tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-247945372024-03-08T15:02:30.489-06:00Lost In Left FieldOne man's view of the world of baseball.Paul Whitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11393600178387119479noreply@blogger.comBlogger20125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24794537.post-1146330646634546912006-04-29T11:54:00.000-05:002006-04-29T12:13:12.056-05:00That's All Folks<span style="font-family:arial;">It's been fun folks, but it's my sad duty to report to you that my days of posting on this website are now over. I'll leave it up and running, and I may try to get all of my old content posted before I stop completely, but I won't be putting anything new on the site moving forward.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;">The reason is simple - no one is reading it. I get the grand total of two hits per day on this site, particularly since I moved to the new format. Prior to that, I'd get a few random daily hits on individual pages, if they happened to align with someone's Google search, but even then it was a rare day when as many as fifteen people stopped by to see the site. Sorry, but that's just not enough to justify the effort required to write new content and post it. My life is just as busy as yours, maybe more so in many cases, whether I write that day or not. On days I write, the time I can spend on my family suffers too much, particularly if no one is bothering to read it. </span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;">I've never made one penny off this website, and never intended to. It was always a labor of love. Well, I love my family and the rest of my life more.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">When the writing itch hits me in the future, as I'm certain it will, I'll still try to find some outlets to get the work published. Sadly there seem to be fewer and fewer sites on the Internet that accept free content, so I'm afraid I can't make any promises, other than to say that I'll do my best. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Thank you to the few of you who visited regularly (especially since you're probably related to me), and thanks to all who stopped by to take a look or drop a note. It has always been greatly appreciated. </span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;">Go Sox!</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;">Go Royals!</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;">Take Care,</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;">Paul</span>Paul Whitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11393600178387119479noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24794537.post-1145282487914551012006-04-17T08:55:00.000-05:002006-04-17T09:06:12.743-05:00The Bane of My Existence<span style="font-family:arial;">I recently had a fairly passionate email exchange with Bill Ballou, a sports columnist for <em>The</em> <em>Worcester Telegram & Gazette</em>. The subject was Mr. Ballou’s blank ballot that he turned in during this year’s Hall of Fame election. He was not alone, as nearly a dozen other voters did the same thing.<br /><br />If this was an election where there simply wasn’t anyone worthy of the Hall of Fame on the ballot, I’d be okay with that. I’d even be okay with it if Ballou or the others evaluated the candidates and honestly felt they did not meet the standards at their position set by previous elections to the Hall. That would be fine. After all, that’s their job as voters.<br /><br />But that’s not what Ballou did. No, instead he justified his empty ballot by saying that none of the players met his personal standards for the Hall of Fame, explaining that, in his view, the Hall should only be comprised of the super elite of past ballplayers, and they have already admitted far too many players he would have left on the outside.<br /><br />That view is something I have a big problem with.<br /><br />Hall of Fame voters who think like this are the bane of my existence. Look, I understand that writers are tasked with exercising their individual judgment about whether a player is worthy of being elected to Cooperstown, and I completely agree with that. But I fundamentally disagree with the notion that the writer should apply that judgment against their own set of Hall of Fame standards. In my view, the writer's job as a voter is to compare the players to the standards already established by the Hall of Fame through years of sanctioning prior BBWAA and Veteran's Committee elections. Since it is the Hall that sets the election rules and exercises the power to set the standards for exclusion (like a minimum of 10 years of playing time, not on the banned list, etc.), it follows that they have the power to set the standards for inclusion as well. They have done so by accepting the results of every prior election, even the ones that look like they didn't make much sense. (Rabbit Maranville? Catfish Hunter? Chick Hafey?) And since it is the Hall that grants the writers the power to vote in the first place, I don't think it is the writers’ luxury to ignore those standards and apply their own. It's fair to pass on Jim Rice, for example, on the grounds that, in the writer’s judgment, he doesn't match that collective level of the eighteen left fielders already in the Hall. But if they’re excluding him because he can't compare to Ted Williams and Stan Musial only, that seems like an abuse of the power the Hall has granted the voters.<br /><br />Ballou went on the claim that he sees no point in maintaining the Veteran’s Committee anymore, since all of the worthy candidates have long since been elected and it’s the Veterans, not the BBWAA, that makes the lion’s share of the mistakes in admitting unworthy players to Cooperstown. While I agree with him that the majority of the poor selections to the Hall of Fame have come from the Veteran's Committee, I'm afraid I can't agree that they no longer have a purpose. The reason is that the BBWAA regularly makes an egregious omission that would have no means of being corrected without the Veteran’s Committee. In it's current state, I sincerely doubt the Veterans will ever elect anyone, but since they revamp their rules about once per decade, I'm pretty confident that they'll be loosening their rules in the near future. And that's necessary because I can name a number of players who the BBWAA have failed to elect despite the fact that each has matched or exceed the standards the BBWAA has already set.<br /><br />To illustrate, ignore all of the shortstops elected by the Veteran's Committee, since that seems to be Ballou’s preference, and concentrate just on the nine that the BBWAA has elected (Aparicio, Appling, Banks, Boudreau, Cronin, Maranville, Smith, Wagner and Yount). Combined, these nine average a .285 batting average, .353 on-base percentage, and .408 slugging percentage. Their average OPS (on-base plus slugging) was .761, or 10% better than the average of the leagues in which they played. They averaged 143 homers and 1063 RBI.<br /><br />Now look at Alan Trammell: .285 AVG, .352 OBP, .415 SLG, .767 OPS (10% better than HIS leagues' average), 185 homers, 1003 RBI.<br /><br />So what's the difference? What keeps his BBWAA vote totals so low every year? Is it defense? It shouldn't be - Trammell won four Gold Gloves, which fits him neatly in the middle of the four current Hall of Famers who played in the Gold Glove era, above Yount and Banks (1 each) and below Aparicio and Smith (9 and 13 respectively). Was it durability? Nope. These nine averaged 2468 games played, just one season's worth of games more than Trammell accumulated in his 20 years. It can't be post-season performance either since Trammell was the World Series MVP in 1984. He never chased trick-or-treaters in his car, never screamed at reporters, never had a drug or sex scandal, and wasn't a clubhouse cancer that bounced from team to team.<br /><br />And Trammell isn't an isolated case. I could do the same thing for Rich Gossage, for instance. Not only wasn't he elected, but he was passed over for a contemporary, Bruce Sutter, who is demonstrably worse. Here's the averages of the three true relievers elected to the Hall (Dennis Eckersley excluded due to his numbers as a starter): 108 wins, 104 losses, 892 games, 289 saves, 1666 innings, 1257 strikeouts, 2.72 ERA. Then there's Gossage: 124 wins, 107 losses, 1002 games, 310 saves, 1809 innings, 1502 strikeouts, 3.01 ERA.<br /><br />Or how about Ron Santo? The six third basemen elected by the writers averaged 304 homers; Santo had 342. They averaged 1381 RBI; Santo had 1331. They walked 1132 times; Santo walked 1108. They got on base at a .370 clip; Santo's was .362. They slugged .465 to Santo's .464. They averaged 6 Gold Gloves to Santo's 5. Their collective OPS was 28% better than their leagues, while Santo's was 25% better. Yes, he played only 2243 games compared to an average of 2463, but he played every one of them with diabetes that later forced him to have both legs amputated, so I think it's fair to cut him some slack when it comes to longevity.<br /><br />Or how about Joe Torre? Eight catchers have been elected by the writers to the Hall of Fame, posting averages of 1944 games, 1004 runs, 1918 hits, 281 homers, 670 extra-base hits, 1180 RBI, .284 average, .358 OBP, .473 slugging and an OPS that was 24% better than their leagues. Torre played in more games (2209), scored just about the same number of runs (996), had far more hits (2342), nearly as many homers (252) and extra-base hits (655), the same number of RBI (1185), a better average (.297), better OBP (.365), and better OPS compared to his leagues (29% better). And yes, I recognize that he played more games at third and first combined than he played at catcher, but he still was a catcher more than he was anything else, and not a bad one either, winning a Gold Glove in 1965.<br /><br />The really egregious one is Bert Blyleven. I don't think the collective BBWAA has any awareness that the average of the 30 Hall of Fame starting pitchers who they have already elected looks like this: 286 wins, 284 complete games, 51 shutouts, 2573 strikeouts, 1.20 walks-plus-hits per inning, 5.4 strikeouts per nine innings, 2.1 strikeouts per walk and an ERA 22% better than the league average. That's everyone - Cy Young, Lefty Grove, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, Warren Spahn, and the other 25 starters selected by the writers. See, if the writer's were really aware of those numbers, they would have already elected Blyleven, because he approaches or exceeds every single one of them - 287 wins, 242 complete games, 60 shutouts, 3701 strikeouts, 1.20 walks-plus-hits per inning, 6.7 strikeouts per nine innings. 2.8 strikeouts per walk and an ERA 18% better than league average (the same as Warren Spahn and Ted Lyons, and better than eleven of the other twenty-eight). Bert Blyleven essentially is the average starting pitcher elected by the writers over the years, but mystically can't get any support unless the BBWAA members are inundated with email from obscure stat heads like me or famous ones like Bill James. I have zero explanation for that.<br /><br />Omissions of this kind are particularly confusing when the BBWAA has demonstrated in the past that they will occasionally let in a stinker as well. Bruce Sutter is this year's example, but Tony Perez and Pie Traynor and Catfish Hunter and Red Ruffing and Early Wynn and Don Sutton and Ralph Kiner and Kirby Puckett and several others were all elected by the BBWAA despite being nowhere near the standards already set, and despite being no better, and in some cases worse, than other players the writers had already passed over.<br /><br />So explain it to me, please, Mr. Ballou. And I'm not just talking about your vote, I'm talking about the collective vote of the BBWAA. Why do players like Trammell and Gossage and Blyleven and Santo get passed over when they either match or exceed the Hall of Fame standards at their position that have been set by your own organization? Until that question can be answered well, the Veteran's Committee, or preferably some better organization for correcting these kinds of mistakes, has to be retained.<br /><br />Why do the Sutter's, Perez's and Puckett's get elected? Until that question is answered well, and as long as the BBWAA requires the Veteran's Committee as a safety net, I'm going to doubt the writers’ collective competence as voters.</span>Paul Whitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11393600178387119479noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24794537.post-1143997374302422812006-04-02T10:45:00.000-05:002006-04-02T12:06:10.073-05:002006 National League Predictions<span style="font-family:arial;">This entry is going to be decidedly shorter than the American League predictions, for the simple reason that there isn't a single National League team worthy of much analysis this season. Honestly, I would take six different AL teams - A's, Angels, Indians, White Sox, Red Sox, Yankees - over anyone from the National League. Don't get me wrong, someone from the NL will win 92 or 93 games, and will look somewhat dominant doing so. But that will be solely due to the poor competition they'll face most days. Trust me folks, other than the Cardinals, Braves and maybe the Mets, I don't think there's a single team in the NL that could finish as high as third in any of the American League's three divisions.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"><strong><u>NL EAST</u></strong></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2421/2566/1600/rentan.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2421/2566/320/rentan.jpg" border="0" /></a>Do you know how many National League teams projected to 90 wins given last year's results? Just three. The most predictable of these, in some respects, was the Braves, in that they win 90 or more games every year. Don't expect much to change this season. Atlanta is still the class of their division, no matter how many moves the Mets made in the off-season. Atlanta lost a great player in Rafael Furcal, but Edgar Renteria is a decent replacement, especially in the NL and in a city like Atlanta, where half the population doesn't even know they have a baseball team. Boston-like pressure in long in his rearview mirror, and he's still young enough to bounce back to the form he displayed in St. Louis. With all the youngsters now a year older, look for Atlanta to repeat. Again. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;">The Mets will win the Wild Card by default, after buying so much talent the last couple of years that Omar Minaya should be fired if this team doesn't make the playoffs. Honestly, his spending sprees these past two winters made me think that he simply has no impulse control now that he has a fat checkbook. It's as if he's living out every fantasy he had as the GM in Montreal, when he would fall asleep at night thinking, "If only I had New York money to play with".</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;">The Phillies will be decent, in a way sure to torture their fans. Honestly, they'll hit the ball like crazy, with their bandbox home field playing a huge role, but their pitching staff will look the east coast version of the Rockies.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;">The Nationals are a bad baseball team (77-85 Pythagorean record last year) that got worse by trading away perhaps their best offensive player, Brad Wilkerson, and losing perhaps their best pitcher, Esteban Loaiza, through free agency. All they got in return is a wildly overrated Alfonso Soriano, a man who is less suited to play 81 games in RFK Stadium than perhaps any other everyday player in the major leagues. This will end badly.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;">The Marlins will be spending the summer auditioning for the good people of San Antonio.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"><strong>Predicted finishes:</strong></span><br /><p><table style="MARGIN-TOP: 0pt; WIDTH: 300px" cellpadding="4"><tbody><tr><td><strong><span style="font-family:arial;"></span></strong></td><td><p align="center"><strong><u><span style="font-family:arial;">W</span></u></strong></p></td><td><p align="center"><strong><u><span style="font-family:arial;">L</span></u></strong></p></td></tr><tr><td><span style="font-family:arial;">Braves</span></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">93</span></p></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">69</span></p></td></tr><tr><td><span style="font-family:arial;">Mets</span></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">90</span></p></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">72</span></p></td></tr><tr><td><span style="font-family:arial;">Phillies</span></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">82</span></p></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">80</span></p></td></tr><tr><td><span style="font-family:arial;">Nationals</span></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">70</span></p></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">92</span></p></td></tr><tr><td><span style="font-family:arial;">San Antonio</span></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">59</span></p></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">103</span></p></td></tr></tbody></table><center></center><p><span style="font-family:arial;"></p></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong><u>NL CENTRAL</u></strong><br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2421/2566/1600/pujols.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2421/2566/320/pujols.jpg" border="0" /></a>Let's be clear from the beginning; The Cardinals will win the NL Central again. They are still the class of this division, and really shouldn't have much trouble in defending their title. But the Cardinals are not a great baseball team anymore. Their lineup is strewn with guys who have never been reliable regulars in the big leagues (So Taguchi), are still learning (Yadier Molina), are streaky at best (Juan Encarnacion, Junior Spivey), or have serious injury histories (Scott Rolen, Jim Edmonds). Their rotation is topped by two guys with histories of injuries (Scott Carpenter and Mark Mulder) and rounded out with three guys who define "shaky" (Jason Marquis, Jeff Suppan, Sir Sidney Ponson). Braden Looper, who was run out of New York after single-handedly torching the Mets bullpen last season, is now a key setup man. And there is little or no help in the high minors that can contribute this season.<br /><br />In short, the Cards are one Albert Pujols injury away from being a .500 team. I don't expect that to happen, but the only reason I'm picking them to win this division is because none of the other five teams in it stepped up during the off-season. The Brewers' will be frisky, but their best pitcher is a health concern and their youngsters probably need another year. The Cubs seem incapable of investing money wisely or keeping pitchers healthy. The Astros lost their best pitcher, their all-time franchise player is likely to retire, and they made no moves to help a bad offense. And the Pirates and Reds are the Pirates and Reds.</span><br /></span><p><span style="font-family:Arial;"><strong>Predicted finishes:</strong></span></p><p><table style="MARGIN-TOP: 0pt; WIDTH: 300px" cellpadding="4"><tbody><tr><td><strong><span style="font-family:arial;"></span></strong></td><td><p align="center"><strong><u><span style="font-family:arial;">W</span></u></strong></p></td><td><p align="center"><strong><u><span style="font-family:arial;">L</span></u></strong></p></td></tr><tr><td><span style="font-family:arial;">Cardinals</span></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">91</span></p></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">71</span></p></td></tr><tr><td><span style="font-family:arial;">Brewers</span></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">87</span></p></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">75</span></p></td></tr><tr><td><span style="font-family:arial;">Astros</span></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">82</span></p></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">80</span></p></td></tr><tr><td><span style="font-family:arial;">Cubs</span></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">77</span></p></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">85</span></p></td></tr><tr><td><span style="font-family:arial;">Pirates</span></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">74</span></p></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">88</span></p></td></tr><tr><td><span style="font-family:arial;">Reds</span></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">68</span></p></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">94</span></p></td></tr></tbody></table><center></center><p><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong><u>NL WEST</u></strong></span></p><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2421/2566/1600/little.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 199px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 205px" height="211" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2421/2566/320/little.jpg" width="205" border="0" /></a>Do they still play baseball in the NL West? They sure didn't last year, when every single team in the division was outscored. The best of this hideous lot, the Padres, projected to just 77 wins, but lucked into enough that they finished 82-80, thus saving baseball the embarrassment of having a sub-.500 team in the playoffs.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Honestly, none of these team is worthy of much ink, but I'm going with the Dodgers on the theory that they did the most in the off-season to blow up their old, mediocre selves. Now, those moves were questionable in many cases (Grady Little? Nomar to play first base?), but I'm going to reward the effort.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><p><strong>Predicted finishes: </strong></span></p><br /><p><table style="MARGIN-TOP: 0pt; WIDTH: 300px" cellpadding="4"><tbody><tr><td><strong><span style="font-family:arial;"></span></strong></td><td><p align="center"><strong><u><span style="font-family:arial;">W</span></u></strong></p></td><td><p align="center"><strong><u><span style="font-family:arial;">L</span></u></strong></p></td></tr><tr><td><span style="font-family:arial;">Dodgers</span></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">89</span></p></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">73</span></p></td></tr><tr><td><span style="font-family:arial;">Padres</span></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">81</span></p></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">81</span></p></td></tr><tr><td><span style="font-family:arial;">Giants</span></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">75</span></p></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">87</span></p></td></tr><tr><td><span style="font-family:arial;">Diamondbacks</span></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">71</span></p></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">91</span></p></td></tr><tr><td><span style="font-family:arial;">Rockies</span></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">62</span></p></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">100</span></p></td></tr></tbody></table></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong><u>Playoffs:</u></strong></span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">NLDS: Braves over Dodgers, Cardinals over Mets</span></p><p><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><span style="font-family:arial;">NLCS: Braves over Cardinals</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong><u>World Series:</u></strong></span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">The American league is simply the better league, so I expect that any team that comes out of the AL will triumph over any team from the NL. I also think the AL will win the All-Star Game and the overall season series in interleague play. The AL has won 15 of the last 22 World Series', and has had ten different franchises win it all in that span. Since I picked the Red Sox to emerge from the American League, they're my pick to win the whole show as well.</p></span>Paul Whitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11393600178387119479noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24794537.post-1143661251834626722006-03-29T12:50:00.000-06:002006-03-30T14:53:11.403-06:002006 American League Predictions<span style="font-family:arial;">Ah, my least favorite column of every baseball season. Predictions are a tricky, tricky thing. To paraphrase Billy Beane, they're a crapshoot. You don't know the affect of injuries, or whether rookies will perform, or which veterans will suddenly lose it, or a whole host of other issues that will seriously impact each team during the course of a long season.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;">All you have is the data available and some gut instinct. Plus, it helps immeasurably to know which data to look at. For instance, last year's actual win totals are pretty much meaningless when it comes to predicting the upcoming season. If I mention them at all in the upcoming paragraphs, it won't be frequent and it won't be because I feel they are a hallmark of future performance.</span><span style="font-family:arial;"> </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong><u>AL EAST</u></strong></span><br /><strong><u><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span></u></strong><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;">Here are the 2005 Pythagorean records of each team:</span><br /><p><table style="MARGIN-TOP: 0pt; WIDTH: 300px" cellpadding="4"><tbody><tr><td><strong><span style="font-family:arial;"></span></strong></td><td><p align="center"><strong><u><span style="font-family:arial;">W</span></u></strong></p></td><td><p align="center"><strong><u><span style="font-family:arial;">L</span></u></strong></p></td></tr><tr><td><span style="font-family:arial;">Yankees</span></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">90</span></p></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">72</span></p></td></tr><tr><td><span style="font-family:arial;">Red Sox</span></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">90</span></p></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">72</span></p></td></tr><tr><td><span style="font-family:arial;">Blue Jays</span></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">88</span></p></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">74</span></p></td></tr><tr><td><span style="font-family:arial;">Orioles</span></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">74</span></p></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">88</span></p></td></tr><tr><td><span style="font-family:arial;">Devil Rays</span></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">65</span></p></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">97</span></p></td></tr></tbody></table><center></center><p><span style="font-family:arial;"><br />These totals are based upon the runs scored and allowed by each team, respectively, and they are generally considered a much better indicator of a team's true quality. Note that both the Sox and Yankees dropped five wins. Had the four AL playoff spots been based upon Pythagorean winning percentage only, both clubs would have missed the post-season last year. Also note how close the Blue Jays were. </span><span style="font-family:Arial;">These teams are not quite the dynamic duo they have been in past years. In reality, Toronto was a closer team than anyone thought, and the AL East as a whole wasn't that good last year. </span><span style="font-family:Arial;">Now that we know the off-season changes made by each team, we can use last year's projections as a base and start to project ahead. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:Arial;"><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2421/2566/1600/20051006_arod_error.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 167px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 263px" height="263" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2421/2566/320/20051006_arod_error.jpg" width="138" border="0" /></a>I think the Yankees got a bit better offensively with the addition of Johnny Damon, but they treaded water on their pitching staff and collectively got a year older. They got essentially healthy years from Jeter, Matsui, A-Rod, Sheffield, Giambi and Posada, a bunch of aging regulars who simply can't be expected to repeat that performance. I suspect they'll score a bit more than last year, but not by nearly the amount some people are expecting. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:Arial;">At the same time, my guess is that their pitching will regress. Randy Johnson and Mike Mussina are each a year older and fragile, while Jaret Wright, Carl Pavano and Chien-Ming Wang each missed time through injury last year. To Wang may become a good, reliable pitcher, but to expect Wright or Pavano to return to form, or to expect Johnson and Mussina to replicate their combined.400+ innings, 30 wins and 4.06 ERA, would be foolish. It would be similarly foolish to expect Kyle Farnsworth to post the kind of number Tom Gordon regularly provided, and one of these days, 36-year old Mariano Rivera's single pitch will lose one or two miles an hour and he'll become pretty ordinary.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:Arial;">Now, many, perhaps even most, of these things won't happen this year. But some will, and the Yankees system-wide lack of major league-ready depth is going to take its toll eventually. I'm guessing that will happen this year. They'll still be good, probably in the area of 90 wins, as they projected last year, but that total makes them more likely to miss the playoffs than make them.