Great Jaffe Moments in Movie History

Nothing to do with baseball, but after a friend showed off her Little Lebowski Urban Achievers t-shirt, I stumbled upon a UK-based website called Last Exit to Nowhere which numbers this beauty among their smartly-designed movie-inspired collection:

Can’t believe I missed that one given all the times I watched Dirty Harry during my formative years. The one cinematic Jaffe reference that’s stuck with me is from Rocky III, during the opening montage where Clubber Lang (played by Mr. T) fights his way into contention for the heavyweight championship:

I’d buy a t-shirt of that as well…

Year of the Pitcher?

Last week, in the wake of Armando Galarraga’s near-perfecto, I took a stab at explaining the recent spate of no-hitters and perfect games. Today’s Prospectus Hit and Run examines the myriad claims that we’re in the midst of a so-called “Year of the Pitcher.”

As usual, my first impulse is to debunk such claims. Scoring is down to 4.47 runs per game through Sunday, 3.1 percent below last year’s rate, to its lowest level since 1992. I offered three potential explanations for the phenomenon:

  • Weather: It’s only mid-June and we’ve yet to experience the warmest months, when scoring should theoretically increase as the ball carries better.
  • Interleague play: The American League has dominated interleague contests in recent years, scoring at a higher rate than in intraleague play. Since we’re only one-third of the way through the interleague schedule, scoring levels are a bit lower than expected.
  • New ballpark: This year, the Junior Circuit added the Twins‘ Target Field to its rolls. Spacious and exposed to the elements, the pitcher-friendly park replaces the climate-controlled Metrodome, where scoring rates were higher.

Alas, the lowered rates more or less persist in spite of these explanations. Based upon recent history, there’s not a big “Wait Till It Warms” effect; rest-of-season scoring (from mid-June onward) is up 0.01 runs per game from early-season rates over the past 10 years, and 0.07 runs per game over the last five. The AL — where scoring is down 5.4percent, compared to 0.7 percent in the NL — has a recent advantage in interleague play which might show itself more in the remaining two-thirds of the interleague slate, but while their five-year rate is higher than in intraleague contests, last year it was actually lower.

As for the ballpark question, controlling for the Metrodome/Target Field swap lowers the annual change from 3.1 percent to 2.6 percent. It’s worth noting that six of the seven newest parks are hosting below-average scoring rates, and that BP’s multi-year park factors (which include some regression to the mean for newer parks) credit the newest parks (Target, Yankee, Citi, Nationals, Busch, Citizens, Petco) with reducing scoring by 2.5 percent. So from a longer-term standpoint, there’s definitely something to the ballpark theory.

The most compelling evidence in favor of the “Year of the Pitcher” designation is that strikeout rates are at an all-time high, occurring in 18.1 percent of all plate appearances this year. K rates have shot up a full percent over the past three years, perhaps due to philosophical shifts on both sides of the ball, with teams viewing strikeout pitchers as ever more important, but worrying less about hitter strikeouts because they correlate well with positive offensive events. Perhaps the latest waves of technology — specifically high-definition TV and the Pitch f/x data system — are making umpires more conscious about calling strikes, because our power for second-guessing is at an all-time high (just ask Jim Joyce).

Even so, such claims about the YoP are probably overstated. BABIP rates, whose rise has mirrored those of scoring rates, are down only a point from last year, and well within the range we’ve seen over the past decade, and Power Factor (paleo-sabermetrician Eric Walker’s measure of total bases per hit, a metric I’ve cited before in such matters, and one which correlates extremely well with the modern rise of scoring rates) is down only by an eyelash, suggesting that the underlying conditions via which the game is played haven’t fundamentally changed.

So color me skeptical as to whether there’s anything to these “Year of the Pitcher” claims beyond a more or less random clustering of some spectacularly entertaining pitching feats (Ubaldo Jimenez’s no-hitter, Dallas Braden and Roy Halladay’s perfect games, Galarraga’s near-miss, Stephen Strasburg’s debut et al). Scoring will likely wind up below last year’s rate and may indeed come in at the lowest rates since 1992, but we’re hardly headed towards revisiting the days of Bob Gibson.

The Likelihood of Perfection

Back in 2003, a beat writer for the Giants named Dan Brown (no, not that guy) interviewed me for a piece on the unspectacular playing careers of the Giants’ coaches, the ranks of which included both Lenn Sakata and Fred Stanley. Naturally, he happened upon something I’d written, and the resulting article made for this site’s first mainstream media mention, both on the web and in print. In the article (now archived), Brown termed this site “the scrappiest place on earth,” a tag which I still proudly trumpet on my front page.

Last week, in the aftermath of Roy Halladay’s perfect game and Armando Galarraga’s near-perfecto (more on which here), Brown came out of the woodwork to query me for an article on the suddenly popular phenomenon of perfection: “Is there anything you or your Baseball Prospectus cohorts can add to the discussion?”

I took a stab, and wound up quoted in the article:

Baseball Prospectus writer Jay Jaffe, responding to an e-mail from the Mercury News, said it’s important to remember that there are roughly twice as many games in the 30-team, 162-game era as there were in the 16-team, 154-game era.

Perfect games happen about 0.005 percent of the time.

“Looking at the results of a single year, there’s really no sensible interpretation for the distribution of no-hitters and perfect games other than randomness,” Jaffe wrote. “The standard deviation for the percentage of no-hitters is 0.056 percent, which means that about two-thirds of the time we should expect to see between 0.3 and 5.7 no-hitters per year.”

The De-Juiced Theory: Former All-Star pitcher Bert Blyleven, whose 287 career victories included a no-hitter in 1977, subscribes to the Coincidence Theory.

But if he had to put his finger on another factor, Blyleven said the crackdown on performance-enhancing substances seems to be having an effect. “Maybe the ball isn’t jumping off the bat like it did during the steroid era,” he said.

Entering play Saturday, the American League was batting .260, the NL .256. Both marks were each league’s lowest since 1992.

“The game for the past few years, maybe longer, was all about the three-run home run,” said Blyleven, now a Twins broadcaster. “Now, we’re getting back to a time when it’s all about small ball and getting that runner in from third, just like it was in the 1960s, ’70s and most of the ’80s.”

Still, as Blyleven acknowledged, the math doesn’t add up. There were more perfect games during the muscled-up 1990s (four) than there were during any other decade. Jaffe, the Baseball Prospectus writer, argued that the offensive potency of an era doesn’t matter as much as people think. “If we check the correlation between scoring levels by decade and perfect game frequency,” he wrote, “we find that the relationship is essentially random.”

