatious monument to the late George Steinbrenner. While Ivan Nova kept the Rays at bay, the Yankees chipped away at Matt Garza and broke the game open thanks to a pair of Curtis Granderson home runs after the Yankees temporarily blew a four-run lead. On Thursday night, the Yanks coughed up a 3-1 lead in the sixth inning amid an unbelievable seven-run meltdown behind CC Sabathia and Joba Chamberlain, and in doing so, emerged with merely a split of their four-game series.

At the outset of the series, here’s what I wrote:

So in the grand scheme of things, it would be tough to pretend that a September Yanks-Rays series actually mattered much; barring either team repeating the 2000 Yankees’ stretch-drive imitation of the 1899 Cleveland Spiders, both teams will reach the postseason, and both those games and this week’s four-game series in the Bronx represent nothing more than jockeying for position. Players and managers from both clubs have dutifully said otherwise, that their goal is the division title and home-field advantage through the first two rounds of the playoffs rather than the backdoor invitation via the wild card, but watching the way Yankees manager Joe Girardi ran his bullpen in the opener of last week’s series—a taut pitchers’ duel between David Price and CC Sabathia which remained scoreless through the first 10 innings — reveals otherwise.

While the Yanks had come in off a rough stretch of having been swept in three grueling games in the Texas heat, Girardi was clearly more concerned with making sure his pitchers were rested. After using Kerry Wood and Boone Logan — two pitchers who’ve been the key to the Yankees bullpen’s second-half resurgence — following Sabathia’s eight stellar innings, Girardi passed up the opportunity to use Joba Chamberlain, David Robertson, and Mariano Rivera, all with at least a day’s rest under their belts, in a tie ballgame on the road. Instead he went with mop-up men Chad Gaudin and Sergio Mitre; the latter yielded a game-ending home run to Reid Brignac, the first hitter he faced. “Maybe you have to lose the battle to win the war,” lamented pitching coach Dave Eilland of the A-listers’ unavailability. Meanwhile, the Yankees’ lineup for that series was without Brett Gardner and Nick Swisher, both of whom received cortisone shots, where they might have played under more meaningful circumstances or with 25-man rosters instead of larger ones padded by September call-ups.

Given the persistence of home-field advantage throughout the regular season — home teams win at about a 54 percent clip — you’d think it would matter more in the postseason, particularly with the AL’s four likely invitees holding stellar records at home; the Yankees and Twins both shared 49-25 records at home through Sunday, while the Rangers were 48-26 and the Rays 46-29. In fact, the tale of the tape is a mixed bag. According to Joe Sheehan, since 1998, when Major League Baseball began seeding playoff teams instead of using a pre-set rotation, teams with the home field advantage have won 45 of 84 series (a .536 winning percentage). That figure suggests an even larger HFA, since the math on a four percent HFA comes out to a 51.3 percent chance of the home team winning a Game Seven. On the other hand, home teams are just 9-10 since 1998 in the small sample of decisive Games Five and Seven. More damningly, as many wild-card winners — who don’t have home-field advantage in either of the first two rounds — have gone on to reach the World Series as have No. 1 one seeds in that time span, with eight apiece.

Re-reading the piece, I’m pretty sure I undersold the value of winning the division; more importantly, so have the Yankees. Because their road is considerably harder now, as I wrote today at Pinstriped Bible:

Had [Sabathia] and the bullpen been able to convert that into a win, they’d have taken this week’s series with the Rays 3-1 and secured a split of the season series at nine games apiece. More importantly, they would have held a 2.5-game lead in the division with nine games left to play. A 5-4 record the rest of the way would have required the Rays to go 8-2 to achieve a tie, though that still would have given the latter the division title based upon a better intra-division record.

…[W]hile the Yankees still hold a half-game lead over the Rays in the AL East, they’ve got the much tougher schedule of the two teams the rest of the way… Ignoring home-field advantage for a moment, the weighted winning percentage of the Yankees’ remaining opponents is .538, while that of the Rays is .401 — the equivalent of a 22-game difference between the two slates over the course of a 162-game season, or roughly the gap between the Red Sox and the Royals.

Baseball Prospectus’ Playoff Odds, which factor home field advantage, scoring environment, run components and quality of opposition into a Monte Carlo simulation of the remainder of the season — BP colleague Tommy Bennett explained the complicated-sounding system very well a few weeks back — show the Yankees with a 38.4 percent chance of winning the division and the Rays with a 61.6 percent chance. A mere two days ago, those numbers stood 74.5 to 25.5 in New York’s favor.

As I go on to point out, the Twins have now pushed their way into the best-record picture; they’re a half-game ahead of the Yankees at the moment, and a full game ahead of the Rays, plus they’ve got an easier schedule the rest of the way as well (.479 via the Tigers, Royals and Blue Jays). The bottom line is that the odds suggest the Yanks are likely not to have home field advantage in any round of the playoffs, and will need help from others in order to have it for one round. They’re going to have to step up considerably if they want to repeat as champions.

How good are the Twins? Good enough to break the Yanks’ and Rays’ 1-2 monopoly atop the AL Hit List, which has been in place since the April 23 edition, though the two teams have swapped places a few times. Here’s how the top three shake out this week:

[#1 Yankees] Grand, and Not So Grand: Curtis Granderson’s two homers lead the Yanks past the Rays on the night they unveil a massive monument to the late George Steinbrenner and play host to prodigal sons Joe Torre and Don Mattingly. Granderson is hitting .261/.358/.543 with 11 homers since retooling his swing with hitting coach Kevin Long in mid-August, and Derek Jeter is riding a 12-game hitting streak (.327/.410/.404) thanks to Long’s help as well. Alas, if you know how to read odds, you could see the Yanks are unable to do more than secure a split of the series with the Rays, and in losing the season series, their odds of winning the division plummet from 74 percent to 38 percent in two days.

[#2 Twins] Don’t Call Them Twinkies: After battling all the way to a 163rd game in each of the past two seasons, the Twins rally to surmount a three-run deficit and become the first team to clinch their division, winning their sixth AL Central title in nine years. They’re 16-4 this month, and now a half-game ahead of the Yankees for the league’s best record. Danny Valencia bops three homers in a four-game span; the 19th-round 2006 pick, who was once seen merely as an organizational player is hitting .332/.374/.463, and the team is 48-23 (.676) with him in the lineup.

[#3 Rays] Back-End Blues? After losing the first two games of their series in the Bronx with the Yankees, the Rays move into the driver’s seat by taking the next two; although they’re a half-game back in the AL East, they’ve now got 62 percent chance of taking the division thanks to a much easier schedule the rest of the way. Still, there’s plenty of cause for concern given the rotation’s recent performance, as Jeff Niemann, James Shields, and Matt Garza have combined for an 8.36 ERA in 11 starts this month while averaging just 4.7 innings per start. Niemann has been particularly brutal since returning from his DL stint, with a 14.43 ERA, 7.0 BB/9, and 2.8 HR/9 over five starts while averaging less than four innings.

