Detroit Is Still Burning

The marvelous Matt Labash has a lengthy profile of Detroit that’s both hilarious and heartbreaking. (H/T) On a macro level, conservatives tend to laugh at Detroit as being the Zimbabwe of American cities, a place where all of the worst pathologies of political, economic and cultural liberalism have been allowed to run wild for decades with predictably ghastly results, yet the city’s incompetent and kleptocratic political class is perpetually insulated from accountability by an impenetrable wall of race-mongering. The Reagan Revolution, the reformist governorship of John Engler, the Gingrich/Clinton welfare reforms, the economic booms of 1983-89, 1995-99, and 2003-06…all of these helped put temporary brakes on the downward spiral at times but none did anything to alter the fundamental dynamics that have kept the city stuck in a permanent reverse gear. Detroit’s residents, like Chicago’s, truly have the government they want and deserve.
And yet, as is often true of the truly wrecked places of the world, on an individual level the human tragedies of the place are still worthy of our pity even as they overwhelm even the most optimistic among us (Detroit is almost certainly too far gone to be revived by a Rudy Giuliani or Bobby Jindal type, not that any is on the horizon). Labash combines horrifying statistics with heart-rending anecdotes to bring home precisely how bad things have gotten, and to pay tribute to the Detroiters who still battle the blaze. It’s a must-read.

“But The Internet Said She Was 18!”

It’s the old story:
Boy searches for girl on SexSearch.com
Boy meets girl
Boy has sex with girl
Girl turns out to be 14
Boy gets arrested for sex with a minor
Boy sues SexSearch.com for allowing her to represent on her profile that she was 18.
The Sixth Circuit dismisses the case:

A risk is considered open and obvious when its “dangers are within the body of knowledge common to the community” and “generally known and recognized by the ordinary consumer.” Gawloski v. Miller Brewing Co., 644 N.E.2d 731, 733 (Ohio Ct. App. 1994). In this case, the danger that a member of SexSearch could be a minor is open and obvious. Internet users’ anonymity and potential for false personal representations are well known. Doe was familiar with the registration process and knew that SexSearch did nothing more than asking members to check a box indicating that they are at least eighteen. Furthermore, even if there was a duty to warn, the statement in the Terms and Conditions that SexSearch could not verify members’ information could be seen as a satisfaction of that duty. Therefore, Doe has failed to state a claim for failure to warn.

Yankee Dollar

Pinto:

The Yankees are like Mr. Potter from It’s a Wonderful Life. He was buying up bank shares cheap during the depression, but he was also supplying liquidity. The Yankees are doing the same, as their luxury tax and revenue sharing bills help keep other teams competitive.

I hate the Hated Yankees as much or more than the next guy, I still think it’s bad for baseball that one team should have such vastly larger financial resources than even the other rich teams, and I still support my matching fund idea as a more elegant solution to economic disparities ruining the fun of the game. Pinto’s and Drezner’s analogies notwithstanding, baseball is a sport before it is a business (as Bill James once noted, the game would survive if the business model collapsed, but the business would never survive if interest in the sport collapsed); we may want Coke and Pepsi to drive lesser soda companies out of business, but the Yankees would not benefit if the Royals ended up folding halfway through a season as was known to happen in 19th century baseball.
All that being said, some of the reaction to the latest Yankee spending spree has been overblown, not least given the huge salaries that are coming off the Yankee payroll this offseason – Giambi, Mussina, Abreu, possibly Pettitte. And of course, the 21st Century may yet see a New York baseball team win a championship, but it hasn’t thus far. Teixeira, Sabathia and Burnett are just the Yankees being the Yankees.

The Middle Infielders Revisited

After I did my Hardball Times column on the post-1920 middle infielders in the Hall of Fame conversation, including the recently elected Joe Gordon – and you should go back and read the column if you expect to make sense of this post – I figured I’d like to check how the rough offensive “Rate” metric I was using stacks up to more sophisticated measurements that incorporate defense. With that in mind, I’ve pulled together in chart form for the long- and short-prime middle infielders a ranking by Win Shares per 162 team games for their prime years. To add to the picture I list their WS/162 for the non-prime seasons of their careers, which of course are highly variable (some guys get charged with “seasons” for a brief cup of coffee, like Alex Rodriguez in 1994 and 1995 or Rogers Hornsby spending the last 6 years of his career as a manager and part-time pinch hitter). Anyway, as you will see, the WS rankings match up fairly well with mine but naturally diverge in some cases, most obviously guys like Ozzie Smith who had a lot of defensive value.

