Baseball Crank: May 2012 Archives

May 29, 2012

POLITICS: Tim Noah's Sad Parade

The publication of Jonah Goldberg's new book The Tyranny of Cliches has brought forth a number of responses from liberals and progressives, many of them either essentially proving Goldberg's point or entirely avoiding grappling with the book's substance. The latest entrant is Tim Noah, now writing with The New Republic, who seeks to offer a companion to Goldberg's collection of liberal cliches with his own "conservative cliches." It is clear from the column that Noah either (1) did not read the book, (2) completely missed its point, or (3) simply could not come up with counter-examples of the same type.

If you haven't read The Tyranny of Cliches, Goldberg has not set out to gather liberalism's strongest, weakest, most ideological or most fact-challenged arguments and contest them, but rather to focus on criticizing a particular type of liberal argument, arguments that (1) pretend not to be liberal or (2) pretend not to be arguments at all. He also takes on a variety of the kinds of shopworn slogans that sound like truisms and are often found on bumper stickers, but don't stand up to even the most minimal scrutiny if taken seriously - the sort of thing Bill James used to do with old saws like "baseball is 75% pitching." One of his main points is how these cliches allow people posing as something other than political ideologues to spread an explicitly political ideology without seeming to do so. And, as with his prior book Liberal Fascism, he puts a lot of effort into illustrating the intellectual and political history of the cliches he's discussing, history that is often ignored by the people deploying them. Front and center are his critiques of cliched claims by liberals to be pragmatic, non-ideological, without labels and opposed to dogmas. These are big-picture themes, themes that often suffuse how modern liberal-progressivism is presented in academia and popular culture.

Noah, by contrast, sets his sights mainly on explicitly ideological arguments in the immediate political context of the day, thus missing the point completely.

For example, a number of Noah's beefs are with politicial euphemisms like "Broaden the tax base" and "Job creator". Goldberg takes a few shots of his own in the book at euphemisms, which are pervasive on both sides of the aisle, but it's not even close to the point of the book. Noah's entry on "job creator" is, in fact, just an excuse for him to exhume the phrase "trickle down economics," which Democrats have been using as a euphemism of their own for so long that Wikipedia traces it back to William Jennings Bryan's Cross of Gold speech at the 1896 Democratic Convention.

Others are simply things Republicans say that Noah disagrees with, like "If you tax something, you get less of it" (Noah offers the stinging riposte that if you tax land, you won't have less land, which is thuddingly obvious but at the same time ignores the fact that most property taxes are pegged to the developed value of property) or "The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen," which he does not even try to grapple with.

In other places, Noah simply snipes at terms like "central planning" and "mainstream media" that he feels Republicans use too selectively.

Noah argues that the phrase "Kicking the can down the road" is a cliché used by both sides to refer to failing to solve the budget deficit, although he doesn't even address the main current conservative usage of the term to refer to failing to fix entitlements.

Finally he snipes at the phrase "War on Christmas," which is basically a Fox News shorthand for a longstanding cultural and legal battle over how a predominantly but not exclusively Christian country celebrates Christmas. You can argue that this is a silly term for this particular controversy, but basically everyone associates this phrase with Fox News, which makes it the very opposite of the kind of insidious stealth argument Goldberg grapples with.

This is not to deny that there are such things as conservative clichés, bumper-stickerisms that oversimplify issues and fail to stand up to even basic logical scrutiny the way so many of Goldberg's targets do (e.g., "America: Love it or Leave it"). But the fact that Noah - a veteran liberal pundit writing in a venerable liberal magazine - cannot come up with even a vaguely comparable list simply underlines Goldberg's central thesis about the asymmetry between how conservatives and liberals approach the elaboration of their own ideas:

Liberals aren't oriented toward their own intellectual history the way conservatives are. This has the result of making them more, not less, dogmatic. Indeed, they are so dogmatic, they can't see it. They think they're ideology free. This is the lie liberals tell themselves and then everyone else: "We're not ideological, we're pragmatists!"

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Posted by Baseball Crank at 2:30 PM | Politics 2012 | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

May 25, 2012

POLITICS: #shrug

You would think it's easy enough to get bipartisan agreement that the kind of tactics described here by a recipient of millions of dollars from supposedly respectable left-wing foundations are beyond the pale. But Markos Moulitsas, the man who has never failed in the immediate aftermath of any kind of political violence - even violence by people who turned out to be left-wingers - to jump to place partisan blame, just shrugs:

More here.

Shrug indeed. Or, as he once said: "screw them."