That was the take-home from a bit of spreadsheet jockeying I’d done. What follows is more or less what I wrote to Brown (corrected to fix a few imperfections), with some more fun figures to chew on.

• • •

The basic thing to remember about no-hitters and perfect games is that there are roughly twice as many games in the 30-team, 162-game era as there were in the 16-team, 154-game era. Going back to 1901, when the AL began play in parallel with the NL, about 0.063% of games are no-hitters, and 0.005% of games are perfect games. That means under current conditions we should expect to see about three no-hitters per year, and a perfect game every four years. If you draw the line between 1960 and 1961, the pre-expansion and post-expansion eras, you’ll find that the rates of no-hitters are pretty similar, but the rates of perfect games are not (note that we have to exclude Don Larsen’s 1956 perfect game because it happened in postseason play):

Era           NH+PG    NHonly      PG
1901-1960    0.067%    0.065%    0.002%
1961-2010    0.060%    0.053%    0.007%
1901-2010    0.063%    0.058%    0.005%

While the rate of no-hitters has gone down slightly in the post-expansion era, the rate of perfect games has skyrocketed, becoming 3.4 times more likely as it was in the pre-expansion era.

Looking at the results of a single year, there’s really no sensible interpretation for the distribution of no-hitters and perfect games other than randomness. The standard deviation for the percentage of no-hitters is 0.056%, which means that about two-thirds of the time we should expect to see between 0.3 and 5.7 no-hitters per year. Because we’re obviously bound by the number zero at the low end, we start to see that we need a few years worth of data to begin assessing the frequency for no-hitters fairly. As for perfect games, we need an even larger sample.

If we divide up modern baseball history by decades starting in 1901 (so, 1901-1910… 2001-2010), we find that the frequency of no-hitters has a very strong inverse correlation with scoring levels (r = -0.8), which is to say that the lower the scoring rate, the more likely there is to be a no-hitter, and the higher, the less likely. The current decade (of which we’re nearing the end) rates as the second least-likely one in which to throw a no-hitter:

Decade       PG%       NH%     R/G
1911-20    0.000%    0.116%    4.04
1961-70    0.009%    0.105%    4.03
1901-10    0.008%    0.087%    3.92
1951-60    0.000%    0.081%    4.37
1971-80    0.000%    0.070%    4.21
1991-00    0.009%    0.055%    4.97
1941-50    0.000%    0.048%    4.35
1981-90    0.007%    0.044%    4.46
1931-40    0.000%    0.041%    5.20
2001-10    0.009%    0.037%    4.80
1921-30    0.004%    0.032%    4.96

If we divide the data into even larger chunks, we get an even better correlation between scoring rates and no-hitter frequency. Splitting the 110 years into five 22-year chunks, we get a correlation of r = -.95, confirming that the larger our sample size, the more predictive scoring rates are of no-hitters.

On the other hand, if we check the correlation between scoring levels by decade and perfect game frequency, we find that the relationship is essentially random (r = .01), and even if we up it to the 22-year samples, we only get a correlation of r= -.23, which is fairly faint. Remember, this is covering somewhere between 25,000 and 50,000 games per decade, and yet there’s really no pattern we can spot at that level, nothing that particularly clues us into the fact that an era — to say nothing of a sliver of a season, as in 2010 to date — should be more or less likely to yield a perfect game.

What a Week!

Well, that was quite a week of baseball, so much so that I didn’t get a chance to update this blog amid all of the happenings, particularly due to Ken Griffey Jr.’s retirement and Armando Galarraga’s near-perfect game. Running down what I gots:

• On Wednesday, amid a three-game series between the two teams, I covered the suddenly-interesting NL Central race between the overly favored Cardinals and the upstart Reds. The Cardinals came into the season favored by PECOTA to win the division by the widest margin of any team. They’ve played better than expected overall even given a sub-.500 record amid their May power outage. The race has more to do with the Reds, a team whose collection of young talent I’ve been (over)hyping for years in preseason radio hits. They’ve suddenly and surprisingly put together the league’s top-scoring offense even with the hindrance of Dusty Baker’s inability to find an effective leadoff hitter, and some trouble with the pitching staff:

To be fair, the Reds’ staff has been better lately, that blown six-run lead notwithstanding, putting up a 3.84 ERA in May after a 5.41 mark in April. The starters were especially good last month, with a 3.18 ERA and 20 quality starts out of 29, with rookie Sam LeCure providing one in his major-league debut on May 28 in place of Bailey, who’s on the DL due to shoulder inflammation. He’s fifth-starter fodder, but the Reds do have higher-upside reinforcements available. Edinson Volquez is simultaneously working his way back from Tommy John surgery and serving a 50-game suspension for PED usage; one can rail against the absurdity of the latter, but for a team in contention, this counts as a major break. He could be back around the All-Star break.

Meanwhile, lefties Travis Wood and Aroldis Chapman, both of whom spent March challenging Leake for the fifth spot, are at Triple-A. Wood, a three-star prospect, has a 4.19 ERA and a 60-17 K/BB ratio in 62 1/3 innings at Triple-A Louisville, though he’s been touched for 1.3 homers per nine. The much more heralded Chapman has a 3.55 ERA and 55/25 K/BB ratio in 45.2 innings while yielding just four homers. As Kevin Goldstein noted the other day, he hasn’t dominated like Stephen Strasburg, but he’s been very good quite often. Under normal circumstances, he’d merit a September callup, but it’s tough to imagine the Reds battling for a playoff spot while leaving him on the farm if he’s throwing well, even if he only winds up in the bullpen. In any case, the team does have pitching depth to draw upon if they’re serious about contending.

The elephant in the room, of course, is Baker, and particularly his reputation in handling young arms. His track record lends itself to cautionary tales told around campfires as well as ready-made satire, but even if one discounts the career arcs of Kerry Wood and Mark Prior as ancient history, he’s already left his mark on this staff. Harang’s ERA since his four-inning May 22, 2008 relief stint is a bulky 4.93, compared to 4.10 prior, yet he’s still ranked among the majors’ top 20 in Pitcher Abuse Points in each of the past three years. Volquez ranked 17th in PAP in his first season in the rotation, then wound up needing TJS after just nine starts last year. Cueto was pushed hard last summer while battling shoulder inflammation, and put up a 7.05 ERA after July 1.

