Three and Out

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A few quick links from earlier this week before I head off on my European vacation:

• In Wednesday’s New York Sun, I wrote about the demise of the Mariners. A couple of early paragraphs were apparently cut, one for space reasons, the other because the transition kinda sucked. Warts and all, here’s the director’s cut of the relevant portions, with the excised paragraphs in brackets:

When the sun rose on August 25, the upstart Mariners were sitting pretty. Thanks to a streak in which they won 13 out of 17, they were 73–53, one game behind the Angels in the AL West, and three ahead of the Yankees in the wild card race. According to Baseball Prospectus’ Playoff Odds report — which uses a team’s run-scoring and run-preventing proclivities in a Monte Carlo-simulation that plays out the rest of the season one million times — the M’s held a 29% shot at winning their division, and a 30% shot at the AL Wild Card.

Less than three weeks later, the Mariners’ ship has all but sunk. A 1–13 skid helped knock them 8.5 games back in the division, and 5.5 back in the wild card, plunging their Playoff Odds down below 2%. In terms of raw wins and losses, they’ve set a dubious record — no team so far above .500 so late in the season has ever collapsed so quickly. What went wrong?

[In the grand scheme, the Mariners simply regressed to the mean. Studies have shown that run differentials are better predictors of future performance than past won-loss records. At the point when they were 20 games above .500, the Mariners had outscored opponents by just 28 runs, with rates that projected to a far less impressive and contention-worthy 66-60 record. Call their recent plunge a market correction, a brutal one at that.]

In retrospect, it’s surprising the Mariners contended at all this year. The team that made the playoffs four times between 1995 and 2000, and averaged 98 wins a year between 2000 and 2003, has fallen on hard times, with four straight losing seasons and a slew of questionable free-agent signings by general manager Bill Bavasi. Back in the spring, Baseball Prospectus projected the Mariners to finish 73–89, last in the AL West, with the third-worst mark of any AL team.

[Even in surpassing that projection, the team has ridden an emotional rollercoaster. Amid an eight-game winning streak in late June, manager Mike Hargrove resigned abruptly to spend more time with his family. Three weeks later, replacement John McLaren navigated the club through a seven-game losing streak that foreshadowed their late August troubles. Stability is not among the 2007 Mariners’ limited virtues.]

More after the jump.

• The Mariners were also the focus of Tuesday’s Hit and Run; you’ll see some crosover between that and the Sun piece, but the emphasis was on the bullpen’s second-half decline. After posting a 3.72 Fair Run Average (accounting for their performance of inherited and bequeathed runners via the good old run expectancy tables; here is a good layman’s explanation) in the first half, they’ve ballooned to a 5.30 FRA in the second half, the fourth-highest jump in the majors. Several contenders have had similar troubles; the Red Sox, Dodgers, Yankees, Brewers, and Padre join the Mariners in the bottom 10, with the Padres dead last, jumping from 2.51 to 5.45.

Also in that Hit and Run is a quick look at Pedro Martinez’s JAWS case for the Hall of Fame, and a comparison between his case and that of Sandy Koufax:

Coming into the year, Martinez’s JAWS score (113.7 career WARP3/75.3 peak/94.5 JAWS) was well above the Hall standard for starting pitchers (99.0/62.7/80.9). His JAWS score ranks 20th all-time, and his peak score ranks 14th. As I noted in Mind Game, his 2000 season ranks as the best ever in terms of RA+ (293) for any pitcher with at least 150 innings.

Compare that to Koufax; as impressive as the Dodger lefty’s stats were, his best seasons were achieved under some of the most favorable conditions of any pitcher, and his JAWS score (70.7/60.3/65.5) is miles behind Pedro, ranking 80th of all time. He was basically a league-average pitcher from 1955-1960 before taking a big step forward in 1961 (the year before the team moved into Dodger Stadium), but he’s only got three seasons above 9.0 WARP3. In comparison, Pedro has six. Koufax’s best RA+ was “just” 196. But before anybody gets the pitchforks out to either run him out of the Hall (or me out of the field of baseball analysis), as one Schmuck tried to do to BP alum Dayn Perry, let’s not forget that Koufax’s Hall of Fame case also includes three Cy Youngs, an MVP award, gallons of black ink, three World Series rings, an 0.95 postseason ERA, and the enigmatic glow that comes from retiring while at the pinnacle of success.

Glow aside, Martinez isn’t lacking in any of those categories, with three Cys, a ring of his own, and even more black ink in an era where the increased player pool makes it much harder to come by. His JAWS score and other Hall of Fame credentials are so rock solid that he stacks up pretty well with 300-game winning teammate Tom Glavine (129.4/61.4/95.4 coming into the year). He’s my lock of the week, and it’s a pretty big lock.

• Finally, I’m honored to be the author whose It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over chapter has been chosen for excerpting on the BP site. “The Summer of Loving Carl Yastrzemski” is a supporting chapter for my narrative on the 1967 American League race between the Red Sox, Twins, Tigers, and White Sox, which leads off the book. Here’s the intro; you can read the rest at BP, where it’s free:

In the simplified narratives that our sports media produce, the notion of one player’s carrying a team is a popular and appealing one. It puts a human—even superhuman—face on a disparate collection of players, emphasizing the strengths of one hitter’s or one pitcher’s accomplishments while glossing over his own weaknesses and those of his teammates. Who cares about Babe Ruth’s lousy baserunning, or who was riding shotgun to Joe DiMaggio in 1941, or even Barry Bonds’s peevishness unless it actually cost his team a game? Can one player carry a team? Performances like Carl Yastrzemski’s final two weeks of September 1967, when he hit a jaw-dropping .523/.604/.955, certainly suggest it’s possible for a short time. In the longer term, the nature of baseball would suggest not. Aside from the obvious—the simple unlikelihood of one player’s maintaining such a high level of performance over a larger time frame—there’s the inherent structure of the game. The best hitter can only bat once every nine times, the most durable pitcher needs a few days’ rest between starts, and even the best fielder (beyond catchers) handles the ball only a handful of times each game, making it extremely unlikely that a team could keep relying on the same player over and over again for that extra boost.