The NL Hit List was a lighter-hearted affair, with some of the best bits in the middle:

[#7 Cardinals] Jack the Ripper: Former Cardinals slugger Jack Clark brands the 2010 squad “quitters” with “poopy in their pants,” (yes, really) while Tony LaRussa alludes to Clark’s own checkered history. The Cards are now 13-25 since their sweep of the Reds, and while the lineup’s big guns haven’t stopped firing during that span (Albert Pujols, .294/.395/.625, Matt Holliday .331/.396/.556, Colby Rasmus .302/.425/.523), they’ve reaped what they have sown with a regressing Jon Jay (.220/.288/.283), a Replacement Level Killer-worthy Brendan Ryan (.212/.248/.263) and the half-eaten remains of Pedro Feliz (.208/.227/.255), to say nothing of the clearly trouser-loading Felipe Lopez (.132/.231/.191), who’s released for repeated tardiness.

[#10 Mets] Flushing Follies, Part 647: As the Mets continue traveling their road to nowhere in ignominious fashion (seriously, did they play this week?), Jerry Manuel takes issue with Joe Torre’s tepid expression of interest in managing the Mets. Without asking the obvious question (“Why in the #$%@ would a septuagenarian future Hall of Fame manager leave one disasterpiece to step into an even bigger one such as this?”), Manuel questions Torre’s integrity while conveniently forgetting his own scruples-free pursuit of predecessor Willie Randolph’s job. Sadly, the laughingstock Manuel and his superior Omar Minaya’s days are likely numbered in Queens, which could leave the Hit List with a dearth of comic material. Then again, if they hire Wally Backman to replace Manuel, we’ll be just fine.

There’s one more BP-related link for the week, but I’ll save that for the next post.

Clearing the Bases: Hump Day Edition

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Off to a hot start this week, with two pieces at Pinstriped Bible and two more at Baseball Prospectus along with a chat:

• It’s been a grim stretch for the Yankees in losing seven of eight and temporarily surrendering first place, but Curtis Granderson’s resurgence has been something to write home about:

It was just over a month ago that he went to hitting coach Kevin Long for help retooling his swing, specifically by eliminating some of its extraneous movement. While his overall numbers haven’t taken a huge jump since then — particularly as he’s fallen into a 2-for-19 mini-slump over the past week — there’s reason to be optimistic that the change has taken hold. Check out the splits since he reemerged in the Kansas City series:

Period    PA    AVG/OBP/SLG   UIBB%   SO%  BABIP  BACON
Before   336  .239/.306/.415   7.7   22.0  .283   .317
Since    114  .263/.360/.515  12.2   17.5  .264   .329

First things first: NuCurtis is making more contact than before, as noted by the 20 percent drop in his strikeout rate. When he makes contact, he’s actually hitting for a higher average (BACON isn’t just a tasty breakfast food, it’s Batting Average on CONtact: H / (AB-SO)). Granderson’s not exactly getting lucky when he makes contact; his Batting Average on Balls in Play has dropped 19 points (it’s 51 points below his career rate!), but the balls are flying out of the park. His home run rate has doubled from 3.0 percent of plate appearances to 6.1 percent, and his isolated power (SLG – AVG) has increased from .176 to .252. Along with all of that, his unintentional walk rate has risen nearly 60 percent.

The result is a much more productive hitter. Granderson’s seven homers are tied with Marcus Thames for the team high since August 12. Only Thames (.606) and Jorge Posada (.564) have higher slugging percentages in that span, albeit in about 20 percent less playing time; only Robinson Cano has as many total bases (51). As if that weren’t impressive enough, Grandy’s hitting .342/.419/.579 with two homers and five walks in 43 plate appearances against lefties, compared to an anemic .206/.243/.275 with one homer and five walks in 110 PA against them before.

• I can practically recite the cover copy from the dog-eared paperback my grandfather sent me when I was nine years old:

In 1963, Jim Bouton won 21 games for the Yankees. In 1964 he won 18 games for them, and two more in the World Series. Then Bouton lost his fast ball, and came to the gut-twisting decision to try to make it with the knuckleball–the most erratic and difficult pitch there is. Bouton got sent to the minors, fought his way back to the majors. Almost wrecked himself working on his knuckleball. Insulted people. Made enemies. Made friends. Never gave up. And wrote a book. The biggest bestseller about the game of baseball, and the men who play it, ever published.

You don’t need me to tell you that Bouton means a lot to me and that Ball Four is a classic, but upon its 40th anniversary, I’m doing just that:

Ball Four is still being celebrated. Last month, the Baseball Reliquary — a shrine for the game’s iconoclasts and outcasts, based in the Pasadena Central Library — put together an exhibition in honor of the 40th anniversary of its publication, and this coming Saturday at the Burbank Central Library Auditorium, they’ll hold a special day-long panel featuring Bouton as well as the world premiere of a documentary on the Pilots, who spent just one season in Seattle before fleeing to Milwaukee to become the Brewers.

Ball Four is credited with being the first book to give a candid glimpse into the lives of major league ballplayers — hard-drinking, skirt-chasing, amphetamine-popping athletes using four-letter words — as they try to cope with the pressures and the boredom of the game. The story is set against a backdrop of social upheaval, and the outsider Bouton often finds himself at odds with his teammates when it comes to his views on the war in Vietnam, race relations, politics and the burgeoning union movement inside the game — which would eventually challenge the Reserve Clause, leading to higher salaries and the right to free agency. Amazingly, such an explosive exposé did not win Bouton many friends inside the game.

Hapless commissioner Bowie Kuhn attempted to get Bouton to sign a statement stating that its claims were fiction, a move which backfired. “I guess if you’re writing a book, you want to be banned in Boston or called in by the Commissioner,” Bouton recounted recently. “It was the perfect form of censorship. The publisher had only printed 5,000 copies on the grounds that nobody would want to read a book about the Seattle Pilots written by a washed-up knuckleball pitcher. Then the baseball Commissioner calls me in, and they have to print another 5,000 and then 50,000 and then 500,000 books…”

…It’s a book I myself have read at least half a dozen times since my grandfather gave me a dog-eared paperback when I was nine years old (I’ve even gotten to meet its author a couple of times), and I know of fans who re-read it on an annual basis, as a rite of spring. Every time through yields fresh insights as well as familiar laughs. Its tales of camaraderie, clubhouse pranks and good old-fashioned yarns form an often hysterically funny counterpoint to the battle for survival being fought on a daily basis by a group of players near the ends of their big league ropes. It continues to endure, to be hailed as a classic, because it’s a book about far more than just a game.