While the Reds are currently second in the league in pitches per start (101.3), they’re just eighth in PAP after ranking fourth last year. None of the starters have thrown a Category 4 start (122-132 pitches), but Bailey (121 pitches on May 1), Harang (121 on May 8 ) and Cueto (118 on May 5) have all come close. Whether Bailey’s long outing and his injury are connected is unknown, though the pitcher vocally defended his skipper upon hitting the DL.

The Reds have an impressive aggregation of young talent, but they don’t have a battle-tested team the way the Cardinals do. In order to hang with the big boys, they’ll need this latest burst of strong pitching to keep up in some way, shape or form, and they’re particularly going to need Baker to handle his young starters with sensitivity, a notion that conjures up visions of a fox licking his chops as he fires up a barbecue outside a henhouse. That in turn will likely require general manager Walt Jocketty to keep a close eye on Baker’s handling of the staff, particularly when it comes to protecting the 22-year-old Leake, who’s throwing less than 15 pitches per inning, but will nonetheless face an innings limit somewhere down the line. Having Volquez, Wood, and/or Chapman in the mix by season’s end should help that, but the Reds will need their share of breaks for that even to matter.

• Wednesday quickly got crazy. First there was Griffey’s retirement, at once sudden — it’s not often a guy with over 600 homers hangs up his spikes midseason, particularly given that there are in fact six such players in baseball history — and inevitable, given that he was hitting so poorly and had created a distraction with the reports of his clubhouse napping. I quickly threw together a JAWS-flavored look, but not before waxing a bit nostalgic:

The Mariners, with whom Griffey began his major league career back in 1989, purportedly re-signed him as much for his effect on the clubhouse atmosphere as for whatever was left in his bat, but with a 20-31 record and an offense that was averaging just 3.7 runs per game, there was little defense for carrying him on the roster, particularly after the recent Slumbergate controversy turned the Seattle locker room into a chest-thump-a-thon.

None of which should devalue what Griffey accomplished in the game. His 13 All-Star appearances, 10 consecutive Gold Gloves (1990-1999), four home run crowns, and 1997 AL MVP award are a pretty fair haul as far as honors are concerned, and his performance in the five-game 1995 American League Division Series against the Yankees — five homers, followed by his scoring the series-winning run on Edgar Martinez’s double off Jack McDowell in the bottom of the 11th inning — is credited with helping to save baseball in Seattle.

Between that amazing run with the ’95 Mariners, his spectacular leaping catches at the wall, and his infectious smile, Griffey would have left his mark on the game without being one of the preeminent sluggers of the era, but it’s his homers for which he’ll most likely be remembered. Griffey’s 630 homers rank fifth all-time behind only Barry Bonds, Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth and Willie Mays. When he hit 56 home runs in 1997, it was he, not Bonds or Mark McGwire or Sammy Sosa who seemed like the obvious candidate to break Roger Maris’ single-season home run record of 61. Griffey hit 56 again the next year, but the spotlight shone upon McGwire and Sosa, and soon afterwards shifted to Bonds.

That latter trio players, as we now know, has since been connected to various performance-enhancing drugs while Griffey has not. While we’re still far from knowing the truth about what happened during an era where illicit substance usage was all too common — we never will — Griffey’s lack of a connection to that endless scandal managed to overshadow the last 10 years of his career, a span during which he averaged just 19 homers and 99 games a year while dealing with an endless litany of leg problems. Thus he’s been preserved as the innocent, smiling face of an era which many observers now view as soured.

Anyway, according to JAWS, Griffey ranks sixth among center fielders — behind Mays, Cobb, Speaker, DiMaggio and Mantle — on career, peak and total measures. It’s amazing and saddening to think what he might have accomplished without injuries, perhaps passing Ruth’s 714 homer mark if not Aaron’s 755, but what we got was still pretty amazing. (Thanks to Hardball Talk’s Aaron Gleeman and the Wall Street Journal’s Carl Bialik for the shout-outs).

• The Griffey news was instantly overshadowed by the controversy surrounding Jim Joyce’s blown call at first base on what would have been the final out of the third perfect game of the year — an astounding enough occurrence given that not since 1880 had there even been a year in which two such games were thrown; if you don’t know offhand how many balls and strikes it took, it doesn’t really count, does it? Watching the eighth and ninth innings via MLB.tv while instant-messaging with Steve Goldman, Nick Stone and the Twitscape, I had barely finished hyperventilating over Austin Jackson’s spectacular over-the-shoulder catch for the penultimate out when the outrage began.

Occupied by the Griffey writeup, my reaction unfolded in a rather fragmentary fashion. Mindful of the recent controversies involving umpires (particularly Joe West, not to mention last October’s ridiculousness), I joined the chorus: “ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME??? BRING ON THE FUCKING ROBOT UMPS YESTERDAY,” I tweeted momentarily after the play. Watching the aftermath, the grace with which both the pitcher and the umpire handled themselves, I noted both that “Jim Joyce’s otherwise upstanding rep clearly illustrates why instant replay use should be expanded. Reverse the call & his error is forgiven,” and that “Armando Galarraga showed more class in losing his perfect game than Dallas Braden did in completing his.” The latter thought — by which I meant more the whole narrative arc running from Moundgate through Braden’s subsequent running of the mouth through Granny Braden‘s “Stick it, A-Rod!” — was quoted or retweeted hundreds of times and gained me about a hundred new followers when it was all said and done.

In the end, I’m glad commissioner Bud Selig resisted the temptation to overturn the blown call and that angry fans resisted the call to mob violence in search of Joyce’s scalp. Not only is there the likelihood that Galarraga’s feat may live longer in memory as the new Harvey Haddix than he would as the new Len Barker, but the whole scenario turned out to be something of a teachable moment. Collecting a few links of the best links amid Friday’s AL Hit List entry:

[#6 Tigers] Nobody’s Perfect: Armando Galarraga is deprived of a perfect game—one that would have been the 21st of all-time, the third of the season, and incredibly, the second of the week—by a blown call by first base umpire Jim Joyce on the potential final out; a calm and collected Galarraga retires the next hitter to end the game. Controversy rages as to whether commissioner Bud Selig should overturn the blown call or expand the use of instant replay, and while the play stands, both Galarraga and Joyce show exceptional class in addressing the matter after it happens.

I’d like to have included Alex Belth’s take as well; he hit it out of the park:

Baseball brings us together. It’s a truism that can smack of cliche when invoked in a sentimental or nostalgic frame of mind, but it’s true all the same. And sometimes the game chokes up even the tough guys and the cynics…

This togetherness is why I chose to write about baseball and about being a baseball fan when I started this blog seven-and-a-half years ago. That’s why most of you guys roll through. That’s what we do. Today at work, people that could not care less about baseball were talking about the umpire’s blown call. “WORST CALL EVER” said the headline on the front page of the Daily News. There is nothing like injustice to bring people together, nothing more binding than “He wuz robbed!”