As superficial as the notion of one player’s carrying a team may be, our ability to quantify the contributions of each player via an all-encompassing value metric like wins above replacement player (WARP) lends itself well to exploring the limitations of this concept as it applies to a full season. WARP measures each player’s hitting, pitching, and fielding contributions against those of a freely available reserve or waiver-wire pickup. The metric calculates these contributions in terms of runs and then converts those runs into the currency of wins. Park and league contexts are built right into WARP, so that, for example, a player in a barren offensive environment such as mid-1960s Dodger Stadium and another player in a bountiful one such as turn-of-the-century Coors Field can be measured on the same scale. With WARP in hand, we can answer questions such as the following:

1. How much impact does the presence of one great player have on a team’s chances?

2. How much impact does the presence of one great player have on a team’s chances if he’s head-and-shoulders above all his other teammates?

While I could quibble with the choice of chapters — this wasn’t my personal favorite even among the ones I contributed, but nobody asked me — I’m honored to be chosen to represent BP for this. The findings here aren’t revolutionary, but they do quantify some answers to questions that are often debated on a more abstract level.

I actually applied a couple of the take-home lessons to this chapter in other BP work, one for the Angels’ entry here, countering the notion that they lacked enough star power in support of Vlad Guerrero, and the other to answer a Keltner Test question — If this man were the best player on his team, would it be likely that the team could win the pennant? — on Jeff Kent. Yes, the Keltner is largely qualitative, not quantitative, but I like to ground my Hall of Fame arguments in numbers and facts before tackling the more subjective elements.

Anyway, I’m off to Switzerland and Austria for the next two weeks, leaving Marc Normandin in charge of the Hit List and my bobblehead collection in charge here. Here’s hoping the Yankees can hold onto their playoff spot and that the Dodgers can mount a great comeback while I’m gone.

Oh, What a Week

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Exhilarating and exhausting week here at Futility Central, full of travel, deadlines, and media:

• On Monday (Labor Day), I worked from home and watched most of Pedro Martinez’s comeback outing, which I then discussed with Joel Blumberg on WGBB SportsBreak, which aired later that afternoon. As I said during the discussion, I was quite impressed to see Pedro grit his way through five innings; even with less stuff than he had before, his mastery of the mental side of pitching will serve him well and will certainly help the Mets down the stretch.

• Tuesday morning, I headed down to Washington, DC, for an evening bookstore appearance to promote It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over. Around 30 people came out to Politics and Prose bookstore to hear what Clay Davenport and I had to say about the book, not a bad showing given how little advance publicity we were able to give it at BP. Several readers old enough to remember the races I wrote about had nice things to say about my chapters, particularly the 1967 one, which meant a lot to me; it’s always good to know not only that you’ve brought something memorable back to life but that you’ve provided some new insights along the way. I’m not sure I could ask for a higher compliment than that when it comes to my work.

• Tuesday also saw publication of my latest Hit and Run piece at BP. This one took a close look at quality starts and at BP’s Support Neutral metrics to evaluate the work of starting pitchers. Both individually and on a team level, there’s a great deal of overlap when comparing what the two types of stats are telling us:

As defined by [Philadelphia Inquirer columnist John] Lowe, a quality start is one in which a pitcher goes at least six innings and allows no more than three earned runs. It’s a simple and elegant stat that suggests a pitcher did a reasonable job of keeping his team in the ballgame. And while it’s possible for a pitcher to earn a quality start with a game ERA of 4.50, such instances are rare. In the aforementioned ESPN column, [Rob] Neyer found that in 2005, the average quality start featured a game ERA of 2.04, a non-quality start 7.70 — that’s not a misprint, it’s Boeing’s next jet — and the 6 inning/3 earned run/4.50 case constituted just 9.2 percent of all quality starts.

Based on this year’s numbers, a team getting a quality start wins 68.0 percent of the time, on par with the 67.4 percent Neyer reported based on 1985 and 2005 data…

…As a metric, SNLVAR [Support Neutral Lineup Adjusted Value Above Replacement] certainly has its advantages over quality starts. It adjusts for ballpark and opposition strength, strips out things a pitcher can’t control like run support and bullpen support, and expresses the result in wins above replacement level. For my money, it’s the best metric in the BP toolbox with which to measure starting pitchers, and as such, I use it every week in the Hit List, along with its bullpen sibling, WXRL. However, you can’t eyeball SNLVAR over a cup of coffee and a page full of box scores, nor can you impress mixed company with such an unwieldy acronym, one which brings to mind that old Serak the Preparer line: “To pronounce it correctly, I would have to pull out your tongue.” The humble quality start is perfect for just such occasions.

Then again, the quality start metric does lack the zazz we at BP like to apply to things, so it’s worth passing along a little tidbit from Keith Woolner: our Support Neutral family can provide a sophisticated approximation of quality start rate if we untether ourselves from replacement level and turn towards league average via the per-game stat SNLVA_R (Support Neutral Lineup-adjusted Value Added Rate). Simply put, a pitcher’s SNLVA_R + 0.5 is the percentage of the time his team would win a game given average offense and bullpen support. So for Jake Peavy, who’s got an SNLVA of 5.3 in 28 starts and thus an SNLVA_R of .189, his team can be expected to win at a .689 clip. That’s tops among pitchers with 100 or more innings this season.

The piece was accompanied by an Unfiltered entry which clarified my decision to use a definition of quality starts that excluded unearned runs, which generally isn’t how we roll at BP.

• Back from DC on Wednesday, I attended that evening’s Yankees-Mariners game with an old college friend named Ben (readers may remember him from my wife’s fabulous 2003 Game Seven story). After leaving his law practice, Ben has spent the last two years traveling around the world. “Since I last saw you, I’ve been through 25 countries,” he told me. With the desire to catch up and the stresses of the week — which included arrangements to close on my apartment at the end of the month — weighing on me, I didn’t even bother taking my scorebook to the game. Ben and I simply kicked back in our seats in Section 601 of the upper deck, right behind home plate, and concentrated on baseball and beer, hootin’ and hollerin’ and just having a good time.