Player Age Years Seasons WS WS/162 Career WS Rest Rest Yrs Avg WS Rate
Rogers Hornsby 24-33 1920-29 9.51 362 38.07 502 140 12.12 11.55 186.7
Joe Morgan 25-33 1969-77 8.95 304 33.97 512 208 11.69 17.79 131.4
Arky Vaughan 21-29 1933-41 8.56 278 32.48 356 78 4.75 16.42 132.1
Craig Biggio 25-33 1991-99 8.57 269 31.39 428 159 11.00 14.45 127.3
Alex Rodriguez 20-27 1996-03 8.00 250 31.25 399 149 6.59 22.61 140.7
Ryne Sandberg 24-32 1984-92 9.00 260 28.89 346 86 6.36 13.52 116.3
Charlie Gehringer 25-35 1928-38 10.46 302 28.87 383 81 7.60 10.66 128.4
Lou Boudreau 22-30 1940-48 8.56 238 27.80 277 39 5.70 6.84 114.8
Cal Ripken 21-30 1982-91 10.00 273 27.30 427 154 10.23 15.05 121.9
Roberto Alomar 23-33 1991-01 10.57 281 26.58 375 94 6.00 15.67 113.4
Derek Jeter 24-33 1998-07 10.00 263 26.30 320 57 3.90 14.62 121.2
Vern Stephens 21-29 1942-50 8.56 225 26.29 265 40 5.70 7.02 111.3
Frankie Frisch 22-32 1921-31 10.46 274 26.20 366 92 7.52 12.23 106.3
Joe Cronin 23-34 1930-41 11.41 296 25.94 333 37 7.60 4.87 108.6
Jim Fregosi 21-28 1963-70 8.00 207 25.88 261 54 9.96 5.42 106.9
Jeff Kent 29-37 1997-05 9.00 232 25.78 339 107 7.59 14.10 116.6
Joe Sewell 22-29 1921-28 7.60 195 25.66 277 82 5.70 14.39 110.4
Billy Herman 25-33 1935-43 8.56 217 25.35 298 81 5.70 14.21 110.9
Barry Larkin 27-35 1991-99 8.57 217 25.32 347 130 10.00 13.00 101.3
Nellie Fox 23-32 1951-60 9.51 240 25.24 304 64 8.80 7.27 103.2
Pee Wee Reese 27-36 1946-55 9.51 237 24.92 314 77 5.70 13.51 100.8
Chuck Knoblauch 23-30 1992-99 7.57 188 24.83 231 43 4.00 10.75 110.9
Luke Appling 26/42 1933/49 14.26 354 24.82 378 24 4.75 5.05 100.3
Bobby Doerr 22/32 1940/50 9.51 232 24.40 281 49 3.80 12.89 107.7
Joe Gordon 23/34 1938/49 9.51 230 24.19 242 12 0.95 12.63 106.1
Bobby Grich 23-35 1972-84 12.67 296 23.36 329 33 4.00 8.25 99.5
Alan Trammell 22-32 1980-90 10.67 248 23.24 318 70 8.60 8.14 99.1
Lou Whitaker 26-35 1983-92 10.00 228 22.80 351 123 8.27 14.87 102.6
Ozzie Smith 30-37 1985-92 8.00 179 22.38 325 146 10.27 14.22 84.4
Tony Fernandez 23-31 1985-93 9.00 198 22.00 280 82 7.60 10.79 90.0
Tony Lazzeri 22-32 1926-36 10.46 230 21.99 252 22 2.85 7.72 105.6
Davey Concepcion 26-34 1974-82 8.67 189 21.80 269 80 9.95 8.04 85.9
Jay Bell 25-33 1991-99 8.57 183 21.35 245 62 9.00 6.89 99.5
Jim Gilliam 24-34 1953-63 10.60 219 20.66 247 28 3.00 9.33 84.3
Willie Randolph 21-32 1976-87 11.67 238 20.39 312 74 6.00 12.33 85.6
Bert Campaneris 23-34 1965-76 11.95 241 20.17 280 39 6.68 5.84 80.5
Ray Durham 26-34 1998-06 9.00 174 19.33 231 57 3.90 14.62 93.8
Davey Johnson 24-31 1967-74 8.00 147 18.38 171 24 5.00 4.80 86.7
Luis Aparicio 25-36 1959-70 11.85 212 17.89 293 81 5.80 13.97 76.2
Marty Marion 23-31 1941-49 8.56 153 17.87 177 24 3.80 6.32 66.8
Bill Mazeroski 20-31 1957-68 11.75 195 16.60 219 24 4.91 4.89 71.9
Frank White 27-36 1978-87 9.67 148 15.31 211 63 8.00 7.88 72.3

As you can see, Frisch, Cronin, Smith and Larkin – as befits their reputations – all go up the list by this measure, while Lazzeri, Whitaker, Bell and Durham go down (you will note, amusingly, that this puts Whitaker and Trammell together).
Two small data inconsistencies with the article, which was written after the 2006 season. One, I added Derek Jeter’s 2007 (but not 2008) to complete his prime years; two, I adjusted Miguel Tejada’s age.

Player Age Years Seasons WS WS/162 Career WS Rest Rest Yrs Avg WS Rate
Jackie Robinson 29-33 1948-52 4.75 162 34.11 257 95 4.75 20.00 135.6
Robin Yount 24-28 1980-84 4.67 144 30.84 423 279 15.00 18.60 129.2
Ernie Banks 24-30 1955-61 6.65 194 29.17 332 138 11.90 11.60 135.3
Rod Carew 25-29 1971-75 4.95 129 26.06 384 255 13.68 18.64 120.7
Miguel Tejada 26-32 2000-06 7.00 182 26.00 239 57 5.00 11.40 115.9
Eddie Stanky 28-34 1945-51 6.65 164 24.66 191 27 3.80 7.11 98.2
Nomar Garciaparra 23-29 1997-03 7.00 169 24.14 218 49 6.00 8.17 109.4
Gil McDougald 23-29 1951-57 6.65 157 23.61 194 37 2.85 12.98 94.8
Dave Bancroft 29-35 1920-26 6.65 156 23.46 269 113 8.28 13.65 93.2
Maury Wills 27-33 1960-66 6.90 160 23.19 253 93 6.91 13.46 80.4
Phil Rizzuto 29-35 1946-52 6.65 154 23.16 231 77 5.70 13.51 87.0
Davey Lopes 28-34 1973-79 7.00 158 22.57 240 82 8.64 9.49 93.0
Alvin Dark 26-32 1948-54 6.65 150 22.56 226 76 6.65 11.43 96.8
Julio Franco 26-32 1985-91 7.00 155 22.14 280 125 15.70 7.96 105.3
Red Schoendienst 28-34 1951-57 6.65 147 22.11 262 115 11.51 9.99 97.3
Travis Jackson 22-27 1926-31 5.70 126 22.11 211 85 8.56 9.93 89.0
Cecil Travis 21-27 1935-41 6.65 146 21.95 169 23 4.75 4.84 96.8
Omar Vizquel 29-35 1996-02 7.00 119 17.00 267 148 12.59 11.76 82.4

As discussed in the article, Carew and Yount – like A-Rod – have other seasons that are “prime” but not as middle infielders (I looked at Carew’s broader prime in the article on the tablesetters).