But a funny thing happened on the way to infamy. The two principal characters displayed such authenticity that the moment of greatness prevailed despite Joyce’s terrible mistake… Galarraga was so at ease with this basic fact that it stripped the drama of a victim. There was no outlet for any outrage. (Now, if the same thing had happened to a jacked-up spaz like Dallas Braden and a hard-nosed blowhard like Joe West it would have been like Wrestlemania and perhaps one of the trashiest scenes since Disco Demolition Night.) But Galarraga didn’t feel persecuted. He felt badly for Joyce. He knew the guy was hurting. After all, it’s got to be every umpire’s worst dream to blow a call of that magnitude. Galarraga didn’t let it ruin anything.

Then of course, Jim Joyce handled himself in such a way that I don’t think it’s an understatement to say that he’s a credit to his profession and to the game. We should all be that forthright, earnest, and professional in face of screwing the pooch. The umpires have been in the news for all the wrong reasons lately, but in what is clearly the biggest mistake by an umpire in years, Joyce was a full-grown man. He didn’t hide. He admitted that he was wrong. He was genuine. I don’t know what more can you ask from a person.

• Amid all of that, Thursday’s NL Hit List got somewhat lost in the shuffle, but I was quite proud of it, particularly given the Marlins rant and the Werner (not Whitey) Herzog reference:

[#9 Marlins] Perfect Crime: Victimized by Roy Halladay’s throwing a perfect game against them in front of 25,086 paying fans (65% capacity), the Marlins find a new way to devalue baseball history by selling unused tickets to the game in order to make a fast buck-while also padding their attendance total (yes, really). Screw Jeffrey Loria, David Samson, their merry band of money-grubbing carpetbaggers and the horse they rode in on; the money they’ll raise won’t buy them a clue.

[#14 Diamondbacks] Fire, and Lots of It: The Diamondbacks’ losing streak reaches 10 in a row, including four straight one-run losses and a 31-inning scoreless streak. As the offense sputters, the bullpen continues to smolder, surrendering the winning run in all four games (once via walkoff balk!) and throwing the obligatory Chad Qualls blown save in for free; he and Juan Gutierrez, who surrenders a walkoff homer to Matt Kemp, are second and third in the majors in negative WXRL. Diamondback relievers have allowed opposing hitters to bat .309/.390/.545; the last time such a conflagration raged in the desert, Werner Herzog filmed it.

Back in a bit with more.

That Seventies Vibe

Before I catch up with this week’s batch of Baseball Prospectus links, a just wanted to give a quick shout-out for a book I haven’t yet read but am looking forward to cracking, Dan Epstein’s Big Hair and Plastic Grass. Earlier in the week a friend of mine suggested I hit the book release party in Brooklyn because he knew I’d be on the same wavelength as the author.

One look at the cover and the subtitle and you can see why:

Pretty cool, no? Through another mutual friend (Stu Shea, who laid a Topps ’75 Roy White on me in honor of my mustache) I was introduced to Epstein chatted with him for a few minutes as a funky soundtrack —the Commodores’ “Machine Gun,” the Jimmy Castor Bunch’s “It’s Just Begun,” the Spinners’ “Rubberband Man” — and it was quickly apparent we were on the same wavelength. If I needed further proof, Epstein’s readings for the evening provided it: one on the Cleveland Ten-Cent Beer Night Riot (as made famous in one of my favorite baseball books, Seasons in Hell), the other a postmortem tribute to Dock Ellis from his blog. I’ve got a stack of new baseball books to get through this summer, and this will surely be among them.

• • •

Onto this week’s links: The NL Hit List, the AL Hit List, and a quick JAWS-flavored take on Scott Rolen’s Hall of Fame chances.

The 35-year-old Rolen is enjoying something of a resurgence at the moment, hitting .271/.335/.549 for the Reds. His 10 homers rank fifth in the NL, his slugging percentage ranks ninth, and his .306 True Average is just outside  the lower reaches of the NL’s top 20 (it was there yesterday when I wrote this, but he went 0-for-4). The power resurgence is a particularly interesting development, as Rolen hasn’t hit more than 11 homers in a single season or slugged anywhere near .500 since 2006 due to years of shoulder troubles.

Coming into the year, Rolen had tallied 74.7 career WARP, and 52.4 peak WARP (his seven best seasons at large), for a JAWS score of 63.6. That’s a hell of a score, actually; it ranks fourth all-time among third basemen, and is well above the JAWS standard at the position…

Rolen ranks as high as he does because of his defense. His Fielding Runs Above Average total is second only to Brooks Robinson among hot cornermen, and about 100 runs above the average Hall third baseman. That gives him enough of a boost that his peak score ranks fourth among third basemen, while his career score ranks sixth, with a good chance of passing both Paul Molitor and George Brett before it’s all said and done. Molitor, of course, spent a good portion of his career at DH, but is lumped in with the third basemen here because he did generate a fair bit of value above replacement defensively over the course of his career.

Rolen’s clearly in good shape on the JAWS scale, but that doesn’t mean he’s a lock for the Hall. Even with his seven Gold Gloves … He’s got just five All-Star appearances, which isn’t an overwhelming amount for a Hall of Famer. He’s never finished higher than fourth in an MVP vote, and never led the league in a key offensive category. While he did win a ring with the 2006 Cardinals and had a strong World Series that year, his overall postseason line (.228/.321/.421 in 131 PA) thus far suggests somewhat more harm than good done to his reputation. Furthermore, he had a five-year period from age 30 to 34 where he averaged just 111 games a year, suppressing his career totals to the point that he has “just” 1,849 hits (and 293 homers) right now. While he’s likely to stick around long enough to pad those totals, it’s worth remembering that no player from the expansion era (1961 onward) has been elected while having less than 2,000 hits.

I look at Rolen, I see a guy who might wind up like Bobby Grich, another personal favorite who generated a lot of value due to great defense, plate discipline and a bit of pop but missed a lot of time in his mid-30s due to back woes, retiring after his age 37 season.