Posted by Baseball Crank at 1:31 PM | Politics 2012 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

POLITICS: Horror Show

You have to read this post by the fearless and indefatigable Patterico in its entirety to get the full effect of the campaign of personal harassment waged against him by left-wing activists. I'd also encourage you to follow the links in his post (as well as Erick's post here) to see the background and how long Patterico has been on this particular beat. One thing I had not realized before was that these goons are the people behind the Raw Story site.

Let me add one thing here. Every belief system - political, religious, philosophical, lifestyle - attracts some nutty people, some stupid people, some evil and dangerous people. You can't judge those belief systems by their craziest adherents. Liberalism, as understood in the United States over the past half-century or so, involves the belief in a lot of nonsense, but it is basically a peaceable creed.

But increasingly since the late 60s, we have seen the emergence of a particular style of activism - occasionally aped in some corners of the Right, but systematically practiced on the Left - that takes as its creed "the personal is political" and that everything is politics, and follows that to its logical conclusion by such methods as:

-Picketing the homes of political opponents and business executives.

-Boycotts aimed at donors and sponsors of political causes and political commentators.

-Efforts to "out" political opponents, ranging from disclosing the identities and addresses of anonymous or pseudonymous writers to targeting closeted homosexuals among Congressional staffers.

-Googlebombs designed to skew internet searches for information about a targeted person.

-Reporting targeted opponents to ISPs, hosting companies or Twitter as spam.

That's just a quick list, and of course it ranges from older-style campaigns to things done specifically on the internet. The theoretical and practical justification for this style of political activism as personal war against opponents is, of course, laid out most explicitly in Rules for Radicals and other writings of Saul Alinsky, the father of "community organizing," the subject of Hillary Clinton's college thesis, and the specific inspiration for groups like the PIRGs and ACORN that (to simplify a much longer story) trained and worked hand in glove with Barack Obama. We see such campaigns waged regularly online by left-wing activist groups like ThinkProgress and particular in the battles over Proposition 8 (ranging from the targeting of Mormon donors to the reasons why Paul Clement ended up leaving his law firm). The campaign against Patterico merely takes these methods to their logical endpoint. If you think your role in politics is not merely to compete in the world of ideas but to raise the personal cost of opposing your ideas and agenda to the point where people fear speaking out against you, you have gone down this same path, and should think long and hard about what you are encouraging.

PS - If you want to know where this style of activism leads, read Mark Steyn's bracing introduction to Geert Wilders' book.

Posted by Baseball Crank at 11:30 AM | Politics 2012 | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0)

POLITICS: Hey, Big Spender

Following up on yesterday's post, that Rex Nutting article cited by White House Press Secretary Jay Carney has been debunked so thoroughly by so many sources on the Right - a number of them cited in my post - that even the Washington Post Fact Checker felt compelled to point out how dishonest it was, leaving only the White House and PoliFact standing by it. Note the WaPo's point about how Nutting distorted the record by ignoring inflation.

Posted by Baseball Crank at 9:44 AM | Politics 2012 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

May 24, 2012

POLITICS: The Growth Deficit and Spending Fairy Tales

The United States faces a number of economic and fiscal challenges in the short and long terms. But the single biggest is the Growth Deficit: the problem of government spending and government debt growing faster than the private sector. That deficit needs to be reversed; we are on an unsustainable path unless we start producing a Growth Surplus. And Republicans and conservatives need to put more effort into emphasizing the importance of the Growth Deficit to the public.

The Obama Administration seems to recognize that this is a political vulnerability, as it has lately been spinning the notion that the last few years have not actually grown federal spending. Below the fold, I've collected a number of charts that illustrate why this is nonsense. But first, a word on how we should be measuring our solvency.

I. Operating Deficits and Credit Card Balances

We're all familiar with the budget deficit, the measurement of how much more the federal government's annual operations spend than the government takes in. I refer to this as the "operating deficit." The operating deficit has really only one important role: it tells us how much of the government's spending will lead to the issuance of new debt. While large operating deficits can be a symptom, they are not the real problem. Let me illustrate with a simplified example. Let's say you have a credit card with a fairly low teaser rate, 2 or 3%. You are running a balance on that card instead of paying your bills on time, which means you're paying a modest interest rate and the balance is accumulating. In terms of your credit card spending, you have an operating deficit - you've spent more than you paid back. But in this example, the amount you're spending on the card isn't that big compared to your income and savings. That balance may not be a great idea: eventually, you'll have to pay it off, that could be a pain to do if you let it pile up too much, and if it goes on too long the interest rate will go up. But you don't have a serious problem because you have the money to pay for what you're spending, even if you aren't paying your bills on time.