We watched Philip Hughes, who’d been torched for 15 runs in 16.2 innings over his last three starts, overcome some early trouble to give the Yankees six solid innings with six strikeouts. After yielding two walks and an HBP in the first two innings, he surrendered a two-run homer to Raul Ibañez in the third inning — it could have been a three-run job had the umps not blown a call at second base, when Ichiro Suzuki was out stealing after a single — and when he yielded a leadoff double to Ben Broussard to start the fourth, it looked like he might be in for another quick exit.

But from that point on, Hughes faced the minimum number of hitters to get through six. Broussard was moved over to third on an infield grounder, but Hughes struck out Jose Lopez and got Yuniesky Betancourt to pop out to end the threat. The only other baserunner he allowed was Ibañez, who was nailed stretching a single into a double to lead off the sixth, though apparently the umps had also victimized Ichiro in the top of the fifth when they called him out on a bang-bang play at first base. Still, it was a good outing from the kid. In light of the injury concerns regarding Roger Clemens (my nickel, based on his comments, says he’s got a bone spur) and the ineffectiveness of Mike Mussina, they’ll need more where that came from if they want to play into October.

The Yanks could do almost nothing against Seattle starter Jarrod Washburn. In the bottom of the third they got their first hit, a solo homer by #9 hitter Jose Molina. His next turn at bat, he collected the Yanks’ second hit, leading off the sixth with a single and boldly — or foolishly, given how slowly he runs — taking second as Lopez dropped the relay throw. Seriously, you could time the guy with a sun dial.

That hit went for naught, and following an 11-pitch, 1-2-3 inning from Joba Chamberlain (first time I’d seen him in person), the M’s were still ahead 2-1 in the bottom of the seventh, when Alex Rodriguez, who’d been doubtful before the game after banging up his ankle in a collision with Adrian Beltre the previous night, bashed a solo homer to leftfield, his 47th of the year. When Robinson Cano reached on another error by Lopez, Washburn’s night was done even though he’d allowed just three hits.

In came George Sherrill to face Shelley Duncan, a hacktastic over-age rookie whose swing is all-or-nothing. We watched in amazement as Duncan squared around to bunt. Ben was sure he was going to get one down; I was in total denial. “Attempting to bunt and getting one down are two different stories, and this guy doesn’t have it in him to complete the job.” One pitch later he’d done just that, sending Cano to second.

At this point, Sherrill lost the plate, walking Jason Giambi and Wilson Betemit, who was playing third base while A-Rod DHed. With Molina looming on deck as Betemit worked the count in his favor, I saw Jorge Posada don a helmet and move to the edge of the dugout. “Watch,” I told Ben, “if Betemit gets on to load the bases, Posada’s going to pinch-hit for Molina.”

“But he’s got two hits!”

“Yeah, and he also just got his bell rung.” Molina had taken a foul ball off the mask in the top of the inning. “Posada’s going to pinch hit because Torre knows he’s good at working the bases-loaded walk.”

Sure enough, that’s exactly what happened. Posada took four balls in a row after fouling off the first pitch, and we exchanged high-fives as Ben laughed, “That’s why they pay you the big bucks!”

Mariners manager John McLaren, who’d already endeared himself to the crowd by arguing over both Ichiro calls, came out for the second time of the inning. This time he summoned Eric O’Flaherty, who yielded one run when Johnny Damon legged out an infield grounder to prevent a double play, and another when Melky Cabrera singled to rightfield. Brandon Morrow came on and instantly yielded a two-run double to Derek Jeter, bringing up A-Rod again.

“Come on, A-Rod. Two in one inning!” howled Ben. Boom! Another shot to left centerfield for Rodriguez’s second home run of the frame and his 48th of the year, tying his own Yankee record for righthanded batters. It was the first time I’d ever seen a player hit two in one inning, and the first time a Yankee had done so since Cliff Johnson in 1977. Amazing!

By the time the dust settled, McLaren had made four pitching changes as the Yanks scored eight run on four hits, four walks and an error to make the score 9-2. Just like the night before, the Yanks had broken open a close game in the seventh. They would add one more run and win going away. Good stuff.

• Thursday found me back on the Amtrak, headed to Philadelphia to make a TV appearance on Comcast SportsNet’s “Daily News Live” show with host Neil Hartman and panelists Rich Hofmann and Mark Kram from the Philadelphia Daily News. On a 90-minute show that alternated between baseball and football in a 30-30-15-15 format, I had the final segment, but at virtually every commercial break, the host plugged the book and my appearance, showing the cover and mentioning my name.

Finally, after some time in the makeup room to keep me from looking as sweaty and disheveled as the week had made me feel, I was on. I did somewhere between eight and 10 minutes, answering Hartman’s questions about the methodology which determined the races that made the book, explaining their relevance to the current races (the Phils, after blowing a six-run lead the night before in gut-wrenching fashion, were down to about a 25 percent shot at the playoffs according to BP’s Playoff Odds report), kicking around the Phils’ 1964 collapse and discussing my 1959 chapter. It was difficult to provide too much detail in such a short time, but I think I used what I had pretty well, and made the most of my brief moment in the spotlight. I’m hoping to get a clip to put up on the site soon.

• Finally, having gone to Philly and back on the same day, I returned home to finish this week’s Hit List, one that featured a no-hitter, a near-perfect game, an imperfect game, Network, Old School, C. Montgomery Burns, a poorly-timed look at Troy Glaus’ turnaround, and a whole lot of season-ending injuries. I always like the Hit List to feel like a wrap-up of a full, rich week, but this one only scratched the surface of my adventures. Still, given the chaotic circumstances under which it was produced, I’m proud that it went up more or less on time. Aside from the season-ending list, it’s the last one I’ll be writing given an upcoming trip to Europe. I’m ready for that vacation.