King Arthur’s Daughter

I am torn on the issue of Caroline Kennedy being appointed to the U.S. Senate to fill out Hillary Clinton’s term. On the one hand, as a New Yorker, I’m appalled. On the other hand, as a Republican, this is the best thing that could possibly happen short of Gov. Paterson deciding he likes the ring of “Senator Spitzer.”
Kennedy is one of scores of wealthy Democrats in this state who have never held public office or accomplished really all that much in the public or private sector; all she has is her family name. That the Democrats are even considering her tells me that they’ve basically fallen into one of two dangerous delusions:
(1) That it’s the 1930s again and all you need is a D next to your name to win;
(2) That Obama’s victory proves that glamor and celebrity are more important than experience, accomplishments or a substantive platform.
I don’t think much of David Paterson, but I’d have thought he has more backbone and independence than to let Kennedy’s base (the media and the Obama camp) bully him into choosing such a poor candidate rather than the other available options, all of whom have more political experience and, frankly, all of whom would pay more (public) political dividends to Paterson, himself an accidental Governor who has yet to receive a mandate from the public.
Now, it is far too late in the game for either party to object on principle to political dynasties, given the scores of political families in this country (few states are without at least one major one). Nor is it wholly a bad thing – we accept politics as a family business for the same reason why we accept Barry Bonds, Ken Griffey jr., Jakob Dylan, Ben Stiller, Kate Hudson…every business is a family business, and the children of the pros do often learn things early. But of course, legacy politics has also given us more than its share of brain-dead empty suits like Bob Casey and Linc Chaffee who could never, ever have gotten elected to public office on their own. And this is still a democracy; even if we’re willing to vote for second or third generation politicos, they still need to prove that they can run the gauntlet of seeking public approval first (George W. Bush, for example, cut his teeth working for his dad’s campaigns but had no public office until he was elected to one by the people of Texas). The idea of just handing office to a 51-year-old who has never, so far as I can tell, accomplished anything in the practice of law or in politics simply because of her famous name is repugnant.
On the other hand, the GOP actually has a pretty strong candidate in Pete King, and Kennedy is about the worst possible matchup to a pugnacious Long Island Irishman with a blue-collar edge. She has no separate and distinct geographic or ethnic base, other than perhaps her gender, and it’s sad that modern feminism’s political icons seem to be women who only got jobs because of who their husbands or fathers are. She can’t match King’s long record in office and his many years sparring on the political talkers, nor his common touch. Kennedy would start out with pole position against King purely on party identification, but from there that’s all she has – her nomination would be the ultimate example of what we have seen a lot of the last month, the hubris of Democrats who think they can never lose what they only just won.

Cheney Holds His Ground

After September 11, the United States awoke to a series of unpleasant realities: an enemy was at war with us, and had been for some years; that enemy was not a traditional nation-state, but a loose confederation of non-state-actors – with safe havens and support provided by foreign states, to be sure, but united by a common political/religious ideology rather than by a geographic base; the enemy worked both within and without our borders, and depended on stealth; and our government was institutionally unprepared to deal with an enemy of that nature and methods. The Bush Administration, from that day to this, has faced a long series of hard choices in prosecuting a war unlike the major wars of the past: how to conduct surveillance on the enemy, how to detain and interrogate captured enemies, how to get boots on the ground overseas, and how to remake our intelligence and law enforcement systems to handle the information gained by doing all these things.
One of the signal failures of the Bush second term, in particular, has been an undue timidity in defending the hard and difficult choices made – choices, in many cases, that Barack Obama will have little realistic option but to ratify if he’s going to be serious about defending the country. Attorney General Muskasey has been one rare exception to this trend, but the Administration’s last and strongest voice on national security remains Vice President Cheney. Kudos to the VP for standing up for the Administration’s security policies in a recent interview with ABC News:

Continue reading Cheney Holds His Ground

Brave Once Again

The Braves re-signing Rafael Furcal would seem, at first glance, an admission that the younger DP combination of Yunel Escobar and Kelly Johnson has failed, and needs to be replaced. But at least offensively, both Escobar and Johnson have held up their end, and I don’t really see the basis for dumping either of them on defensive grounds (just on a quick check, both had good range factors this season, and the Braves had a fairly good team Defensive Efficiency Rating and turned an above-average number of double plays). So I have to assume that the deal is setting up Escobar and/or Johnson to be traded (ESPN suggests possibly as a package for Jake Peavy).