Now picture the opposite situation: you're spending way more every month than you earn, but you're still paying your bills each month by raiding your savings account. You don't have a credit card balance, and thus don't have an operating deficit - but you do have a serious problem, because you are spending more than you're making, you're using up your savings instead of adding to them, and sooner or later your savings will run out and you won't be able to keep this up. You'll be broke.

The credit card balance in these examples is the operating budget deficit - it tells you whether or not you're paying your bills on time. But it doesn't tell you whether you're spending more than you (the American taxpayer) can afford.

To know whether we are spending more than we can afford, we have to compare government spending to the nation's income (ie, the money being made by the taxpayers), not to how much of that income is being used in a given month or year to pay the bills when they come due. Sure, a big balance is often a sign that you're spending too much - but you can't cure that problem, long term, by raiding your life savings to pay this month's bill. You can only fix it by bringing your spending in line with how much money you make in the first place. In the real world, that means we have to ask, not whether the government is taxing us enough to pay its bills, but whether the government is running up bills we can't afford to pay with the money we make. The government can't fix the problem of spending more than we can afford by taxing us to stay current on its bills; if it does, we're just raiding the private sector's savings and income to pay for today's spending, depleting the money that's left over to pay tomorrow's bills. Over-reliance on operating deficits to measure fiscal health ignores this dimension by assuming that a government that is eating the private sector's seed corn to pay today's bills on time is healthier than one that is living well within a society's means but doing so partly by issuing debt.

II. The Growth Deficit

What I've explained above is the overall parameters. The proper measurement, in my view, is to compare the total spending by the federal government to total private sector income, which can - depending how you look at these things - be measured by private-sector GDP or by Gross Domestic Income. Phil Kerpen, for example, makes the case for using private-sector GDP.

Economist and investment manager Rob Arnott adds another way of looking at the question, arguing that besides private sector GDP we can look at what he calls "structural GDP" - GDP minus the operating deficit. The theory for that is that including operating deficits in GDP growth figures lets the government massage the numbers:

Let's suppose the government wants to dazzle us with 5% growth next quarter (equivalent to 20% annualized growth!). If they borrow an additional 5% of GDP in new additional debt and spend it immediately, this magnificent GDP growth is achieved! We would all see it as phony growth, sabotaging our national balance sheet - right? Maybe not. We are already borrowing and spending 2% to 3% each quarter, equivalent to 10% to 12% of GDP, and yet few observers have decried this as artificial GDP growth because we're not accustomed to looking at the underlying GDP before deficit spending!
From this perspective, real GDP seems unreal, at best. GDP that stems from new debt - mainly deficit spending - is phony: it is debt-financed consumption, not prosperity. Isn't GDP, after excluding net new debt obligations, a more relevant measure? Deficit spending is supposed to trigger growth in the remainder of the economy, net of deficit-financed spending, which we can call our "Structural GDP." If Structural GDP fails to grow as a consequence of our deficits, then deficit spending has failed in its sole and singular purpose.

I'll return to Arnott's charts later, but one of the things that's frustrating in evaluating this issue is that consistently collected private GDP figures over time are not that easy to come by. The BEA has them in one dataset from 1963-97 and a different method of collecting the data from 1997-2010, although the numbers appear to be reported in "current dollars." (General note: I'm happy to hear from people who have better ways to skin this particular cat in terms of measurements). The fact that we're not reporting a regular, widely-used and easily available private sector growth measurement is itself a symptom of the failure to popularize thinking in these terms.

Another methodological problem is that federal operating deficits tend not to get reported honestly. USA Today had a big cover story this morning on this, noting the various items (like new liabilities for entitlements) that get exempted from officially reported deficits. USA Today's chart illustrates the impact:

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A proper picture of our fiscal health would look at three variables - private sector GDP compared to spending and debt. (It would also look at state and local government spending and debt. In fact, a good deal of the explosive growth of federal spending the past several decades, in particular in the Medicaid, education and transportation areas, involves the state governments effectively borrowing money on the federal government's low credit rating to cover their own operating deficits). That's the balance that really matters: keeping our public spending in line with the source of income that ultimately pays for it. But it would then also track the relationship of those variables over time to see if we are headed in a positive direction (the private sector growing faster than our public obligations) or a negative one, as we are now.

That's the problem of the Growth Deficit. We're already spending too much of what we earn, and that in and of itself puts a crimp in the base from which we grow the private sector. But the bigger problem is that the relationship between public spending and private-sector growth has been getting worse, and is projected to get a lot worse. We have to look, over the multi-year view, at whether government spending - including things like entitlement spending and interest on debt that grow on auto-pilot - is growing faster than the private sector economy.