TV for Me

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The D.C. appearance was great, last night’s Yankees game — first time I’ve been on hand for a player homering twice in one inning, as Alex Rodriguez did — was even better. Tonight I’m headed to Philadelphia for a TV appearance to promote It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over. At 6:15 PM, I’ll be on “Daily News Live” on Philly’s Comcast Sports Net. Hopefully the segment will be added to the network’s multimedia page and I’ll be able to pass it along.

We’ll catch up soon…

Jon Heyman’s Chass-Ity Belt

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Move over, Murray Chass. Ignorance has a new best friend, and his name is Jon Heyman. In a recent SI.com mailbag piece, Heyman decided to ape the senile New York Times sports columnist by parading his reactionary view of sabermetrics:

Regarding your NL MVP candidates, how about those two guys in Florida? Yes, the Marlins are not in playoff contention, but it’s hard to ignore Hanley Ramirez and Miguel Cabrera, especially considering they’re first and second, respectively, in the NL in VORP, and rank in the top three in Runs Created. It looks like you went through all the playoff-contending teams, and chose a “good” player from each. Let me ask you: If Cabrera were on a playoff-contender this season, would there be any doubt who the MVP was?
– Carolyn, Boca Raton, Fla.

Actually, you’re right. That’s exactly what I did, and how I came up with Prince Fielder as my NL MVP leader. His “good” year is actually more than good, and the Brewers are right in the thick of the playoff race. While I understand your sentiments, I am more interested in “wins created” than runs created. And the day I consider VORP is the day I get out of the business. The idea of the MVP is to honor the player who has had the biggest positive impact on the pennant races. I have been a big champion for Ramirez, but I would not consider him a true candidate to win the MVP award.

Emphasis added. Once again, an old-guard sportswriter decides that a simple sabermetric concept is interfering with his ability to gum his applesauce in peace:

“Damn you kids! You don’t know anything about the manly, musky smell of a locker room and its relationship to team chemistery and anonymously sourced shit-stirring quotes! It’s got nothing to do with your new-age sissy numbers! You don’t need a computer to add up RBIs! Hell, I’ll bet you think these stat-generating robots put their pants on two legs at a time as they plug their Internets into their calculators. Well, you whippersnappers can pry my ignorance out of my cold, dead hand!”

Funny, I had Heyman for being about 15-20 years younger than Chass. Clearly, he got old in a hurry.

Fire Joe Morgan was on this one like white on rice, and Lone Star Ball took some pretty good cuts, too. So rather than raising my blood pressure any further, I’ll simply get off Mr. Heyman’s lawn and allow him to resume the search for his pants.

And hope that the day he gets out of the business comes before the day he hands in another award ballot.

Mr. Pennant Race Book Goes to Washington [BP Unfiltered]

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Just a quick and somewhat overdue note here to publicize a rapidly approaching talk and signing to promote It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over: the Baseball Prospectus Pennant Race Book. With our editor Steven Goldman on the 15-day DL with the Dreaded Gamboo (get well soon, Steve), Clay Davenport and I will take the ball for an appearance at a site of many a frequent Washington, DC BP soirée:

Tuesday, September 4, 7:00 PM
Politics & Prose Bookstore
5015 Connecticut Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20008

More details after the jump…

Clearing the Bases – Long Day’s Journey Into Night Edition

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Guy: It’s August 31. Have you got waiver trade deadline fever?

Other Guy: (checks thermometer) Nope.

Guy: But… but… some teams need second LOOGYs! And third pinch-hitters! MIGUEL CAIRO may be headed back to St. Louis.

Other Guy: (breaks out into a cold sweat) Better drink a beer and go straight to bed.

Guy: I’ve pulled down the shades and barred the door.

Other Guy: (looks at watch, digs finger in ear, looks at watch again) Any news?

Guy: Jesse Orosco has put on his conversation hat, just in case. Tony Fossas is using his cell phone to call his home line and vice versa, just to make sure both are working. Paul Assenmacher got a phone call, but it was a wrong number. He went back to sleep.

Other Guy: on the couch, in his stained wifebeater, with two-week old chili stains…

Guy: …sprinkling Doritos crumbs on top of last night’s pizza.

Other Guy: (gags)

Guy: Hey, you think being a retired LOOGY is all skittles and beer? Far too often, it’s Milk Duds in scotch. Or simply 1¢ gumballs in Mad Dog.

• • •

As for the tribulations of Mike Mussina, who’s been torched for 17 runs and 25 hits over his past 9.2 innings, the reason is now clear. From today’s New York Times:

The self-analysis has become so painful for Mussina that he has stopped doing his regular interviews with the author John Feinstein, who is writing a book about Mussina’s season. Mussina would prefer to focus on whatever positives remain.

Holy cow, it’s A Pitcher’s Story: Innings with David Cone all over again. Recall Cone’s 2000 season, in which the 37-year-old Yankee hurler collapsed from a 12-9, 3.44 ERA season to a 4-14, 6.91 debacle while working on a book with Roger Angell. Instead of writing about the normal ups and downs of a pitchers’ season, Cone and Angell were forced to confront the darker side, the possibility that Cone might have Lost It. By Angell’s standards, the book wasn’t great, but his depiction of the likable Cone twisting and turning as he candidly sprinkled the discussion of his troubles with a touch of gallows humor made for a compelling read.

Moose, who replaced Cone when he signed as a free agent in the winter of 2000-2001, is probably every bit as cerebral as Cone, but from a public persona standpoint, he’s always lacked his predecessor’s candor, up-front accountability and sense of humor. That’s not a criticism, it’s just fact, as are the numbers which say he’s got a much stronger Hall of Fame case even with a less crowded awards shelf, or the ones which say he’s had a few bad starts in a row, not an entire season in hell.

I can’t fault Mussina for wanting to shut out the coverage, but it makes me wonder if he’s as equipped to handle adversity as Cone; his career has run far more smoothly, with no major injuries or troubles outside the lines to put his 60’6″ struggle in perspective. Given that he’s under contract for 2008 (Cone was facing free agency), the hope is that he turns things around in short order and writes a happier ending to his tale. But I’m not holding my breath.