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:Arial;">Meanwhile, the rival Red Sox are in a slightly different boat. They are aging in in many areas just as badly as the Yankees, with the key difference that Boston's front office has stockpiled a lot of talent in the high minors that could contribute this year, either directly or through trades that bring in reliable veterans. Plus, they have built in flexible, young depth at the key questionable roster spots. Mike Lowell coming off a poor year? No problem, we've got Kevin Youkilis to slide over to third base if needed. J.T. Snow showing his age this spring? That's okay, Hee-Seop Choi is sitting in Pawtucket waiting for some playing time. Trot Nixon's knees giving out? There stands Wily Mo Pena or Adam Stern. A starter finally feeling his age? Enter Jonathan Papelbon or Jon Lester. On top of that, the club got younger in center field, and third base, and shortstop and first base, as well as a key rotation slot with the addition of Josh Beckett, a proven Yankee-killer. Their entire bench got younger except for Snow, and while the pitching staff collectively got older, that is also the area where the club has the most talent in the minors ready to contribute.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:Arial;">Toronto's case is a hard one. The numbers tells me they were a better team than their record showed last year, and I know they added some nice pieces in the off-season. But their top two starters are injury prone, and they gave up their vacuum cleaner second baseman who was so key to that staff's success. I don't think they'll regress at all, but I don't see them passing either of the two traditional powers.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:Arial;">Baltimore will be better simply by virtue of having their luck change. After the Rafael Palmeiro debacle last year, the parts started falling off the Oriole bandwagon faster than they fell of Apollo 13. Then Brian Roberts suffered his ugly elbow injury and the team dropped like a rock. They should be better this year, and their young arms look pretty promising, but I doubt they'll reach .500.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:Arial;">Tampa? They still play baseball there? No, to be serious, the Devil Rays will hit this year, but their pitching is a joke and their new front office didn't make any serious moves with their wealth of outfielders to acquire help for the rotation or bullpen. I guess I'm just don't know what direction this team is going, but I know it won;t be up in the standings.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:Arial;">Predicted Finishes:</span></p><p><table style="MARGIN-TOP: 0pt; WIDTH: 300px" cellpadding="4"><tbody><tr><td><strong><span style="font-family:arial;"></span></strong></td><td><p align="center"><strong><u><span style="font-family:arial;">W</span></u></strong></p></td><td><p align="center"><strong><u><span style="font-family:arial;">L</span></u></strong></p></td></tr><tr><td><span style="font-family:arial;">Red Sox</span></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">94</span></p></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">68</span></p></td></tr><tr><td><span style="font-family:arial;">Yankees</span></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">90</span></p></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">72</span></p></td></tr><tr><td><span style="font-family:arial;">Blue Jays</span></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">86</span></p></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">76</span></p></td></tr><tr><td><span style="font-family:arial;">Orioles</span></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">77</span></p></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">85</span></p></td></tr><tr><td><span style="font-family:arial;">Devil Rays</span></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">70</span></p></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">92</span></p></td></tr></tbody></table><center></center><p><span style="font-family:arial;"></p></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong><u>AL CENTRAL</u></strong></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;">2005 Pythagorean Standings:</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><br /><p><table style="MARGIN-TOP: 0pt; WIDTH: 300px" cellpadding="4"><tbody><tr><td><strong><span style="font-family:arial;"></span></strong></td><td><p align="center"><strong><u><span style="font-family:arial;">W</span></u></strong></p></td><td><p align="center"><strong><u><span style="font-family:arial;">L</span></u></strong></p></td></tr><tr><td><span style="font-family:arial;">Indians</span></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">96</span></p></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">66</span></p></td></tr><tr><td><span style="font-family:arial;">White Sox</span></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">91</span></p></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">71</span></p></td></tr><tr><td><span style="font-family:arial;">Twins</span></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">84</span></p></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">78</span></p></td></tr><tr><td><span style="font-family:arial;">Tigers</span></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">75</span></p></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">87</span></p></td></tr><tr><td><span style="font-family:arial;">Royals</span></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">60</span></p></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">102</span></p></td></tr></tbody></table><center></center><p><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2421/2566/1600/05WhiteSoxALCSCeleb.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" height="279" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2421/2566/320/05WhiteSoxALCSCeleb.jpg" width="209" border="0" /></a>It shouldn't shock anyone that the White Sox were playing way over their heads last year. Their offense was subpar, as they posted the lowest percentage in the entire league of team plate appearances by players with above-average on-base percentages. Almost 60% of the team's plate appearances wee by someone who doesn't reach base at least at a league-average level. The team OBP was just .322, 12th in the AL. That's bad, because OBP is one of the primary building blocks of offense, along with power. Thankfully for the Sox, they had plenty of that, muscling up for 200 team homers. They'll need to do that again, because no one besides Jim Thome was brought in to help the situation, and he's got a chronically bad back. Couple that with a regression to normal performance levels for some of their pitchers, especially in the bullpen, plus a normal leveling out of luck on the injury front, and I think Chicago is due for a fall.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">The Indians, as last season's projections indicate, were the class of the division. They're a bit weaker offensively, but can still expect some development from their stars because none of them are terribly old. Plus, they have several solid hitters in Triple A, just waiting for someone to falter. The solid bullpen should return and backstop a rotation that will be no worse for the losses of Kevin Millwood and Scott Elarton.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Detroit will be much better, with young arms coming out of their ears and a new manager who knows which buttons to push. Plus, they don't really have a lineup weakness, though no one stands out as a star either. I think Leyland will push this club to the .500 level or better.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Minnesota, on the other hand, continues to do nothing in the off-season to impress me. Knowing they have glaring offensive weaknesses, the Twins decided to do nothing but sign Luis Castillo to play second base and Rondell White to DH, while praying that Torii Hunter is healthy and Justin Morneau and Joe Mauer finally cash in on their promise. That's a shaky plan at best. I think they'll pitch their way to contention, meaning they'll linger at .500 or a few games above, but I just don't think they've got the sticks.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Which brings me to my Royals. Only Chicago was worse at sending good on-base men to the plate last year, and the Royals tried to address that with three guys who traditionally reach base at a decent rate, Mark Grudzielanek, Reggie Sanders, and Doug Mientkiewicz. That will help, as will healthy season from David DeJesus and Mike Sweeney, and continued development from John Buck and Mark Teahen. I won't be shocked at all if the Royals approach league average levels of offense. I don't expect it, but it wouldn't be a shock.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">The pitching, on the other hand, is still highly questionable. And I mean that literally. Can Scott Elarton be league-average again? Can Joe Mays return to his pre-injury form? Is Jeremy Affeldt really a starter? Can Denny Bautista cash in on his talent? Will Zack Greinke find his way? Will Runelvys Hernandez find a lock for his refrigerator? Will Scott Redman's knees hold up? Or Mike MacDougal's shoulder? It's a really sad state of affairs when the least question marks on the entire staff are in regard to the long man out of your bullpen, Mike Wood, who is pretty much a known quantity at this point, and a mediocre one at that. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">All in all, I think the Royals will be better. But since they're now in a division where all four other teams will likely be at or above .500, "better" means it will still be a struggle to avoid triple digits in the loss column.</p></span><br /><p><span style="font-family:Arial;">Predicted Finishes:</span></p><p><table style="MARGIN-TOP: 0pt; WIDTH: 300px" cellpadding="4"><tbody><tr><td><strong><span style="font-family:arial;"></span></strong></td><td><p align="center"><strong><u><span style="font-family:arial;">W</span></u></strong></p></td><td><p align="center"><strong><u><span style="font-family:arial;">L</span></u></strong></p></td></tr><tr><td><span style="font-family:arial;">Indians</span></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">95</span></p></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">67</span></p></td></tr><tr><td><span style="font-family:arial;">White Sox</span></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">91</span></p></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">71</span></p></td></tr><tr><td><span style="font-family:arial;">Tigers</span></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">85</span></p></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">77</span></p></td></tr><tr><td><span style="font-family:arial;">Twins</span></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">84</span></p></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">78</span></p></td></tr><tr><td><span style="font-family:arial;">Royals</span></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">63</span></p></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">99</span></p></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong><u>AL WEST</u></strong> </span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">2005 Pythagorean Standings: </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /></p><p><table style="MARGIN-TOP: 0pt; WIDTH: 300px" cellpadding="4"><tbody><tr><td><strong><span style="font-family:arial;"></span></strong></td><td><p align="center"><strong><u><span style="font-family:arial;">W</span></u></strong></p></td><td><p align="center"><strong><u><span style="font-family:arial;">L</span></u></strong></p></td></tr><tr><td><span style="font-family:arial;">Angels</span></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">93</span></p></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">69</span></p></td></tr><tr><td><span style="font-family:arial;">A's</span></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">93</span></p></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">69</span></p></td></tr><tr><td><span style="font-family:arial;">Rangers</span></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">82</span></p></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">80</span></p></td></tr><tr><td><span style="font-family:arial;">Mariners</span></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">76</span></p></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">86</span></p></td></tr></tr></tbody></table></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;"><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2421/2566/1600/crosby_84378.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2421/2566/320/crosby_84378.jpg" border="0" /></a>Last season, the only thing keeping the A's from being just as good as the Angels was luck and inexperience. Statistically, the two clubs were of equal quality. The difference was that the Angels played a touch over their heads, due in large part to a solid bullpen that always helps win a one-run game or two that they otherwise shouldn't have won. At the same time, Oakland had some terrible luck, losing their best pitcher, Rich Harden, and player, Bobby Crosby, for extended periods. Plus, they were just very, very young, and experience counts to a degree when you're in crunch time.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">This year, things have changed. The A's are now a year older, and picked up two solid veteran bats, Milton Bradley and Frank Thomas, plus a solid 200-inning fifth starter in Esteban Loaiza. They have their star player, Crosby, back healthy, as is Harden. At the same time, the Angels did little to improve other than clear space for some youngsters. I'm all in favor of that, particularly in the Angels' case because the people they let go really were blocking better young players, but it does have the effect of putting some inexperience on the field, the same situation the A's faced last year. In essence, it's a blend I don't like, since too many of the veterans who were kept are well overrated (Garret Anderson, Darin Erstad, Orlando Cabrera, Bartolo Colon), and generally have health questions, while the younger guys just don't have much time under their belts.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:Arial;">I like what the Rangers did this off-season in dumping Alfonso Soriano, not only because he was nearly useless when he wasn't hitting for power, but because they got the better everyday player, Brad Wilkerson, in return. Just watch as Wilkerson blossoms in Texas, assuming he can stay on the field. They also added some pitching, which was desperately needed. I just don't think they added enough given the two solid teams ahead of them.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:Arial;">Do I have to talk about the Mariners? Well, I guess they're still in the league, but the reality is that I don't see them making much noise. They're not bad, and have some fine players in Richie Sexson, Ichiro Suzuki (who I refuse to call by just one name), Adrian Beltre and pitching phenom Felix Hernandez. But they're going to be buried by the unbalanced schedule, having to play the other three clubs in their division so much. Plus, the American League is just so loaded with quality teams that the ones who struggle will probably struggle mightily. The Mariners qualify.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:Arial;">Projected Standings:</span></p><p></p><table style="MARGIN-TOP: 0pt; WIDTH: 300px" cellpadding="4"><tbody><tr><td><strong><span style="font-family:arial;"></span></strong></td><td><p align="center"><strong><u><span style="font-family:arial;">W</span></u></strong></p></td><td><p align="center"><strong><u><span style="font-family:arial;">L</span></u></strong></p></td></tr><tr><td><span style="font-family:arial;">A's</span></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">97</span></p></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">65</span></p></td></tr><tr><td><span style="font-family:arial;">Angels</span></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">89</span></p></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">73</span></p></td></tr><tr><td><span style="font-family:arial;">Rangers</span></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">84</span></p></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">78</span></p></td></tr><tr><td><span style="font-family:arial;">Mariners</span></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">72</span></p></td><td><p align="center"><span style="font-family:arial;">90</span></p></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong><u>Playoffs:</u></strong></span></p><p><span style="font-family:Arial;">ALDS: Oakland over Chicago; Boston over Cleveland</span></p><p><span style="font-family:Arial;">ALCS: Boston over Oakland in a classic</span></p><p><span style="font-family:Arial;"><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2421/2566/1600/sox_team.jpg"></a><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2421/2566/1600/04ALCSgame4TeamCeleb.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" height="209" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2421/2566/320/04ALCSgame4TeamCeleb.jpg" width="276" border="0" /></a>The two final teams are both playoff savvy to a large degree, and are balanced teams with good pitching and a solid offense. Plus, they don't really like each other from previous years of playoff showdowns. It has all the makings of a classic series, and it could go either way, but given the playoff experience of the Boston rotation and most of their lineup, I think they'll take the ALCS in seven games.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:Arial;">Yes, I'm speaking with my heart a bit on his one. But it's not like I'm picking the Royals.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span></p>Paul Whitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11393600178387119479noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24794537.post-1143416337338115842006-03-26T17:38:00.000-06:002006-03-26T17:38:57.340-06:00Welcome!<span style="font-family:arial;">I hope you enjoy the new format for Lost In Left Field. Please bear with me as I transition from the previous site. It may take a while to get all of the earlier content loaded, but I promise to get that done as soon as possible. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Thanks for your patience, and enjoy!</span>Paul Whitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11393600178387119479noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24794537.post-1143496476210818112006-03-23T15:49:00.000-06:002006-03-28T11:30:18.370-06:00Alfonso Soriano - The Next Curt Flood?<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2421/2566/1600/iOQUHjod.2.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2421/2566/320/iOQUHjod.2.jpg" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:arial;">Is it possible that Alfonso Soriano’s recent struggles with the Washington Nationals allow him to be placed in the same company as </span><a href="http://www.baseball-reference.com/f/floodcu01.shtml" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;">Curt Flood</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;">? </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Um, no. And, sadly in the end, he wasn’t even close. But there was an opportunity in the Soriano case that was missed. An opportunity to make a statement about a cold business. About fairness. It was an opportunity to do the right thing. And, unfortunately, Soriano chose to pass it up.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://xroads.virginia.edu/~CLASS/am483_97/projects/brady/flood.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;">Let me refresh your memory about Curt Flood</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;">. After the 1969 season, when he was still just 31-years old and coming off a Gold-Glove winning, .285-hitting season as the Cardinals center fielder, Flood and three other players were unceremoniously traded to the Phillies in exchange for Dick Allen and two others. </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curt_Flood" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;">Flood refused to report to the Phillies</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;">, citing the racism displayed by their fans, the poor performance of the club, and the awful condition of their stadium as reasons why he didn’t want to play in Philadelphia. And, in his view, not wanting to play there meant that he shouldn’t be forced to play there. This was America, after all, where a man could choose to work wherever he saw fit.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Unfortunately for him, Commissioner Bowie Kuhn didn’t see things the same way. Citing the ages-old reserve clause that bound a player to one team for his entire career unless released (or traded, which transferred that right to his new team), Kuhn refused to approve a request by Flood that he be declared a free agent. Flood sued, claiming that </span><a href="http://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Reserve_clause" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;">the reserve clause</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;"> had the effect of treating him and other players like property rather than people, an inherently un-American principle.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">The case reached the Supreme Court, which upheld lower court rulings in favor of Major League Baseball. The impact on Flood’s career was extreme. Having sat out the entire 1970 season, he signed with the Washington Senators for the 1971 season, but faced with widespread criticism for his actions, he performed poorly, and retired after playing only thirteen more games. He was just 33-years old, and for all intents and purposes, had sacrificed five or six years at the end of his career, at six-figure salaries each year, to make the point that baseball players should have the same rights as other workers in this country. Thankfully, in Flood’s case, his sacrifice wasn’t fruitless, because the reserve clause he fought against </span><a href="http://www.baseballlibrary.com/baseballlibrary/ballplayers/M/Messersmith_Andy.stm" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;">was </span></a><a href="http://www.baseballlibrary.com/baseballlibrary/ballplayers/M/Messersmith_Andy.stm" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;">finally </span></a><a href="http://www.baseballlibrary.com/baseballlibrary/ballplayers/M/Messersmith_Andy.stm" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;">struck down</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;"> just five years later.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">All of which brings us to </span><a href="http://www.baseball-reference.com/s/soriaal01.shtml" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;">Alfonso Soriano</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;">. In a modern repeat of Flood’s situation, Soriano was traded against his will to a team he had no interest in, that plays in a league in which he has never played, in </span><a href="http://thenats.blogspot.com/2005/10/rfk-not-surprisingly-pitchers-park.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;">a </span></a><a href="http://thenats.blogspot.com/2005/10/rfk-not-surprisingly-pitchers-park.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;">stadium that doesn’t suit his skills</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;">, and with the expectation that he would switch to a position, left field, that would likely decrease his free agent value a year later.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">From his perspective, it was a crappy deal, and he rightly was upset about it. Now, keep in mind that this isn’t a troublemaker. Soriano is a kid from the Dominican Republic who went to Japan for a couple of years as a teenager to establish himself as a professional ballplayer, and took it upon himself to </span><a href="http://www.jockbio.com/Bios/Soriano/Soriano_facts.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;">learn to </span></a><a href="http://www.jockbio.com/Bios/Soriano/Soriano_facts.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;">speak Japanese</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;"> in order to fit in. He eagerly moved from his naturally position, shortstop, to left field when the Yankees acquired him. He did it without complaint and actually played the position well in Spring Training of 2001. Then, when the Yankees finally decided that Chuck Knoblauch’s throwing problems weren’t going away, Soriano agreed to change positions again, to second base. He flourished there, becoming one of the most dangerous power hitters in the history of the position and nearly winning the </span><a href="http://worldseries.mlb.com/ws/index.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;">2001 World Series</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;"> by hitting an 8th-inning homer in Game Seven that gave the Yankees the lead. Only Mariano Rivera’s famous blown save kept Soriano from being the hero.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">After doing all of this for New York, they dealt him to the Rangers before the 2004 season in exchange for Alex Rodriguez, essentially because the Yankees had a unique opportunity to acquire a great player and because they considered Soriano expendable after he had a terrible 2003 post-season.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">So here we have a guy who has done nothing but work hard and travel far and wide to become a big league ballplayer, who has selflessly changed positions not once but twice for the good of his team, only to have that team trade him away when it suited their interests, and now he was faced with being dealt again and asked to change positions again, because the team that acquired him already had a second baseman.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">How much more “good of the team” behavior should really be expected of this guy? He had already proven, time and again, that he’s a team player. And what did that get him? It got him the reputation of being a guy who could be moved around to suit the team’s needs, leading the Nationals to make the deal without ever asking him in advance if he would be willing to move to left field. Of course he would move, they must have thought. He’s done it before, twice.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Well, this time was different. Soriano had all the leverage in this case, since he was slated to make a ton of money and the Nationals desperately need him in their lineup, plus the fact that he’s going to be a free agent after this season, meaning the Nationals could lose him and get nothing in return if they make him unhappy. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Plus, he had every right to make a stink about how he was treated. The Nationals and Rangers, like the Cardinals and Phillies years ago with Flood, treated Soriano like property. They didn’t care about where he wanted to play, or which team he wanted to play for, or how much money a move to left field would cost him. They acted like all big businesses do these days, they treated the employee like an expendable asset instead of like a human being. This was a case of Corporate America at its finest. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">“You’ve got Little League practice for one of your kids? Tough, I need this PowerPoint pitch done tonight.” </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">“You just bought a house here in town? Oh well, I need you to move to Detroit. You can commute back home on the weekends if you don’t want your kids yanked out of school mid-year.”</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">“I know you’re eighteen months away from retirement, but the company is restructuring after the recent merger, and your former job is no longer necessary, so we’re letting you go.”</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Workers in Corporate America aren’t people anymore. They’re not even “personnel”. They’re “headcount”, all subject to some quaint euphemism for being forced out of a job they perform perfectly well. Reduction in Force. Laid Off. Downsized. Subject to Synergy. That last one is my favorite.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">And yet, in Soriano’s situation, he has been widely criticized for standing up like a man and saying “Enough.” </span><span style="font-family:arial;">He didn’t take one for the team, and that makes him the bad guy. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Well, my question is this; when is the team going to take one for Alfonso Soriano? Sure, they pay Soriano a ton of money, and that makes his case even less sympathetic, but with that kind of money at stake, isn't is just good business for the Nats to make sure Soriano would be happy with the move? When did the Nationals become exempt from caring about their players’ well-being? Haven’t they just revealed themselves as an organization that has no interest in doing what’s right for their players? How hard do you think it’s going to be to attract quality people to play for them now?</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">I won’t criticize Soriano for the stand he started to take. I think it was noble, or at least qualifies for that description under today's standards. What I criticize him for is giving up. He caved in yesterday when </span><a href="http://mlb.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/news/article.jsp?ymd=20060322&content_id=1358953&vkey=news_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;">he trotted out to left field</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;">, despite having all of the leverage on his side. Soriano passed up the opportunity to be this generation’s Curt Flood, a man who would sacrifice his own interests to make the point that ballplayers, and other workers in America, aren’t just inanimate assets for companies to spend as they see fit. They’re people, and you shouldn’t treat people, especially good people like Alfonso Soriano, the way the Nationals treated him. It would have been a great statement for Soriano to make.