Sometimes You Feel Like A Putz

Omar Minaya’s work on the bullpen this offseason has been less a restructuring than an exorcism, with the signing of Francisco Rodriguez, the trade of Scott Schoeneweis to Arizona, and the deal sending Aaron Heilman and Joe Smith to, respectively, the Mariners and Indians and bringing home JJ Putz, the Mets have now dumped most of the culprits in the last two seasons’ bullpen collapses (Guillermo Mota and Jorge Sosa already being gone and Luis Ayala not offered arbitration and possibly headed to Colorado, although Duaner Sanchez remains) and have two closers (Putz being the setup man as long as K-Rod is healthy) and pretty good odds that at least one of them will be really good. As of now, assuming Wagner’s not available to pitch next season, the pen looks like Rodriguez, Putz, Feliciano, Sanchez, the newly-acquired Sean Green, and youngsters (Feliciano being the only lefty in the group).
Keith Law has an overview here of the Putz deal. Putz has great stuff and still had an excellent K rate last season, but really – as we’ve said so often with the Mets the past few years – it’s all about his health. In pure baseball terms, the Mets did give up a lot to get Putz, but a good deal of that was guys like Heilman and Smith who probably needed to be evacuated from Queens. Endy Chavez will be missed for sentimental reasons but is the most replaceable type of outfielder and was barely playing by season’s end. The Mets need better bats in the corners, anyway. Mike Carp is the guy I hated to see go – he’ll just be 23 this year and batted .299/.403/.471 in AA in 2008, suggesting a guy who could be a legit 1B or LF in the bigs.
As for the other new arrivals, Jeremy Reed was a highly-touted prospect back when he batted .409/.472/.591 in half a season at AA as a 22-year-old, and his career minor league line is .321/.386/.476, but Reed’s never recovered his swing after some hand injuries and has at most been a singles hitter in the majors – last year from June 1 to August 16 he hit .297 but still managed just a .337 OBP and .394 slugging. He even hit better at home than on the road in 2008, for a change, so his struggles at the big league level can’t be blamed on Safeco.
Then there’s Green, who has been very frustrating for Mariners fans in his two full years in Seattle, in which he’s posted a 4.29 ERA in 136 appearances (146 if you count AAA). Green keeps the ball down (only 0.31 HR/9 over those two years) but is terribly wild (4.29 BB/9 compared to 7.04 K). He has about the same home and road numbers. But what jumps out, given the fairly large number of games he’s appeared in, is a very pronounced tendency to hit the wall in August: in 2007-08 he had a 2.76 ERA through July 31, averaging 7.99 Hits, 0.37 HR, 3.77 BB and 7.71 K per 9; from August 1 through the end of the year, that goes to a 7.35 ERA, 12.86 H, 0.18 HR, 5.33 BB and 5.69 K. Green threw, counting AAA, 45 games through the end of July 2007 and 53 through the end of July 2008 (on the whole, his 82 appearances from 8/1/07 through 7/31/08 ranked him sixth in the majors, albeit ranked behind Heilman and Feliciano and tied with Ayala). I don’t know if the late-season fades are preventable, but I’d sure like to see Green kept on a tighter leash in 2009.
On the Schoeneweis deal – as an exercise in comparative agony, consider this Chicago item begging the Cubs to trade Jason Marquis to get Schoeneweis. You can see the minor league numbers here for Connor Robertson, the righthanded reliever the Mets got for Schoenweis; he’ll be 27 next year and had a 5.02 ERA in the (admittedly hitter-happy) PCL last season, averaging 3.77 BB/9 and 1.26 wild pitches per 9. On the upside, he’s struck out 11.32 batters per 9 innings in his minor league career, and he doesn’t have Schoeneweis’ contract.

So Much For New York’s Famously Low Taxes

Via Shannon Bell: David Paterson is planning to join the roll of tax hiking Democratic governors with $4 billion in new tax hikes, including consumption taxes and, less objectionably, raising fees for government services, but, to Paterson’s credit, not hiking income tax rates. On the spending side, Paterson is proposing some tough cuts – to Medicaid and education – but also expanding other areas of state spending like welfare and health insurance:

The most significant move was a proposed increase to welfare grants for the first time in 18 years, though more money would not be made available until the beginning of 2010. The administration plans to seek a 30 percent increase over three years, with the eventual cost of the increase exceeding $100 million a year.
The basic welfare grant would eventually rise to $387 a month from $291 for a family of three, or $3,492 per year, where it has remained since 1990.
That the administration was pushing the measure foretold how little money was available this year; the increased welfare grants will have little impact on the budget for the coming fiscal year, which ends in March 2010.
The administration also said it would expand a state-financed health insurance program, Family Health Plus, to cover 19- and 20-year-olds who no longer live with their parents. Enrolling in such programs would also be made easier by, among other things, ending requirements for face-to-face interviews.

As the NY Times notes, Paterson will likely come under pressure from Democrats, especially in the Assembly, to add income tax hikes on the same New York taxpayers also being targeted by Democrats at the national and city levels, and to drop the spending cuts.

Stealing Time

For one of the longer-term projects I’ve been working on, I’ve been going over the league-wide stolen base and caught stealing data at Baseball-Reference.com; I’ve been going back to the beginning of the Retrosheet era in 1956, since that’s when the site has defensive stolen base data for individual catchers, although for the NL the site has league-wide figures back to 1951, and the AL to 1920.
Anyway, I thought I’d share the chart I put together for the 1956-2008 period, showing the number of games played, steals and caught stealings for each league, followed by the league-wide average of stolen base attempts per 162 team games and league-wide stolen base percentages.