Whatchootalkingbout? Gary Coleman (1968-2010)

Sad news regarding the passing of Gary Coleman due to a brain hemorrhage, and in my home state of Utah no less. Diff’rent Strokes was hands-down my favorite TV show when it first went on the air in late 1978, when I was just about to turn nine. While the premise of the show — wealthy white Park Avenue widower adopts African-American housekeeper’s children after she passes away — was a bit of a stretch, the witty, pint-sized Coleman used his impeccable comic timing to steal scenes left and right and became America’s number one child star. Via Jon Weisman, here’s a taste:

From CNN’s obituary:

“Pudgy cheeks, twinking eyes, and flawless timing made him seem like an old pro packed into the body of a small child,” wrote Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh in “The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 1946-Present.”

At the time, NBC was mired in last place among the three major broadcast networks and, excluding movies, had just two series in the Nielsen Top 20. “Strokes” was an immediate hit, finishing in the Top 30 its first three years, and made Coleman into a household name.

Veterans marveled at his comic timing. He appeared several times on Johnny Carson’s “The Tonight Show,” performed on several specials and had a hit TV movie with “The Kid From Left Field.” Until NBC started its mid-’80s rise with “The A-Team” and “The Cosby Show,” he was the primary prime-time face of the network.

“Gary is exceptional, and not only by the standards set for children. He’s bright, sweet and affectionate. He seems incapable of a wrong reading, and I’ve never seen that in any actor,” co-star Conrad Bain, who played “Strokes’ “millionaire industrialist Philip Drummond, told People in 1979.

“His talent,” his mother added, “may be God’s way of compensating him for what he’s been through, and the fact that he’ll never have the physical size of other boys.” Coleman reportedly had a kidney transplant at 5, and would have another when he was 16.

In its heyday, the show featured guest appearances from Muhammad Ali (helping Arnold get even with the school bully known only as The Gooch), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Clarence Clemons, David Hasselhoff, Janet Jackson, Reggie Jackson, Ed “Too Tall” Jones, even First Lady Nancy Reagan as she fought the Drug War.

Like fellow cast members Todd Bridges and Dana Plato, Coleman didn’t find much success outside of Diff’rent Strokes, and he fell on hard times due to his congenital kidney problems (he required daily dialysis), financial woes (some brought on by his parents, who misappropriated his earnings), numerous legal scrapes, and, by his own admission, something of a Napoleon complex. He did star in an enjoyable TV movie, The Kid from Left Field, in which he plays Jackie Robinson ‘J.R.’ Cooper, a bat boy who becomes manager of the Padres. Robert Guillaume played his father, and Ed McMahon played the owner. Sadly, it’s not available on NetFlix and has never been released on DVD. He also made an appearance on a very weird Simpsons Christmas episode:

Most of the headlines he made in his post-Strokes years were unflattering ones, but he’ll always have a place in the hearts of those who saw him at his youthful peak, and he’ll be missed.

Meet the Mets

As promised, here’s my in-depth look at what’s ailing the Mets, who did manage to take two out of three during the CitiField leg of the Subway Series. From the part about the pitching staff:

The front of the rotation is essentially sound. Johan Santana is pitching about as well as he did prior to last year’s season-ending surgery, which is to say a step down from his AL heyday. His 3.41 ERA would be his highest full-season mark, and his 7.0 K/9 his lowest, but even so, he’s eighth in the league in SNLVAR, and 10th in Support-Neutral Winning Percentage (.609). Mike Pelfrey (2.86 ERA, .605 SNWP) has added a splitter to his arsenal and increased his strikeout rate by a full K per nine (to 6.2) while getting slightly more ground balls (55.2 percent, up from last year’s 52.3 percent). SIERA approves of the 2010 model, shaving a half-run off his estimated mark (4.08, down from 4.57). Though the gap between his SIERA and his actual ERA indicates that he’s over his head at the moment, he’s emerged as the Mets’ number two starter.

The rest of the rotation is an outright mess, starting with the ever-maddening Oliver Perez, who was exiled to the bullpen last week thanks to an unsightly walk rate (7.9 per nine). Season-ending surgery to correct patellar tendinitis and enable him to clean up his mechanics hasn’t helped; he’s still capable of driving anyone watching him to the brink of homicide, and his three-year, $36 million dollar deal looks more like a sunk cost every day. Additionally, Jon Niese and John Maine both hit the disabled list last week, the former with a hamstring injury, the latter with shoulder weakness and a ridiculous amount of drama. Niese (4.79 ERA, .451 SNWP) has been serviceable at best, though his SIERA mark (4.20) suggests he’s capable of better. Maine (6.13 ERA, .401 SNWP) may have talked his way out of town; generally a decent pitcher when healthy, he has just 49 starts over the past three seasons.

It’s not like such problems couldn’t have been foreseen, as that aforementioned trio combined for 34 starts and a 5.31 ERA last year, with more DL days than innings pitched (193 to 173). As such, it’s absolutely unconscionable that a club with aspirations of contention didn’t do more to shore up their rotation this winter by at least acquiring a bona fide inning-eater, a problem that’s apparently contagious. How long until the zombie Russ Ortiz shows up clamoring for brains or innings? Making matters worse, Minaya even lost Nelson Figueroa via waivers at the end of spring training; he made 10 starts with a .503 SNWP last season, third on the team. Two hitters added to the 40-man roster at the time Figueroa was punted, Mike Jacobs and Frank Catalanotto, are both already history, furthering the embarrassment.

Having failed to do their winter homework, the Mets will likely need to bolster their rotation via trade to further their aspirations. Roy Oswalt is out of the question, as his no-trade clause can prevent exile to a dysfunctional outfit such as this. A willingness to take on salary could protect them from dealing top prospects like Mejia, Fernando Martinez, or Wilmer Flores and open the door to the acquisition of someone like Kevin Millwood, Jake Westbrook, Ben Sheets, or Ted Lilly, if not Cliff Lee (whose price tag will be higher), but it isn’t clear that the Wilpons, who forced the team to trim about 15 million (10 percent) off last year’s opening-day payroll are prepared to do that.

And here’s a little bit about the Mets’ most maligned hitter:

At third base, David Wright is hitting .261/.368/.490 with eight homers, only two behind last year’s aberration. His .307 TAv is about the same as last year, but his performance is surrounded by bad optics in that he’s whiffing in 31.6 percent of his plate appearances and on a 216-strikeout pace, this from a player who until last year had never whiffed more than 118 times in a year. And yes, his beaning of last August 16 does appear to be a point of inflection:

Split        PA   AVG/ OBP/ SLG    K%
2009 pre    497  .324/.414/.467   21.1
2009 post   121  .239/.289/.367   28.9
2010        190  .261/.368/.490   31.6
Total post  311  .252/.338/.440   30.5

The strikeouts appear to be taking a toll on Wright; at times, his body language is like one giant cringe. Even so, there’s really not a ton to complain about his production. His .286/.351/.531 showing with runners in scoring position is down from his 2004-09 split (.302/.392/.491) but hardly unproductive; among the regulars only Angel Pagan and Rod Barajas have a higher OPS marks, albeit in considerably fewer opportunities. Furthermore, Wright’s second on the team and 26th in the league in OBI%. While his struggles may be grabbing headlines, he’s hardly the offense’s biggest problem.