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Unfortunately, I guess we’ll have wait for someone else to make it.</span>Paul Whitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11393600178387119479noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24794537.post-1143513876144592992006-03-05T20:36:00.000-06:002006-03-28T09:44:42.480-06:00A Major Mistake<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2421/2566/1600/SpaldingCover1889_small.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2421/2566/320/SpaldingCover1889_small.jpg" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:arial;">Pretend for a moment that next season, a new baseball league is formed. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">This new league will exist for exactly one season, during which many of its teams will cease to exist or re-locate in mid-season. Replacement teams in replacement cities will be hastily formed, some playing as few as nine games, but those games will be included in the standings nonetheless. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Administration of the league will be shoddy, at best. No statistics will be kept for RBI, or strikeouts, or double plays, or stolen bases. Of the twenty-two men who will come to bat for the league champion, it will be unclear from league records which side of the plate eight of them bat from, including the starting catcher and left fielder. Three men from the eleven-man pitching staff also won’t be identifiable as lefty or righty.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">The players will be comprised of journeymen, some of them with brief, undistinguished major league experience, but over two-thirds with no big league experience of any kind. For instance, the starting shortstop on the league champion will be a 22-year old whose sole year of professional baseball experience will be this one season in this new league. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">For the sake of argument, let’s say that the level of talent is such that almost two-thirds of the players will never be given another chance at the big leagues. The league’s MVP, upon returning to the National League, will manage to hold a job as a regular for just three more seasons, and won’t post an OPS higher than the league average after age 29. Someone like Ryan Freel, currently the primary bench player for the Cincinnati Reds, can be one of the league’s stars. He will be the league’s best third baseman, starting at that spot for the league champion, and he will finish in the top-five in the league in batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, OPS, doubles, home runs, and walks. His batting average will be nearly 50 points higher and his OPS 140-points higher than his career marks in the National League, in large part because the new league’s teams average nearly six runs per game. After the league disbands, Freel will return to the National League, but will last parts of just two more seasons, hit .186, and retire. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Now imagine that, forever more, baseball historians would consider Freel’s season in this rogue league to be the functional equivalent of Albert Pujols’ rookie season.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">All together now…“Huh?”</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Before you call me crazy, let me assure you that I’m not making any of this up. This exact scenario has already happened.Way back in the 19th Century, back before the major leagues were as organized as they are today, there was a one-year blip just like the one described above. Its was called the Union Association, and, incredibly, it is considered to be a “major league” to this day.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">In perhaps the first instance of players feeling crapped on by ownership, the Union Association formed in late 1883 with the intent of raiding disgruntled players from the National League and American Association, the two recognized “major” leagues, both of which exercised reserve clauses in their player contracts. Such a clause tied players to a team until that team didn’t want them anymore, a situation that would be so for almost 100 more years, and it never sat well with players. Many of them hated it enough to give the new league a look.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">The problem for the Union Association was that few of those established players took them up on their offer. Of the 238 different positional players who played at least one game in the Union Association, over 68% had never played major league baseball. Of the group that did have big league experience, few had played much. They averaged just 105 big-league games upon joining the Union Association. When the players with no previous experience were counted, all of the hitters in the league averaged just 33 games of major league experience.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">The talent level was such that one of the league’s few players with real major league experience, Fred Dunlap of the St. Louis Maroons, had little problem establishing himself as the league’s best player. With four years as the regular second baseman for the National League’s Cleveland Blues under his belt, he easily led his new league in batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, OPS, runs, hits, total bases, doubles, home runs, adjusted OPS, runs created, extra-base hits, and time on base. A solid player in Cleveland, Dunlap suddenly was Babe Ruth in the Union Association. His .412 batting average was 86 points higher than his previous career best. His OPS+ mark of 250 was higher than all but one of the seasons in Ruth’s career. Upon returning to the National League the next year, Dunlap’s OPS+ was halved, to 122, a mark he never matched again.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">And that was the league’s best player. Lesser lights were much less distinguished. Orator Shaffer finished second in most of the league’s hitting categories, despite being a 32-year old journeyman outfielder who had already played for eight big league teams. His OPS+ the previous year was 103, barely above league average and just fifth-best on his 1883 Buffalo Bisons team, yet he managed to bat .360 in the Union Association, 85 points higher than his career mark, and his OPS+ of 196 was a mark never glimpsed by the likes of Hank Aaron, Willie Mays or Joe DiMaggio. Upon returning to the big leagues, Shaffer batted .249 and had an OPS+ of 100, both league-average marks.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">The career record of Harry Moore, the starting left fielder for the Washington Nationals, reads pretty quickly:</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Debut – April 17,1884</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Final Game – October 19, 1884</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Bats – Unknown</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Throws – Unknown</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Birth – Unknown</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Death – Unknown</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Major league games before joining the Union Association – zero.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Major league games after leaving the Union Association – zero.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">And that, ladies and gentlemen, was the Union Association’s third-best hitter, with a batting average of .336.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">It should be abundantly clear that the talent level in the Union Association was nowhere near that of the major leagues. It was essentially Triple A. And yet, there are the stats from the Union Association in “Total Baseball”, next to the numbers players posted in the National League, American League, and every other league that could reasonably be called “major”. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Some may not consider that to be a big deal. I do, and not because the numbers in question affect any records or corrupt any career marks. They don’t. But as long as the UA is considered a major league, historians and statisticians are going to have to account for it. They have to measure its players and compare them to players from real major leagues. The results are often ridiculous.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">For instance, remember the Ryan Freel example? The player in question was Jack Gleason of the UA’s St. Louis Maroons. Prior to jumping leagues, Gleason was a mid-level starter in the American Association, at the time a major league. After a one-game debut in the National League at age 22, Gleason failed to make a big league roster again for five years. He resurfaced as the third baseman for the American Association’s St. Louis Brown Stockings in 1882, batting .254 and posting an OPS that was about 5% better than the league average. After a slow start the next season, he was dealt to the Louisville Eclipse and had a solid year, batting .299. His OPS was 31% higher than the league average, a very respectable mark, but apparently he wasn’t kept very happy by his new club because he bolted for the UA when the opportunity presented itself.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Gleason was easily the UA’s best third baseman. He batted .324, fourth-best in the league, and posted an OPS+ mark of 164. The Maroons were easily the best team in the league, so when the UA folded after its only season, the National League absorbed the Maroons as a new addition. Gleason went with them, but could never replicate his success. He played just two games for the Maroons in 1885. The next year proved to be his last in the majors, when he batted a terrible .187 as the regular third baseman for the Philadelphia Athletics of the American Association.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">That’s it, the entire career of Jack Gleason summarized in two paragraphs. It was an unremarkable career in every respect, but for his one season of glory in the UA. A good comparison for Gleason would be Keith Miller or Dirty Al Gallagher. Solid utility players who aren’t memorable in any way, unless you count Gallagher’s classic nickname.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">But since Gleason’s great year happened in a minor league that is improperly called major, he gets analyzed by all the new-fangled sabermetric measurements. According to Bill James’ Win Shares measurement, Gleason’s 1884 season accounted for 20 win shares. Since win shares are a counting statistic, it matters that Gleason compiled his total in just a 113-game season for his club, because those twenty win shares would interpolate out to 29 in a modern 162-game season. To give you some perspective on that number, it’s the same total Albert Pujols managed in 2001. To refresh your memory, that was Pujols’ first season, one in which he hit 37 homers, drove in 130 runs, batted .329, slugged .610, finished in the top-10 in the league in average, slugging, hits, total bases, doubles, RBI, runs created, extra base hits, time on base, OPS, and adjusted OPS, made the All-Star team, won the Rookie of the Year Award and the Silver Slugger, and finished fourth in the MVP voting. And, according to Win Shares, it was the functional equivalent of Jack Gleason’s nifty season in a high minor league called the Union Association more than a hundred years earlier.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Fred Dunlap, clearly the UA’s best player, had 38 win shares in the Maroons’ 113 games, which equates to 54 in a full 162-game season. That’s the same number Barry Bonds posted in 2001, the year he hit 73 home runs. Yes, according to the measurement system currently considered to be the most advanced in the history of baseball analysis, Fred Dunlap’s best year and Barry Bonds’ are equals.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Congratulations. You have just read the first sentence ever that included both Fred Dunlap’s and Barry Bonds’ names.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">I, for one, am tired of this kind of silly game. It’s foolish to say that the best player in a league full of minor leaguers is the equal to the season that gave us the all-time home run record. It is both asinine and easily fixed.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Hit the Delete key, all of you guys over at “Total Baseball”. Remand the Union Association to history’s dustbin, where it belongs.</span>Paul Whitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11393600178387119479noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24794537.post-1143566928818830372006-01-04T11:09:00.000-06:002006-03-28T11:28:48.843-06:00The 2006 Hall of Fame Ballot<span style="font-family:arial;">Here we go again. The most recent </span><a href="http://www.baseballhalloffame.org/hofers_and_honorees/candidate_info/candidate_info_2006.htm" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;">Hall of Fame ballot</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;"> has been released, and voters are even now pondering who should be elected. As always, I have some strong opinions on the matter.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">This year, the wrinkle is that none of the new guys on the ballot are really expected to get much support. I mean, you can make a nice case for Will Clark, and he’s much better than Don Mattingly or Steve Garvey, two returning candidates who regularly get more votes than they deserve, but I have no expectation that Clark will actually get elected. And neither should Clark. If he’s lucky, he’ll get Mattingly-level support and build from there, but that’s probably the best any of the new guys can hope for. I’d vote for a couple of them, as you’ll see shortly, but none of these guys are going to be elected anytime soon. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">That leaves the returning candidates as the only hope for induction this year. Since the voters can’t stand letting a year go by without electing someone, I think one or more of these guys will get in. Specifically, I think Bruce Sutter will be elected, though he shouldn’t, and Rich Gossage will also go in, which he should. Sutter is the closest to election based on last year’s vote totals, so simple math will get him there, while Gossage will probably garner extra votes from Sutter supporters who will suddenly realize how moronic it is to elect Sutter while Gossage, a considerably better pitcher, wastes away on the same ballot. The next-closest guy will be Jim Rice, followed closely by Andre Dawson. More on them in a moment. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">For now, let me make it perfectly clear why Bruce Sutter doesn’t deserve induction. I have said repeatedly in the past that Sutter was nearly interchangeable with Dan Quisenberry in terms of results. In fact, Quiz was arguably better in some respects. For instance, Sutter lost 25 more games than Quiz even though he pitched in 13 fewer career games. Sutter’s career winning percentage was just .489, while Quiz’s was .549. Sutter had a career ERA of 2.83, slightly higher than Quisenberry’s mark of 2.76 even though he pitched in leagues that averaged a 3.85 ERA while Quiz pitched in leagues that averaged 4.04. In short, once adjusted for their home ballparks, Quiz’s ERA was 46% better than his leagues while Sutter’s was just 36% better.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">They threw the same number of innings, they allowed the same number of baserunners per inning, they led their leagues in saves the same number of times, and so on, and so on. Other than Sutter’s style being more conducive to strikeouts, they were essentially the same pitcher, only Quiz had some distinct advantages as noted above. So, since the voters decided that Quiz should only get 18 Hall of Fame votes, why in the world does Sutter get 300? It makes no sense to me. I’d vote for Quiz over Sutter any day if he was still on the ballot, but truthfully I wouldn’t vote for him either because his career was just too short. So Sutter, who may be the only guy elected this year, doesn’t get my vote.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Here’s who would:</span><br /><ul><li><span style="font-family:arial;">Alan Trammell</span></li><li><span style="font-family:arial;">Bert Blyleven</span></li><li><span style="font-family:arial;">Rich Gossage</span></li><li><span style="font-family:arial;">Jim Rice</span></li><li><span style="font-family:arial;">Dale Murphy</span></li><li><span style="font-family:arial;">Will Clark</span></li><li><span style="font-family:arial;">Albert Belle</span></li><li><span style="font-family:arial;">Andre Dawson</span></li></ul><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Probably in that order. Here’s why.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2421/2566/1600/Alan_Trammell.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2421/2566/200/Alan_Trammell.jpg" border="0" /></a>Alan Trammell</strong>. </span><a href="http://www.baseballlibrary.com/baseballlibrary/submit/White_Paul8.stm" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;">I've made his case before in more detail</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;">. With almost no fanfare of any kind, Alan Trammell compiled a career that puts him easily in the top-10 shortstops of all time.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>Bert Blyleven.</strong> I waffled back and forth on this guy for a long time, and now I have no idea why. This guy is clearly one of the top 20 to 30 pitchers in the history of baseball.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong></strong></span> </p><p><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2421/2566/1600/gossage.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2421/2566/320/gossage.jpg" border="0" /></a>Rich Gossage.</strong> This one is easy, being </span><a href="http://www.baseballlibrary.com/baseballlibrary/submit/White_Paul11.stm" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;">another subject I've covered in more depth</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;"> in the past.. He’s the best relief pitcher. Ever.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>Jim Rice.</strong> I don’t know what more to say about this guy. The Red Sox published a lengthy analysis of Rice’s career this year and distributed it to the voters, and after reading it I’ve come to the conclusion that I had written every word of it in various online articles over the past five years.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>Dale Murphy.</strong> I changed my mind on this guy based on the peak value of his career. Clay Davenport of The Baseball Prospectus published a series of articles late last year that presented a system for determining an objective Hall of Fame built upon Baseball Prospectus’ WARP3 stat. The system is a bit flawed (it had Wade Boggs as the top-rated third baseman ever), but it did open my eyes about the peak values of some players. Murphy was one of those. His peak was essentially in the top-10 of all time among center fielders. That was enough for me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>Will Clark.</strong> Much like Trammell, Clark is vastly underrated. His career numbers were terribly suppressed by his ballpark and the fact that he began his career during one of the lowest run-scoring periods since the end of World War II. For instance, Clark’s 1989 season was a thing of beauty, He hit .333, had a .407 on-base percentage, and slugged .546, and he did all of this despite playing in a league where each team averaged less than four runs per game and played in a park that suppressed runs by almost 8%. And that was an improvement over Clark’s first three seasons, when Candlestick Park suppressed scoring by 11%, 11% and 13% respectively. Consequently, Clark’s OPS+, which adjusts OPS for his park and the league’s overall scoring, was 175 in 1989, meaning it was 75% above the league average. To put that in perspective, Eddie Murray’s best season was 1990, when he posted an OPS+ of 159. Murray posted seven seasons with an OPS+ of 140 or greater. Clark also had seven seasons at that level, despite playing six fewer years than Murray. Clark’s career mark was 138 to Murray’s 129. Clark’s mark was also higher than Orlando Cepeda (133), and Tony Perez (122), and George Sisler (124), and Frank Chance (135), and Billy Terry (136), and Jake Beckley (125), and George Kelly (110), and Jim Bottomley (125), all Hall of Fame first basemen, not to mention other iron-clad Hall of Famers like Yogi Berra (125), Johnny Bench (126), Charlie Gehringer (124), Jackie Robinson (132), Joe Morgan (132), Rod Carew (132), George Brett (135), Wade Boggs (130), Ernie Banks (122), Robin Yount (115), Al Simmons (132), Roberto Clemente (130), Al Kaline (134), Billy Williams (132), and Carl Yastrzemski (130).</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>Albert Belle.</strong> A world-class jerk. A cheater (long live corked bats). A fragile hip condition resulting in a short career. But one of the most destructive hitters in recent memory. Remember Clark’s career OPS+ mark of 139? Well, Belle’s was 143. That number is too big to ignore.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>Andre Dawson.</strong> A close call for me again, but ultimately I still support him because there are so many crappy right fielders in the Hall of Fame. Take the bottom eight or ten guys out of the Hall, and I probably wouldn’t support Dawson. But they’re in there, and he’s clearly better than they are, so it just doesn’t seem fair to keep him out.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">That's who I would vote for. I reality, I think Sutter and Gossage will get in. I think Rice is a pick 'em for induction, receiving a boost from a weak ballot, the Red Sox public relations machine, and from the anti-steroids argument that makes his era of players look better to the voters. Here’s hoping all of that is enough.</span></p>Paul Whitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11393600178387119479noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24794537.post-1143572829660442002005-12-04T12:53:00.000-06:002006-03-28T13:07:09.696-06:002005 Red Sox Wrap-Up<span style="font-family:arial;">Where to begin? The 2005 season was pretty disappointing, so let’s address that and get it out of the way, so we can focus on the real work at hand, which is to build for next year. There are positives that need to be remembered, which need to serve as the foundation for a better year in 2006 and beyond.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Isn’t it interesting that after I wrote the paragraph above, I realized it could be used for either of the two season wrap-ups I’m writing, one for the Royals and one for the Red Sox? I ultimately decided to do just that, use it to open both articles, because, despite the obvious differences between the two clubs, they are both currently in the same boat. They each need to evaluate the 2005 season, determine which parts need to be kept, which need to be replaced, which youngsters are future regulars, and which are expendable. They then must go forth and spend or trade to fill their many holes. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">The only difference is the level of expectations and the resources available to each GM. There are currently 29 other teams who are in the exact same position.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">But this is about the Red Sox, so let me start being specific. Having started writing this late, I’ll try to avoid making obvious predictions like, “the Red Sox should dump Theo Epstein and trade for Josh Beckett”. Here are the clearly recognizable failures and successes from 2005:</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong><u>FAILURES</u></strong></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>The Bullpen.</strong> A complete disaster, from Keith Foulke’s refusal to get his gimpy knees fixed before the season, to Alan Embree’s implosion, to the hideous Mike Remlinger Era. The Sox bullpen had the worst ERA (5.15) in the American League and allowed the highest opponents’ OPS (.805). That means that the Sox’s pen turned the average hitter they faced for the entire season into Johnny Damon. They struck out fewer hitters per nine innings (6.25) than every other AL team except the Devil Rays. Only Mike Timlin distinguished himself over the entire season, though Mike Myers filled his limited role well. Help is on the way (Jonathan Papelbon, Craig Hansen, Manny Delcarmen), but it was too late to keep the ’05 pen from being a collective train wreck.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>Second Base.</strong> In 2004, the second basemen for the Red Sox, primarily Mark Bellhorn, combined for a .794 OPS, the best mark in the league and sixth in all of baseball. That included power (.434 SLG, 3rd in AL) and plate discipline (.360 OBP, 1st in AL). All of that went to hell in 2005. Bellhorn was so bad he was released outright at the All-Star Break. The acquisition of Tony Graffanino helped, but there was still a massive overall drop in production. The OPS from that position dropped almost 70 points, to .725. That mark was very middle-of-the-road (8th in the AL, 17th in baseball), and ordinarily that would be acceptable production from second base. But one of the strengths of the Boston offense in’04 was that there wasn’t a hole in the lineup. That couldn’t be said for much of 2005, and second base was a major reason for it.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>Shortstop.</strong> Production from shortstop was essentially flat from ’04 to ’05 – OPS of .716 in 2004, 9th in the AL, down to .708 in ’05, 7th in the AL), but once Edgar Renteria’s defensive struggles and mammoth contract are factored in, the position has to be notched as a disappointment.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>First Base.</strong> Despite all of the well-publicized struggles of Kevin Millar to find his power stroke, it’s only fair to note that the Red Sox’s first basemen didn’t really drop all that much in combined OPS. They posted a mark of .813 in 2004, 6th in the AL, and fell to .795 in 2005, 7th in the league. The problem was that the drop came entirely in power (their collective OBP actually rose from .346 to .358), and that power loss was damaging on a team that already lost power at catcher, second base, shortstop, center field and right field. First base is supposed to be one of the few spots that should reliably produce power. A team can get by without it if they find it somewhere else, but when the defense-first positions fail to come through with some pop, first base power becomes crucial. The Sox’s first basemen didn’t have that in 2005 (.436 combined SLG, 9th in the AL, 20th in baseball), a failure that proved costly in the end, when the offense unraveled in September and the playoffs.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>Right Field.</strong> If first base is going to be thrown under the bus, then right field, particularly Trot Nixon, must be called a failure, too. In fact, the production drop from right was even more pronounced than the first base drop. In ’04, Nixon, Gabe Kapler and a bit of Dave Roberts combined for a .823 OPS, 5th at that position in baseball. In ’04, with yet another Nixon injury to cope with, no Roberts, no Kapler for most of the year, and a disgruntled Jay Payton, the right fielders dropped to an OPS of .772, just 8th in the AL and 21st in baseball. I love Trot, but either he or the Sox need to do better.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>Team Defense.</strong> The Red Sox’s defense, a point of such emphasis in 2004 that it prompted the trade of Nomar Garciaparra, reverted back to the franchise norm of mediocrity in 2005. Actually, that would be overstating the club’s defense. In reality, they were below mediocre, 11th in the AL and 23rd in baseball in defensive efficiency, according to the Baseball Prospectus guys. Jason Varitek’s Gold Glove and Edgar Renteria’s reputation notwithstanding, there really wasn’t an above average defender at any position until John Olerud arrived to platoon at first. Perhaps, with the acquisition of Mike Lowell, the team is now moving in that direction.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>The Front Office.</strong> The defection of both Theo Epstein and Josh Byrnes at the very outset of the off-season, followed by Peter Woodfork joining Burns in Arizona, leaves the Sox with egg on their face and holes on their staff. The contributions of these guys cannot be overstated, and now they are gone. There seems to be a competent group working in their absence, evidenced by the Beckett trade, but that may not last long, as many of them may also ask to leave for greener pastures. And the manner in which all of this has been handled has prompted many viable, desirable GM candidates to withdraw themselves from consideration, most before even interviewing, leaving the Sox with a pair of undistinguished retreads, Jim Bowden and Jim Beattie, as the most likely candidates. Ugly, ugly, ugly.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong><u>SUCCESSES</u></strong></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>The Bash Brothers.</strong> Even with reduced contributions from five lineup spots - center field, right field, first base, second base and catcher – the lineup of recent years was so deep that it still managed to lead the AL in runs, tallying over 900 for the third consecutive year. David Ortiz became a force, and Manny Ramirez remained his potent self, a tandem that intimidated every pitching staff in the league. And, even though their production actually dropped off from 2004 levels, Jason Varitek and Johnny Damon remained at the top of the league at their respective positions. In fact, only at second base (8th) and right field (also 8th) did the Sox fail to finish in the top half of the league in positional OPS. That’s quite a feat, and indicates exactly how much the Sox have figured out how to put a deep offense together.