• • •

Thursday was a memorably great day for games with playoff implications, and as I worked on the Hit List, I had a fantastic time following the action. In the early afternoon, I followed the Yankees-Red Sox game and was treated to Chien-Ming Wang taking a no-hitter into the seventh inning, less than 24 hours after Roger Clemens had held the Sox hitless into the sixth. Wang lost his no-hitter one batter after Derek Jeter made a throwing error on Kevin Youkilis’ grounder, his second of the game; with first baseman Jason Giambi (!) holding the runner, Mike Lowell singled through the opening into rightfield. Rats.

The game was a tight 2-0 affair at that point, and it quickly got interesting when Youkilis ran out of the basepaths and onto the grass on J.D. Drew’s grounder, avoiding a tag by Alex Rodriguez, who fired to first to get one out. Not until the umps convened did they actually call Youkilis out for his transgression, but the replays showed he was clearly coloring outside the lines. Of course, that meant Terry Francona needed to enact the getting-tossed ritual, and he got his money’s worth. Jason Varitek struck out to end the frame and Wang’s afternoon.

The Yanks opened up their lead in the bottom of the eighth off Hideki Okajima thanks to a Jeter single, a Bobby Abreu RBI double, an intentional walk to A-Rod, and a double steal accompanied by a horrible throw from Varitek that went down the leftfield line, with both runners scoring.

With the lead expanded beyond a save situation, Joe Torre bypassed Mariano Rivera, who’d worked the previous two nights, in favor of a second inning from Joba Chamberlain. The kid added a level of intrigue when he sent consecutive 98 MPH pitches over Youkillis’ head and to the backstop on the fly. It was unclear if Chamberlain was throwing at him, and if so, on what grounds, but after the second one, home plate ump Angel Hernandez — one of the worst umps in the majors long before this — tossed the rookie. Chamberlain denied intent:

Chamberlain threw up his hands in a mixture of confusion and disgust before leaving the game.

“There’s no chance I’m trying to do that,” Chamberlain said of his intent. “I definitely don’t want to send that message, because that’s not who I am.”

Youkilis anticipated Chamberlain’s reaction, and rebuffed it in advance.

“Two balls going over somebody’s head at 98 mph, I don’t know,” Youkilis said. “I didn’t see any other pitches going that far out of the strike zone. Those balls were pretty close to the head.”

“That’s the second time,” Youkilis continued, referring to a similar situation that occurred on June 1. “Scott Proctor hit me in the head. Coincidence? I don’t know. It doesn’t look good. When two balls go at your head and the guy has a zero ERA and is around the strike zone pretty good, any man is going to think there’s intent to hit him in the head.”

In any event, the Yanks completed a sweep of the Red Sox, but after a 2-5 road trip, that only cut the AL East gap to five games.

Following the conclusion of that contest, I flipped over to the Mets-Phillies game, a wild affair which saw the Phils, who were gunning for a four-game sweep, blow an early 5-0 lead; neither Kyle Lohse nor Orlando Hernandez completed four innings. The Phils recaptured the advantage in the fifth, 8-5, but fell behind 10-8 in the eighth.

That’s where I came in, with the surprise that Billy Wagner was on the hill, gunning for his first two-inning save in eight years. After striking out Chase Utley, Wags yielded a solo homer to Pat Burrell, his second longball of the day. Wagner escaped the inning, but the contest had tightened.

After the Mets went 1-2-3 in the top of the ninth, Wagner found trouble when he yielded a leadoff single to Jayson Werth. One out later, with the pitcher paying him no mind — not that Wagner has much mind to pay — Werth stole second and third on consecutive pitches, setting up a game-tying single from Tadahito Iguchi. The Gooch stole second, Jimmy Rollins was intentionally walked, and then Utley, who had come off the DL at the start of the series and gone 3-for-5 with a homer, delivered again, with a single to rightfield. Ballgame.

After burrowing into my Hit List work for a few more hours I stopped for dinner, where I flipped back and forth between the Indians-Mariners (a makeup game from that absurd snowed-out series back in April) and the Brewers-Cubs. The Tribe had already taken 3-0 lead when I tuned in, and Aaron Laffey looked sharp in protecting it. They wound up falling behind 4-3 as Laffey ran out of gas, but won 6-5 in the bottom of the ninth when Kenny Lofton drew a bases-loaded walk off Rick White.

Which brings up the question: what the hell was M’s manager John McLaren thinking? With his team having lost five straight, why wouldn’t he call upon closer J.J. Putz, the most effective reliever in baseball this year according to BP’s metrics? Putz hadn’t pitched at all during the streak, apparently because of the lack of save situations, but this was the kind of brain-dead Joe Torre mistake that’s been railed at before. Particularly in a high-leverage game such as this, you owe it to the team to force the opposition to beat your best pitcher, not some fringe guy with bad facial hair. Just absolutely one of the dumbest moves of the year. In case you were expecting surprises:

Other than Putz, who hasn’t pitched since Aug. 24, the bullpen has been overworked.

McLaren said he didn’t use Putz in the ninth inning on Thursday night because, “We had to have J.J. available in case we got the lead and had to wrap it up. If we don’t do that and we count on the other guys (to finish the game), we’re really behind the eight ball.”

Right, because only a guy wearing the scarlet letter C can possibly protect a lead. Now’s the time to shell out for that plasma TV, McLaren; you’ll want something big to watch the playoffs.

Over to the NL Central game, the rubber match of a three-game set that could trim the Cubs’ division lead to a half-game. The day before, the Brewers had clawed their way back to .500 — yes, it’s gotten that bad for Milwaukee, who is 17-28 since the All-Star Break — on the strength of Ben Sheets’ return from a six-week absence.

The Brew Crew took a 2-0 lead in the top of the first against Ted Lilly, forcing him to work through eight batters, with Kevin Mench dealing the big blow via a two-run double down the leftfield line. The Cubs came back in the second, scoring three against Manny Parra, a rookie who tossed a perfect game in Triple-A earlier this year but has mostly been confined to mop and bucket duty — not that the Brewers have had much other work these days, what with a staff ERA above 6.00 in August.