Year NL-G NL-SB NL-CS NL-A/162 NL-SB% AL-G AL-SB AL-CS AL-A/162 AL-SB%
1956 1242 371 242 80 60.5% 1236 348 253 79 57.9%
1957 1238 399 254 85 61.1% 1232 368 304 88 54.8%
1958 1232 388 236 82 62.2% 1238 353 280 83 55.8%
1959 1240 439 271 93 61.8% 1236 414 235 85 63.8%
1960 1238 501 313 107 61.5% 1234 422 234 86 64.3%
1961 1238 468 288 99 61.9% 1622 578 311 89 65.0%
1962 1624 788 409 119 65.8% 1618 560 292 85 65.7%
1963 1622 684 493 118 58.1% 1616 552 270 82 67.2%
1964 1624 636 419 105 60.3% 1628 540 300 84 64.3%
1965 1626 745 429 117 63.5% 1620 704 357 106 66.4%
1966 1618 737 494 123 59.9% 1612 718 432 116 62.4%
1967 1620 694 470 116 59.6% 1620 679 470 115 59.1%
1968 1626 704 460 116 60.5% 1624 811 471 128 63.3%
1969 1946 817 548 114 59.9% 1946 1033 570 133 64.4%
1970 1942 1045 516 130 66.9% 1946 863 562 119 60.6%
1971 1944 900 492 116 64.7% 1932 865 547 118 61.3%
1972 1860 954 552 131 63.3% 1858 853 539 121 61.3%
1973 1942 976 552 127 63.9% 1944 1058 661 143 61.5%
1974 1944 1254 625 157 66.7% 1946 1234 758 166 61.9%
1975 1942 1176 558 145 67.8% 1926 1348 811 182 62.4%
1976 1944 1364 677 170 66.8% 1934 1690 867 214 66.1%
1977 1944 1555 843 200 64.8% 2262 1462 936 172 61.0%
1978 1942 1533 725 188 67.9% 2262 1471 892 169 62.3%
1979 1942 1486 767 188 66.0% 2256 1497 831 167 64.3%
1980 1946 1839 835 223 68.8% 2264 1455 775 160 65.2%
1981 1288 1108 543 208 67.1% 1500 913 557 159 62.1%
1982 1944 1782 822 217 68.4% 2270 1394 795 156 63.7%
1983 1948 1786 870 221 67.2% 2270 1539 749 163 67.3%
1984 1942 1728 773 209 69.1% 2268 1304 738 146 63.9%
1985 1942 1636 716 196 69.6% 2264 1461 715 156 67.1%
1986 1938 1842 858 226 68.2% 2268 1470 762 159 65.9%
1987 1942 1851 757 218 71.0% 2268 1734 772 179 69.2%
1988 1938 1789 729 210 71.0% 2262 1512 689 158 68.7%
1989 1946 1529 715 187 68.1% 2266 1587 726 165 68.6%
1990 1944 1787 727 210 71.1% 2266 1503 783 163 65.7%
1991 1940 1651 809 205 67.1% 2268 1469 758 159 66.0%
1992 1944 1560 741 192 67.8% 2268 1704 860 183 66.5%
1993 2270 1714 788 179 68.5% 2268 1549 872 173 64.0%
1994 1606 1141 529 168 68.3% 1594 1117 503 165 69.0%
1995 2014 1602 671 183 70.5% 2020 1331 586 154 69.4%
1996 2268 1785 709 178 71.6% 2266 1454 634 149 69.6%
1997 2268 1817 841 190 68.4% 2264 1491 723 158 67.3%
1998 2596 1609 751 147 68.2% 2268 1675 754 174 69.0%
1999 2591 1959 830 174 70.2% 2265 1462 689 154 68.0%
2000 2593 1627 736 148 68.9% 2265 1297 587 135 68.8%
2001 2592 1456 735 137 66.5% 2266 1647 673 166 71.0%
2002 2588 1514 703 139 68.3% 2264 1236 579 130 68.1%
2003 2590 1294 585 118 68.9% 2270 1279 547 130 70.0%
2004 2590 1336 527 117 71.7% 2266 1253 573 131 68.6%
2005 2594 1349 560 119 70.7% 2268 1216 509 123 70.5%
2006 2590 1515 610 133 71.3% 2268 1252 500 125 71.5%
2007 2594 1564 506 129 75.6% 2268 1354 496 132 73.2%
2008 2588 1482 547 127 73.0% 2268 1317 488 129 73.0%
TOTAL 103614 67266 32156 155 67.7% 105398 61396 31575 143 66.0%