For all of the drama about injuries and their endless — and often entertaining — ineptitude when it comes to public relations, the Mets aren’t beyond fixing, but both GM Omar Minaya and manager Jerry Manuel are going to have to think outside the box to make it work, and I don’t think they’re constitutionally capable of that. I’d bet that Manuel gets the axe midsummer, with Minaya following him out the door at the end of the year despite having another season under contract. And of course, it will be quite the spectacle when it happens, because that’s how they roll…

Beat the Mets

Sunday’s sad news about Lima Time prevented me from catching up with my latest BP links. In addition to the usual Hit Lists (AL here, NL here), I had my second press box adventure inside of a week, attending Friday night’s Yankees-Mets game at CitiField. For a Subway Series, this one kicked off under rather inauspicious circumstances:

Fourteen seasons since interleague play was first introduced, it’s fair to say that even the small handful of natural rivalries which drive these annual matchups have lost some of their luster. So it appears to be with the Yankees-Mets Subway Series, which began on Friday night surrounded less by buzz than buzzkill. Not only did both teams enter the weekend’s series reeling from injuries and late-inning defeats, but amid an 18 percent drop in attendance at CitiField, the Mets were reduced to the indignity of giving premium tickets away to former season ticket holders.

The Yankees limped into Citi having lost eight out of their previous 12. Despite their lineup’s scrubbiness — Randy Winn, Marcus Thames, Francisco Cervelli, Juan Miranda and Ramiro Pena had all seen extensive action throughout the week, owing to the absences of Nick Johnson, Curtis Granderson, Nick Swisher and now Jorge Posada — the Yanks had scored a respectable 5.2 runs per game across that stretch, maintaining their spot as the majors’ most potent offensive team thanks to the recent resurgences of Mark Teixeira and Alex Rodriguez. Alas, their pitching staff had let them down, allowing 5.6 runs per game, a problem owing a fair deal to the bullpen’s sudden decrepitude — 20 runs allowed in 16.1 innings across their last five games, playing a major part in the four defeats they’d suffered since I’d seen them at Yankee Stadium last Saturday.

Still, their 25-16 record and second-place standing put them miles ahead of the Mets, who’d lost nine of 12 — including one game on a walkoff wild pitch and another on a walkoff throwing error, rekindling uncomfortable memories of last season’s debacles — and entered with a 20-22 record, bad enough for last place in the NL East. As has been the hallmark of the latter-day Omar Minaya regime, an air of constant crisis once again enveloped the club. Earlier in the week chief operating officer Jeff Wilpon had flown to Atlanta for impromptu organizational meetings that put manager Jerry Manuel’s job status in doubt; the deathwatch on his regime has begun.

To make matters worse — and these days, it almost goes without saying that the Mets are major league baseball’s foremost experts in doing so — injuries continue to decimate the club, exposing the winter’s scrimping. Where the Yankee’ recent championship gives them the latitude to view their injuries in the context of the big picture, the battered Mets have become all too prone to treating key maladies with the panic of a claustrophobe in a broken elevator — one full of hungry alligators, at that. How else to explain the conflicting stories arising from multiple clashes between player and team over diagnoses, doctors, rehab plans, and endless setbacks involving stars such as Jose Reyes and Carlos Beltran? While it’s tempting ascribe the constant siege under which the team finds itself to a ravenous New York media the reality is that any team with a sub-.500 record over the past season-plus while carrying one of the game’s top five payrolls might as well paint a target on its back.

The game turned out to be a good one, a scoreless duel for its first six innings between Javier Vazquez, making just his second start in 20 days, and Hisanori Takashi, a 35-year-old Japanese southpaw pressed into rotation duty by the Mets’ myriad injuries. The latter befuddled the Yankee lineup, scattering five hits and whiffing five despite his lack of velocity, which he made up for with a deep arsenal of offspeed stuff and a herky-jerky motion. Vazquez, despite bringing an 8.01 ERA into the game, was even better, limiting the Mets to just a fifth-inning single over the course of 70 pitches. Alas, he hurt a finger bunting amid the Yanks’ seventh-inning rally against Elmer “Glue Factory” Dessens and had to depart, and from there Manuel and Joe Girardi swapped pitchers in and out like it was an international hockey game. The Yanks won, 2-1, surviving a shaky ninth inning by Mariano Rivera in which he yielded back-to-back doubles against Jason Bay and likable Ike Davis.

The CitiField press box experience wasn’t quite the smooth sailing that Yankee Stadium had been; from the time I entered the ballpark, it took about 20 minutes for me to find my way to a seat. I was turned away at the Mets’ clubhouse for insufficient access privileges (unlike last week), and then seemingly every security official I asked for directions looked at me as though it was the first time the words “press” and “box” had ever been used in the same sentence. Whereas in Yankee Stadium you simply take the press elevator to the right floor, make one turn and you’re there, at Citi one must survive a byzantine maze that takes you past the radio and TV personnel, up and down multiple staircases through unmarked doors, through the media lounge (cafeteria) and out another unmarked door. Whereupon there was no seating assignment for me.

After asking four different people to help me find an unassigned seat, I finally emerged with one just behind a pair of MLB.com stringers charting pitches and hits for their Gameday application. Next to them were River Avenue Blues’ Mike Axisa and eventually my Bronx Banter homeboy Alex Belth. When the seats eventually filled up, to my left was a pair of Japanese writers to cover Takahashi, one of whom annotated his scorecard in Japanese. To my right was none other than Fox Sports’ Ken Rosenthal, for my money just about the hardest working man in the industry. Rosenthal was a frenzy of activity, typing out a column (or merely some bits for the next night’s Game of the Week) broadcast and contending with a Blackberry that buzzed every 30 seconds for an incoming email when he wasn’t actually talking to somebody, no doubt pursuing one of his rumors. Rosenthal is the gold standard when it comes to trade rumors, making similarly-calibered big names sound like plants on behalf of various interested parties. To my relief once I struck up the nerve to introduce myself, he also turned out to be a swell guy who had nice things to say about BP. In all, he scores big points in my book.