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>The Rotation.</strong> Believe it or not, the Sox should be fairly satisfied with the production they got from four-fifths of their rotation. As a group, the rotation certainly dropped off from 2004 levels, but they remained in the top half of the league in ERA, WHIP, K/9IP, K/BB ratio and OPS allowed. Put a healthy ’04 version of Schilling in his rotation slot and the group would have come close to replicating their overall ’04 numbers, when they were in the top-3 in the league in each of those categories. Add in Josh Beckett and a (hopefully) healthy Schilling, plus the possibility of a full-time starting role for Jonathan Papelbon, and the 2006 rotation appears flush with options.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>The Draft.</strong> Anytime your first round draft pick reaches the majors in the same year you drafted him, things are looking up. With five first-round or sandwich picks, the Sox grabbed a lot of guys who look to be the real deal. Craig Hansen was so impressive that he cracked the big league bullpen in September, and showed pretty well there with the exception of one poor outing. And he didn’t even have his good slider at the time. Impressive. Fellow first-rounder Clay Buchholz posted remarkable numbers at Rookie League Lowell, including a 2.61 ERA, 1.05 WHIP, 5.00 K/BB ratio and 9.80 K/9IP. Jed Lowrie, a switch-hitting shortstop/second baseman from Stanford, tore Lowell up, to the tune of .328/.429/.448/.877. Fellow Pac-10 standout Jacob Ellsbury, who has been billed as a future replacement for Johnny Damon, posted similar numbers in the same Lowell lineup (.317/.418/.432/.850). Other successes included 6th-round center fielder Jeffrey Corsaletti, who lit up A-Ball at Greenville to the tune of .357/.429/.490/.919, and 10th-round pitcher Kevin Guyette, who posted a combined 2.30 ERA, 0.93 WHIP, 5.43 K/BB ratio and 7.95 K/9IP at Lowell and Single-A Greenville. There were pleasant finds in the 11th round (Ismael Casillas, 11.25 K/9IP) and all the way down in rounds 32 (Trinity College second baseman Jeff Natale, .368/.474/.557/1.031) and 39 (center fielder Bubba Bell, .317/.363/.457/.820). Overall, it was an impressive haul, and the front office staff should be commended for yet another year of solid work in rebuilding the farm system.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>The Farm System.</strong> An absolute, unqualified success. The Red Sox farm system has evolved into a prototype for how a team can build at the big league level by leveraging good, young, cheap, homegrown talent. Bullpen in disarray? No problem, we have a few stellar young arms that can help immediately (Hansen, Papelbon, Manny Delcarmen, Lenny DiNardo). Third baseman injured and aging? That’s okay, we have another waiting in the wings (Kevin Youkilis). In need of a second baseman at the trading deadline? Well, we just happen to have an extra outfielder at Triple A (Chip Ambres) that the Royals can use, and we can afford to give him away with an anonymous Single-A arm for a rental on Tony Graffanino. Need some veterans in the off-season to plug holes? Fine,we’ve got enough farm depth to trade away four prospects without giving up a single guy who figures in the club’s near- or long-term future.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">The Sox have so much depth in the minors that five of their six affiliates had winning records. Once a team filled with acquisitions from other teams, the Sox might go into 2006 with a dozen or more players from their own farm system ready to play major roles or at least contribute with the big club. They will come from a group that includes Hansen, Delcarmen, Papelbon, DiNardo, Youkilis, Ellsbury, Lowrie, Jon Lester, Edgar Martinez, Dustin Pedroia, Abe Alvarez, David Pauley, Chris Durbin, Kelly Shoppach, David Murphy, Brandon Moss, Randy Beam, Matt Van Der Bosch, and Cla Meredith. Almost all of these guys would already be major league regulars on lesser teams like Kansas City or Pittsburgh.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Okay, so where does all of this leave the team? </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Well, in the short term, it leaves them without a clear direction until a new GM is brought in. I want someone who isn’t going to come in with the idea that, as the new guy, he needs to put his stamp on the organization, even if it means ritually violating the “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” dictum. That is a common failing among new managers in all forms of American business, and baseball is no exception. There seems to be a prevailing “look at me” attitude with these guys that prevents them from rationally saying, “You know what? None of the stuff I inherited is broken. Let’s stay the course.”</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Neither of the Jim B. retreads excites me. In fact, each scares me more than a little because I think they will be exactly the kind of crappy manager described above. That’s why I’m rooting for Jed Hoyer, Craig Shipley, or Ben Cherington to get the job full-time. Coming from within the organization, each of them will be more likely to appreciate the good strides already made, continue the philosophy that built the farm system and resist the urge to do something flashy but stupid.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Once the GM issue is settled, there are some obvious steps that need to be taken:</span><br /><ol><li><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>Find a center fielder and lead-off hitter.</strong> These are linked because Johnny Damon has filled both of those roles for the last four years. He is now a free agent and his agent, the hateful Scott Boras, has already set the contract demands so high that Damon is almost certain to be wildly overpaid. The thin free agent market makes that even more likely. The Sox don’t have many options here. There is no one on the team who is a likely lead-off replacement unless Dustin Pedroia is ready to take over at second base. If he is, the course of action I recommend is to let Damon go. I don’t think Damon is going to be anything like his current self in year four (or, God forbid, year five) of his next contract, and by year three he will be blocking Jacob Ellsbury from taking over. I simply love building from within, so if Pedroia is ready, I’m okay with giving him the lead-off role and trading for a temporary center field alternative to Damon (Torii Hunter anyone?). The problem is that I’m getting the vibe that the Sox don’t think Pedroia is ready yet. That narrows their options even more. They could still let Damon walk away, trade for Hunter or someone else to play center, and also deal for a temporary second baseman who can bat lead-off (Ray Durham? Luis Castillo would have been a perfect fit also). Or they can deal for Juan Pierre. Or they can re-sign Damon. Frankly, re-signing Damon, for the dollars and years he’s going to command, is the least appealing of those options.</span></li><li><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>Find an everyday second baseman.</strong> I’m hoping it will be Pedroia, but if he’s not ready to go, a reliable veteran like Graffanino or Mark Grudzielanek should do nicely for now.</span></li><li><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>Find an everyday right fielder.</strong> Like I said, I love Trot Nixon. But he’s finally proven to me that he can’t hit lefties, he’s regularly injured, he’s aging (32 next year), and his production has dropped off steadily. His last three years, his OPS has dropped from .974 to .887 to .803. Since the farm system doesn’t really have anyone ready to assume that large a role in the outfield, they’re going to have to make a deal or sign someone.</span></li><li><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>Find an everyday first baseman.</strong> Kevin Millar, mercifully, is gone, and as much as I like Olerud, I don’t think he can be replied upon given his age and recent health. Lyle Overbay’s name keeps coming up, as does Adrian Gonzalez. Either is fine with me.</span></li><li><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>Assign bullpen roles.</strong> I have no idea how healthy or effective Keith Foulke will be next season. I have no idea if either Delcarmen or Hansen is ready to be a major league closer. I have no idea if Guillermo Mota can rebound from a bad year and fill that role. But I do know that someone from that group has to step forward and close, or else the club is going to have to go get someone (Trevor Hoffman? Todd Jones?). For whatever reason, bullpen guys seem to perform better when they know their role, so determining them quickly is key fixing last year’s problems.</span></li></ol><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Those are the gaps I see. The team has a variety of chips to play in filling them, from prospects, to veterans who can be trade bait, to large amounts of cash, to even larger amounts of cash if Damon is let go and someone from the Well-Clement-Manny group is traded away. I won’t insult the front office by offering my own thoughts on which combination of moves should be made to fill those gaps. Unlike the Royals, where even my meager observations are probably startlingly revealing to the fools running that team, the Red Sox have earned a pass, even with Theo and his minions now gone. I have no doubt that these gaps will be filled, to some degree of satisfaction, long before Spring Training.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">I will offer this one piece of feedback to Sox leadership, from a fan who pays attention – stop embarrassing us. I don’t mean on the field, those results are wonderful. I mean in the media, where flaps like Theo’s departure, and the lawsuit over the Mientkiewicz ball, and “Evil Empire” potshots at the Yankees, and the declaration that you can’t be a real member of Red Sox Nation unless you pay $9.95 for a plastic card, are all humiliating. You’re better than that, or at least you should be. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Start acting like professionals and maybe your GM options will suddenly be greater.</span></p>Paul Whitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11393600178387119479noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24794537.post-1143768652766986132005-11-14T19:23:00.000-06:002006-03-30T19:34:50.603-06:00Peter Gammons' Hatchet Job<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2421/2566/1600/Jrice1978.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2421/2566/320/Jrice1978.jpg" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:arial;">Apparently, Peter Gammons has decided that Jim Rice might not belong in the Hall of Fame after all. He voted for him for years, and maybe he still does, but in </span><a href="http://insider.espn.go.com/mlb/gammons/story?id=2222269"><span style="font-family:arial;">his most recent ESPN </span></a><a href="http://insider.espn.go.com/mlb/gammons/story?id=2222269"><span style="font-family:arial;">column</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;">, Gammons went out of his way to hatchet Rice’s last, best shot at the Hall. With no clear front runners on the ballot this year, and Rice one of the top returning vote getters, he may never again have a better chance at election. The Red Sox have recognized this, and are campaigning on his behalf.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">With this landscape, one might expect Gammons, a past supporter of Rice’s election, to come out in favor of him. He’s the most well-known baseball writer in the world, as well as the most respected, and as a former Boston guy, his views on Rice carry a lot of weight. If Peter Gammons had decided to write that he still supports Rice, and that this year other writers should take advantage of this opportunity to vote for him, a lot of the membership of the BBWAA would have paid attention.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">But Gammons didn’t do that. Instead, he wrote a fleeting compliment of Rice’s achievements, followed by a scathing assessment of his accomplishments, based on the fact that he led the league in OPS just once, and on the assessment that his career OPS mark of .854 isn’t particularly noteworthy.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">I don’t know why Gammons suddenly decided to fire off this salvo, knowing, as he must, that it is likely to cause irreparable damage to Rice’s chances for election. I can’t help but wonder if it may have something to do with the hit his image took in </span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0807009792/qid=1132003414/sr=8-2/ref=pd_bbs_2/002-9932540-6286449?v=glance&s=books&n=507846"><span style="font-family:arial;">Howard Bryant’s 2003 book, “Shut Out”</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;">, in which Gammons came off as someone in a position to expose the racism Rice faced in Boston, including from the Red Sox organization itself, but passed up the opportunity to do the right thing. It was Rice making the point in Bryant’s book that it was the responsibility of people like Gammons to expose the truth, and it sure is interesting that Gammons now feels the need to disparage Rice’s Hall credentials at a critical time, despite having supported his election in the past. I wonder what changed his mind?</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Allow me to take the opportunity in this meager space, with nowhere near Gammons’ readership or reputation, to point out how misleading his comments were. Here’s his full comment on Rice:</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">“The Red Sox are campaigning for Jim Rice for the Hall of Fame. Despite his six top-five finishes in MVP balloting in a span of 12 years, Rice is hurt by the way his career ended -- with 388 home runs. Rice led the league in OPS only once (1978) and his .854 career mark is the same as Jack Clark's and lower than Wade Boggs'. Ted Williams led in OPS 10 times; Carl Yastrzemski four; Babe Ruth, Dwight Evans, Boggs and Fred Lynn twice.”</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">First, it would be nice if the leading baseball columnist in the world could properly look up a stat line. Rice had 382 career homers, not 388. Also, it would be nice if he placed the numbers in any kind of context. For instance, while he’s correct that Rice’s career OPS of .854 is the same as Jack Clark’s, it would be nice if he pointed out that Clark’s adjusted OPS+ (which is OPS adjusted to account for home ballpark and run-scoring era) of 137 is better than half of the 18 first basemen currently in the Hall of Fame. That’s not a bad comparison for Rice at all. And having a career OPS lower than Wade Boggs certainly isn’t anything to be ashamed of; Boggs is in the Hall of Fame, and is probably one of the top five third basemen of all time.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">In addition, Rice’s failure to lead the league in OPS more than once is also nothing to be ashamed of. Here’s a list of outfielders already in the Hall of Fame who also led the league in OPS just once:</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong><u>HOF Outfielders Who Led League Once in OPS</u></strong></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Joe Medwick</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Elmer Flick</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Edd Roush</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Hugh Duffy</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Fred Clarke</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Willie Keeler</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Tris Speaker</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Hack Wilson</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Al Kaline</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Billy Williams</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Larry Doby</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">And in case you think every other outfielder in the Hall managed to do better than that, think again. There are 25 other outfielders in the Hall who <em><u>never</u></em> led their league in OPS a single time, including such immortals as Joe DiMaggio, Al Simmons, and Roberto Clemente (see full list below). Does that make Rice better than all of those guys? Of course not, no more than it means his career is somehow less worthy than Fred Lynn’s or Dwight Evans’ simply because they led the league in OPS twice each.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">It’s that kind of context that Gammons ignores in his little blurb. It’s wildly unfair to throw around the numbers he did with the implication that they make Rice unworthy of election. If he wants to use OPS numbers as his measuring stick, shouldn’t he mention the good along with the bad, by making mention of the facts I just listed? Shouldn’t he note that Rice would have led the league in OPS twice if not for the fact that he finished 2nd in the American League in 1977 to an MVP season by a Hall of Famer (Rod Carew)? Or that the only people he trailed in 1983 are also in the Hall of Fame (George Brett, Boggs and Eddie Murray)?</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Picking one stat that makes a guy look ordinary is sloppy journalism, at best. At worst, it smacks of a deliberate smear attempt, and that’s unfortunate. I thought Gammons had a little more character than that.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Maybe the criticisms of him in Bryant’s book are closer to the truth than Gammons cares to admit.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong><u>HOF Outfielders Who Never Led in OPS</u></strong></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Goose Goslin</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Kiki Cuyler</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Lloyd Waner</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Heinie Manush</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Sam Rice</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Max Carey</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Zack Wheat</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Sam Crawford</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Joe DiMaggio</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Al Simmons</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Paul Waner</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Harry Heilman</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Tommy McCarthy</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Jesse Burkett</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Jim O’Rourke</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">King Kelly</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Earle Combs</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Chick Hafey</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Harry Hooper</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Joe Kelley</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Ross Youngs</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Roberto Clemente</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Sam Thompson</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Earl Averill</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Lou Brock</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Enos Slaughter</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Richie Ashburn</span>Paul Whitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11393600178387119479noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24794537.post-1143770701745056402005-10-19T19:35:00.000-05:002006-03-30T20:05:39.236-06:002005 Royals Wrap-Up<span style="font-family:arial;">Where to begin? The 2005 season was pretty disappointing, so let’s address that and get it out of the way, so we can focus on the real work at hand, which is to build for next year. There are positives that need to be remembered, which need to serve as the foundation for a better year in 2006 and beyond.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Isn’t it interesting that after I wrote the paragraph above, I realized it could be used for either of the two season wrap-ups I’m writing, one for the Royals and one for the Red Sox? I ultimately decided to do just that, use it to open both articles, because, despite the obvious differences between the two clubs, they are both currently in the same boat. They each need to evaluate the 2005 season, determine which parts need to be kept, which need to be replaced, which youngsters are future regulars, and which are expendable. They then must go forth and spend or trade to fill their many holes. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">The only difference is the level of expectations and the resources available to each GM. There are currently 27 other teams, playoff participants excluded, who are in the exact same position.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">But this is about the Royals, so let me start being specific. Here are the clearly recognizable failures and successes from 2005:</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong><u>FAILURES</u></strong></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>The Rotation</strong>. Denny Bautista and Brian Anderson were hurt. Zack Greinke regressed badly. Jose Lima was arguably the worst single-season starting pitcher in the history of baseball. Only Runelvys Hernandez from the Opening Day rotation had a season that could be called a qualified success, and that’s because expectations weren’t that high since he was returning from a lost season. It’s a sad commentary on the rotation as a whole that Hernandez’s eight wins and 5.52 ERA are considered a success.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>Second Base.</strong> Ruben Gotay never turned the corner. He got off to a terrible start, posting a .519 OPS through May 8th, and never really recovered. Shipped out to the minor leagues, his first replacement, Donnie Murphy, was even worse, posting an excruciating .501 OPS for the year, which left the team with nothing better than journeymen Joe McEwing and Denny Hocking. As a group, Royals’ second basemen posted an OPS of .630, the worst mark in all of baseball. To give you an idea of exactly how bad that is, Detroit’s pitchers had a combined OPS of .610. Aside from pitchers, only Cleveland’s third basemen (.628), Minnesota’s shortstops (.611), the Dodgers’ left fielders (.606), St. Louis’ catchers (.603), Washington’s shortstops (.583) and Seattle’s catchers (.568) had lower OPS figures at a single position.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>Third Base.</strong> There is some sense of hope here, because Mark Teahen has talent, and seemed to be putting things together over the season’s final few weeks. If he keeps his September-October pace up for a full 150 games, Teahen would be a 21-homer, 113-RBI, .859-OPS third baseman, which would obviously be outstanding. But the fact is, his first few months of this season were bad, reflective of the fact that he really belonged in Triple A. Royals’ third basemen combined for an OPS of just .668, and that was mostly Teahen. Only Cleveland’s third basemen had a lower mark in all of baseball. Add in the fact that Teahen had the worst zone rating of all major league regular third basemen, and only four regular third basemen made more errors in the field, and his season has to be called a failure. As of now, it would be extremely premature to move Alex Gordon to another position, because it’s a real possibility that Teahen won’t put it together. Of course, this being the Royals, Gordon is already playing first base in the Instructional League.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>Shortstop</strong>. Even with a decent second half at the plate, Angel Berroa’s overall season was a menace to good baseball. Listing the aspects of the sport in which Berroa needs to improve could take a while, so I’ll try to summarize. His hitting is atrocious. His OPS of .680 was 17th among 21 major league shortstops with enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting title. It was one point lower than, get this, Neifi Perez. He drew a total of 18 walks for the year; the same number as the infamously impatient Perez, only it took Berroa over 40 more plate appearances to reach that number. His base running is also terrible. Not only did he manage to steal just seven bases despite being one of the faster runners on the team, but he did so at just a 58% success rate. On top of that, he regularly fell asleep on the base paths and got picked off, or thrown out trying to take an extra base. Finally, his defense has regressed significantly since his rookie year. He was 22nd among 24 regular shortstops in fielding percentage. He was 17th in zone rating at .827. Compare that to his rookie year, when his .861 zone rating was tied for 6th among all major league shortstops. His range factor has dropped from 4.79, a great figure, tied for second in all of baseball in 2003, to just 4.60, which ties for 10th. That’s still respectable, but is means that once every five games, over thirty times per season, Berroa is failing to reach a ball he used to get to. He is a significant liability in an everyday lineup, particularly one that is already lacking in production at most positions, and given his late-season comments that indicated he has no real concern about improving his pitch selection, I would be thrilled if they unloaded him for whatever some foolish GM offered.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>First Base</strong>. Only the Angels got fewer home runs from the first base position than the 13 paltry dingers the Royals managed, while just two teams’ first basemen drew fewer walks than the 44 put up by the Royals’ crew. Their ranks in the other major offensive categories were similarly bad – 27th in runs scored, 23rd in total bases, 20th in RBI, 20th in on-base percentage, 25th in slugging percentage, 22nd in OPS, 21st in extra-base hits, 29th in isolated power (which is slugging percentage minus batting average), 20th in runs created, 29th in secondary average (a measure of a player’s extra bases gained, including walks and steals, independent of batting average), 24th in pitches seen per plate appearances, 24th in strikeout to walk ratio. For a position that is supposed to be a major supplier of offense in most lineups, that just plain sucks. Given that the position was mostly populated with such stone hands’ as Matt Stairs, Mike Sweeney, Justin Huber and Ken Harvey, I’m not even going to talk about first base defense. If I did, I might be contributing to the suicide rate, and I couldn’t live with that.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>Left Field.</strong> A sore spot last season (.608 left field OPS in 2004), the position definitely improved this year, but it was still pretty damn bad. Royals’ left fielders combined for a .717 OPS, 25th in all of baseball, 11th in the American League. (That mark still would have been dead last in 2004, but overall offense dropped a bit this year.) A litany of poor offensive rankings, similar to those listed in the first base comments, could be cut and pasted here, but what’s the point? From 2004 to 2005, there was improvement from horrific and embarrassing to merely terrible. Let’s just leave it at that.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>Team Defense.</strong> The Royals’ defense, essential in such a big ballpark, particularly with such a young pitching staff, was awful. Baseball Prospectus publishes a report on each team’s defensive efficiency, which is nothing more than the rate at which a team translates balls in play into outs. That’s really what defense is all about, obviously, and the Royals have the worst Defensive Efficiency mark, .672, in all of baseball. What that means is that, as a team, when the Royals’ opponents put the ball in play, they are collectively hitting about .330. Good grief. There are only two ways to combat that – make hitters swing and miss more often, or get better defensive players. Since the Royals’ pitchers posted just the 26th-best strikeout rate in baseball, some better gloves are needed desperately. (Note – This doesn’t not have to apply to every position on the field, just the key up-the-middle and other infield spots. More to come in the Right Field comments.)</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong><u>SUCCESSES</u></strong></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>The Bullpen</strong>. Credit to Allard Baird for finally putting together some decent young bullpen arms. Mike MacDougal is still pretty shaky as closers go, but he showed immense improvement. Pitching the same number of games as his All-Star season of 2003, he managed to throw more innings and give up fewer runs and walks. His strikeout rate topped one per inning, and he struck out three men for each walk he allowed. If not for a few brain cramps in save situations, I’d love the guy. As it is, I still like him a lot. Added to MacDougal were two rookies, Andrew Sisco and Ambiorix Burgos, each of whom struck out better than one batter per inning. They both allow too many base runners, but command should come in time, as it did for MacDougal. In fact, Sisco is probably best suited to start eventually, because his numbers in multi-inning outings were much better than in appearances where he threw one inning or less. Throw in two solid middle-to-long relief men, D.J. Carrasco and Mike Wood, plus a solid debut by rookie Jonah Bayliss, and suddenly the Royals have a full bullpen, and we haven’t even discussed Jeremy Affeldt or Leo Nunez yet.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>Center Field.