A couple of conclusions:
1. You can see the rapid upward movements in steal attempts in the NL around 1962 (Maury Wills’ big year) and 1974 (Lou Brock’s), the AL much later in 1965-66 and then around 1974, and the big falloff around 2000 capping a longer-term decline (the NL’s one-year spike in 1999 looks like just a fluke).
2. We’re at something like a historic happy medium for stolen base attempts. Very low numbers of steal attempts generally mean that a lot of steal attempts are busted hit-and-runs, with a low success rate (the stolen base percentages of the 1950s bear this out), whereas very high numbers indicate a lot of high-risk running.
3. I think a good deal of the shift from the AL to the NL in big base stealing in the late 1970s was driven not just by the DH rule but by managers: Chuck Tanner moved to the NL in 1977, Whitey Herzog in 1980. Tanner in particular left his stamp on the AL in 1976, when he forgot his mother’s admonition that if you make that steal sign on Opening Day it might freeze that way. The 1976 A’s, on their way to their first failure to win the division in six years (helped along by the exodus of the Mustache Gang’s stars) attempted an obscene 464 steals (the only other team in the league over 230 was Herzog’s Royals at 322), albeit at an admirable 73.5% success rate. Don Baylor attempted 64 steals, Bill North 104, Sal Bando (!) 26, Phil Garner 48, Claudell Washington 57, Bert Campaneris 66, and the team’s two full-time pinch runners, Matt Alexander and Larry Lintz, combined to attempt 69 steals while having only 33 plate appearances.
4. Stolen base percentages were growing steadily for much of the period, but have really entered a golden age only in the last 2-4 years – before 2004-05, it was rare for the AL to reach a 70% success rate, and the NL wasn’t able to stay consistently above 70%; since then, we’ve seen the NL average spiral as high as 75.6%, with both leagues above 73% the past two seasons for the first time ever. The Mets and Phillies, led by Carlos Beltran, Jose Reyes, Jimmy Rollins and Shane Victorino, have been the leaders: in 2007-08, the Mets attempted an average of 210 steals per year with an 80.5% success rate, the Phillies an average of 159 steals with an 86.2% success rate.
It’s an interesting question what the cause of this is. Probably the influence of sabermetrics is a part, especially since the growing popularity of Baseball Prospectus, the 2003 publication of Moneyball, the passing of generational torches and other events have helped focus managers’ attention on not running themselves out of innings (a process accelerated by the post-1994 scoring/home run explosion that peaked in 1999-2000). I suspect that baserunners have gotten faster at a greater rate than catchers have been throwing harder. I don’t think it’s the pitchers; if anything, you hardly see the big leg kicks of the 1970s anymore. Looking around the league, it’s hard to say that teams are really diminishing the priority they place on catchers who can throw, either (Piazza’s not in the league anymore). I don’t think equipment is a big factor, especially with artificial turf in declining usage, but better shoes may be incrementally aiding the baserunners.
Anyway, it’s yet another reminder of how many different aspects of the game evolve over time, both in terms of strategy and in terms of outcomes.

Wrong Week To Quit Sniffing Glue Open Thread

This is an exceptionally crummy week to not have time to blog, but work pays the bills (and, as it happens, I’m working on some very interesting stuff – just quite a lot of it at the same time), plus my home PC is still out of service. For those of you who come here regularly, here’s your open thread for now on
CC Sabathia
JJ Putz
Rod Blagojevich
Senate Candidate #5
Auto company bailouts
Or, you know, whatever else.

It’s Not The Years, It’s The Miles

Quick followup to the anecdotal evidence cited in yesterday’s post: here’s the complete list of pitchers who threw at least 200 games through age 26, with at least half of those appearances in relief. As you can see, K-Rod is second on the list at 408, and the #3 guy, Terry Forster, is 65 games behind him. K-Rod trails Mitch Williams 437-429 if you include the postseason.

Christmas in June!

crazyeddie.jpgThe tradition of celebrating Christmas in December is, as most people familiar with the history of the early Church know, not based on a December birthday for Jesus – the Bible mentions nothing of the sort – but on accomodation of the Church calendar with the Roman traditional holidays around the winter solstice. The exact date of Christ’s birth has generally been lost to history. There are two documentable historical events, however, that the Biblical narrative can be tied to – the Roman census under Caesar Augustus, and the Star of Bethlehem.
Here you can read one of the latest efforts to nail down the latter, an atronomical historian trying to pinpoint the “star” as being a particularly close conjunction of Venus and Jupiter in the night sky (such as we’ve been experiencing in less complete form the past few weeks – I had the kids on the lawn with the telescope a few weekends ago):

The researchers claim the ‘Christmas star’ was most likely a magnificent conjunction of the planets Venus and Jupiter, which were so close together they would have shone unusually brightly as a single “beacon of light” which appeared suddenly.

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Australian astronomer Dave Reneke used complex computer software to chart the exact positions of all celestial bodies and map the night sky as it would have appeared over the Holy Land more than 2,000 years ago.
It revealed a spectacular astronomical event around the time of Jesus’s birth.
Mr Reneke says the wise men probably interpreted it as the sign they had been waiting for, and they followed the ‘star’ to Christ’s birthplace in a stable in Bethlehem, as described in the Bible.
Generally accepted research has placed the nativity to somewhere between 3BC and 1AD.
Using the St Matthew’s Gospel as a reference point, Mr Reneke pinpointed the planetary conjunction, which appeared in the constellation of Leo, to the exact date of June 17 in the year 2BC.

It’s an interesting theory; such theories tend to be pretty common in Bliblical history, but as Reneke notes, astronomy is a fairly precise science, and identifying a specific astronomical event that fits so neatly with the Gospel account at least adds one small piece to a historical picture that is likely to remain somewhat elusive.

K-Riffic!