I’d set up my ballpark visit with an eye towards a feature on the Mets; I’ll link that one in the next post…

Lima Time Has Passed

Sad news out of Los Angeles: Jose Lima died of a heart attack on Sunday morning at the age of 37. An erratic pitcher for parts of 13 major league seasons, Lima was almost always either awfully entertaining or entertainingly awful. He had just appeared at Dodger Stadium two nights earlier, as the Dodgers, the team for which he produced his most memorable moment, played the Tigers, the team that signed him out of the Dominican Republic in 1989.

The Dodgers’ official site has a fitting tribute, as does Dodger Thoughts’ Jon Weisman, while Sons of Steve Garvey has the transcript of Vin Scully’s remarks from Sunday’s game. Bronx Banter’s Emma Span unearths a 2006 New York Times article from Lima’s brief stint with the Mets which mentions that the pitcher owned more than 2,000 suits, and that he recorded a merengue album, “The Mambo of Lima.” Look what I found rummaging around YouTube armed with my pidgin Spanish:

Lima had just three and a half seasons in which he posted an ERA better than the park-adjusted league average. For most of the rest of his time in the majors, he was brutally bad, cursed with the inability to get enough movement on a fastball that was rarely fast enough to elude major league hitters. In 2000, after two years of strong performances for the Astr0s, he set an NL record by allowing 48 homers, and put up a 6.65 ERA. Given at least 50 innings to do his damage, he actually topped that astounding mark twice, in 2002 with Detroit (7.77) and in 2005 with the Royals (6.99). His career ERA of 5.26 is actually the highest among pitchers with at least 1500 innings in their careers.

But when he was good, he was very good, and as fun to watch as any pitcher in the game, flamboyantly huffing, puffing and otherwise gesticulating his way to success. In 1998 and 1999, after four years of getting knocked around both leagues at a 5.92 ERA clip, he emerged as an All-Star caliber pitcher for the Astros, winning 21 games in the latter year, making the NL All-Star team, and finishing fourth in the Cy Young voting. In 2003, he was picked up off the independent Atlantic League scrap heap to made 14 starts  for the only winning Royals team since the 1994 strike. And in 2004, after spending most of the first two months of the season in the bullpen, he joined the injury-riddled Dodgers’ rotation and wound up as their number three starter. He capped his time in Dodger blue with a five-hit shutout of the Cardinals in the NL Division series to give the team its first postseason victory in 16 years. Here’s some of what I wrote after that game, whose conclusion I didn’t get to watch until several hours later:

In the first two games of the series, the devastating squad of Cardinal hit men had rolled up 16 runs on Dodger pitching and KO’d starers Odalis Perez and Jeff Weaver before they’d combined for eight innings pitched. With their season on the line, the Dodgers offered up loose nut Jose Lima, a man who encapsulates the one-man’s-trash-is-another-man’s-treasure aesthetic of this year’s team.

This is a junk-tossing pitcher picked up off of the scrap heap, a guy who can’t hit 90 on the gun, a guy who was pitching in the Atlantic League last season before resurrecting his career with the Kansas City Royals. Lima has posted an ERA below 5.00 in only three of his nine big-league seasons. His last big year was 1999, when he won 21 games for the Astros and made waves (and enemies) with his animated style and eccentric ways. When he couldn’t agree to terms with the Royals last winter, the Dodgers signed him to a minor-league deal. He was a reliever and spot starter until midseason, when the pitching-thin Dodgers were out of other alternatives. He went 13-5 with a 4.07 ERA for these Dodgers, including 9-1, 3.08 at Chavez Ravine. His crazy-like-a-fox demeanor won ballgames, and won over his teammates and Dodger fans as well.

…A phone call to my friend Nick later confirmed the game’s result but not its details, and so when I got home at 1:30 AM, I decided to check the TiVo to see the end. I picked it up in the bottom of the seventh. Lima was still his animated self, shaking his head and muttering after walking Edgar Renteria, then pumping his fist after retiring Reggie Sanders on a warning-track fly ball to Finley on the next pitch. The Dodger Stadium crowd was PUMPED in a way I had never seen before, waving the L.A. equivalent of the Homer Hanky in delight.

With one out in the top of the eighth, the telecast cut to Gagne warming up in the Dodger bullpen. The decision seemed automatic; at the beginning of the ninth or the first sign of trouble, the goggled closer, perhaps the best in the game, would take the ball. Lima retired pinch-hitter Marlon Anderson for the second out, and Fox showed a montage of the pitcher’s antics on the evening… They then cut to a graphic illustrating that with Anderson’s out, Lima had outdistanced the first two Dodger starters combined.

When Tony Womack escaped a full count by singling to center with two outs, I figured Jim Tracy would cue Gagne, but he let Lima press onward against the dangerous Walker. Ball one in the dirt brought pitching coach Jim Colborn out of the dugout, likely to issue the “get him or sit down” ultimatum. Lima huffed and puffed, pointed and gesticulated, then fired. Walker hit a sharp one-hopper right to Green in front of first base, and both Lima and the Dodger Stadium crowd went apeshit.

As the Dodgers batted in the eighth, the Foxies kept cutting to the Dodger dugout, searching for clues as to whether Lima was done for the night. Even Tim McCarver in his exalted omniscience didn’t know.

Even knowing the outcome of the game, I have to admit I got goosebumps when Lima emerged for the ninth to face the Cardinals’ trio of MVP candidates. A line from former Cardinal manager Johnny Keane about Bob Gibson after Game Seven of the 1964 series (for which McCarver was the catcher) came to mind: “I had a commitment to his heart.” Jim Tracy, a student of the game’s history, had to have that line in mind as well.

A fly ball to rightfielder Milton Bradley at the edge of the warning track retired Pujols. A drive to Finley in center took care of Scott Rolen, who remained hitless in the series. A popup to Beltre at third base disposed of Jim Edmonds and sealed the deal. In stark contrast to his previous gestures, Lima knelt near the mound for a serene moment, presumably thanking his local diety for allowing him to stymie the National League’s most fearsome offense on a five-hit shutout before resuming the festivities.

You would have thought the Dodgers had won the series by the fans’ fervor. They haven’t and they may not. But with the win, they’ve shed a 16-year burden of postseason futility and have now gone farther than any Dodger team since the Orel Hershiser-led 1988 World Champions. Their spot in the hearts of Dodger fans has been clinched, their accomplishments worth savoring for every last minute. Dodger Blues ought to reset that infernal clock which shows that it’s been 5837 days since the last great Dodger moment. Until tonight’s first pitch — Perez against Jeff Suppan — Lima Time is in full effect.