• Several days ago, I addressed Robinson Cano’s MVP case at PB and threatened to dust off JUMP (Jaffe’s Ugly MVP Predictor), a complex algorithm for predicting who will win (as opposed to who should win) based upon a few key tendencies of post-strike MVP voting which center around team success and individual performance in certain categories. I’ve finally done just that:

When I first ran the numbers on Saturday, [Joey] Votto led the pack, with the Reds’ hefty six-game lead in the NL Central standings helping him to overcome Pujols’ slight superiority in the individual stat categories. Nonetheless, [Albert] Pujols’ two homers and five RBI over the weekend were enough to push Phat Albert into the lead. He’ll need to hold those positions to have the upper hand on Votto here, and it wouldn’t hurt his cause to reclaim the total bases lead.

CarGo [Carlos Gonzalez] isn’t out of the race yet, however. He’s in the red as far as [Team Success Points] goes, but should the Rockies win the NL West—through Sunday they had a 23.2 percent chance of doing so according to our Playoff Odds Report—he would leapfrog the two slugging first basemen. Merely claiming the wild card (11.1 percent chance) wouldn’t be enough in terms of the point total unless he also passed Pujols and/or Votto in the runs and/or RBI categories. It’s not hard to see how the narrative of him helping the Rox reach the postseason after being nearly left for dead could carry the day, even with his Coors-infused stat line (.385/.433/.773 at home, .288/.310/.450 on the road).

…

The situation here should be considered extremely fluid. [Josh] Hamilton has been sidelined by bruised ribs since September 4, and he’s made little progress thus far in his recovery; he could easily drop out of the top 10 in RBI and out of the top five in homers if he doesn’t return soon, and could fall in the other counting categories as well. [Miguel] Cabrera could lose his meager allotment of Team Success Points if the Tigers fall under .500; that wouldn’t be enough to knock him out of the top three without other players stepping forward, though if Jose Bautista keeps launching enough bombs to boost his slugging percentage and total base total, it’s possible.

The first real surprise [in the AL race] is the presence of Teixera in the top three even in a down year; leading the league in runs scored for a division leader—a showing that owes to the fact that the supposedly unclutch Alex Rodriguez leads the league in OBI%—turns out to have its advantages, particularly when coupled with two other top-10 rankings. The second surprise is that Teixeira’s presence in the top three comes at the expense of teammate Cano, who’s put together an MVP-caliber season worthy of the narrative if nothing else by becoming the big run producer for the Yanks in a year where Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, and Jorge Posada have all shown their age. Cano is in the top 10 in six different categories, and has the middle infielder bonus going for him; alas, he’s in the top five in just one of those categories, and a lesser one (intentional walks) at that.

The other situation that could have an impact on the top three here is if the Yankees wind up with the wild card and the Rays win the AL East flag. Without changing anything in the individual statistical rankings, that switch alone would drop Teixeira to 32.3 points and Cano to 25.8. It would also push the Rays’ Carl Crawford into the top three with 39.4 points; Crawford ranks second in runs, third in steals and ninth in batting average thanks to a hot September showing (.444/.500/.778). Evan Longoria (33.2, thanks to five top-10 showings, albeit none above sixth) would pass Teixeira as well but would still be behind Mauer (34.8).

[Update] I’ve got a bit more on Cano and Teixeira at PB.

• Also at BP, I’ve got a few paragraphs in the second entry in our collaborative series of postmortems, “Kiss ‘Em Goodbye.” This one’s on the Orioles:

What went right: Guys such as [Adam] Jones, [Matt] Wieters, Matusz, Jake Arrieta and Brad Bergesen—key youngsters who all appeared to be going backward this season—have performed well since Showalter arrived, providing optimism going into next year. The Orioles’ defense is benefiting from the return of Brian Roberts and the departure of Miguel Tejada; the team’s batting average on balls in play has improved from .313 before to .284 since.

What went wrong: The Orioles came out of the gate 2-16; it’s nearly impossible to start that way in the AL East and have any drama left in the season aside from the eventual firing of your manager. They were 15-39 when manager Dave Trembley got the ax in early June. Roberts missed virtually the entire first half thanks to an abdominal strain and a herniated disc.

The key number: 5.61 to 3.12

Under Trembley and interim manager Juan Samuel, the Orioles’ rotation ERA was 5.61; under Showalter, it has been 3.12 (and starters are averaging 6 1/3 innings per outing). Bergesen (2.62), Jeremy Guthrie (2.64), and Matusz (2.72) all have ERAs under 3.00 during Showalter’s tenure, and Kevin Millwood (3.28) hasn’t been far off.

• Finally, I did a 2 1/2 hour chat on Monday:

Dick Whitman (Cubicle of Awesome): Any reason to be worried about Yankees starting pitching come playoff time? Pettitte health, A.J. being A.J., Phil’s fall off a cliff, etc? Or am I just overreacting because of how piss poor they played this past week?

JJ: I think there’s plenty of reason for concern. The Yankee rotation’s ERA since the All-Star break is 5.11, and CC Sabathia is the only experienced pitcher who’s healthy and pitching up to his skill level. Hughes (5.37), Burnett (5.82) and Vazquez (6.20) have all been awful for the most part, and while Ivan Nova’s shown promise, he’s got just four big-league starts under his belt. To play deep into October, the Yankees need Pettitte to come back strong AND they need at least one of the aforementioned trio to get their [expletive deleted] together.

On the other hand, their bullpen has rounded into shape, as I wrote at Pinstriped Bible on Friday.

Steve (VA): How filthy is Neftali Feliz? Fastball 96-99 Slider 80-83..When he throws his slider for strikes.. Watch out.

JJ: Filthier than a pig doing a Redd Foxx imitation out at the Smut Hut on Highway 61.

Paul (Boston): Would you rather have A-Rod + Contract or Beckett/Lackey + Contracts?

JJ: Beckett and Lackey will receive about $130 million combined over the next four years, A-Rod $180 million over the next seven. The latter is probably easier to swallow based on the time value of money and the fact that it’s less of a per-year investment. It’s also easier to hide a declining hitter than it is a declining pitcher (or two). Finally, given that the two pitchers are unlikely to be chasing any milestones, whatever minimal milestone value A-Rod has – and it’s not going to be that much given his steroid-infused past – is still higher. So I’d take the guy with the stick, particularly if I had the Yankees’ revenue stream.

There’s plenty more where that came from, but for now, it’s to the HitListMobile for me…

Friday’s Child: Stray Doggie Roundup

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It’s been awhile since I checked in here. I took a vacation to see my folks in Salt Lake City, caught a couple of minor league games in the process — the first two I’ve seen in Utah since the late 1980s — dropped a couple of Pinstriped Bible entries, and farmed the Hit List out to capable colleagues Marc Normandin and Ben Lindbergh. It was a nice getaway.