Mench tied the game up with a sac fly in the third, but the bad omen arrived in the fourth. Parra bruised his thumb bunting and departed in favor — no, that’s not the right word — of Chris Capuano, bumped from the rotation recently after an epic winless streak; in fact, the Brewers had lost every one of the last 15 games he’d appeared in.

Make that 16. Capuano worked out of minor trouble in the fourth and fifth, but surrendered back-to-back solo shots by Matt Murton and Alfonso Soriano with two outs in the sixth. The Brewers looked like they might claw their way back from the 5-3 deficit, but with two outs and runners on second and third, home plate ump Brian Gorman made a horrible strike three call on a Carlos Marmol pitch to Corey Hart; Eric Gregg would have been shamed by that one.

Fast-forward to the ninth, where the Brewers made it interesting. Supersub Joe Dillon doubled into the gap in left-center, Rickie Weeks was hit by a pitch. J.J. Hardy bunted them over, a move I didn’t hate; it set up the possibility of a game-tying hit and kept them out of the double play. But slugger Ryan Braun, the likely NL Rookie of the Year, chopped one to third base. Prince Fielder was intentionally walked, then Hart worked an RBI walk. That set up a final showdown between Mench and Cubs closer Ryan Dempster, but he induced a fielder’s choice to end the game. Ah, shitfuck.

But wait, there’s more! I’d actually left the house in the middle of that game and the Hit List to see off some friends who were ending an extended stay in the city; with the tone of four teams’ entries riding on the balance of the night’s action, I downed a couple pints before returning.

Once the Cubs prevailed, I flipped over to Diamondbacks-Padres — the one game of the day where first place was actually on the line — as I resumed my work. The Pads had taken the first three games of their four-game series to recapture first place on a percentage point basis, but they trailed 8-0 at the seventh inning stretch. Then 8-1, 8-3 as starter Doug Davis ran out of gas. To the bottom of the eighth, where Juan Cruz and The Other Tony Pena coughed up another three runs before LOOGY Doug Slaten ended the threat with runners on second and third, inducing a pop-up from Brian Giles. Hmmm.

Finally, I stopped working to see the bottom of the ninth, where Jose Valverde yielded a one-out solo shot to Milton Bradley, his 10th homer in just 135 plate appearances since being picked up off the scrap heap; the dude is hitting like Gary Sheffield in a grudge match.

Alas, the Pads got no closer, as Valverde K’d the next two hitters in short order, but after all that excitement on a full, rich day of baseball, I was hardly in a position to complain. What a day, what a day.

• • •

Oh, and in case you haven’t had enough of me yet, here’s Tuesday’s Hit and Run, featuring Stupid VORP Tricks and a look at the recently deceased Phil Rizzuto’s Hall of Fame case.

For a Fat Man, He Didn’t Sweat Much (Redux)

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In the Hit List a couple weeks back, I suggested that the Padres’ release of David Wells may have been premature, and that given their rotation woes, a couple teams were likely to target the big man:

Lowering the Boomer: a 5-1 run snaps the Pads out of their post-break funk, but the return of Chris Young prompts the team to release David Wells. The move may have been premature; though bombed for 26 runs in his last 16.2 innings, Wells had put up four quality starts in his previous five, and while the market for overweight 44-year-old hurlers with a history of gout may not be robust, the cost for a banged-up contender like the Dodgers or Phillies to bring him in after a couple weeks of rest and rehab is vanishingly small.

Last week, the Dodgers inked Wells, cutting bait on the struggling Brett Tomko (2-11, 5.80 ERA) and biting the bullet on a $176,000 per start incentive clause that I’d failed to account for but that didn’t seem all that daunting given the possibility that the team may know after one start whether he has anything left.

Unsurprisingly, Wells made something less than a graceful entry:

In a surreal scene, Tomko talked to reporters about his fate while Wells, an unapologetic jokester, dressed not two feet away at the next locker.

Tomko: “I’m OK with it. Last night I saw it coming.”

Wells: “Really? You saw it on the sports ticker?”

Tomko: “Funny.”

The Dodgers have 10 days to trade Tomko or give him his unconditional release.

Tomko: “I hope the (general manager Ned Colletti) can get me to another team and not let me sit around and rot. I’ll go home and start throwing at the local high school field. I don’t know what to do first, it’s uncharted territory.”

Wells: “You’ve got to find a catcher.”

The Dodgers kept Tomko on the roster through Thursday, allowing him to reach 10 years of major league service time and guaranteeing him the maximum pension.

Tomko: “That was important. It’s a good time for me. I’m ready for a new opportunity. And it’s not like they brought in a chump to replace me.”

Wells: “Yeah, they did.”

Ouch. As bad as Tomko has been at times, he’s basically come off as an amenable guy while on the team, well aware of his limitations; there was little reason to add insult to injury. So much for the San Diegan staying classy, right?

Nonetheless, all is forgiven after Wells’ debut in Dodger blue, on a Sunday night ESPN game against the NL’s best team. What else would one expect from the biggest big-game pitcher around? Wells pitched five inning of two-run ball, not quite going Granny Gooden but hardly safe for the heart-attack prone. He was often one pitch away from disaster, puttin g10 men on base in his five innings but ultimately escaping jam after jam. He wound up his night on a high note, striking out Moises Alou with two outs and the bases load in the fifth on a classic hook. Boo-yah for Boomer!

The most surprising part of the night had already come and gone in the top of the inning, when Wells led off the frame by — are you ready for this — bunting for a base hit. If you had a 44-year-old 250-pounder with bad knees dropping one down and beating it out, you just hit the exacta, and if you had that sparking the go-ahead rally and scoring the tying run (just his seventh run of a 21-year career), we’re talking trifecta; claim your winnings at the ticket window.

All in all, it was just one more memorable showing from a pitcher who’s rarely failed to disappoint me no matter what uniform he’s wearing. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: “For a fat man, he doesn’t sweat much.”