</strong> Hold on to your hats, here comes a bold statement - David DeJesus was the best-hitting center fielder in the American League after the All-Star break. No lie. After the All-Star break, DeJesus had an OPS of .864. The next best mark in the AL was Grady Sizemore’s .857. No one else was even close, but the enormous caveat attached to this accomplishment was that DeJesus couldn’t stay on the field. He had just 142 at bats after the break due to a shoulder injury, and had a few other nagging injuries throughout the year. Even so, his performance at the plate and in center field easily makes him the Royals’ Player of the Year. If anyone else gets that award it will be a cruel joke. If he can put together 150 games next year, DeJesus should be the team’s only sure All-Star.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>Right Field.</strong> Contrary to what some “experts” have stated (yes, Jeffrey Flanagan, I’m talking about you), Emil Brown was a good overall baseball player for the Royals in 2005. Was he a defensive liability? You bet. Was he, in the grand scheme of things, a candidate for the All-Star team or for Royals’ Player of the Year? No, of course not. But Emil Brown did a couple of things extremely well for the Royals, things they had been lacking from right field since Jermaine Dye’s days in KC. First, he showed up healthy every day. Don’t underestimate the importance of having a consistent presence in the lineup, when nearly every other position on the field was in flux. More importantly, unlike the only other consistent presence in the lineup, Angel Berroa, Brown hit well. Really well. An overall OPS of .804 is quite good. Royals’ right fielders combined for an OPS of .814 (Aaron Guiel contributing to these numbers as well), a mark good enough for 10th in all of baseball and 4th in the American League. I’ll take it, bad defense and all, particularly when you keep in mind that in 2004, Royals’ right fielders combined for an ugly OPS of .682, dead last in all of baseball. Against lefties, Brown was a terror, hitting .313/.368/.539/.906, meaning that even if his defensive liabilities prove to be too costly to allow him to play in the field, he is still an excellent option for the right-handed half of a platoon at DH. As it is, I’d love to move him over to left field, where his liabilities will be minimized, and put Aaron Guiel in right field every day until a youngster like Chris Lubanski or Billy Butler is ready. Guiel came back healthy after a series of eye problems in 2004, and quickly proved that he had returned to the very promising form he had in 2003. A pure righty-lefty platoon of Brown and Guiel would produce an OPS of .873 based upon 2005 performance. That’s excellent, even if their average (Guiel)-to-poor (Brown) defense gives back a few of the extra runs their bats produce. Corner outfield defense just isn’t important enough to sacrifice that kind of run production.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>The Draft.</strong> A qualified success. Slow as the process was, the Royals did manage to sign top pick Alex Gordon, avoiding a potentially embarrassing situation, and they did so with enough time to at least get him some Instructional League and Arizona Fall League playing time. Had they stalled until Gordon went back to school, or even until it was too late to get him any playing time before Spring Training, nothing else they did in the draft could keep it from being classified a failure. As it happens, they did a couple of other nice things in the draft as well. Second pick Jeff Bianchi had a spectacular debut in Arizona, posting a .408/.484/.745/1.229 line. And he’s a shortstop! Who can hit! What a concept. The third pick, Chris Nicoll, had a nice debut as well, posting a 3.62 ERA, 1.28 WHIP, 3.78 K/BB ratio and sparkling 11.20 K/9IP ratio in Idaho Falls. The Royals certainly need that kind of swing and miss capability. They saw much of the same from 7th-round pick Brent Fisher. He was a high school pitcher, which always raises red flags, but the kid was terrific in the Arizona rookie league, going 5-2 in 13 games as a starter and reliever, and posting a 3.04 ERA and 1.21 WHIP in a hitter’s league. More importantly, he showed both outstanding command (2.32 BB/9IP ratio) and outstanding punch out ability (12.34 K/9IP). They also had promising results from catchers Kiel Thibault (9th round) and Jeffrey Howell (10th round), and gigantic (6’8”) right-handed pitcher David Henninger (21st round). First baseman Jase Turner (27th round) promises to be a fascinating guy to follow. If strikeouts were hits, Turner would have batted .349 for Idaho Falls, which is certainly ugly, but he managed to post a promising .282/.385/.498/.883 line anyway. What that means is that when Turner made contact with the ball, his numbers soared to .434/.550/.765/1.315. Wow. Talk about a great pet project for some hitting coach. All in all, I was pleased with the draft. Had the club signed Gordon faster, I would have taken the qualifier off completely.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>The Farm System.</strong> Also a qualified success. The top level of the talent pool down on the farm is outstanding. Billy Butler, Justin Huber, Chris Lubanski, and Mitch Meier all hade solid-to-stellar years, a nice indication that some homegrown help for the offense may not be far away. Let me also throw in a name I never see mentioned as a big prospect, and that’s Kila Kaaihue, the first baseman for High Desert in the California League. I realize that’s a hitter’s league, so his numbers have to discounted a bit, but Kaaihue hit .304 and slugged .497 while demonstrating the one talent sorely missing from the Royals’ offense – pitch selection. He drew 97 walks in 132 games, boosting his on-base percentage to .428, good enough to lead that league. And he’s still just 21-years old. Bears watching. As mentioned, the Royals’ rookie level talent increased a lot with this year’s draft, another positive sign to build upon a 2004 draft that saw some success as well. We all know about Butler from 2004, but others from that class started to show some promise this season, like J.P. Howell, and shortstop Chris McConnell, the team’s 9th-round pick in ’04, who batted .331/.403/.516/.919 at Idaho Falls. Closer Chad Blackwell (6th round in ’04) put up nice numbers at Burlington, including a 2.23 ERA, 1.30 WHIP and 9.70 K/9IP. Pitcher Billy Buckner (2nd round, ’04, and a really unfortunate name) put up solid numbers, including a strikeout per inning and a promotion to High Desert mid season.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">In between those extremes of solid youngsters and excellent top-level talent, the talent isn’t quite there. Most of the good pitching in the farm system was rushed straight to the big leagues. Some performed well or at least showed promise (Burgos, Bayliss, Howell), while some were awful (Leo Nunez, Chris Demaria), but in almost all cases they should still be in the minor leagues, building experience and arm strength. The team has already announced that they are likely to focus next year’s draft, including the number one overall pick, on pitching, and that makes complete sense. Another positive step would be to make ample use of the Rule 5 draft, since the Royals will chose first in each round of that draft and have demonstrated an ability to make good on their selections – Miguel Asencio in 2002, D.J. Carrasco in 2003, Jose Bautista in 2004 (who was neatly flipped straight up for Justin Huber), and Andy Sisco in 2005.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Okay, so where does all of this leave the team? In a word, nowhere. The club seems to be adrift, floating without direction or purpose. There is a supposed “youth movement” underway, and we can see signs of that in the bullpen and about half of the lineup. They pushed that agenda beyond reason at times, rushing Nunez, Howell, Bayliss, Murphy, Teahen and Gotay to the big leagues, and refusing to send Greinke down when he struggled so badly in the middle of the year.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">At the same time, the team also chose to give significant playing time to the likes of Terrence Long when they could have given those appearances to Matt Diaz, or recalled Shane Costa. They retained the putrid Jose Lima beyond all reason, to the point of actually letting him continue to vest incentive payments with each additional hideous outing. They re-signed Matt Stairs for next season, despite an apparent logjam at the first base/DH positions, and have made some noise about re-signing Long as well. In order to garner meaningless wins late in the year, they regularly benched Teahen to play Joe McEwing, and started Denny Hocking frequently as well. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">These are the signs of a team that either doesn’t have a plan or can’t execute on one. So what to do? Here’s my view:</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><ol><li>Spend a good chunk of that new, reported $50 million payroll on two good, veteran starting pitchers. One of them (Matt Morris, Kevin Millwood, A.J. Burnett) is likely to cost somewhere north of $10 million per year, and another (Paul Byrd for example) is going to run about $6-$8 million. It’s worth that price to have 400 or more solid innings to replace the output of Jose Lima and the terrifying combination of Jimmy Gobble, Ryan Jensen, Brian Anderson and Kyle Snyder. They would be at the top of a rotation that featured a fully recovered, and hopefully matured, Runelvys Hernandez , either J.P. Howell or Denny Bautista, whichever is more effective, and Zack Greinke, who will hopefully throw exclusively to whatever backup catcher the team keeps and not John Buck. As I have written before, Greinke’s career ERA throwing to Buck is 6.04. It’s 3.40 throwing to anyone else. That rotation can keep the club competitive, particularly with the improved bullpen.</li><li>Sign a veteran second baseman, like Mark Grudzielanek or Ray Durham. It will cost at least a couple of million, and possibly five or six million if we manage to sign Durham, but there is clearly no ready replacement on the horizon and the hole is too big to use a stopgap, as the team tried this year.</li><li>Move Emil Brown to left field and give him the everyday job.</li><li>Give Andres Blanco the everyday shortstop job.</li><li>Make Justin Huber the full-time DH.</li><li>Keep Teahen, Buck and DeJesus in their current roles, only move DeJesus to the second spot in the batting order to take advantage of the power he's developing.</li><li>Trade Mike Sweeney, Matt Stairs, Angel Berroa, Ken Harvey and Jeremy Affeldt. They represent over $15 million of payroll, all of it either aging, ineffective, or both. In return, the club would need a regular first baseman and right fielder, which should be do-able. For instance, Tampa Bay has six players on the current roster who need regular time in the outfield – Carl Crawford, Rocco Baldelli, Joey Gathright, Aubrey Huff, Jonny Gomes and Damon Hollins – plus they have super prospect Delmon Young ready for playing time, too. Since they are desperate for some pitching, a Gathright-for-Affeldt trade, or Gomes-for-Affeldt trade, is entirely possible, particularly now that they don’t have to deal with Chuck LaMar’s strategy of hoarding talent at the expense of filling holes. Getting a first basemen and prospects for Sweeney and some other parts (Casey Kotchman from the Angels? Chad Tracy or Conor Jackson from the Diamondbacks?) should also be possible.</li></ol><p>Doing all of this, plus proactively signing David DeJesus to a contract extension that gives him $2 million or so each year but safely removes the danger of much higher numbers in arbitration, would only cost the club about $44 million in payroll next year, and that assumes that Sweeney’s replacement makes about $5 million and it takes $5 million to sign Ray Durham. It would give the Royals a lineup that would look something like this: 2B - Durham, CF - DeJesus, 1B - Kotchman/Jackson/Tracy , RF - Gomes, LF - Brown, DH - Huber, 3B - Teahen, C - Buck, SS - Blanco.</p><p>That lineup would score, certainly more than they did this season. And with Butler, Lubanski and Gordon in the pipeline for help in the near future, the team could confidently turn to developing more pitching depth with the first pick of the June draft. It would also give the team two desperately needed things that have been missing for a long, long time.</p><p>Direction and Hope.</span></p>Paul Whitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11393600178387119479noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24794537.post-1143771444477190392005-10-10T20:09:00.000-05:002006-03-30T20:21:36.306-06:00An Open Letter to Jayson Stark<span style="font-family:arial;">Dear Jayson,</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">To quote </span><a href="http://www.tr-i.com/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;">Todd Rundgren</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;">, “Hello, It’s Me”. Yes, the lunatic in Kansas City who wrote annual novels to you about the legitimacy of Jim Rice’s Hall of Fame case is back for a return engagement. Only this time, there’s a twist.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Your stunning, </span><a href="http://espn.go.com/classic/s/miracle_ice_1980.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;">USA Hockey-like upset</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;"> of last year, when you courageously reversed a decade of transgressions and finally cast your ballot with Jim Rice’s named checked (or punched or written-in – how are those ballots actually formatted?) has not been forgotten and is still greatly appreciated. The name “</span><a href="http://www.baseball-reference.com/r/riceji01.shtml" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;">Jim Rice</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;">” will not be mentioned again in this missive, as both a salute to your reversal and as a reprieve from a long sentence of badgering you suffered at the hands of myself and those like me.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">This year’s subject – here’s the twist – will focus on someone else. And you thought I was just a maniac over He Who Shall Not Be Named. Silly Jayson.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Before revealing whom this person is, allow me to frame the conversation. Let’s say you have a player, we’ll call him Joe Baseball for now, who has the following characteristics:</span><br /><ul><li><span style="font-family:arial;">20-year career</span></li><li><span style="font-family:arial;">Offensive numbers solidly above the average Hall of Famer at his position.</span></li><li><span style="font-family:arial;">4-time Gold Glover</span></li><li><span style="font-family:arial;">Unquestioned leader of his team</span></li><li><span style="font-family:arial;">World Champion</span></li><li><span style="font-family:arial;">Career post-season OPS of .992.</span></li><li><span style="font-family:arial;">Near MVP (finished 2nd in a year when it is generally agreed he was robbed)</span></li><li><span style="font-family:arial;">Stellar off-field character</span></li></ul><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Now, on the surface that seems to be a pretty good Hall of Fame case, but let’s provide a few more details of those offensive numbers, just to be clear about Joe Baseball’s accomplishments.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">He played almost 7% more games and had about 3% more at-bats than the average Hall of Famer at his position. He had 3% more hits, 7% more doubles, 90% more homers and 10% more extra-base hits than the average Hall of Famer at his position. He had more walks than the average HOFer, a better slugging percentage, and an OPS that was 2% higher than the HOFers who played the same position as he did. And this is not a cross-era fluke that sees him benefit. His OPS+, which includes adjustments for his run-scoring era and his home ballpark, was 2 points higher than the average Hall of Famer too.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">If Joe Baseball were a first baseman, that kind of offensive output would translate to a stat line that looks like this:</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">2250 Games, 1377 Runs, 2472 Hits, 544 Homers, 1418 RBI, 908 XBH, 125 Steals, .308 AVG, .380 OBP, .525 SLG, .905 OPS</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Pretty impressive. And that’s not just some fluke at first base. The mythical center fielder that fits the Joe Baseball profile looks like this:</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">2186 Games, 1456 Runs, 2513 Hits, 396 Homers, 1128 RBI, 805 XBH, 256 Steals, .318 AVG, .393 OBP, .507 SLG, .900 OPS</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">When you throw in the squeaky-clean reputation, four Gold Gloves and the post-season accomplishments (FYI – not only was Joe Baseball a World Champion, he was MVP of that World Series), it’s pretty obvious that he would be a Hall of Famer, probably a first ballot guy.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">To attach a real-life name to the Joe Baseball profile, we could turn to second base. The profile there would look like this:</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">2325 Games, 1361 Runs, 2546 Hits, 254 Homers, 1055 RBI, 730 XBH, 239 Steals, .303 AVG, .372 OBP, .450 SLG, .822 OPS.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">T</span><span style="font-family:arial;">hose are projected numbers, but they are awfully close to Ryne Sandberg’s actual numbers, with the key difference being that Joe Baseball’s stats are a bit better than Sandberg’s and include a World Championship.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Now, if I’m not mistaken, you voted for Ryne Sandberg every year he was on the ballot, and it was the right decision, clearly.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">So why won’t you vote for </span><a href="http://www.baseball-reference.com/t/trammal01.shtml" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;">Alan Trammell</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;">? </span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;"><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2421/2566/1600/atrammell-4.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2421/2566/320/atrammell-4.jpg" border="0" /></a>Trammell is the Joe Baseball I have described above. His career is the functional equivalent to shortstops of </span><a href="http://www.baseball-reference.com/s/sandbry01.shtml" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;">Ryne Sandberg</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;"> to second basemen, only a bit better. He’s the equivalent of that 500-homer first baseman, or that 400-homer, 250-steal, .900-OPS center fielder. He’s that much better than the average Hall of Fame shortstop already enshrined. Here is the average Hall of Fame shortstop:</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">2150 Games, 1206 Runs, 2292 Hits, 97 Homers, 1028 RBI, 591 XBH, 279 Steals, .286 AVG, .354 OBP, .397 SLG, .751 OPS.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">T</span><span style="font-family:arial;">hen there’s Trammell:</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">2293 Games, 1231 Runs, 2365 Hits, 185 Homers, 1003 RBI, 652 XBH, 236 Steals, .285 AVG, .352 OBP, .415 SLG, .767 OPS.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Now, those numbers obviously pale in comparison to the big boppers at the corner outfield spots or first base. But for a shortstop, they are numbers that have rarely been matched in the game’s history. Trammell served as the pre-cursor for the modern, slugging shortstop. He is the only true shortstop link between the slugging era of </span><a href="http://www.baseball-reference.com/w/wagneho01.shtml" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;">Honus Wagner</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;"> and </span><a href="http://www.baseball-reference.com/v/vaughar01.shtml" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;">Arky Vaughan</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;"> and </span><a href="http://www.baseball-reference.com/managers/cronijo01.shtml" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;">Joe Cronin</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;"> and the modern era of </span><a href="http://www.baseball-reference.com/r/ripkeca01.shtml" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;">Cal Ripken</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;"> and ARod. The only others who even approach that description, </span><a href="http://www.baseball-reference.com/b/bankser01.shtml" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;">Ernie Banks</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;"> and </span><a href="http://www.baseball-reference.com/y/yountro01.shtml" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;">Robin Yount</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;">, both played a significant number of games at a different position than shortstop (but I included their numbers in the averages above anyway – take them away and Trammell looks even better). </span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">For the most part, the Hall has determined that a shortstop’s primary role is in the field, so if they did that well, they could hit .270 (or worse) and slug .370 (or worse) and still make the Hall of Fame, in the mold of </span><a href="http://www.baseball-reference.com/w/wallabo01.shtml" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;">Bobby Wallace</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;">, </span><a href="http://www.baseball-reference.com/t/tinkejo01.shtml" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;">Joe Tinker</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;">, </span><a href="http://www.baseball-reference.com/m/maranra01.shtml" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;">Rabbit Maranville</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;">, </span><a href="http://www.baseball-reference.com/w/wardjo01.shtml" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;">Monte Ward</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;">, </span><a href="http://www.baseball-reference.com/b/bancrda01.shtml" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;">Dave Bancroft</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;">, </span><a href="http://www.baseball-reference.com/r/rizzuph01.shtml" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;">Phil Rizzuto</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;">, </span><a href="http://www.baseball-reference.com/r/reesepe01.shtml" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;">Pee Wee Reese</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;">, </span><a href="http://www.baseball-reference.com/a/aparilu01.shtml" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;">Luis Aparicio</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;">, and </span><a href="http://www.baseball-reference.com/s/smithoz01.shtml" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;">Ozzie Smith</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;">.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Well, Trammell came along at the same time as Yount and proved that shortstops could hit again. By age 22, he was hitting .300 in the big leagues, posting an OPS better than the league average for all players, not just shortstops, and playing Gold Glove defense. At a time when Yount and Ripken were playing the position in the same division as he was, Trammell still won four Gold Gloves and three Silver Slugger awards. And he did all of this for one team, in one city, with utmost professionalism and off-field grace.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">How Trammell’s vote totals have remained so low for so long is baffling to me, unless he is a victim of the misperception that shortstops always hit like he did, or better. The truth is that he is far more worthy of induction as a shortstop than You Know Who is as a left fielder, or Ryne Sandberg was as a second baseman. In fact, depending upon your view of relief pitchers, Trammell is far more worthy at his position than anyone else on the upcoming ballot is at theirs. He deserves to be elected to the Hall.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">There, that wasn’t so bad, was it? Less than 1,200 words this year. Please bear in mind that I could easily triple that figure next year if you don’t vote for Trammell. </span><span style="font-family:arial;">Consider yourself warned.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Regards as always,</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Paul White</span></p>Paul Whitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11393600178387119479noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24794537.post-1143772595656229712005-10-04T20:26:00.000-05:002006-03-30T20:36:35.673-06:002005 Playoff Picks<span style="font-family:arial;">Now that we know who will keep playing, not to mention who </span><a href="http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/playoffs2005/news/story?id=2179945" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;">the experts at</span></a><a href="http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/playoffs2005/news/story?id=2179945" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;"> </span></a><a href="http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/playoffs2005/news/story?id=2179945" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;">The Worldwide </span></a><a href="http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/playoffs2005/news/story?id=2179945" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;">Leader</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;"> think will triumph, allow me to give you my infallible logic on this year's post-season.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong><u>AMERICAN LEAGUE</u></strong></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>Red Sox vs White Sox</strong> - I have no doubt that the White Sox have the better pitching staff, but that gap isn't nearly as large as you would think. For instance the much-maligned Red Sox bullpen is actually in good shape for the post-season. They no longer are saddled with the struggling arms of Alan Embree, Keith Foulke, Mike Remlinger and John Halama. The group that goes into the post-season has combined for a bullpen-only ERA of 3.34. Meanwhile, the six relievers the White Sox are likely to carry have combined for an ERA of 3.50 against the Red Sox this year. Also, while Jose Contreras has been wonderful in the second half of the season, he has not been wonderful against the Red Sox. He won his only start against them on July 24th, but the Sox battered him to the tune of a .348 batting average and 4.76 ERA. For his career, Contreras has an ERA of 11.67 against the Red Sox, and the current Red Sox roster has a combined slugging percentage of .633 against him. In addition, the Red Sox clearly have the better hitting in general in this series. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Combine all of that with the fact that the two teams' run differentials are nearly identical - the White Sox come out a game ahead - but that Boston compiled their record against stiffer competition (.504 opponents winning percentage compared to the ChiSox .498), and I think the Red Sox will win.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Red Sox in 4.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>Yankees vs Angels</strong> - Let's see, the Angels won the season series against New York, 6-4, and it would have been 8-2 if not for a pair of bullpen lapses. They outscored them head-to-head. They have, by far, the better pitching. They have home field advantage. Their roster has as much post-season experience as New York's. And the Yankees had to fly out to the West Coast after a tense seven-game road trip that ended in Boston.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">If you think all of that was just a clever setup for me to surprise you with a pick of the Yankees, you're wrong. The Angels are the better team. Their run differential has them as a 93-win team, while the Yankees came out to just 90 wins, and run differential is a pretty solid predictor of post-season outcomes, much more so than actual won-loss records, particularly when the two clubs played similar competition (Angels opponents - .505 Win Pct; Yankees - .504)</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Angels in 5.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>Padres vs Cardinals</strong> - The Cardinals are the best team in the National League, by a wide margin. They are a true 100-win team, in that their real record matched their projected record exactly. Their hitters are getting healthier and their rotation, though struggling of late, is simply better and deeper than the Padres. The Pads managed to finish above .500, but only through luck. They were outscored for the year by 42 runs, a huge difference, and projected to a record of just 76-86. Jake Peavy gives them some hope, having pitched eight innings of one-run ball in his only start against St. Louis this year, but it just won't be enough.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Cardinals in 4.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>Astros vs Braves</strong> - I realize the Braves always fail in the post-season. I realize they have a bunch of rookies on their team. I know that Astros have the veteran pitchers, all of whom have been hot lately. I know that more of the experts over at ESPN picked the Astros to win the World Series than any other team.