No formal confirmation yet, but the Mets appear to have signed Francisco Rodriguez for 3 years and $37 million. This is good news for the Mets, and of course much worse news for the Angels, who have a fairly big budget of their own to throw around but have a lot of holes to plug.
First, the Angels. They exceeded their Pythagorean record by 12 games in 2008, which means that (1) they’re due to fall backwards next year and (2) they relied heavily on a deep bullpen in 2008. Take K-Rod out of the picture, and that will be stretched thinner (Darren Oliver is returning, but he’s not cut out to be more than a fifth man in the pen). I assume Jose Arredondo will eventually take over closing duties, though Scot Shields will probably get first crack. And that’s before you deal with the challenge of re-signing Mark Teixeira, as well as clearing out Jon Garland and Garret Anderson and Juan Rivera also free agents – all guys (other than Tex) that you can spare, but it’s harder to replace them all at once.
From the Mets perspective, I’ve always liked K-Rod, but I’ve been suspicious of him as a long-term investment. Some of that may just be a matter of listening to the Baseball Prospectus people fretting about his mechanics for years, of course. But there’s also history: as I have noted before, by far the most similar pitcher to K-Rod through age 26 is Gregg Olson, who flamed out at 27, and #3 is Bobby Thigpen, who did the same at 28. Looking at the all-time leaders through age 26, K-Rod is one of 3 relievers in the top 10 in games pitched (the rest are 19th century starting pitchers), and the others are Mitch Williams, finished at 29, and Terry Forster, who threw just 58 innings between age 27 and 29. The top 10 in saves is K-Rod, Olson, Thigpen, Chad Cordero (who was hurt most of this season at age 26), Rod Beck, Williams, Ugueth Urbina, Bruce Sutter (who had his first off year at 30 and broke down starting at 32), Billy Koch, who hit the wall at 28, and Forster. Even bearing in mind that K-Rod has none of Williams’ mental problems or Forster’s conditioning issues, basically there’s two guys on that list who didn’t really suffer a sudden loss in effectiveness (Beck and Urbina, although Beck basically never recovered his high strikeout rates) and one (Sutter) who lasted into his 30s before the wheels came off. Turning to the top 10 in games finished, we get most of the same crowd plus Goose Gossage, whose broken hand at 27 was the only bump in the road, Byung-Hyun Kim, who missed most of his age 25 season and hasn’t been the same since, and Jorge Julio, who at any rate has come down in the world from when he was 23, was terrible at 26 and 28 and was hurt this season at 29. We may not have a very lengthy track record to evaluate the durability of young relievers who throw a lot of games in their early twenties, but what we do have presents pretty grim odds.
Statistically, there’s also K-Rod’s declining K rate; although it was still over 10 this year, the trend combined with his high walk rate are worrisome signs.
All of which is why a 4-year contract would have scared me, a lot, and why I still regard K-Rod as a risky acquisition, much as Billy Wagner and BJ Ryan were big injury risks three years ago, and both of them went down. But the Mets needed a closer; Wagner’s out most or probably all of next year, and K-Rod was better than the other options on the market. If he stays healthy for two of the three years of the deal, it won’t be a bad investment. The Mets took advantage of the fact that there were more closers on the market than demand for them, and played some hardball. They will need more relievers to overhaul the bullpen after the last two seasons’ fiascoes, but this was the logical place to start.
One guy they were rumored to be considering: Trevor Hoffman, who would give them three pitchers under contract with a total of 1147 career saves. Hoffman’s close to finished and can’t carry a huge workload – he threw 45.1 innings this season – but he may have enough left to contribute as a setup man. He had a 2.88 ERA from April 13 to the end of the year, including a 41-5 K-BB ratio. Over the past two years, righties have batted .167/.188/.292 (Avg/OBP/Slg) against Hoffman compared to .295/.355/.472 for lefties, which suggests that he might be more useful in a situational role (of course, I said that earlier this year about Schoenweis – guys with those splits tend to get exposed sooner or later). I’m not saying Hoffman’s a good idea, but if he’s not too expensive he may have his uses.

Sour Grapes

Lots of stuff to blog about today that deserves longer treatment, but I just have to say that while Ron Santo strikes me as a deserving Hall of Famer (not overwhelmingly so, but he clearly meets the standard for third basemen after you finish adjusting his numbers for the huge boost he got from Wrigley Field – career .296/.383/.522 at home, .257/.342/.406 on the road – as offset by the terrible era for hitters he played in), his complaining about the Veterans Committee balloting system can’t help but come off as sour grapes. Frankly, the Veterans Commitee exists for one reason: to correct injustices, whether to guys the writers never saw play (i.e., Negro Leaguers, pre-1930s players) or that the writers for whatever reason failed to appreciate or had a grudge against. If the commitee rarely elects anybody, that’s fine.

Obamises Watch – The Economy

Flip – October 7, 2008:

Brokaw: Sen. Obama, time for a discussion. I’m going to begin with you. Are you saying to Mr. Clark (ph) and to the other members of the American television audience that the American economy is going to get much worse before it gets better and they ought to be prepared for that?
Obama: No, I am confident about the American economy.

Score – November 4, 2008:

In Next Year, Economy Will…
Total Obama McCain Other/No Answer
Get Better (47%) 61% 38% 1%
Get Worse (23%) 43% 54% 3%

Flop – December 6, 2008:

MR. BROKAW: On this program about a year ago, you said that being a president is 90 percent circumstances and about 10 percent agenda. The circumstances now are, as you say, very unpopular in terms of the decisions that have to be made. Which are the most unpopular ones that the country’s going to have to deal with?
PRES.-ELECT OBAMA: Well, fortunately, as tough as times are right now–and things are going to get worse before they get better–there is a convergence between circumstances and agenda.

If you had “32 days” in how long that one would last past Election Day: time to cash in. Funny thing about this “new politics”: it seems so…familiar.