Rounding up those stray dogggies:

• On Wednesday I took a look at the Hall of Fame candidacy of Jim Thome, who belted four homers over a three-day span to pass Mark McGwire and tie Frank Robinson on the all-time list at 586. Park and era have much to do with Thome’s totals; he’s got the fifth-highest ratio of home-to-away homers while playing during a time when the longball was more prevalent than ever. His JAWS score coming into the year had just cleared the Hall of Fame standard for first basemen, and he’s put some daylight beyond that mark with a season worth 3.4 WARP thanks to a .278/.407/.635 line with a team-high 21 homers for the Twins:

Whether that will be enough to get him to Cooperstown is unclear. As noted above, Thome doesn’t have an MVP award to call his own, although he did finish in the top 10 in the vote four times and does have some other solid credentials. He made five All-Star teams and led the league in homers once (2003, with 47 for the Phillies during his odd NL foray), which helps whip his Bill James Hall of Fame Monitor and Hall of Fame Standards scores (145 and 55) into above-average territory. He reached the 40-homer plateau six times, which is tied for eighth all-time. His post-season credentials aren’t sterling (.222/.321/.488 with 17 homers), but he was a vital part of the Indians during the period in which they made five straight postseasons (1995-99), did hit .255/.352/.511 with three homers in the 1995 and 1997 World Series, and bashed four homers in losing causes in both the 1998 ALCS against the Yankees (suffice it to say he made quite the impression on this fan; he killed the Yanks for years) and the 1999 ALDS against the Red Sox. He’s also served on three other teams that have reached the postseason and could make that four if the Twins pull through.

What Thome does have going for him along with the homers and the other numbers is a clean rap sheet. Unlike so many of the other players who have reached the 500 home-run plateau during his career — Bonds, Sosa, Rodriguez, McGwire, Palmeiro, Ramirez, and Sheffield — Thome has never been implicated as a user of performance-enhancing drugs, either via positive test, leaked test result, or involvement in a steroid-related investigation such as BALCO or the Mitchell Report. Only Griffey and Thomas, two virtual locks for the Hall, can say the same thing, and while that’s not the same as knowing definitively that they’re clean—we still don’t know around 100 of the names on the 2003 survey test list from which some of the aforementioned players have been outed—it’s the best we’ve got in this cynical age. McGwire is the only one of those players to appear on a ballot thus far, and the voters have treated him poorly. They’re likely to snub Palmeiro, who’s eligible this winter, but it won’t be until 2013, when Bonds and Sosa reach, that we’ll have a better sense of what fate awaits the implicated players at the 600 level.

Against that backdrop, Thome may do well in the voting when he finally becomes eligible, particularly as he’s a player with a good-guy reputation and not to mention something of a throwback with his high socks and mighty uppercut. He’ll certainly deserve that bronze plaque for his work, and the guess here is that he’ll get it in due time.

• The NL and AL Hit Lists are here and here. In the former, I didn’t pull many punches when it came to the Dodgers and Mets:

[#9] Dodgers Blew: Manny Ramirez is gone, but the idiot wind still blows. And so does the Dodgers’ offense: they’ve hit just .236/.305/.342 since the All-Star break, with Andre Ethier (.232/.3035/.387), Matt Kemp (.235/.300/.369) and James Loney (.210/.281/.326) competing for the title of the Ultimate Vortex of Suck. This season can’t end soon enough.

[#10 Mets] We Don’t Like To See It, Either: Another year, another Mets team staggering towards an ignominious finish while exhibiting a special talent for turning minor nicks and cuts into gangrenous wounds. As the team meanders along with a 21-31 second-half record, Carlos Beltran, Oliver Perez and Luis Castillo — three disappointing, immovable players owed $36 million in 2011 — skip the annual trip to Walter Reed Army Medical Center; Beltran says it’s due to commitments to his own charitable foundation, but Perez refuses to answer questions about the snub, while Castillo admits to squeamishness: “Sometimes when you see people with no legs, no arms, to also be in the hospital like that, I don’t like to see that.” Fans watching Castillo’s declining play at second base and at the plate can certainly relate.

From the latter, here’s the 1-2 punch of the Yankees and Rays:

[#1 Yankees] Problems of the Rich and Famous: The Yankees’ winning streak reaches a season-high eight games to push their Playoff Odds into the 99-percent range, but they’re not without their anxieties. Nick Swisher is limping (somewhat heroically), Jorge Posada has a concussion scare, Derek Jeter is hitting .234/.307/.313 since July 1, and the rotation now features three starters with ERAs above 5.00 since the break (Phil Hughes, 5.47; A.J. Burnett, 5.91; Javier Vazquez, 6.10). Andy Pettitte’s nearing a return, but the real question is whether the team will need rookie Ivan Nova to take the ball in the postseason; at the very least, his performance (2.92 ERA, .562 SNWP) merits consideration.

[#2 Rays] Well, We Like the Pants Idea: Joe Maddon is a smart guy, but he’s all wet when it comes to wanting a balanced schedule, an historically awful idea which was rightly scrapped for preventing AL rivals from playing each other down the stretch. While the current strength of the AL East is obviously a huge factor in Maddon’s thoughts, does he think his team (ninth in the league in attendance) would draw better with fewer games against the Yanks and Red Sox? In their fight for first place, the Rays have relatively little to complain about these days. Their remaining opponents have a weighted winning percentage of .489 and their final three series come against the Mariners, Orioles and Royals; the Yankees’ remaining opponents have a .540 winning percentage, and their last three series come against Boston (twice) and Toronto.

• As for the Yankees, I’ve had plenty to say at the Pinstriped Bible lately. I cut the legend of Futility Infielder Homer Bush down to size, weighed in on Robinson Cano’s MVP candidacy, uncovered a particularly interesting facet about Alex Rodriguez reaching 100 RBI for the record-setting 14th time, sounded the alarms on Jorge Posada’s concussion symptoms, and checked in on Kerry Wood and the progress of the Yankees’ bullpen. On Cano:

Of course, it’s unfair to base the conversation simply on offense; the MVP award should take into account defensive value, so towards that end, here are the above eight candidates ranked by averaging three competing valuation metrics. WARP is Baseball Prospectus’ Wins Above Replacement Player, while the two WAR figures represent Baseball-Reference’s and Fangraphs’ dueling methodologies for computing Wins Above Replacement via different defensive metrics and theoretical frameworks. “Wins” is the average of the three:

PLAYER    WARP  bWAR  fWAR  Wins
Hamilton   8.1   6.0   7.9   7.3
Longoria   7.0   6.3   5.9   6.4
Cabrera    7.0   6.2   5.9   6.4
Cano       6.3   6.4   6.0   6.2
Beltre     6.9   5.1   6.2   6.1
Bautista   5.5   5.3   5.7   5.5
Mauer      5.7   5.2   4.7   5.2
Konerko    4.9   4.8   3.9   4.5

WARP and fWAR both say Hamilton’s the league leader, while bWAR says Cano. In the aggregate, the Texas left fielder comes out nearly a full win ahead of the rest of the pack even after adjusting for hitting environments and accounting for the difference in value between playing a difficult up-the-middle position and an easy corner outfield one, both important considerations. Cano ranks fourth overall, third if you exclude Cabrera because of the losing team factor. Because of that, it’s difficult to make the case that he should win.