That 2004 Dodger team, the first one to make the playoffs since 1996 and the first one to win a playoff game since the 1988 World Champions, was a pivotal one for me, as it began healing the wounds induced by six years of poisoning by the Foxies. Upon their elimination 24 hours after Lima Time, I wrote:

After spending the better part of the News Corp era in self-induced exile from my Dodger roots and fretting endlessly over their various suitors, I was braced for the worst when Frank McCourt’s seemingly underfinanced bid turned out to be the winning one. Watching the Dodgers lose the Vladimir Guerrero sweepstakes and its nefarious underpinnings only fed my skepticism. Hearing that McCourt might sell naming rights to Dodger Stadium had me even angrier…

For years I had begun each Fox-era season with hope but not faith. From 3000 miles away, I would follow their offseason moves intently, slowly losing interest as the team stumbled out of the gate or wilted in the summer heat, only to make a day-late, dollar-short run at the Wild Card that would have me scrambling to keep up. The decision to hire [GM Paul] DePodesta — and retain Tracy — began to restore my faith.

Taking the reins from Dan Evans, a man who deserved better after restocking the farm system, DePodesta spent the year improvising masterfully in concert with Tracy, most notably with a bullpen almost completely rebuilt with rookies and castoffs after a flurry of deals at the trading deadline. The team upgraded its offense over last year thanks to the additions of Bradley, Werth, and Jose Hernandez. They watched Adrian Beltre finally live up to his star potential. They turned their defense into the league’s best (a .715 Defensive Efficiency Rating, tops in all of baseball) as Cora and Cesar Izturis emerged as the game’s top double-play combo. They overcame a shaky rotation that nearly dropped an axle down the stretch and a trade that more or less blew up in their face. And they kicked the Giants squarely in the groin on the season’s final weekend, capping a seven-run ninth with a Steve Finley grand slam that will live in the annals of Dodger lore forever. NL West champs, for the first time in nine years.

For all of that and so much more — Eric Gagne’s 84 consecutive saves, Alex Cora’s 18-pitch at-bat, Lima Time, night after night of pinch-grand slams, 53 come-from-behind victories including 26 in their final at-bat, their first postseason victory in 16 years as Lima shut down the league’s most feared offense and got L.A. fans to stay right to the end — the Dodgers showed their hearts every single day and won mine all over again. If I’m a bit misty-eyed, whatever tears I’ve shed over the end of their season have been tears of gratitude and joy. Thank you, Dodgers, for bringing me home.

Thank you, Jose Lima, for being part of that special moment, and for giving us so many entertaining memories even when you were down on your luck.

How the Mighty Ortiz has Fallen

Having watched Monday night’s wacky back-and-forth Yanks-Red Sox game, I couldn’t help but notice not only the fact that David Ortiz homered, but that he did so with nobody on base and the score 6-1. In fact, all but one of Ortiz’s seven homers this year have come with the bases empty, and six of them have come in low-leverage situations, those where based upon the inning, baserunner, out and relative score simply aren’t likely to wind up very consequential to the outcome of a game. I also noticed that he wasn’t walking much. So I wrote up a quick One-Hopper for Baseball Prospectus:

…Ortiz is still hitting just .235/.301/.500, numbers that come out to a very humdrum .262 True Average, just two points above the league average, and well below what one would expect from a DH. Ortiz’s May numbers (.348/.380/.761) certainly reflect better production, but his ugly 17/3 strikeout-to-walk ratio in those 50 plate appearances is particularly telling. Even amid this month’s spree, he’s not drawing walks, a reflection of the fact that pitchers are no longer afraid to challenge him.

Ortiz’s strikeout-to-walk ratio for the entire year is an abysmal 38/10, and he doesn’t have a single intentional walk to his name — numbers way out of line with his time in Boston. Expressing his strikeout, unintentional and intentional walk numbers as percentages of his total plate appearances, and including his True Averages for reference:

Year    K%     UIBB%  IBB%   K/UIBB   TAv
2003   16.3%    9.8%   1.6%   1.43   .304
2004   19.9%   10.0%   1.2%   1.77   .308
2005   17.4%   13.0%   1.3%   1.22   .324
2006   17.1%   14.0%   3.4%   0.98   .325
2007   15.4%   14.8%   1.8%   0.93   .341
2008   15.1%   11.8%   2.4%   1.06   .292
2009   21.4%   11.0%   0.8%   1.81   .266
2010   34.9%    9.2%   0.0%   3.80   .262
03-09  18.0%   12.1%   1.7%   1.49   .311

One of those lines is not like the others… Still, it’s fair to point out that Ortiz has just 113 plate appearances thus far this year, and that he did rebound substantially last year after failing to homer through his first 164 PA. But it’s also worth noting that through his first 113 PA in 2009, he was only striking out at a 20.4 percent clip and drawing walks at a 10.6 percent clip, for a 1.92 K/UIBB ratio — numbers very close to his year-end rates. Furthermore, it’s also worth noting that according to the work of Russell A. Carleton (a.k.a. Pizza Cutter), it only takes 150 plate appearances for strikeout rate to stabilize, and 200 PA for walk rates to do so, whereas OBP and SLG don’t stabilize until the 350 PA mark. By Carleton’s definition, which refers to the intraclass correlations of equivalent sequences of PA, batting average and BABIP don’t stabilize over small enough samples to fit into a typical 650 PA single season.

As for the leverage aspect, Monday night’s homer came at a point when the Yankees had an estimated 94 percent chance of winning the game; sure, the Sox came back to take the lead and nearly win, and they certainly have a reputation for making such comebacks more often than the average team. A quick comparison of Big Papi’s Boston-era numbers in high, medium, and low leverage situations, split into 2003-2008 and 2009-2010 bins:

High     PA   HR    AVG/OBP/SLG
03-08   723   42  .337/.429/.648
09-10   152    5  .238/.316/.446

Med      PA   HR    AVG/OBP/SLG
03-08  1392   81  .289/.387/.580
09-10   282   14  .251/.333/.482

Low      PA   HR    AVG/OBP/SLG
03-08  1616  108  .286/.394/.593
09-10   306   16  .226/.327/.466

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Pitchers need not have The Fear when they face Ortiz in pressure situations, as they can challenge him with impunity. That doesn’t bode well for the Red Sox or their fans, and even from this side of the rooting aisle, it’s kind of painful to watch.

But also kind of fun, mwah-ha-ha…