The Killer in Blue

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Tuesday’s Replacement Level Killers piece was still on my mind when I sat down to write this week’s Hit List. Here’s what I had to say about the Dodgers:

For those who thought Juan Pierre deserved a spot on the Replacement Level Killers, he was left off due to his surprisingly robust VORP (on the strength of a .367/.405/.443 August) and the team’s distance from first place, though his -12 FRAA does keep his WARP at 1.8. A stronger case can be made for the inclusion of Nomar Garciaparra (0.3 VORP, 0.3 WARP), or the team’s handling of an eight-man pileup at third base.

Yesterday I came across a Dodgers.com piece on Pierre that has me reconsidering my exclusion of him in favor of Andruw Jones (3.1 VORP, 3.0 WARP). The piece is so blatantly idiotic it may deserve a Fire Joe Morgan-esque line-by-line carve-up [late note: great minds, etc.]. Start with the headline: “Pierre not bothered with OBP issues: Center fielder focused on doing little things to help team win.” Marge, boil some coffee. And get me something sharp, I’m feeling stabby.

What is it about the on-base percentage that a player like Juan Pierre — who leads the Dodgers in at-bats, runs scored, hits, stolen bases, triples and games played — gets knocked for not having his higher than .350?

Pierre has been one of the most consistent players in the Dodgers lineup this season. He plays every day (395 consecutive games, which is the longest active streak in the Majors), makes diving catches in center field on a regular basis and steals second just about every time he gets on base, yet his OBP evidently isn’t cutting it.

…The issue with Pierre is that he doesn’t walk. Plain and simple, his OBP suffers because he averages one walk every 21 at-bats. On the season, he has just 24 walks in 510 at-bats, which is the lowest in the Majors.

Even with a torrid August showing, Pierre is hitting .289/.329/.344. So let’s start with the fact that on a park- and league-adjusted basis (per Baseball-Reference.com), his OBP is 19 points below the .343 average, and his slugging percentage is 89 points below the .435 average. In other words, he’s doing neither of the principal things necessary to create runs, getting on base or advancing runners (without using up outs, please).

THAT is why Pierre gets knocked.

That and the goddamned $44 million contract Dodger GM Ned Colletti dished him last winter.

Jeebus Cripes, I’m in one-line paragraph Plaschke mode, ready to disembowel someone and send the entrails to Stupid Flanders.

This is bad. It’s not going to end well.

Pierre’s Equivalent Average, which places his ability to produce runs on a scale similar to batting average (.260 is the league average), is .247. So he’s about halfway between average and replacement level (.230).

In other words, his crippling the offense is why he’s getting knocked.

Compared to some of the elite leadoff batters in the game, Pierre’s .324 on-base percentage is considerably low. [Jose] Reyes has an OBP of .375, Hanley Ramirez is at .392, Chone Figgins is at .392 and Ichiro is at .396, so the consensus is that a No. 1 or 2 hitter in the lineup needs to have a .350 or higher OBP.

Gee, ya think? Pierre’s OBP in the #1 spot is actually just .268, though he’s got just 83 plate appearances there. In a move that recalls Seventies style like bad shag carpet, polyester leisure suits, and macrame plant holders, Manager Grady Little actually hits Pierre out of the #2 hole, where Pierre’s OBP is still an offense-murdering, soul-curdling .329 in 478 plate appearances. Among the 19 hitters with enough PA in the #1 or #2 spots to qualify for the batting title, only Florida’s Dan Uggla, Milwaukee’s J.J. Hardy (both .321), Washington’s Felipe Lopez (.300) and Houston’s Craig Biggio (.294) have lower OBPs atop a lineup. All of them save for the truly hapless Lopez have enough power to put up higher OPSes than the big Juan.

But Pierre does the little things. How little? Futility Infielder’s intrepid field reporter Nick Stone interviewed Pierre. Here’s what he filed:

“My short at-bats allow me to sneak back into the clubhouse and help put together a really nifty post-game buffet,” said the Dodger centerfielder. “I know from experience that it’s really nice to come back to the locker room after a close defeat and find personalized place settings, and I think the guys really appreciate my centerpiece designs. Little things like that really do help team morale.”

In full-on Martha Stewart mode, Pierre added, “And I also leave inspirational notes for the guys, written inside these handmade cards I do. That and back in spring training, I made some macrame plant holders for the other guys in the lineup. You can see how little things like that really help this ballclub.”

In the interest of avoiding this blog entry turning into a death threat to either Pierre or Colletti, I’ll stop here. Suffice it to say that under Colletti, this team has about as much idea of how runs are created as your average three-year-old does of where babies come from.

“The Run Stork?” asks the wide-eyed Stupid Flanders.

You can use your imagination to envision how much red I’d spill over these Dodger blues.

• • •

Friday’s Hit List went up with a glitch that unfortunately I wasn’t aware of until late in the evening. It’s been corrected now but in case you were one of the readers who hit it early, the Red Sox entry should have read:

Clay Buchholz makes a solid debut (6 8 4 3 3 5), but he’s sent back to Pawtucket, where he’ll continue to build on the absurd 164/30 K/BB ratio he’s compiled in 117.1 minor-league innings this year; he may be back for a September 1 start. There’s more help from the farm as Kevin Cash — subbing for injured Doug Mirabelli — catches a Tim Wakefield start with nary a police escort from the airport, a ball rolling to the screen or a world coming to an end. Wakefield continues to bedevil the Rays with a 15-inning scoreless streak; he’s 19-2 with a 2.72 ERA against them in his career.

Over and out.

Triple Threat

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In today’s edition of Prospectus Hit and Run, I provide an updated taste of a chapter I wrote for the recently-released It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over: the Baseball Prospectus Pennant Race Book:

In a pennant race, every edge matters. The late-season heroics of one individual may turn a close race into a tale of success writ large, but it’s the failures writ small, the weak links on a team, that commonly create that close race in the first place. All too often, for reasons rooted in issues beyond a player’s statistics, managers and GMs fail to make the moves that could help their teams, allowing subpar production to fester until it kills a club’s postseason hopes. Nowhere is the value of the replacement level laid more bare than when the difference between playing into October and going home is simply a willingness to try something else.