Whether he will win may be another story, quite literally. As a group, the BBWAA voters’ standards as to what constitutes an MVP tend to shift from year to year. Furthermore, they tend to be rather wary of sabermetrics, so it’s unlikely that most of them will be using the leaderboards in the above valuation metrics as their guide. Also worth noting is the fact that the voting body isn’t exactly in awe of the Yankees. During their long run of excellence — 14 postseason appearances, seven pennants and five world championships in 15 years — A-Rod is the only player to win an MVP while wearing pinstripes; he’s done so twice, in 2005 and 2007, with overwhelming offensive numbers in years the team didn’t have the best overall record, perhaps suggesting that the voters valued him as the difference between the Yankees making the playoffs or not.

On A-Rod:

For all the hand-wringing about A-Rod’s subpar 2010 showing — not to mention those nasty rumors about him having been caught clubbing baby harp seals, thus causing a worldwide recession — it’s worth noting that he is leading the league in something positive: he’s tops in the Junior Circuit in Baseball Prospectus’ OBI% (Others Batted In Percentage), meaning that he’s driven in the highest percentage of baserunners of anyone in the AL, at 21.3 percent. Note that OBI% excludes a player driving in himself via his own home runs. A quick look at the major league leaderboard:

Rk   NAME              TEAM    PA   PA_ROB   ROB   OBI    OBI%
 1   Carlos Gonzalez    COL    542    225    305    66    21.6%
 2   Alex Rodriguez     NYA    492    247    366    78    21.3%
 3   Delmon Young       MIN    517    268    389    77    19.8%
 4   Jose Bautista      TOR    578    229    307    60    19.5%
 5   John Buck          TOR    359    150    207    40    19.3%
 6   Josh Hamilton      TEX    559    251    342    66    19.3%
 7   Joey Votto         CIN    558    265    344    66    19.2%
 8   Paul Konerko       CHA    551    259    339    65    19.2%
 9   Ryan Ludwick       SLN    314    131    167    32    19.2%
10   Nelson Cruz        TEX    348    180    262    50    19.1%
11   Vladimir Guerrero  TEX    547    291    394    75    19.0%
12   David Wright       NYN    578    267    359    68    18.9%
13   Adam Laroche       ARI    527    244    354    67    18.9%
14   Carlos Quentin     CHA    471    221    309    58    18.8%
15   Buster Posey       SFN    347    169    236    44    18.6%
16   Neil Walker        PIT    360    168    221    41    18.6%
17   Angel Pagan        NYN    535    205    272    50    18.4%
18   Rafael Furcal      LAN    357    123    169    31    18.3%
19   Carlos Lee         HOU    546    259    341    62    18.2%
20   Magglio Ordonez    DET    365    195    259    47    18.1%

PA is plate appearances, PA_ROB is those with runners on base, ROB is the actual runners on base, OBI the number of those runners driven in, and OBI% the percentage of OBI divided by ROB.

A-Rod’s 21.3 percent is actually a pretty impressive rate. By comparison, the next highest rates on this year’s Yankees, the majors’ top-scoring team, are owned by Robinson Cano, Mark Teixeira and Nick Swisher, who’ve all driven in between 16.3 and 16.8 percent of baserunners. It’s also the highest mark of Rodriguez’s career by far; his second-best mark came when he drove in 20.4 percent in 2000 with the Mariners, and he was right at 20.0 percent with them in 1996. He’s been above 17 percent just one other time while wearing pinstripes, with a 19.2 OBI% during his MVP-winning 2007 campaign. Last year, when he packed his 100 RBI into just 535 plate appearances, he was at just 16.6 percent, his third-highest mark with the Yankees.

Less on Posada, who didn’t actually sustain a concussion and was subsequently cleared to play, than on concussions themselves; the first link contains some absolutely mortifying numbers:

Sadly, concussions have become a Very Big Deal in professional sports in recent years as their devastating and harrowing long-term effects have come to light. Among football players, they’ve been implicated in the onset of dementia. On the diamond, they’re thought to be the real cause of what’s previously been accepted as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a/k/a Lou Gehrig’s Disease, at least according to one recent scientific paper. Concussions have ended the careers of players such as Brewers’ third baseman Corey Koskie, who collided with a wall while attempting to catch a pop-up in 2006, and Giants’ catcher Mike Matheny, who was forced into retirement in early 2007 as a result of the cumulative effect of all the foul tips he took in the mask — a situation that rings a bell both literally and figuratively as far as Posada is concerned.

Other players such as Jim Edmonds, Ryan Church, Justin Morneau and Jason Bay have been forced to the sidelines for extended and maddeningly indefinite periods of time due to concussions and their aftermath, the poorly understood post-concussion syndrome, which can include headaches, nausea, dizziness, fatigue, loss of memory, insomnia… a potpourri of misery. Cardinals’ manager Tony La Russa basically impugned Edmonds’ manhood while the latter recuperated, and Mets manager Jerry Manuel similarly made a hash of Church’s situation to the extent that his club came under well-deserved fire for their general handling of such cases.

The tide may have begun turning over the past few years as teams have recognized concussions as threats to players’ long-term well-being. Morneau hasn’t played since taking a knee to the noggin while attempting to break up a double play on July 7, and Bay is apparently done for the year, though only after the Mets were slow to react to his having collided with a wall in late July; he played two games before complaining of symptoms following a cross-country flight.

The Yankees haven’t been immune to concussions, either; it was after suffering one via a beaning during spring training that Cervelli donned the oversized “Great Gazoo” batting helmet designed to better cushion the head upon impact — a piece of equipment the Mets’ David Wright shunned after being ridiculed for wearing one in two games last year following his return from a beaning.

On Wood and company:

Wood arrived carrying a hefty 6.30 ERA thanks to a few early-season drubbings which stuck to him like Ben and Jerry pints on a coed’s thighs, but he’s been pretty close to lights out since coming over. Relieved of closer duty, he’s become the reliable righty setup man the Yanks have sorely needed all year, with a solo homer in his second outing the sole blemish on his mark. He’s pitched 16.2 innings for the Yankees, allowing 10 hits while striking out 20, even stranding all eight runners he’s inherited. Sure, his 10 walks have made for some adventures, but with men on base, batters are just 4-for-22 against Wood.