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">But these teams are very close to one another, finishing a game apart in the real standings and a game apart in projected standings, with the Braves having the edge in each case. And the Braves posted their record against much, much stiffer competition - their opponents had a combined winning percentage of .506, the toughest schedule faced by any of the eight playoff teams, while the Astros faced the 2nd-weakest, a .495 mark. And it's not as if the Braves have bad pitchers going - Tim Hudson has a career post-season ERA of 3.44 in the American League, while John Smoltz (14-4, 2.70 ERA) is one of the finest post-season pitchers of all time. Throw in home field advantage (or what qualifies as such in tepid Atlanta) and I'm going with the Braves.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Braves in 5.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>ALCS - Red Sox vs Angels</strong></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">"Let's see, the Angels won the season series against New York, 6-4, and it would have been 8-2 if not for a pair of bullpen lapses. They outscored them head-to-head. They have, by far, the better pitching. They have home field advantage. Their roster has as much post-season experience as New York's. And the Yankees had to fly out to the West Coast after a tense seven-game road trip that ended in Boston."</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">A lot of that commentary still applies here, only with Boston inserted for New York. In this case, the Red Sox won the season series 6-4, but the Angels actually outscored them head-to-head. They still have the better pitching, by far, as well as the home field advantage, and just as much post-season experience as Boston. And Boston had to fight it out at the end of the season just to get into the post-season, plus face a road series to start the playoffs then a cross-country flight to play the Angels.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">As much as I hate to admit it, I think it's going to be an unhappy winter in Red Sox Nation.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Angels in 6.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>NLCS - Braves vs Cardinals</strong></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">The Cardinals will enter the series pretty refreshed, having a relative walkover against San Diego while Atlanta has to go though the Astros pitching staff. They are still the best team in the NL, and though I like the Braves more than most of the experts, I just don't see how those youngsters are going to get through two post-season series', especially with the last one being on the road in an emotional, motivated Busch Stadium.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Cardinals in 5.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>World Series - Cardinals vs Angels</strong></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">The American League is the better league at the moment, so while the Cardinals won 100 games again and have a better run differential than the Angels, much of that goes out the window since the contexts of their accomplishments are so different.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">More important to me is this - the Angels posted a great record, both in real wins and projected - against competition that combined for a .505 winning percentage in a clearly better league, while the Cardinals posted their marks against .494 competition - the weakest schedule in the playoffs - in a clearly inferior league. Mike Scioscia and his boys have won it all before, and while the Cardinals are motivated, Tony LaRussa's teams have a tendency to play tight in the big games.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">I'm going with the best team in the better league.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Angels in 6.</span>Paul Whitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11393600178387119479noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24794537.post-1143773100795058012005-06-17T20:37:00.000-05:002006-03-30T20:45:00.806-06:00Some Miscellaneous Stuff<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2421/2566/1600/0615angels.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 250px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 196px" height="216" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2421/2566/320/0615angels.jpg" width="279" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:arial;">Mike Scioscia is wrong, Frank Robinson is right, Jose Guillen did the right thing twice and Brendan Donnelly is quite properly suspended. I see no reason why Scioscia should throw a little hissy fit about Donnelly's glove being checked. He cheated, and that's that. Recall that Scioscia didn't have any problem with Darin Erstad's largely dirty play against Atlanta, when he threw a body block to the catcher's head. You condone that kind of thing in baseball and other teams are going to start watching you closer. You made your bed, Mike, now lie in it. Robinson had every right to call Donnelly on the pine tar in his glove. In fact, to protect his team, he was pretty much obligated to say something if he thought the opposition was cheating (or about to in Donnelly's case). Guillen not only was perfectly justified in letting Robinson know about the pine tar, but he was right to try to defend his manager once it looked like things were going to get heated. It looks like MLB agrees, since Guillen wasn't suspended and Donnelly got ten games. Giving each manager a game was proper as well. You can't have managers throwing down in front of the paying customers...</span> <p><span style="font-family:arial;">Speaking of the Nationals, all of you DC fans can simmer down. Until your team proves they can outscore the opposition over the long haul, you should still be dubious about their ability to reach the post-season. The Nats have been outscored by one run this season, indicating that their current record is a bit of a mirage...</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Is it just me, or does the media not seem to quite know what to do with themselves without the Yankees playing well? I understand that a .500 team with the highest payroll in baseball history is a story, but rather than pursue that story line, I find the media continually hinting that the Yankees are about to go on a run. Giambi hit a homer to bring the team back to .500, after the first base ump blew a call to keep them alive in the game, and this is somehow viewed as the "turning point" of their season? How can any game against the Pirates be a turning point? Face it, ESPN, the Yankees are just a mediocre, aging ballclub this year...</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Part of what follows is not going to be politically correct, but it needs to be said. Before I say it, let me try to cut off some of the more popular attacks that will surely come my way. First, I think women are great. My wife is my favorite person and my daughter is in my personal top-3. My mother, sister, nieces and mother-in-law are all high on my list, too. They are all intelligent, strong, witty, caring people. And at least two women in my family are cancer survivors, including the lovely woman I conned into marrying me, so I'm all in favor of cancer research in all its forms. I wear one of Lance Armstrong's "Live Strong" bracelets not because it is fashionable but as a display of support for my wife. I made certain to earmark my annual United Way contribution this year to go to </span><a href="http://www.cancer.org/docroot/home/index.asp" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;">The </span></a><a href="http://www.cancer.org/docroot/home/index.asp" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;">American </span></a><a href="http://www.cancer.org/docroot/home/index.asp" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;">Cancer Society</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;">.</span></p><span style="font-family:arial;"><p>So there's that. Let me also make it clear that, as someone with a degree in U.S. History, I am fully aware that the United States, and pretty much the rest of Earth as well, has been the personal playground of men for a long, long time. Women in this country, and a lot of men who didn't share a similar skin color or religious belief with the power brokers, were truly downtrodden. In many aspects of our society they still are, so I'm in favor of most of the efforts in the last 40 years or so to achieve equality between the sexes. Those were, and are, noble, necessary efforts. </p><p>But, in some glaring cases, they have gone too far. Our desire to right historical wrongs often takes us from one bad extreme to another bad extreme. In fact, I probably should have just dropped "bad" from that last sentence because, in my view, any extreme is de facto "bad". Good rarely comes from an extreme view.</p><p>The glaring case that has set me off on this little rant is The Breast Cancer 3-Day, promoted on the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation's web site as, "a 60-mile walk for women and men who want to make a personal difference in the fight against breast cancer. Participants walk 60 miles in three days, help raise millions of dollars for breast cancer research and patient support programs and are part of something way bigger than themselves." Now, that sounds like a wonderful cause. Under other circumstances, I'd gladly hand over a few dollars to support it. I won't be doing so this year, however, because the Breast Cancer 3-Day concludes on, you guessed it, FATHER'S DAY! The only officially-recognized day of the entire year that is specifically set aside for men has been usurped by a national charity for a women's health issue. </p><p>I will readily admit that men have their other, non-official days. Football Sundays spring to mind, as do countless poker nights, bachelor parties and so forth. But, in terms of national recognition, Father's Day is it. It is the only day of the year when men can be the lazy bums they generally are with the understanding that they can't catch any crap for it and don't have to feel guilty about it. I think I'm pretty much representative of men in general, and I know that there are numerous weekend days, not to mention weekdays, when I'm a lazy lout, lounging around in my recliner in shorts and a t-shirt, watching a ballgame, when I should be putting up a new wallpaper border in my kids' rooms or washing the cars or some other fatherly duty. My wife is a warm, kind-hearted soul, and is not the type of person to hen-peck me into action, but that does nothing but accentuate the guilt I feel, knowing I should get out of my exceptionally comfortable, soft, leather recliner, turn off the TV and go mow the lawn. Sometimes, the guilt even makes me do that. It's rare, but it's been known to happen. Father's Day removes all of that guilt, at least for a day.</p><p>So why would any women's organization, even one fighting such a noble fight against such a worthy opponent, breast cancer, choose this singular day on most men's calendars to promote a women's issue? I mean, let's turn the tables. According to </span></p><a href="http://www.cancer.org/docroot/STT/stt_0_2004.asp?sitearea=STT&level=1" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;">The </span></a><a href="http://www.cancer.org/docroot/STT/stt_0_2004.asp?sitearea=STT&level=1" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;">American Cancer Society's </span></a><a href="http://www.cancer.org/docroot/STT/stt_0_2004.asp?sitearea=STT&level=1" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;">figures from 1997-2004</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;">, prostate cancer and breast cancer are running neck-and-neck. Prostate cancer is the most frequent cancer in men; breast cancer is the most frequent cancer in women. Prostate cancer is the number two cause of cancer deaths in men; breast cancer is number two in women. The mortality rates of the two diseases are similar - 27.5%, on average, for prostate cancer; 26.2% for breast cancer. They are pretty equal in terms of new diagnoses as well - over 230,00 new prostate cancer diagnoses in 2004; over 215,000 new breast cancer diagnoses. Clearly, prostate cancer is just as serious a health issue for men as breast cancer is for women. </span><p><span style="font-family:arial;">So, if the </span><a href="http://www.prostate-cancer.org/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;">Prostate Cancer Research Institute</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;"> held its national convention on Mother's Day, can you imagine the criticism they would face? It would be enormous. Women's organizations everywhere would issue statements of how insensitive the Prostate Cancer Institute was being for publicizing a men's issue on Mother's Day. And they would be 100% correct in their outrage. Knowing this, and being sensitive to the fact that it is a men's health issue, what did the Prostate Cancer Institute choose, properly, to do? They decided that their </span><a href="http://www.prostate-cancer.org/aboutus/events/conf2005DC_info.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;">national convention</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;"> would conclude on, you guessed it, FATHER'S DAY! See how nicely that works? Isn't it selfless of these men, many of whom are certainly fathers, to give up their one day of guilt-free recreation and acknowledgment from their families in order to shed light on such a worthy men's health issue? </span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Couldn't the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation have held the Breast Cancer 3-Day on Mother's Day? I know many other breast cancer awareness events were held at that time, so if they wanted to spread these efforts out through the year, that's perfectly understandable, but why choose the only weekend when we should be thinking about the men in our lives? Would it have been so hard to push this back to next weekend, so as not to take away from the one day of the year when we can honor the men who have always helped care for breast cancer's victims? The men who often single-handedly raise the children breast cancer's victims leave behind? The men who have helped research it's causes and searched for it's cures? </span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Father's Day is one day in 365. I don't think it is too much to ask the Komen Foundation to take less than one-quarter of one percent of the calendar year, Father's Day, to recognize these men by not using it to focus on a primarily women's issue. And if they must, keep in mind that </span><a href="http://my.webmd.com/content/article/46/1662_52441?src=Inktomi&condition=Breast%20Cancer" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;">1% of </span></a><a href="http://my.webmd.com/content/article/46/1662_52441?src=Inktomi&condition=Breast%20Cancer" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:arial;">all breast cancers occur in men</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;">. Maybe the Breast Cancer 3-Day should have been the Men's Breast Cancer Awareness Day. Or maybe Breast Cancer Caregiver Recognition Day. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">That's something that would get me out of my recliner.</span></p>Paul Whitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11393600178387119479noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24794537.post-1143571774834607862005-04-22T12:20:00.000-05:002006-03-30T08:39:35.493-06:00Dear Allard,<span style="font-family:arial;">Allow me to introduce myself, Mr. Baird. My name is Paul White. No, not the editor of The Sporting News. It’s a common name, what can I say?</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Anyway, I’m a fan of two different teams, and one of them is yours. Being a huge fan of baseball and having lived here in Kansas City for 25 years now, I adopted the Royals as my second favorite team. I had to get my baseball fix somewhere, and the Royals were both convenient and good when I arrived.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">I’m from Boston originally, so my favorite team is the Red Sox, and therein lies the reason why I’m writing. You see, after watching almost every Red Sox game for the past few years, as well as most Royals games that didn’t conflict, I’ve noticed a key difference between the two teams. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">The Red Sox score runs. The Royals don’t.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Now, ordinarily, I wouldn’t presume to point something like this out to a man in your position. This is just one of those things you’re supposed to know, and the fans, like myself, are supposed to take them as givens. But the difference in this case is that it’s really clear that the Red Sox understand why they score runs, and they use that knowledge to guide their player acquisitions. And I haven’t seen anything that leads me to believe that anyone with the Royals has figured that out. I’ve decided that it’s entirely possible that no one in the Royals organization really understands what scoring runs in the American League is really all about, so I decided I should write you and try to explain it.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">I’m going to go on the assumption that you’re an intelligent man. I don’t see much evidence that your intelligence translates to baseball, but since you’re a good New Englander like myself, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. Consequently, I’m going to use some math in this explanation. It won’t be terribly complex because I’m no math major, and I’ll try to make it really easy to understand by throwing in some graphs and charts, but be prepared to see some numbers.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Let’s start with a simple equation and build from there:</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>Runs = Getting on Base + Extra-Base Hits</strong></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Simple right? Almost too simple to even bother with, but I decided to start at this point because I don’t think anyone with the Royals really understands this. If you or anyone on your staff does know this, you clearly don’t use that knowledge when acquiring players. If you did, you wouldn’t waste any of your admittedly limited assets on the likes of Eli Marrero and Terrence Long and Ken Harvey and Angel Berroa and Tony Graffanino and a host of others. None of those guys is terribly good at getting on base. That could still be acceptable if they were good at hitting for extra-base power, but none of them do that either. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">I know, they do some other thing well. They do the little things. Long is a good defensive player and has a good arm. Graffanino can bunt. Berroa can run. Marrero hits lefties. None of them hit into many double plays. The strike out but not 150 times per year like some guys. The problem is that none of the things these guys do well translates to scoring runs. None of it.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Take bunting. The Royals lead the league in sacrifice bunts, but they are dead last in runs per game. That’s not a mistake. There is absolutely no evidence that using the sacrifice enhances a team’s ability to score. Look no further than this – in the nine games in which the Royals have laid down at least one sacrifice, they are 1-8. In all other games, they are 7-15, which still stinks, but is a quantum leap over the games in which they knowingly give away one or more outs.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">The same goes for steals. Not a bad tool if you can use it well, but “well” means using the steal to supplement power and on-base ability, not to replace it. Here’s one of the graphs I was talking about:</span><br /><br /><br /><p><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2421/2566/400/graph1.jpg" border="0" /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Let me translate this for you. The red line represents the runs per game figures of every team in the American league for the 2002-2004 seasons. They are in descending order, so the top left team is the 2003 Red Sox, who averaged 5.93 runs per game, and the bottom right team is the 2002 Tigers, who averaged just 3.57 runs per game. The scale for that line is on the left side of the graph.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">The blue line is the number of stolen bases each team had, with the scale shown on the right side of the graph. As you can see, there is no real pattern to that line at all. If stolen bases were positively correlated to scoring runs – meaning that stealing lots of bases leads to scoring lots of runs – we would expect to see the blue line closely follow the red line. If the reverse was true – if high steal totals hurt run scoring – we would see a big “X”, with the blue line starting low on the left and moving upward as it moved right and crossed the red line.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">We don’t see either. Instead we see a zigzag pattern. Some teams that stole lots of bases scored lots of runs, like the Angels in 2002 and 2004, while others scored few runs, like Tampa Bay in 2003 and 2004. Clearly, steal totals, in and of themselves, have no direct correlation to scoring runs.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Let me say that more plainly – steals alone are meaningless.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">How about those bad things that your players currently avoid? Take strikeouts for example. Supposedly, striking out is one of the worst things a hitter can do. It would follow that any team that strikes out a lot will be prone to lower run totals, right? Actually, that’s not the case:</span></p><p><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2421/2566/400/graph2.jpg" border="0" />Pretty much the same graph as steals, isn’t it? The red line is runs per game again, exactly the same information as in the first graph. This time the blue line represents each team’s strikeout totals. Again we see the random zigzag pattern. Look at the top two scoring teams of the last three years, the Red Sox of 2003 and 2004. In ’03 they collectively struck out just 943 times. The very next year they added almost 250 K’s to that figure, yet they scored almost exactly the same number of runs per game (5.93 in ’03, 5.86 in ’04) and won the World Series. Last year’s champs had the highest team strikeout total (1189) in this three year period. The lowest total was the 805 strikeouts of the Angels of 2002, a club that also won the World Series and was fourth in the league in runs per game.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Again, there is no correlation between striking out and scoring runs. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Grounding into double plays is another traditional taboo for an offense. It’s generally considered to be even worse than striking out, because not only is the batter out but a baserunner is out as well. It’s commonly called a “rally killer”, so a high double play total must have a terrible impact on a team’s ability to score. At least, that’s the conventional wisdom. The trouble is that it’s just plain wrong. More graphs…</span></p><p></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2421/2566/400/graph3.jpg" border="0" />More zigzags. You’d see similar zigzags if I threw in graphs on sacrifices, or other “small ball” ratios, but I hope you get the point by now. These “little things” don’t directly translate to runs. That doesn’t mean they’re bad. No team should ever refuse to attempt any steals or sacrifices, or should wantonly whiff or ground into double plays. As individual events, a steal or sacrifice is still a valuable thing in some situations, just like a double play or strikeout is still a bad thing in certain circumstances. But, in totality, being good at these little things won’t result in more runs unless they supplement the real building blocks of offense.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">And, as I said earlier, those building blocks are really simple – get on base and hit for extra bases. Batting average alone won’t get it done. It has a positive correlation to run scoring, but that’s deceptive for two reasons. First, batting average is really just a subset of getting on base. You can hit .300 all day long, and it will look great on the back of your baseball card, but if you never draw a walk and never get hit by a pitch, your on-base percentage will also be .300, and that just stinks.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">The second reason it’s deceptive is because the correlation simply isn’t that strong when compared to the real drivers. Here’s the batting average graph:</span></p><p><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2421/2566/400/graph4.jpg" border="0" /></span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Obviously, there’s a relationship here, particularly when compared to the small ball graphs. There is a general trend indicating the as team batting average drops, so does team run scoring. But notice how that blue line hops up and down? Some of the swings are pretty far removed from the red run-scoring line, so the relationship here might not be the tightest. Compare it to the graph for on-base percentage:</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2421/2566/400/graph5.jpg" border="0" /></span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">I could start throwing out some more obscure statistical terms like p-values and whatnot, but I don't want to confuse the issue. Trust your eyes and look at the graphs. This is obviously a much closer relationship. There are still swings between points, but at roughly half of the points the two lines are almost on top of each other. It’s obvious that the more a team collectively gets on base, the more runs they tend to score. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">The same can be said for slugging percentage, which is the best representation of a team’s ability to hit for extra bases:</span></p><p><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2421/2566/400/graph6.jpg" border="0" /></span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Again, there are some swings, almost as many as on the batting average graph, but overall it’s still a strong trend.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Now let’s put the two together. A relatively new statistic, OPS, is nothing more than a team’s (or player’s) on-base percentage added to its slugging percentage. When this number is compared to runs per game, the strong relationship is clear:</span></p><p></p><p></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2421/2566/400/graph7.jpg" border="0" /></span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Reasonable swings from point to point, with no glaring exception to the general rule that the higher a team’s OPS, the more runs they will score. This is the strongest correlation yet, making it obvious that a combination of on-base ability and extra base power is the surest route to scoring runs in the American League.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Does that play out for your team this year? Sure it does. Just look at your team’s performance sorted by these various measurements. When the Royals draw two walks or less in a game, they are averaging 2.94 runs per game and have a record of 2-14 (.125). When they draw at least three walks in a game, their scoring average jumps to 4.53, and their record is 6-9 (.400). None of those marks are good, but clearly it’s better when the team is walking than when they aren’t. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">The same trend reappears when we look at extra-base hits. When they Royals have only two extra base hits or less in a game, they average just 1.67 runs per game and their record – hold on to your hat – is 0-15. That’s a .000 winning percentage in case you were wondering. When the Royals get three or more extra base hits in a game, they average 5.63 runs per game and have a record of 8-8 (.500). See the pattern?</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">How about if we combine them? When they Royals draw at least three walks and have at least three extra base hits in the same game, they average 5.64 runs per game, and are a .545 ball club, with a record of 6-5. When they have the same three walks but at least 4 extra-base hits, they are a sparkling 5-1 and average 7.33 runs per game.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Now, if you have a researcher on your staff who is supposed to be looking at this kind if information for you, you might know that the Royals score better when they steal, too. Or when they have a sacrifice bunt, for that matter. That’s absolutely true, but don’t be misled. You see, in statistics there’s this thing called “confounding”, which is just a fancy term used to describe a situation where some other, unexamined factors are presents that make the thing you are examining look different than it really is. In the case of steals, for instance, I could make this completely true statement:</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">“In games in which the Royals stole at least one base, they average 4.56 runs per game. In all other games they average 3.36 runs.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Absolutely true. But here’s the confounding part – look at those games more closely and you’ll find that in five of them the team also had three or more extra base hits. In the games in which they stole at least one base and also had three or more extra base hits, they averaged 6.4 runs (and posted a 3-2 record); in the games when they stole a base but had less than three extra base hits, they averaged just 2.25 runs (and posted a 0-4 record). So was it the steals that produced the runs or was it the extra base hits?