Sometimes a manager sticks with a veteran who’s passed his sell-by date because the guy has helped the skipper win in the past, and the club is convinced it lacks better alternatives. Sometimes a regular simply isn’t performing up to his established level due to injury, but misguidedly tries “toughing it out.” And sometimes a rookie hasn’t yet adjusted to the big leagues, yet the club doesn’t want to risk destroy the youngster’s confidence with a benching. In the just-released It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over: the Baseball Prospectus Pennant Race Book, I examined numerous instances of teams’ pennant hopes dragged down by such “Replacement Level Killers.”

For the book, I compiled an all-star team of ignominy that went back further than a half-century, but even in a single season, it’s not too difficult to assemble such a squad, and at the suggestion of one reader from my most recent chat, I’ve done just that. The difference is that with some six weeks of baseball still to go, teams may still take steps to avert disaster even if they’ve placed a player on this 2007 edition of the Replacement Level Killers; indeed, some already have.

The Yankees were an easy choice at one position:

1B: Doug Mientkiewicz, NYY (-2.2 VORP, 0.1 WARP), Miguel Cairo, NYY (-1.8, 0.3 WARP), Josh Phelps, NYY (0.1 VORP, 0.0 WARP), Andy Phillips, NYY (1.5 VORP, 0.2 WARP), and Wilson Betemit, NYY (1.2 VORP, 0.2 WARP)

For all of the craft that Brian Cashman and company put into their $200 million juggernaut, the Yanks turned a blind eye to first base, sacrificing any shot at offensive production in favor of some notion of defensive competence via which they could justify limiting the increasingly immobile (and for a two-month period, injured) Jason Giambi to the DH role. They left the gate with a plan to platoon Minky with Rule 5 pick Phelps, but the former broke his wrist, and the latter couldn’t buy the time of day from Joe Torre, getting discarded only to bob back to the surface in Pittsburgh.

Torre then installed futilityman Cairo–one of “his guys”–at the first base slot for a few weeks until the fateful day when the supposed defensive whiz made three errors, including a pair on a play where the Angels scored the winning run. That loss turned out to be a win, as it forced Torre to turn to organizational soldier Phillips, who hit a thin but nonetheless useful .320/.355/.420 in July as the Yanks began turning their season around. He’s cooled off considerably since (.327 SLG in August), but continues to share time with deadline acquisition Betemit, who’s provided some pop off the bench along with the ability to play all four infield positions. The Yanks may muddle through, but the standing reservation they’ve held for the postseason since 1995 has been jeopardized by poor planning here.

I was at Yankee Stadium on a gorgeous Saturday to reap the benefits of a team replacing its Replacement Level Killer. In a surprise move, on Friday the Tigers DFA’ed leftfielder Craig Monroe and promoted blue-chipper Cameron Maybin, who had just a couple weeks of Double-A experience. Though he appeared to struggle with the transition to leftfield — he’s a natural centerfielder — Maybin collected a single and an impressive 417-foot homer off Roger Clemens in just his second big-league game. BP prospect maven Kevin Goldsten ranked him seventh on our Top 100 Prospect lists over the winter and compared Maybin’s upside to “a healthy Eric Davis.” Now that’s buzz.

Fellow 2007 RLKillers Stephen Drew and Andruw Jones came up as topics in last Friday’s chat, where JAWS talk predominated — A-Rod, Ichiro, Chipper (and Andruw), Gary Sheffield, Kenny Lofton and Omar Vizquel all got cursory evaluations, which should make up for the lack of JAWS in this week’s Hit and Run. Here’s a thread of Ichiro questions:

Alex (SF, CA): How many more years of top-notch CF play does Ichiro need to be a shoe-in or is he already?

JJ: At least three, since it takes 10 seasons in the majors to be eligible.

He won’t have the career numbers to make him a slam dunk, but assuming he keeps up his level of play long enough to get at least 2000 hits , I think he’s a good bet to get in.

For what it’s worth, if he finishes the season with the WARP3 he’s on pace for, his JAWS peak score will be three wins above the average HOF centerfielder (66.6-63.7).

birkem3 (Dayton): For HOF purposes, should Ichiro even be considered a CF? This year is his first full-time exposure to CF.

JJ: Good point, though rightfield is actually a steeper hill to climb (119.8 WARP3/65.5 peak/92.7 JAWS) than centerfield (109.1/63.7/86.4).

Hal Incandenza (in here): On the other hand, if we are admitting _any_ “extra- (i.e. non-) statistical” criteria for the Hall, Ichiro — assuming continued production — is a slam dunk, no?

JJ: Indeed. I doubt he’ll have a World Series ring (sorry, Mariner fans) let alone two, but I do see Ichiro as having a Kirby Puckett-esque case for the Hall – short career, high peak.

Hopefully without the belated allegations of violence towards women and the early grave bit, of course.

Finally, there’s last Friday’s Hit List. In keeping with the It Ain’t Over plugs and the chat-related synergy, we’ll chose the Angels’ entry:

In Steven Goldman’s most recent chat, one reader of the just-released It Ain’t Over‘s chapter on Carl Yastrzemski (written by yours truly) asked if the Angels fit the bill as a team whose pennant chances might be hurt by the lack of a second superstar behind Vladimir Guerrero. To the contrary, the Halos appear to be in great shape on that front, since the correlation between winning percentage and WARP3 increases markedly the deeper one drills into the roster. Vlad (8.2 WARP3) is joined by Orlando Cabrera (9.4), Kelvim Escobar (8.5), and John Lackey (8.1) in terms of front-line talent, with Gary Matthews Jr. (6.9), Reggie Willits (6.6), and Francisco Rodriguez (6.4) in strong supporting roles… For results of last week’s Rat-tastic contest see here.

More on the Angels — once again proving themselves to be the thorn in the Yankees’ side — when I get a chance.