As noted before, the Yankees’ bullpen has suddenly jelled with the addition of Wood. After ranking ninth in the league in BP’s Reliever Expected Wins Added stat (WXRL, which incrementally credits and debits every reliever with a fraction of a win based upon the game state in which he enters — inning, out, runners on base, relative score — and when he departs) through the All-Star break, they’ve been the best in the AL by a long shot in the second half:

Tm   WXRL1  FRA1  WXRL2  FRA2
NYA   2.7   4.31   6.3   2.26
CLE   1.3   5.09   4.9   3.54
SEA  -2.4   5.47   4.4   3.57
KCA   4.2   4.25   3.9   5.74
TBA   7.5   3.53   3.5   4.56
TEX   5.1   3.61   3.4   3.64
MIN   5.0   3.22   2.5   4.61
OAK   2.2   4.43   2.5   3.36
BAL  -0.4   4.95   1.9   4.64
BOS   3.9   4.74   1.6   4.30
TOR   2.3   4.44   1.6   4.38
ANA   3.8   5.43   1.3   3.87
CHA   5.5   3.98   0.1   4.94
DET   5.6   3.81  -0.3   5.78

FRA is Fair Run Average, a pitcher’s runs allowed (earned and unearned) per nine innings, adjusted for inherited and bequeathed baserunners and the number of outs.; the 1′s and 2′s denote the half of the season in question. As you can see, the Yankees are 1.4 wins better than any other AL bullpen since the break, nearly three wins better than the Rays in that span, and nearly five wins better than the vanquished Red Sox. Wood himself has been worth 0.7 WXRL; by comparison, Joba Chamberlain’s been worth 1.1 the entire year, David Robertson 1.6, and Mariano Rivera 4.0. To be fair, Chamberlain (1.0), Robertson (1.2) and Boone Logan (0.9) have all been more valuable in the second half, but then they did have two more weeks to accrue that value before Wood arrived.

That oughtta hold you for awhile.

Say It Ain’t So, Joe

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Today at Pinstriped Bible, I’ve got a more refined take of yesterday’s rant regarding distinguished Yankee alumnus Joe Torre, cataloging his litany of sins and looking at the possibility that he may not return for another year at the helm of the Dodgers:

Torre, who let a one-year contract extension offer dangle in the face of this mishegoss, may have privately seethed, but he’s publicly bitten his tongue, a wise move if he wished to ingratiate himself to his employers but not one that’s served the team’s competitive interests. A Hall of Fame-bound manager of his stature could and probably should have thrown his weight around by vocalizing, say, the Dodgers’ need for another proven starting pitcher.

Torre hasn’t exactly covered himself in glory elsewhere this season. He’s made a hash of the bullpen at times, failing to get closer Jonathan Broxton save opportunities early in the year, then overusing him in non-save situations. Worse, he quickly burned out his top setup men, a tale that will be all too familiar to Yankee fans. Righty Ramon Troncoso and lefty George Sherrill made a combined 28 appearances in April and another 25 in May, a pace that comes out to 168 combined appearances over the course of the season; not coincidentally, that not-so-dynamic duo has combined for an 8.06 Fair Run Average while each facing demotions to the minors. To be fair, the Dodger bullpen ranks third in the league by BP’s advanced metrics, but those quality arms may be in Proctorville by the time the season is all said and done.

Worse, the young, homegrown players on whom so much of the Dodgers’ present and future depends have regressed on Torre’s watch. Catcher Russell Martin, first baseman James Loney and center field Matt Kemp have played mediocre ball for most of the season. The production of Martin, who once looked to be the Dodgers’ answer to Derek Jeter — a face-of-the-franchise leader — declined for the third straight season before it ended abruptly due to a hip injury earlier this month. Torre’s overuse — starting him behind the plate 271 games in 2008-2009, the third highest total in the majors, and using him in 298 overall, the highest — can’t help but be implicated in that decline; as a former catcher himself, he should have known better, particularly as Martin’s production flagged. After earning All-Star honors last year, the still-raw Kemp has at times suffered from braindead play at the plate, in the field and on the basepaths. After some heavy-handed benching by Torre which was accompanied by unsubtle comments from henchman Larry Bowa, Kemp appears to want to talk his way out of town if he can’t play his way out.

Finally, there’s Torre’s handling of Ramirez…

And you know the rest on that score. With the 70-year-old skipper’s contract up at season’s end, I think the above are signs that he’s lost interest in the day-to-day rigamarole required to run a ballclub. I’m also not sure heir apparent Don Mattingly’s ascendancy is as likely as was once thought to be given his lack of managerial experience, which showed during the infamous double-dip mound visit debacle; the buzz now favors Triple-A Albuquerque manager Tim Wallach. Check it out.

Manny Didn’t Quit, Joe Did

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True story: on Sunday afternoon I sat down to write about Manny Ramirez’s apparently imminent departure from the Dodgers and was overtaken by an overwhelming anger that was so close to physically manifesting itself that I had to stop and go to the gym before I started breaking things. One of my Twitter followers suggested I sounded like Woody Allen’s Vincent van Gogh in “If the Impressionists Had Been Dentists,” which gave me a good chuckle and provided a bit of levity:

Dear Theo,

Will life never treat me decently? I am wracked by despair! My head is pounding. Mrs Sol Schwimmer is suing me because I made her bridge as I felt it and not to fit her ridiculous mouth. That’s right! I can’t work to order like a common tradesman. I decided her bridge should be enormous and billowing and wild, explosive teeth flaring up in every direction like fire! Now she is upset becuase it won’t fit in her mouth! She is so bourgeois and stupid, I want to smash her. I tried forcing the false plate in but it sticks out like a star burst chandelier. Still, I find it beautiful. She claims she can’t chew! What do I care whether she can chew or not! Theo, I can’t go on like this much longer! I asked Cezanne if he would share an office with me but he is old and infirm and unable to hold the instruments and they must be tied to his wrists but then he lacks accuracy and once inside a mouth, he knocks out more teeth than he saves. What to do?

Vincent

It was hours later before I got back to business, by which time Manny had made a surreal one-pitch appearance in the Dodgers’ loss in Colorado, having been ejected after arguing with home plate umpire Gary Cedarstrom over the strike zone. Not with a bang, but a whimper, as that great sportswriter T.S. Eliot wrote. Shortly after that, the news came that the Dodgers reportedly let Ramirez go to the White Sox via waivers, getting nothing in return but salary relief for the $4.3 $3.8 million dollars they still owed him, most of it deferred.