Hall Calls Joe Gordon

Joe Gordon has been elected to the Hall of Fame by the Veterans Committee, as other candidates including Ron Santo, Joe Torre, Gil Hodges, Dick Allen, Luis Tiant, and seriously old-time players like Sherry Magee, Bill Dahlen and Deacon White fell short. I’ll come back to some of the guys who lost when I have more time to write, but you can go here for my take on Gordon as well as Vern Stephens and Maury Wills, also on this year’s ballot. (In fact, I’ve been meaning to revisit and supplement that essay with an additional point, and will when I get a chance). Basically, Gordon – who died 30 years ago – is OK with me as a Hall of Famer when you give him back the two years he lost to World War II (he probably wouldn’t have hit .210 in 1946, either, if he hadn’t missed those two years). He was extremely comparable as a hitter to his contemporary Bobby Doerr and to a lesser extent Tony Lazzeri and Frankie Frisch, though less adept at getting on base than Lazzeri and Frisch, and while all four had comparable-length primes, Frisch had a longer career and success as a manager (Gordon didn’t, and this excellent Steven Goldman essay I’d been meaning to link to gives Gordon some of the blame, along with Bobby Bragan, for ruining Herb Score’s arm).
I also looked here at the 1948 Indians, for whom Gordon played a key role; Gordon is the sixth member of that team inducted to the Hall, as well as the seventh member of the 1938-39 Yankees and the seventh member of the 1941-42 Yankees (incidentally, that 1942 Yankees team, for which Gordon won an MVP award that really should have gone to Ted Williams – Williams won the Triple Crown, led the league in Runs by 18, RBI by 23, Slugging by 135 points and OBP by 82 and times on base by 60 – was a really good team, starring Gordon, the DiMaggio-Keller-Henrich outfield, Rizzuto, Dickey, and a largely forgotten pitching staff, although they were overshadowed by the late-30s editions and the fact that they lost the Series to a Cardinals juggernaut).

Trampled Under Foot

Two thoughts on the Valley Stream Wal-Mart trampling story.
1. You need one seriously unruly crowd – at 5am! – to trample to death a man who is 6’5″ and weighs 270 pounds.
2. Somehow, it seems there’s a rush here – obviously by lawyers looking for deep pockets – to blame absolutely everybody except the people who trampled a guy to death to go shopping, and apparently did so only because he was in the way of a pregnant woman they were in the process of trampling. I mean, Wal-Mart is a store, not a zoo. It shouldn’t have to anticipate people acting like this.

A Very Mugabe Epidemic

There are still too many odious tyrants in the world, and not all of them started off as dictators – some, like Vladimir Putin, Hugo Chavez, and Robert Mugabe, started off as elected politicians and gradually strangled democracy and liberty in their countries. Of those, Mugabe is the furthest down the path, and the natural endpoint of his race-baiting and populist left-wing economics is now in view, as a catastrophic cholera epidemic has Mugabe appealing for international assistance even from his nemesis (Great Britain); like so many of Africa’s disasters, the epidemic is the work of bad government, the direct result of Mugabe’s efforts to stamp out the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party:

The cholera epidemic has been caused by the collapse of the country’s water and sewage systems since the ruling Zanu (PF) party removed control of those services from cities with MDC mayors three years ago and set up the inept Zimbabwe National Water Authority.

This atrocity has even left-leaning African leaders calling for Mugabe’s ouster:

Yesterday, in unusually robust words for an African leader, Kenya’s Prime Minister Raila Odinga called on African governments to work together to topple Mr Mugabe. “Power sharing is dead in Zimbabwe and will not work with a dictator who does not really believe in power sharing,” said Mr Odinga, referring to the negotiations on forming a unity government with the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) that Mr Mugabe has strung out for nearly three months. “It’s time for African governments to take decisive action to push him out of power.”
Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa expressed similar sentiments, openly calling for Mr Mugabe’s removal. “If they say to him ‘step down’, and he refuses, they must do so militarily,” he said.

That would be Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Tutu calling for military force to remove Mugabe, if you’re keeping score at home. Mugabe won’t go quickly, and his end has been predicted before as his campaign against white farmers throttled his country’s once-successful agricultural yield. But with the likes of Odinga and Archbishop Tutu ready to call for his head, he may finally be approaching the end of the line.

Life Matters

Ross Douthat looks at why the pro-life cause is doing well among younger voters, and specifically why it’s doing much better than opposition to same-sex marriage, which started in a much stronger position and still commands a majority even in liberal states like California.
Of course, if you ask social conservatives which battle they’d rather win, it’s no contest; both issues are important to the future functioning of society, but only one of the two is an issue of life and death. If the same-sex marriage fight has sometimes burned brighter in recent years it’s only because the battle lines have been more fluid and the assault from the left more intense.

An Offer You Can’t Refuse

My RedState colleague Jeff Emanuel looks at the health insurance industry’s effort to get Congress to make it mandatory to buy their product. Matthew Continetti notes that the corporatist involvement of the industry is a key difference from the landscape that confronted HillaryCare in 1994 (it’s much more like the conditions that gave us Bush’s Medicare Part D plan in 2003).

Triple Crown Trivia

The pitching Triple Crown (leading the league in Wins, ERA and Strikeouts) may not have the glamor of the batting one, but its winners make up a pretty distinguished roster. Try your hand at some Triple Crown trivia, answers below the fold.
1. Since 1997, we’ve had a bumper crop, with five pitchers winning a total of six Triple Crowns. Name them.
2. Name the threeo pitchers to win it three times.
3. Two of the first three winners (Tommy Bond in 1877 and Guy Hecker in the American Association in 1884) aren’t in Cooperstown – but between 1889 and 1996, 18 pitchers combined to do it 27 times – name the three of those 18 who are not in the Hall of Fame.

Continue reading Triple Crown Trivia

Thanks, Given

Between the holidays, work, technical problems (my home PC needs Vista reinstalled), a little post-election burnout, some slow baseball news days and the like, I’ve gone quiet for a few days here – but I did want to extend a word of thanks to my readers. 2008 has been a good traffic year for the site, culminating in the election, as you can see:
traffic08.JPG
I can’t predict the mix of content going forward, but of course I expect to keep up the baseball side of things a little better over the next 12 months, without neglecting the many political battles to come. In the meantime: thanks for stopping by.