</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">And let’s not forget the reverse side of the stolen base equation. The Royals have been caught stealing as many times as they’ve been successful. Your research might point out that in those games in which the team has been caught stealing at least once, they average more runs per game (4.09) than they do in the games where they weren’t caught stealing (3.50). Some might look at that from the small-ball perspective and say, “Well, it’s because by running we put pressure on the defense, so even though we got caught stealing we pressured them into mistakes in other parts of the game.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">I say, “Hogwash”. Look at the extra base hits again and you’ll see that in most of the games in which the team had at least one runner thrown out trying to steal, they also had three or more extra base hits. In those games, they average 5.25 runs. In the remaining three games, in which they were caught stealing at least once and also failed to manage at least three extra base hits, they scored just one run in each game. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Or look at it this way; In games in which the Royals had three or more extra base hits, but also wasted at least one out by being caught stealing, they were just 3-5 (.375) and scored 5.25 runs per game. In all other games when they had three or more extra base hits, but didn’t needlessly run into an out on the basepaths, they scored more (6.0 runs per game) and won more (5-3 record). Running just doesn’t help unless there’s some power to back it up, and running into extra outs, even when the team is hitting for power, actually hurts a team’s ability to score.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Here’s another one:</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">“In games in which the Royals laid down at least one successful sacrifice bunt, the team has averaged 4.33 runs per game. In all other games they have averaged just 3.45.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">So sacrifices are good, right? </span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Nope. In six of those nine games, the team also had three or more extra base hits, and averaged 5.00 runs in those games. In the three remaining games in which they laid down one or more sacrifices but didn’t have at least three extra base hits, they scored a total of nine runs, an average of just 3.00.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Or look at it this way; In games in which the Royals managed three or more extra base hits, but also gave away at least one out with a sacrifice bunt, the team still scored well – 5.0 runs per game – but posted a 1-5 record. In all other games in which they had three or more extra base hits but didn’t waste an out by bunting, they scored more (6.0 runs per game) and won more (7-3 record). So it should be pretty clear by now that these sacrifice bunts are dragging down the offense, not helping it.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">And I guess that’s pretty much my point in all of this. The Royals collectively, and Tony Pena particularly, seem to have no real grasp of the things that lead to runs. Some of that might be attributable to the fact that the players collected here aren’t the biggest boppers in the world, so Pena and others feel like small ball is the only way to go. There is some truth to that, but not much. This collection of players wouldn’t be good no matter how well Pena used them, but his game strategies are actually taking precious runs away from a team that can’t afford it. Please, I beg you, stop him.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">And as for your role in this, please try to keep some of these figures in mind as you put the team together. I mean, what, exactly, is Ken Harvey doing to help this team win? He has a .678 OPS comprised of a .389 slugging percentage and .289 on-base percentage. That’s awful. Do you realize that Mark Bellhorn, who is working for his fourth team, is generally recognized to be the worst hitter in the Red Sox daily lineup, regularly bats ninths and has failed to hit a home run this year, has a better OPS than Ken Harvey, who Tony Pena regularly bats cleanup? Do you realize that there are only three players on the Royals – Mike Sweeney, Matt Stairs and Joe McEwing – who get on base at a better rate than Bellhorn? </span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">And recognize that this has nothing to do with money. Bellhorn makes only $2.75 million. Last year, when he was truly valuable, he made about $500,000. Both of those figures should be well within the Royals’ budget, and Bellhorn was available for any team to sign prior to last year. The Red Sox just happened to be smart enough to realize that they could have Bellhorn cheap, that his on-base ability would be valuable even if he did lead the league in strikeouts (which he did), and that his versatility (a switch-hitter who has played every position except pitcher and catcher) would actually save them money by allowing them to keep an inexpensive rookie, Kevin Youkilis, on the roster for most of the year and develop him slowly. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">The Red Sox are currently the best at recognizing how offense really works. Yes, they have enormous resources, and they used them to sign Manny Ramirez and Johnny Damon. They also get to keep the players they develop themselves, like Jason Varitek. But almost half of that lineup is full of guys no one else wanted. Bill Mueller, Mark Bellhorn, David Ortiz, Kevin Millar - all free agents that the Red Sox signed for low dollars because they fit their style. The same goes for their homegrown talent, Varitek and Trot Nixon. Every one of those guys is patient and they all have extra-base power. That doesn’t mean they hit 30+ homers each year, though Ramirez and Ortiz certainly do. But you don’t need three or four guys hitting 30 homers each if everyone in the lineup is hitting 15 or more. And if everyone in the lineup is willing to draw a walk, they don’t have to wait for solo homers anyway; they can score with a walk and a double.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Those skills are affordable. The Red Sox didn’t pay most of those free agents much at all. Yes, they pay the likes of Manny, Varitek and Curt Schilling a lot of money, but the majority of the team is made up of players they Royals could have afforded. It’s about concentrating your dollars where it matters. Do you recognize that for the same money you are paying Terrence Long, you could have signed Jeromy Burnitz, who currently has a .518 slugging percentage for the Cubs? Do you realize that you could have a lineup of David DeJesus, David Dellucci, Mike Sweeney, Jeromy Burnitz, Matt Stairs, Joe Randa, Gregg Zaun, Mark Grudzielanek and Angel Berroa for the same amount of money you currently pay for a lineup of DeJesus-Graffanino-Sweeney-Stairs-Long-Marrero-Berroa-Buck-Teahen? That first group is comprised of four current Royals, one Royal who left in the off-season, Randa, and four guys who were free agents this year. They are hitting a combined .280, with a .365 on-base percentage and .479 slugging percentage. The second group – an actual Royals lineup several times this year - is hitting a combined .242, with a .304 on-base percentage and .397 slugging percentage. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Same money, wildly different results. And that’s because the first group includes players at most positions who either get on base a lot, hit for power, or do both. Even then, it can carry a couple of younger players who currently aren’t hitting that well, DeJesus and Berroa. We could have even substituted John Buck for Gregg Zaun, saved money compared to our actual lineup, and still posted impressive combined numbers - .270 average, .350 OBP, .462 slugging.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">I hope you are beginning to see how this works. Forget about speed and whether or not they strikeout a lot. Draft or sign hitters who are patient and who drive the ball when they make contact. If they can run and field on top of that, great. If not, sign them anyway, because it’s a whole lot easier to find a cheap defensive specialist than it is to find someone who walks 80 or more times while he’s hitting 20+ homers. You can carry a couple of field-first guys in the lineup if you are getting the production you need elsewhere. If you’re not, it doesn’t matter how well the team collectively catches the ball, or runs or bunts, they won’t score.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">And in the American League, if you can’t score, you can’t win. I sincerely hope these numbers make that abundantly clear.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">If they don’t , God help all of us poor Royals fans.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Regards,</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Paul White</span> </p>Paul Whitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11393600178387119479noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24794537.post-1144979562634580572005-03-08T20:44:00.000-06:002006-04-13T20:52:42.660-05:00The 2005 Kansas City Royals<span style="font-family:arial;">Ever since the Royals gave new meaning to the term Âbroke from the gate in early 2004, it has been assumed by most observers that this team is due for yet another major re-building effort in 2005. That opinion was confirmed with the trade of Carlos Beltran in June, in exchange for three prospects that only die-hard fans had ever heard of.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">But is that view correct? Will the Royals really spend another season toiling toward oblivion? LetÂs take a closer look.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Before doing anything else, letÂs look at the American League Central, with an eye toward determining whether last yearÂs statistics are accurate measures for each team. In reality, the final standings in 2004 looked like this:</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Minnesota 92-70</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Chicago 83-79</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Cleveland 80-82</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Detroit 72-90</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Kansas City 58-104</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Based upon that, it looks like the Royals were 14 games worse than the next-worst team in the division, Detroit, while lagging a whopping 34 games behind the division champs. But those numbers donÂt tell the entire truth. The reality is that the gap in run differentials for the division wasnÂt that wide. As I have written many times, along with hundreds of others, run differential is a more important measure in judging a teamÂs quality that win totals, which are often swayed in one direction or another by luck, or fate, or whatever you want to call it. That doesnÂt exist in the raw run differentials. Since those differentials are regularly used to project a teamÂs record, what do the differentials of the divisionÂs teams look like for last season? Here they are, courtesy of baseball-reference.com:</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Minnesota 87-75</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Chicago 84-78</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Cleveland 81-81</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Detroit 79-83</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Kansas City 64-98</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">That changes the starting point a great deal. Minnesota played five games over their heads last year, a significant amount. And while the White Sox and Indians played essentially as expected, both the Tigers and Royals under-performed to a significant degree. The Tigers werenÂt really a 72-90 caliber team; their run differential was actually fto Cleveland toClevelandÂs. And while the Royals were clearly still at the bottom of this food chain, the team was of slightly higher quality than their actual record. They were still far behind the next closest team, but instead of being 34 games worse than the division winners, they were really about 23 games worse. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">That 11-game swing is enormous. It indicates that the division as a whole was much more tightly bunched from top to bottom than won-loss records alone would indicate. From top to bottom, 23 games separated the projected records of the divisionÂs best and worst teams. To compare, among all other divisions in baseball, only the American League West was more tightly bunched, with a 22-game spread in the projected records between first place and last place  and they have only four teams.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">So already we see two things in the Royals favor from 2004:</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><ul><li><span style="font-family:arial;">While they were still bad, they were actually significantly better than their won-loss record would indicate.</span></li><li><span style="font-family:arial;">T</span><span style="font-family:arial;">heir division is perhaps the most winnable in baseball.</span></li></ul><p><span style="font-family:arial;">In addition, the Royals schedule shifts in their favor for 2005. Last year, in the 18 inter-league games they played, the Royals faced teams with a combined projected winning percentage of .525. In 2005, their inter-league opponents combined for a projected winning percentage of .509, so that may be a game or two in Kansas CityÂs favor. Plus, in any given year, the Royals are guaranteed of playing every AL team outside their division at least 6 times each. Add that to their division games and their 18 inter-league games, and there is always an additional 14 or 15 games against non-divisional opponents in the American League that must be played to reach a full 162-game schedule. In 2004, the Royals played those extra 14 games against teams against teams that projected to a combined record of about .500 (.498 to be exact). In 2005, the Royals play 15 extra games against non-divisional AL opponents because, for some strange reason, Major League Baseball scheduled only 18 games between the Royals and White Sox, instead of the 19 games the Royals play against all other teams in the AL Central. Those fifteen games come against teams that projected to a combined record of .484 last year. ThatÂs another game or two could swing in the Royals favor.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">We can add up all of these favorable issues as follows: </span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">58 actual wins in 2004 </span><span style="font-family:arial;">+6 wins below projected that the team should have won in 2004 +3 wins for more favorable 2005 scheduling.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">That brings us to a total of 67 wins for 2005 even if the Royals didnÂt change a thing during the off-season. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">But, of course, things did change. Carlos Beltran is gone. So is Joe Randa, and Benito Santiago and Darrell May and a few others. But with the exception of Beltran, most of the losses arenÂt that bad. Joe Randa was a league-average third baseman, which certainly has value, but not as much as sentiment would indicate. Benito Santiago didnÂt play much for the Royals at all last year, and the same goes for Juan Gonzalez. May pitched a lot, but he was terrible.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Conversely, the Royals have a lot more parts this year that were simply missing for large portions of 2004, in some cases for the entire season. Runelvys Hernandez, for instance, combined to throw 166 ingoing 11n 2002 and 2003, going11-9 with an ERA+ of 113 in that time (meaning his ERA was 13% better than the league average). He missed the end of 2003 and all of last season with an injury, but is now back and throwing well by all accounts. If he posts the same kind of numbers noted above, he will be a major upgrade over Darrell May, who, in just 20 more innings than Hernandez could be expected to throw, surrendered 43 more runs, 33 more earned runs, 68 more hits and 21 more home runs, while posting an ERA+ figure of 79 (thatÂs 21% worse than league average). Then factor in an added 50 or more innings from Zack Greinke, who started 2004 in Omaha, and suddenly the staff is seeing roughly 220 innings thrown by pitchers who were better than the league average, instead of having those innings taken up by May or Chris George. In 228 innings in 2004, May and George combined to surrender 169 runs. Greinke and Hernandez, if they pitch to expectations, would be expected to allow just 111, an improvement of 58 runs for the team. All other things being equal, that change alone raises that Royals projected winning percentage from .397 in 2004 to .426 in 2005, a difference of five additional projected wins. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Add those wins to the more favorable schedule and the performance to expectations, and suddenly the Royals look like a team that should be expected to win 72 games. ThatÂs a winning percentage of just .444, and isnÂt all that good, but it represents a quantum leap of 14 added wins over the 2004 total.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">To be fair, there will be reverses. Having Beltran out of the lineup will hurt, as will the loss of Randa before his replacement, Mark Teahen, is ready for the big leagues. But the team will now have Mike Sweeney healthy, as well as Tony Graffanino. More importantly, they will have some of the youngsters available for the full season. David DeJesus, Calvin Pickering and John Buck all produced solid numbers in limited action in 2004. They are all now projected to play full time (or at least, I pray that the Royals allow Pickering to play full time). Projecting their 2004 performances over 150 games (135 in the case of Buck since catchers get more time off), reveals that their presence in the lineup every day should easily make up for the loss of both Beltran and Randa.</span></p><ul><li><span style="font-family:arial;">DeJesus - .287 AVG/.349 OBP/.404 SLG/.753 OPS; 91 runs, 11 HR, 61 RBI</span></li><li><span style="font-family:arial;">Pickering - .251 AVG/.349 OBP/.510 SLG/.859 OPS, 93 runs, 31 HR, 115 RBI</span></li><li><span style="font-family:arial;">Buck - .238 AVG/.284 OBP/.431 SLG/.715 OPS, 77 runs, 26 HR, 64 RBI</span></li></ul><p><span style="font-family:arial;">And none of those numbers account for their continued improvement now that they have a half-season in the majors under their belts.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Additionally, the additions of Eli Marrero and Terrence Long to play the corner outfield positions will help the offense. Neither is better than an average hitter for his position, but that is still a vast improvement over the collection of stiffs who patrolled left and right fields or the Royals in 2004. Consider:</span></p><ul><li><span style="font-family:arial;">In 2004, Royals left fielders combined to post an OPS of .608. That was the lowest figure for left fielders in all of baseball by 119 points. The only teams that posted a lower figure at any position (except pitcher) were the Brewers shortstops (.607) and catchers (.590), the Marlins catchers (.599), and the Mariners catchers (.586). Note that all of those are defense-first positions. And speaking of pitchers, the Indians staff, in admittedly brief time at the plate, posted a better combined OPS, .619, than the Royals left fielders. Pitiful is the only word that springs to mind.</span></li><li><span style="font-family:arial;">Royals right fielders combined to post an OPS of .682, also the lowest in baseball, this time by 34 points.</span></li></ul><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Marrero and Long, the two players most likely to collect significant plate appearances at those two positions in 2005, had OPS marks of 894 and 755, respectively in 2004. Even if each of them regresses this season to post just their career OPS mark, .717 for Marrero and .730 for Long, each still represents a significant upgrade. Look at it this way  Royals left fielders combined for 13 homers and 59 RBI in 583 at bats in 2004. Meanwhile, a platoon of Marrero against lefties and Matt Stairs against righties combined to hit .310, with 19 homers and 71 RBI in just 451 at bats. Extrapolate that out to 583 at bats, and the duo could reasonably be expected to combine for 25 homers and 90 RBI. Both figures would have been squarely in the middle of the pack last season. The Royals would settle for that, no questions asked.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Overall, itÂs not unreasonable to expect that both the Royals offense and pitching will be better in 2005. ThatÂs not saying much, because both were awful in 2004, but it allows us to set goals. As demonstrated above, simply eliminating Darrell May from the equation, with Hernandez taking over the bulk of his innings, and having Greinke for a full season, should allow the Royals to shave nearly 60 runs off the total they allowed in 2004. Even in those two fail to perform quite to their billing, they are an improvement. Add in a resurgent Jose Lima and a settled, healthy bullpen, and it would be fair to project the Royals to allow about 75 fewer runs in 2005. That would be 830, a vast improvement but still a mark that would have been good for just a tie for 9th in the AL last season.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">The Royals offense should also be able to improve upon their 11th-place finish of 720 runs scored, Beltran and RandaÂs departures notwithstanding. They project to be improved at both corner outfield positions (Marrero/Stairs and Long), catcher (Buck for a full season), first base (a healthy Sweeney), DH (Pickering for a full season), and second base (a healthy Graffanino and/or emerging Ruben Gotay). They are likely to drop off significantly at third base, and somewhat in center field, but they have solid prospects at each position. At shortstop, they are likely to get similar results or even a slight improvement if Angel Berroa returns to his rookie form. Overall, there should be modest offensive improvement, say 30 runs, giving them a projected total of 750.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">A run differential of 750 runs scored and 830 allowed projects to a winning percentage of .454, or a 74-88 record over a full season. Even if the team performs below their run differential again, they are a good bet to hit 70 wins, an improvement of a dozen over 2004. In all likelihood, that would still be good for last place in the AL Central, but it would be an enormous stride forward. And, more significantly, it would be accomplished mostly with emerging young (and inexpensive) talent. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">In other words, it would be true Âre-building instead of the facsimile we have witnessed here in Kansas City over the past decade. WouldnÂt that be refreshing?</span></p>Paul Whitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11393600178387119479noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24794537.post-1144974474912535592005-02-28T19:19:00.000-06:002006-04-13T19:42:00.710-05:00Bonds Should Be Ashamed<span style="font-family:arial;">Once the steroid issue fully reared its head, complete with leaked grand jury testimony and name-dropping from has-been players, it was only a matter of time before someone dropped the other shoe. The shoe that always gets dropped when a controversial issue arises in sports.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">I’m talking about the race card, of course. And we now have it woven into the steroid issue courtesy of the one guy involved who has no business playing it – Barry Bonds.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">To be fair in letting you judge my comments on this issue, let me state my position up front as clearly as possible. I believe steroids are the worst thing to come along in baseball since gambling. It robs the game of its integrity and obliterates the one thing about the sport that made it unique; its long history of comparing players across eras. How can anyone now measure Rafael Palmeiro against Harmon Killebrew, or Gary Sheffield against Orlando Cepeda? We can’t, because we don’t know how much steroids may have inflated their performance.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">And let’s clear up one other aspect of this that some try to hang their hats on. No, using steroids wasn’t against the rules in baseball until relatively recently, but they certainly were illegal to obtain and use without a doctor’s prescription. Any player who did so committed a crime, whether baseball wants to recognize it as such or not. Criminal activity is addressed in standard player contracts, and purchasing illegal steroids would have qualified.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">While we’re at it, let’s also dismiss the ridiculous assertion that steroids don’t help with baseball activity. That’s patently false, as anyone who took 11th-grade science can attest. Even if no one can prove the assertions that human growth hormone improves eyesight, and therefore hand-eye coordination, leading to improved contact and pitch identification, it’s indisputable that steroids enhance the development of muscle mass and muscle performance. This has been the case for years. Just refer to Ben Johnson in the 1988 Olympics. Well, as Ms. Berry would have told me back in high school:</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Force = Mass x Acceleration. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">If you have artificially enhanced muscle mass, you can swing a larger bat with more speed than non-juiced players. Both mass and acceleration have been enhanced by the steroids, equating to more force applied to each batted ball. Before Barry Bonds or anyone else decides to argue to the contrary, they should crack open an old textbook first.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">So that’s my view – steroids are a blight on the game, their use was illegal in society if not specifically in baseball, and they have an absolute affect upon players’ performance on the field. Players who used them have disgraced both themselves and the game.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">And I don’t give a fiddler’s fart what color they are.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">I am certain that black players still generally face more difficult circumstances in baseball than their white counterparts, even today. I know that the majority of black players in the game’s history faced even worse circumstances, ranging from open racial slurs to death threats. As Bonds suggests, the legacies of many black players really have been unfairly tarnished, in some cases, by media members who judged them by their skin color rather than by their accomplishments or talents. I have written about that very subject in regard to Jim Rice’s treatment by the media and fans in Boston. It was, in a word, shameful. It is entirely proper that people make this point when discussing the perceptions of black ballplayers throughout history.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">But not when it comes to steroids. This isn’t an issue of the players involved being unfairly targeted by bigoted fans or reporters. Those facing the primary criticisms are those who have admitted using steroids, have been directly implicated in using steroids, or have provided us with ample anecdotal evidence in terms of altered appearance and sudden jumps in performance to speculate about their use. The three players in the absolute spotlight of this attention – Barry Bonds, Jose Canseco, and Jason Giambi – fit all three criteria. These are not innocent bystanders, unfairly questioned without evidence. These are men who have either openly admitted to using steroids, or reportedly admitted doing so to a grand jury. In short, they cheated, all of them. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Each of the three is of a different ethnicity – one black, one latino, one white. Others who have been mentioned also span the races that make up the vast majority of ballplayers. Gary Sheffield is black. Juan Gonzalez, Rafael Palmeiro, and Ivan Rodriquez are latino. Roger Clemens and Mark McGwire are white. All we are missing is Asian players.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">It seems pretty clear that there is no racial component to steroid use at all. And I don’t see any extra focus being placed upon Bonds that isn’t warranted. After all, he has widely been labeled the greatest player ever, or at least is up for consideration for that honor. He’s on the brink of breaking baseball’s most prestigious record. Sorry, Barry, but that’s going to garner a lot of attention. Throw in the possibility that he’s going to break that record because he used banned substances for several years, and of course the attention is going to be overwhelming.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">None of that should have been unexpected to Bonds, and he had a reasonable example of how to handle the media crush if he had watched Giambi’s forthright (if somewhat aborted) apology and ongoing concentration on getting ready for the season. Would a simple, “Sorry, I can’t discuss anything to do with the trial”, have been so demanding? It’s not the answer the media or public wants, and many certainly would have used such a response to crucify Bonds for failing to be forthcoming. No one ever said this situation wasn’t going to be difficult to handle. But it’s a situation of Bonds’ own making, and he could have chosen to handle it in the least controversial manner possible.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Instead, he went down the opposite path, choosing to inflame the situation even further by implying he’s being treated unfairly because of his color. And that the media are all liars, and that he’s had it harder than Babe Ruth, and that steroids don’t help you hit a baseball anyway, and that he doesn’t even know what cheating is, and on and on. It was a rant, one that was obviously contrived to deflect the conversation toward anything but the real topic – that Bonds knowingly cheated the game.