As I wrote over at Baseball Prospectus, Ramirez’s impending departure has been obvious for weeks:

When the Dodgers placed Ramirez on waivers last Wednesday, it was hardly a surprise, as the move had been telegraphed for nearly a month. While general manager Ned Colletti made himself look busy by making a trio of deals with the Royals, Cubs and Pirates prior to the July 31 trading deadline — acquiring Scott Podsednik, Ted Lilly, Ryan Theriot, and Octavio Dotel in the process — it was apparent to all but those in rose-tinted glasses that the moves were too little, too late. The Dodgers’ distance from first place had doubled during July as their fifth starters were pulverized (20 runs in 20 innings over four starts), a problem which in turn exposed the bullpen’s lack of depth; at the deadline, they were were seven games out of first place and 4.5 back in the Wild Card, with their Playoff Odds just below 10 percent.

As if to underscore that those trades were just a smokescreen, the team had taken down the “Mannywood” sign in Dodger Stadium’s left field, claiming it was because another buyer had purchased the advertising space. The message was clear: the Dodgers were preparing for the slugger’s inevitable departure. At the time, Ramirez was on the disabled list, serving his third stint of the season, one for a calf strain in late April, another for a hamstring strain in late June, and the final one for yet another calf strain in mid-July, after he’d made just four plate appearances since his previous stint. Why dedicate a cheering section and a promotional package to a player who wasn’t going to be around for much longer?

The final indication that Ramirez was going-going-gone came via Torre, who started him just three times in the eight games since he returned from the DL, and only once since he hit the wire. Claiming that the decision for the benching was his and not that of the front office, and that he was “trying to win games,” Torre shoveled more manure in the space of four days than he had in 13 years at the helm of the Yankees. “This is just my dumb move,” he told Los Angeles Times beat reporter Dylan Hernandez, fumfering disingenuously about getaway days, the big outfield of Coors Field, team chemistry, and the speed of Podsednik. “There’s no reason I can give you that makes sense. A lot of what I do is a feel thing.” Somewhere, Orlando Hudson nodded silently.

Torre was right: there is no earthly reason not to have Ramirez in the lineup, at least not in the service of a playoff race. It’s only slight hyperbole to say that even spouting blood from three missing limbs à la the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, he’d be a better hitter than Podsednik, though admittedly, under such conditions the latter would certainly have an edge afield. Presumably, the manager did Colletti’s dirty work by serving notice that if Ramirez didn’t waive his no-trade clause, forgo his desire for a contract extension and agree to go gentle into that good night, he’d be buried on the bench.

See, my rage at all of this isn’t directed at Ramirez, who’s a piece of fucking work in cleats but also — to borrow a phrase from Bill James about Pedro Guerrero — the best hitter God has made in a long time. Manny hit .322/.433/.580 as a Dodger while providing enough thrills to carry the team to the National League Championship series in back-to-back years. With him in the lineup over the past three years, the Dodgers have won at a .590 clip and scored 5.03 runs per game. Without him, they’ve literally been a .500 team, averaging 4.08 runs per game — yes, nearly a whole run less.

This year, the numbers are even more stark: 31-21, 5.33 runs per game with, 36-43, 3.72 runs per game without. And he hasn’t lost anything as a hitter. Once you adjust for park and league, his work in Dodger blue was actually more productive than his days in Boston and Cleveland; his True Average as a Dodger was .345, elsewhere it was .319. His mark this year (.328) is higher than his career mark (.321), so suggesting he’s in decline when he’s actually got the wood in his hands is folly. As are the bullshit narratives fostered by some of the biggest names in the business, but that’s what happens when you stop feeding the media beast, greeting their requests with “No, gracias.”

Manny Ramirez may have spent more than half the season on the disabled list — he’s a 38 year old with a history of leg problems — but I don’t in the least buy the idea that quit on the Dodgers. There’s nothing in the world the man loves to do more than pulverize a baseball, and the bigger the moment for him to do so, the better. He had every incentive to play as much as possible in order to earn a big-money contract for next year; why on earth would he dodge that?

No, it’s Joe Torre who quit on the Dodgers, which is why I’m so angry. Torre’s braindead mishandling of the bullpen in July and earlier this month already appeared to signal that he’d unplugged from the the team, that at 70 years old, he was too old for the bullshit of dealing with the Dodgers. That promising young players such as Matt Kemp, Russell Martin and James Loney have stalled in their progress on his watch doesn’t speak particularly well of him either, suggesting he’s lost the team — not an uncommon theme among managers past the age of 65.

Torre’s playing of Podsednik over Ramirez, whether for no good reason but his own gut instinct or as the henchman for the higher-ups is both aesthetically distasteful, and antithetical to winning baseball. Podzilla is a slaptastic hitter in the same mold as Juan Pierre. He’s hitting over .300 between KC and LA, but it’s a thin .309/.355/.388, good for a combined .275 TAv. His Marginal Lineup Value Rate (MLVr) — the number of runs per game he adds to an otherwise average lineup is .054. Manny’s is .316, the second-highest among major league left fielders. The theoretical difference is a quarter-run per game; the observed difference, as noted above, is even higher. Pretending otherwise, as Torre did, is a dark day for those of us who still held him in high esteem. As I wrote at BP, his actions feed the moralizers longing for another Juan Pierre, the ones ready to declare the team is much better, more versatile and more gosh-darn likablewith a slappy speedster who knows his place than with a petulant slugger who supposedly quits on his club. Please kill me before I have to read one of those again.

The circus has left town, and it’s a sad day for Dodger fans, as it’s abundantly clear this season will end in ignominious fashion — though we can always hope for the Colletti special outfield of Pierre, Andruw Jones and Ramirez, all still on the Dodger payroll, at some date to be named later on the South Side of Chicago. Manny provided more dazzling moments in his two years in Dodger blue than any of his teammates, save for maybe Andre Ethier, and he’ll rate as one of the most exciting and pivotal players in team history based on their accomplishments during his brief tenure; after all, it had been 20 years since the team had won a single playoff series before he came along, and 31 since they reached back-to-back NLCS. After nearly eight full years of viewing him as the Red Sox villain, I’m glad I got to appreciate his talents while they were still in full flower. The man can fucking hit, and watching him do so as a Dodger was tremendous fun while it lasted.

Friday’s Child: A Full Plate

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No shortage of what I’m serving today:

• Over at the Pinstriped Bible, I’ve got a look at a reliever who could help the Yankees in September, Jonathan Albaladejo, and an update of last month’s silliness regarding the possibility of Joe Girardi bolting the Bronx for the Cubs’ managerial job. The Albaladejo piece was a riff on BP colleague Kevin Goldstein including him in a list of 10 relievers who could help contenders out of the bullpen in their September callups. Knocked around during spring training, the 27-year-old ne’er-do-well scrapped his sinker for a heater which sits in the mid-90s, via which he’s set an International League record for saves:

In five Grapefruit League appearances, the hapless hurler yielded 16 hits, two walks and 10 earned runs while retiring just eight hitters, good for a 33.75 ERA — numbers that might have led to a pink slip from a less forgiving organization. But Albaladejo’s done a fine job of straightening himself out; not only has the control of his four-seamer improved, his curveball has become a useful weapon to keep hitters off balance as well. Batters are hitting just .168/.231/.241 against him, with 37 hits and 18 walks in 62 innings.

You’d think such work would be rewarded with a long look in a big league bullpen, particularly one that struggled so mightily during the first half of the season, but Albaladejo has just two appearances with the Yankees this year; he was up for all of three days in July, bridging the gap between DL moves involving Andy Pettitte and Sergio Mitre, then forgotten about once the Yankees ditched Chan Ho Park and traded for Kerry Wood. By all accounts, the pitcher hasn’t pouted about not getting his turn; last month, he told LoHud’s Chad Jennings, “I just want to do my job in Triple-A. And whenever they decide they need me, I’ll be ready.”

The Girardi piece is an updated take on the idle patter which immediately followed Piniella’s retirement announcement. With the Yankees marching into Chicago, Girardi feels he’s got to address such rumors, presumably with as much enthusiasm and candor as Derek Jeter detailing his dating life. Other than the reasons I already enumerated regarding Yankee managers not walking away under their own power, there’s this:

Looking into my crystal ball, I can tell you that the short answer is fuhgeddaboutit. Even with Girardi’s ties to the area — he’s a Peoria native and a Northwestern University alumnus who did two tours of duty with the Cubs as a player, essentially bookending his career save for a slight return in St. Louis — and the fact that his Yankees contract is up at the end of this season, it’s not happening.

For one thing, the Cubs are in rough shape, particularly compared to the Yanks. If you think the pressure to win the World Series every year while in pinstripes is something, imagine being on the spot at the helm of a team that’s gone 102 years without winning. The pressure broke Piniella, though he’s admittedly a much older man. It wasn’t kind to Dusty Baker, who got them within five outs of their first pennant since the early days of the Truman administration. It’s a job that’s eaten up and spit out men in more violent and disgusting ways than Piranha 3D. Take Lee Elia, please (warning: NSFW).

While the word around the game may be that the Ricketts family, the franchise’s relatively new owners, intends to spend big dollars, they can’t compete with the Yankees on that level. Bob Dylan wasn’t writing directly about the Bronx Bombers when he penned “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” — “Buy me some rings and a gun that sings / A flute that toots and a bee that stings / A sky that cries and a bird that flies / A fish that walks and a dog that talks” — but their winter shopping lists can go a long way towards keeping a manager in the Bronx.

Furthermore, the Cubs have some crippling contracts on the books in Alfonso Soriano (owed $72 million through 2014), Carlos Zambrano (just shy of $38 million through 2012), Aramis Ramirez ($16.6 million through 2012), Kosuke Fukudome ($14.5 million for next year), and Ryan Dempster ($28.5 million through 2012). Aside from Demptster, those players have been worth just 5.0 WARP this year for $68.6 million, which explains why a team with the majors’ seventh-highest Opening Day payroll is currently 20 games under .500 and 19 1/2 games out of first place before September. While their farm system is on the way up relative to a year ago, and while they’ve added three twenty-somethings to the starting lineup over the course of the year, the expensive regulars above average 33 years old, with a chance to be 34 next year.

It ain’t happening.

• At Baseball Prospectus, the NL and AL Hit Lists are up. A few swatches:

[#8 Dodgers[ Coming and Going: Having fallen further from first place after taking on former Royals and Cubs, the Dodgers attempt the coup de grâce by adding a Met: Rod Barajas, who arrives via waivers to patch their catching position in the absence of Russell Martin. A Dodger fan in his youth, Barajas makes a strong first impression with two doubles and a three-run homer in his first three at-bats, nearly equaling his output since June 1 (.163/.223/.221 with three doubles, a homer and four RBI in 113 PA). Meanwhile, Manny Ramirez hits the waiver wire, as do Casey Blake, Scott Podsednik and Jay Gibbons. The White Sox are supposedly warm for the dreadlocked slugger, who’s hit .313/.407/.513 with eight homers in 231 PA in between three trips to the disabled list; his .322 TAv would rank fifth in the league given enough playing time to qualify. The Dodgers are 32-22 with him in the lineup, 33-40 when he sits or is DLed.

[#10 Mets] Keystone Light: Luis Castillo’s walkoff single sends the Mets past the Marlins, giving the sputtering offense (2.8 runs per game this month) the rare highlight. It’s just Castillo’s second hit since August 4; he’s just 2-for-18 since then while starting five of 18 games, hitting .237/.337/.275 overall. As bad as that line is, it dwarfs the .167/.264/.203 performance of rookie Ruben Tejada, who’s usurped Castillo’s playing time because, you know, “youth movement.” Throw in the mercifully released Alex Cora and you’ve got an execrable .218/.299/.269 performance from the team’s second basemen, good for an OPS 55 points lower than that of any other major-league team. Castillo has still got one year at $6 million remaining on his deal; he’s compiled all of 3.3 WARP through the first three years of his deal ($19 million).

[#1 Yankees] Stepping Up: With Alex Rodriguez hitting the disabled list due to a calf strain, Robinson Cano takes over the cleanup spot and, well, cleans up. After homering in three conseuctive games, he adds his fourth in a six-game span via a grand slam against the Mariners. He’s hitting .324/.439/.765 through nine games in the No. 4 spot (an idea suggested by one wag just a couple weeks back). Cano is hitting .322/.387/.563 overall and starting to earn a spot in AL MVP discussions; he ranks fifth in the league in WARP with 6.2, 1.2 behind Josh Hamilton.

• In the wake of my trip to Target Field, I didn’t get to write of my venture to Coney Island to see the Cyclones on Wednesday night with a great bunch of folks, but it’s been well-documented nonetheless. Joe Sheehan wrote about it at his BP blog, and Derek Jacques took some photos, though unfortunately no group shot. It’s the second time this month I’ve been to MCU Park; the first time was in the service of snagging an Ike Davis Upside-Down Bobblehead:

I Like Ike

That’s the free t-shirt I caught as well. It’s always a good time out at that ballpark.

Speaking of minor league baseball, I’m headed to Salt Lake City next week and will finally avail myself of the chance to check out at least two of the three ballparks in the area. I haven’t been to a game in Salt Lake since 1987 or 1988, and since then they’ve built a new park, and I’ve never seen a game in either Ogden or Provo. With my dad on the disabled list due to back surgery, thus preventing us from our near-annual backpacking expedition, we’re going to play things a bit more low-key.