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">To hear Bonds tell it, the media is supposed to just let the matter drop because Bonds is black. Or perhaps they are supposed to ask him only as many questions as Giambi has had to face, despite his more renowned status in the game’s history. That’s ludicrous, of course. To do so would be to flaunt all journalistic ethics.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">And yet, that’s exactly what some are doing. Jason Whitlock used his most recent column in the Kansas City Star to call the media’s treatment of Bonds a “witch hunt”, as if the man has done nothing wrong. Howard Bryany, a columnist for the Boston Herald, appeared on ESPN’s “Outside the Lines” on Sunday and also agreed with Bonds that his race is a factor in how this story is being reported.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">They, and others like them, have allowed Bonds to succeed. The issue is no longer whether he cheated the game, it’s whether or not the media is racist. Bonds’ apologists have allowed him to manipulate them for his own purposes. They have allowed this discussion to become O.J. all over again. Black people are lining up to support the insupportable, Bonds, while any whites who hold the opposite view have to live with being labeled racists for doing their jobs. Dusty Baker went so far as to draw a direct comparison between Bonds’ situation and O.J. Simpson’s. He was quoted in the Chicago Tribune as saying: </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><em>"I mean, O.J. was found [not guilty] but in the minds of a lot of people he was still guilty. Why do we have this system in place here if you're going to be exonerated for something and still be guilty?"</em> </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Baker has allowed himself to conveniently forget that O.J. Simpson was found responsible for the death of his wife and her friend by a court of law. Simpson lives under the ongoing financial cloud of a multi-million dollar judgment against him, yet Baker acts as if Simpson is somehow blameless. All he remembers is the criminal trial, and the rejoicing of most blacks in this country at the not guilty verdict. And Baker certainly isn’t alone. It’s Baker, and others who share his views, who are guilty of viewing this issue solely through the prism of race, not the reporters who question Bonds. It’s they who conveniently forget the facts about O.J. and the facts about Bonds simply because they are black.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">And why? While there are certainly multitudes of black athletes who have been wronged in various ways because of prejudice, Barry Bonds can hardly claim to be among them. He grew up the child of a famous millionaire major leaguer player. He was endowed with enormous financial and physical blessings for his entire life. This wasn’t the child of a sharecropper from Alabama, who was spit upon in the bus leagues or forced to suffer through the inferior quality of segregated restaurants, schools, bathrooms and hotels. He’s a child of privilege. To play the race card in his favor is patently ridiculous, and it’s a disgrace to all black ballplayers who did suffer the ignominy of racist behavior.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">I could use any number of other black players as an example, but I’m going to use Jim Rice because I know his situation better then most. Rice had real disadvantages because of his skin color. He grew up in a working class family in the South, and had to learn real work at an early age. His high school coach threw him off the team his sophomore year for a lack of hustle, and only allowed him back on when apologized and begged for a second chance. By his senior year, once he had made a reputation as the best player to come along in years, the school board re-wrote the high school boundaries to include his street in the area that attended the white high school. Once he graduated, the boundary shifted back again. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Rice always had to work a job, and took his responsibilities to his employer so seriously that he almost never played major league ball at all. With several major league scouts waiting for him to appear at an American Legion game, Rice wouldn’t leave his job on a loading dock because his replacement hadn’t arrived yet. Consequently, many scouts left before seeing him, and most who remained labeled him lazy because they didn’t know he was laying down in the dugout between innings because he had worked a full shift on the dock before the game. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">When Rice finally reached the majors, his arrival coincided with the racial conflicts in Boston regarding busing. He had to watch buses full of black children being stoned by Irish Southies on the evening news every night, then face the microphones of acerbic media members named Ryan, Sullivan, Murphy, Callahan or McDonough. He had to endure the loneliness of having no black teammates for four years worth of games during his career, and had to listen to some of the home fans in Boston calling him “Uncle Ben” from the left field seats. When he returned to South Carolina in the off-season to play a little golf, he was told to his face that the only reason he was allowed to play the nicest course in town was because he was a famous ballplayer. Otherwise, his skin color would have confined him to the public course in town.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">And how did Rice react to this treatment? Did he play the race card? Did he cheat? Did he inject himself with steroids to help recover from the injuries that forced him to retire at 36? No, because his parents and his coaches taught him personal responsibility early in life, a lesson he never forgot.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Now, years later, Rice can’t get elected to the Hall of Fame, partly because he was portrayed in the media as a jerk and partly because he didn’t cheat to extend his career. He took the abuse with stoicism and suffered the resultant damage to his reputation. He took the responsibility to play the game hard and with honesty, and wouldn’t allow himself to cheat the game with illegal drugs. Bonds has done Rice, and countless others who preceded him, a dual disservice. First he cheated the game and cheapened their accomplishments with artificially bloated statistics, then he cheated their legacy for facing down racism by implying that his cushy upbringing compared to theirs.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">What Bonds’ apologists have done is a further disservice. They have lent legitimacy to his ludicrous complaints, and allowed Bonds to escape responsibility for his actions. Both Bonds and his apologists should be ashamed of themselves.</span>Paul Whitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11393600178387119479noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24794537.post-1144977602650188892005-02-22T20:12:00.000-06:002006-04-13T20:30:30.450-05:00The Empty Glass<span style="font-family:arial;">Fair is fair. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">I am as frustrated about the lack of off-season improvement from the Royals as any fan, but I’m going to look at this from a different perspective. Rather than look solely at the baseball aspects of this stagnation, let’s judge it from David Glass’ view. After all, he’s not a baseball guy, and readily admits it. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">No, David Glass is a businessman. His purchase of this club and every decision he’s made regarding the team since that purchase, has been driven with business in mind. Period. And, in that case, it’s only fair to allow that he won’t run the Royals on his personal nickel. It has to be a self-sustaining enterprise, so I have no problem with his long-standing direction to Allard Baird that the club’s payroll must be in line with its revenues.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">So, if we are to grant Mr. Glass this point, it’s only fair that we judge the club as a business. Is it being run well? Are they reaching the goals of all good businesses, namely to make money?</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Let’s look at the Royals strictly from that cold corporate perspective. What does it look like just as a business enterprise? We all know about the shortcomings they face; both the club and Bud Selig are more than happy to trumpet the woes of small-market teams. But what are the Royals’ strengths? What can be used to offset the disadvantages inherent in baseball's current economic system?</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><ul><li><span style="font-family:arial;">They have a local monopoly. There’s no other major league ball club within 400 miles.</span></li><li><span style="font-family:arial;">They’re cheap. Compared to the Chiefs, KU basketball, or other major league clubs, a night with the family at Kauffman Stadium is very affordable.</span></li><li><span style="font-family:arial;">They have a loyal fan base. This isn’t Montreal, where the fans will run and hide if the team falters. There is a hard-core group of fans that will always head out to the ballpark, no matter how bad the team performs. On top of that, the not-so-loyal followers proved in 2003, when the club contended for much of the season, that they will return to the park to watch a good product.</span></li><li><span style="font-family:arial;">There is finally a decent base of young, inexpensive talent on the big league club. Most teams in baseball would like to have David DeJesus, Angel Berroa, John Buck, Zack Greinke, Jeremy Affeldt, Runelvys Hernandez, Denny Bautista, Ruben Gotay, Calvin Pickering and many of the bullpen arms. There are even some serviceable trade bait parts that other teams would find attractive at the trading deadline – like Mike Sweeney, Matt Stairs, Scott Sullivan, Eli Marrero, Terrence Long, and Tony Graffanino.</span></li><li><span style="font-family:arial;">They have a workable stadium. No, Kauffman Stadium isn’t chuck-full of luxury suites and wide concourses. But the playing field is beautiful, the seats are comfortable, the site-lines are outstanding, and it can get very loud when it’s a good game. It’s a nice home-field advantage.</span></li><li><span style="font-family:arial;">They will always have an extra source of revenue from Major League Baseball because they are a low-revenue team. The club had a small-market team’s worst nightmare in 2004; the highest payroll in the club’s history coinciding with the worst record in club history. And you know what? They still made a profit. About $5 million net profit, to be exact, thanks to shared revenue and luxury tax from MLB. Most businessmen would agree that it’s not a bad deal if you can get it.</span></li></ul><p><span style="font-family:arial;">There are other strengths, but you get the point. The question, then, is whether or not they are leveraging their strengths to get the maximum amount of success despite their weaknesses. Are they, in short, being run as a sound business?</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">The answer is a resounding No.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">What Mr. Glass should be able to see, being a good businessman, is that, in baseball, performance on the field directly translates to profits for the team as a business. More wins equals more tickets sold, which equals more beer and hot dogs purchased. It means more demand for Royals merchandise, and greater demand for advertising space on stadium billboards, scoreboards, drink cups and outfield walls. It means more television viewers and more radio listeners, which translates to higher demand for radio and TV advertising time for the broadcasters, giving the team leverage on negotiating the rights to air those broadcasts. Winning is simply good business.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">What’s more, winning, to a degree, is a self-perpetuating enterprise. It makes running your business easier. Winning means that young players will want to be drafted by the Royals, and that veterans will want to come to Kansas City through free agency. It means good scouts and front office personnel want to come to the club, or stay with them if they are already here. It means minor league clubs will want to partner with the Royals, and local communities will want to keep them around. It means, ultimately, forcing Kansas City to replace Kauffman Stadium with a more modern park that will generate even more revenue.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">That is what winning does. And, so far under the David Glass regime, it’s the one thing the team has failed miserably to do.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Sure, it’s harder to win these days, as players are costing more and more to obtain or keep. Like in most businesses, being successful in baseball is hard. To quote Tom Hanks as Jimmy Dugan:</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;"><em>“It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great.”</em></span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">He also said, “There’s no crying in baseball”, and truer words have never been spoken. And for that reason, I don’t want to hear about the troubles involved in putting a winning team on the field in Kansas City.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">What I want is results. My real job is with General Electric, and as both an employee and a stockholder, I absolutely expect my hard-invested money to be put to good use. When GE’s stock started diving toward the end of Jack Welch’s tenure as CEO, I was one angry investor. How dare they take my money, give me limited investment options in my 401(k), which basically forces me to buy GE stock, and then allow the stock to drop from $60 per share to $20 in a two-year span. What a raw deal.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">As a paying customer of the Royals, someone who pays my hard earned money to attend 6-10 games each year, always with at least one member of my family and often with all of them, I’m the equivalent of a stockholder. I give you my money and I expect results, just like I do with GE.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">To date, those results just haven’t been there. Instead, all my money has purchased me is a team picked dead last in ESPN’s power rankings for the upcoming season. A team that proved it can turn a $5 million profit with a $47 million payroll, and then promptly cut that payroll by about $10 million just as revenue-sharing dollars are likely to go even higher. At this level of spending, it’s entirely possible the Royals could turn a $20 million profit in 2005, which is certainly great for David Glass, but it doesn’t do much for me as an investor. Why hasn’t that $20 million been spent on more major league talent? Or, since I will grant the point that it’s hard to recruit veterans to the team in its current state, why have we heard nothing of the club investing that money in minor league facilities or instructors, or in scouts and player personnel staff, or in development and acquisition of international free agents in Latin America?</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">In short, where is the return on my money?</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">I’m happy to give you a break, Mr. Glass, and judge the Royals’ performance strictly as a business. Like I said, fair is fair.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">But, in case you’ve never learned this lesson Mr. Glass, in baseball, winning is good business. And, no matter what your balance sheet might say, your business is nearly bankrupt.</span> </p>Paul Whitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11393600178387119479noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24794537.post-1144975588750945032005-02-22T19:43:00.000-06:002006-04-13T19:46:28.753-05:00An Apology<span style="font-family:arial;">My sincere apologies to Jayson Stark are in order. And here I am to offer them. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">If you recall, I ripped Stark pretty well in recent years for his failure to support Jim Rice for the Hall of Fame. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t object to such a stance, because I have never been such a Rice zealot that it clouded my objectivity. Rice is a borderline guy, I admit it. Rational people can object to his election.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">But Stark’s objections we so pat, in my view, so lacking in real supporting facts, that I felt compelled to call him out and email him with my rather expansive thoughts on the matter. To his credit, Stark always replied thoughtfully and politely, no matter how lengthy or pointed my commentary. Then came last year’s ballot, when he not only kept Rice off his ballot again, but reiterated all of his hollow objections again, without any new or more detailed reasons to explain why he wouldn’t be swayed. I wrote at the time that it seemed clear Stark was a lost cause, that he had put the Jim Rice question to rest in his own mind, after years of struggling with Rice’s candidacy. I wrote him off and dropped my efforts to persuade him away from The Dark Side.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">It turns out I was wrong. This year, when his latest ballot was published on ESPN.com,Stark’s views had finally changed. After ten years of deciding Rice wasn’t worthy of the Hall of Fame, Stark changed his mind and voted for Rice.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">When I saw that, I sent Jayson a quick email, thanking him for being as open-minded as he always said he would be, and apologizing for labeling him a lost cause. True to form, Jayson sent a gracious, polite, thoughtful reply.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">This is the kind of thing that gives me hope, not only for Jim Rice’s chances of ultimately being inducted into Cooperstown, but for life in general. I don’t know why, because this is a pretty trivial matter in the grand scheme of things, but it does just the same. Maybe it’s the fact that Stark turned out to be an honest man. He said he would always be open to dissenting views, and he was true to his word. That’s rare in the world of big time sports these days, where athletes regularly say it’s not about the money just before they accept the biggest contract offer, or claim they didn’t take steroids, or didn’t slap the ball (hear that A-Rod?). Stark’s honesty was a pleasant surprise.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">So here’s to you Jayson. Please accept my sincere apologies for giving up on you.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Now, about your views on Alan Trammell…</span>Paul Whitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11393600178387119479noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24794537.post-1144976901903442632004-11-22T19:49:00.000-06:002006-04-13T20:08:21.926-05:00World Champ Thoughts<span style="font-family:arial;">Gosh, where to begin?</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Well, the Red Sox are the World Champions. That might be a good place to begin.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">No, seriously.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">It still looks strange in writing, I must admit. I think it has finally fully sunk into my brain that the dreaded fear of all living Red Sox fans - that they would die before the Sox won the World Series - has now been removed. It's going to be nice to just be perceived as normal fans of a normal team from now on. That whole "Sox fans love to be miserable" nonsense isn't going to be missed.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Though I think I now have my brain wrapped around this new outlook on my team, I think it's still going to be a while before I can articulate it well. So, for now, here are a few more random thoughts that I'd like to share to plug the gap since I last updated this site.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">* Most Yankee fans are jerks. Since the Sox have won, I have seen all of the following arguments made by Yankee fans as a means to downgrade the Sox's achievement: The Wild Card system needs to be changed, Schilling wasn't actually hurt, it hurts more to lose as a Yankee fan since they expect to win so much more than other teams, since they won 101 games during the regular season and the Sox won just 98 they are still the better team, Schilling's contract clause is an illegal gift from MLB and without it he wouldn't have even pitched for the Sox, Varitek is a horrible defensive catcher based upon his one ALCS inning catching a knuckleballer, Johnny Damon throws like a girl, the entire team's hair is too long, they arenÂt serious enough and don't respect the game, Francona is lucky they won since he let the clubhouse get out of control, the new ownership wouldn't even own the team if not for Bud Selig's illegal intervention, John Henry practices insurance fraud, and on and on. What a bunch of crybabies. And they said Sox fans were whiners.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;">* One important exception to my observation - Dave Rasmussen. You don't know him, he's just a guy I work with, but since he's a transplanted Yankee fan from Jersey and I'm a transplanted Sox fan from Boston, we have a friendly wager each year on which team will win the division. The winner gets his choice of choice cut steaks or lobster flown in from the loser's home state. Since the Yankees finished first again this year, Dave won the bet, but he said he couldn't decide which option he wanted, so we agreed to let it sit for a while. We had a follow-up bet on the ALCS, which I won, and over that lunch I asked him again if he knew whether he wanted surf or turf for winning the regular-season bet. Again, he said he couldn't say yet. Finally, when the Sox won the Series, he came to my desk to congratulate me, and as he was walking away turned back to tell me he finally knew what he wanted from our bet. </span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;">"Fly in two lobsters from the Cape. But don't deliver them to my house. Ship them to yourself instead, then take them over to share them with your Dad," Dave said. "He's been waiting a long time to celebrate the Sox."</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;">Dave Rasmussen, a Yankee fan with class. Too bad there aren't more like him.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;">* Scott Boras is trying to ruin baseball. Aren't owners already stupid enough? They have made innumerable idiotic decisions that have broken fans' hearts and hurt the game. Do they really need a guy controlling all of the best free agents actively encouraging them to be even more stupid? Because, make no mistake, a 10-year contract for anyone, even someone as good as Carlos Beltran or Adrian Beltre, is stupid. A 5-year contract for a soon-to-be 33-year old catcher, Jason Varitek, is also stupid. Don't get me wrong; if I was a player, I'd probably hire him. But as a GM, I would probably take the Kenny Williams stance and vow never to sign one of his players. Who needs that headache?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;">* Let me explain just how stupid it would be for any team to agree to the contract terms Scott Boras has floated for Varitek. He claims that Varitek is the exception to the rule about catchers' aging patterns because any catcher that proved he can play at the level Varitek did in '04, at age 32, tends to continue that level of performance into their late-30s or early-40s. </span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;">To do a sanity check on Boras' argument, I looked at all catcher's who had roughly the same success, or better, at age 32 as Varitek did this year, and then looked at their next five years, the length of contract Boras wants. The tool I used was a stat call RCAA, which stands for Runs Created Above Average. It was created by a guy named Lee Sinins and compares how many runs that players created as a hitter to the average at his position. </span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;">Even though Varitek had 19 RCAA this year, I set the age 32 floor at 15 RCAA, both to make sure I pulled in enough players who were similar and to make sure Fisk was included since Boras specifically mentioned him as a comparison to Varitek. Then I threw out active players (Mike Piazza, Ivan Rodriguez, Javy Lopez) because we don't know yet what their trends will be.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;">That left 15 catchers with at least 15 RCAA at age 32 - Bill Dickey, Elston Howard, Mickey Cochrane, King Kelly, Gene Tenace, Walker Cooper, Darren Daulton, Ernie Lombardi, Ron Hassey, Ed Bailey, Joe Ferguson, Chief Meyers, Ray Mueller, Roger Bresnahan and Fisk. That would give us 75 potential seasons from ages 33-37 for these guys.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;">Right off, we see a huge hole in Boras' reasoning, because instead of 75 seasons to examine, we only have 61. Over half of these guys, eight to be exact, retired before age 37, when Varitek's proposed contract would expire. So 14 seasons of a possible 75 were never played. (It should be noted that one of those, Mueller's age-33 season, was lost to WWII, not retirement. He came back and played at ages 34-37.) If Varitek follows the pattern, there's a 50% chance or more that he won't be around at the end of the contract.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;">Boras' argument looks even worse when we look at the 61 seasons actually played. Of those, just 11 matched or exceeded the 15 RCAA threshold, meaning that following the trend would give Varitek just a 15% chance of having a single season during that 5-year contract that could equal his output in 2004. Even more disturbing, 27 of the 61 seasons played resulted in negative RCAA. nother 5 were at zero. Add that to the 13 seasons that were never played due to retirement, and suddenly 45 of 75 seasons (60%) were either never played or were played at an average-or-below level of offensive output for a major league catcher.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;">All of this means that if Varitek is as similar to these players as Boras' represents, during a five-year contract he is likely to have just 2 years of that contract with offensive output better than average, only one of which will match 2004, and will retire after four years.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;">That doesn't sound like a $55 million bet the Red Sox, or any team, should take.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;">* Let's also put to rest this sham argument that the Yankees were actually a better team because they won three more games during the regular season. If the two clubs played identical schedules, that argument would be more sound. Faulty and flat out wrong, but with a little more substance than in the world of unbalanced schedules that we live in. </span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;">But it's wrong because the Sox not only played a tougher schedule (opponents' winning percentage of .505 compared to the Yankees' .499), but also because the Sox performed better against good teams, while the Yankees' lofty record was based upon destroying bad teams and treading water against the good ones.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;">Against teams with winnings records, the Red Sox were 42-31, a winning percentage of .575. The Yankees, on the other hand, were just 35-30, a winning percentage of .538. Even more telling, the Yankees were extremely lucky to have a winning record at all against good teams because they were outscored in those games, 341-319. Read that again. Against teams with a .500 record or better, the Yankees were outscored by a third of a run per game. They achieved their 101 wins largely because they lucked into a few more wins than they deserved against good teams and beat the hell out of the bad ones.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;">The Yankees projected record, based upon their run differential, was 89-73, which means they won 12 more games than they should have. Meanwhile, the Red Sox were exactly as good as advertised. They projected to 98 wins and hit that number exactly. This is important because this kind of discrepancy and that amount of good fortune tends to bite teams on the ass in the playoffs. There have been 35 American League Championship Series. In 33 of those, the two teams had different regular-season win totals, with the team who came to the series with more actual wins winning 20 of those series. That's roughly 60%. At the same time, in 34 of those series the two teams entered with different <em>projected</em> win totals, and the team with more projected wins won 25 of those series. That's roughly 75%, and the difference between the two is significant. The same trend holds in the National League - teams with more actual wins won about 57% of all NLCS series, while teams with more projected wins won about 68%.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;">In short, being the better projected team, meaning the team with the better run differential, is a better harbinger of playoff success than being the team that won the most regular-season games. And this year, the Red Sox had the best run differential in the American League. (And the Cardinals had the best in the NL.)</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;">The Sox were just better. So all you Yankee fans who want to claim otherwise, just shut the hell up.</span>Paul Whitehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11393600178387119479noreply@blogger.com0