The picture isn't pretty. Here is Arnott's chart, in small format and clickable blow-out format, showing the trend since 1944 (in inflation-adjusted per capita terms) in - among other things - structural and private sector GDP (the yellowish and greenish lines, respectively), and federal outlays (the brown dotted line). Even adjusting for the fact that Arnott uses a different visual scale to measure federal receipts and outlays than to measure GDP figures, the trend of convergence between the federal outlays line and the private sector GDP line is alarming:

Small Version

The larger version:

(Click to view full size)

The debt trend is not encouraging either. I don't have comparable numbers to do a proper chart of the ratio of debt to private sector GDP, and I continue to apply Crank's First Law of Government Financial Forecasts (i.e., they are always, always wrong), but basically every measure available shows a sharp increase over the past few years, and as Phil Klein illustrates, even the White House's own numbers show only a slight projected decrease in the rate of debt growth from 2012:

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III. Spending Fairy Tales

Enter the Obama White House and its allies, which are touting an 'analysis' by Rex Nutting of Marketwatch supposedly showing that spending has actually grown slower under Obama than under past presidents. James Pethokoukis explains here and here some of the reasons why this is nonsense (make sure to read both), and presents these two graphs to illustrate the real story. First, the properly illustrated rates of spending growth:

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Second, the properly illustrated share of GDP - and again, this is comparing to GDP as a whole (including both tax-financed and debt-financed government spending, rather than just compared to the private sector).

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(UPDATE: Brian Darling has more on exactly why the Democrats were responsible for the 2009 budget)

And note, these are for years before the new Obamacare spending entitlement and Medicaid expansion go into full effect, plus before the waves of retiring Baby Boomers start exploding the rates of spending by Social Security and Medicare. As this NY Times graphic illustrates, entitlements have been driving the real per capita growth of government for years:

Entitlements

But there's more! This enormous and excellent graphic by Political Math (again, I'm indebted to the work that went into these graphics, make sure to click the links and follow for a full explanation) shows exactly how many other bits of hacktastic dishonesty had to go into that Rex Nutting analysis:

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So much of our public debate over spending and debt involves numbers with, as PJ O'Rourke once put it, vapor trails of zeroes after them, and it is dreary work indeed trying to make sense of them all. But our analytical framework should remain constant: the voters need to understand exactly how large a share of private sector income is being spent by government or borrowed against by government, and whether we are growing the private sector faster or slower than the public sector. Until we start framing the issue in those terms, we are not even asking the right questions.

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Posted by Baseball Crank at 3:00 PM | Politics 2012 | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

May 22, 2012

POLITICS: Florida Democrats: This Is Why You Fail

One Florida political blog calls this "Maybe the worst political web video ever produced in Florida" and comments that "You watch this video and all of the losses — Jim Davis, Alex Sink, Kendrick Meek, etc. — begin to make sense." David Freddoso quips that "After watching this, I'm convinced Obama is toast in FL this year." And it's not even targeting any of the actual Republican candidates in 2012, but instead going after the popular Marco Rubio. How bad is this web ad produced by the Florida Democratic Party? Watch for yourself.

Posted by Baseball Crank at 9:49 AM | Politics 2012 | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

May 21, 2012

WAR: Barack Obama Will Not Defeat The Taliban

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We have reached an endpoint of sorts in the decade-long Afghanistan War. President Obama will not keep U.S. troops in Afghanistan to defeat the Taliban and force them to accept terms of any kind. Have we lost the war? Should we have left years ago, or never gone in? That depends on your view of what we were fighting for and about in the first place.

I. Lowering The Bar

The New York Times summarizes the lowered expectations Obama is pushing to be able to declare a successful withdrawal:

Gone is the much greater expectation that NATO will leave behind a cohesive central government with real influence beyond Kabul and a handful of other population centers. Gone is the assumption that Helmand Province, Kandahar and the rest of the heavily contested south - where the bulk of the 2010 influx of troops was sent - will remain entirely in the control of the central government once that area is transferred to Afghanistan’s fledgling national security forces.
...President Obama's national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, described a hoped-for outcome in Afghanistan that was far less ambitious than what American officials once envisioned.

"The goal is to have an Afghanistan again that has a degree of stability such that forces like Al Qaeda and associated groups cannot have safe haven unimpeded, which could threaten the region and threaten U.S. and other interests in the world," Mr. Donilon said.

Nowhere on this list is the defeat of the Taliban, which - seeing this coming - gave up on peace talks months ago:

While Kandahar and other population centers in the south have seen a decrease in Taliban attacks since the surge forces arrived, insurgent attacks have increased in less populated southern areas, military officials report. The heads of the Senate and House intelligence committees, appearing on CNN's "State of the Union" program two weeks ago, and reporting on a recent trip to Afghanistan, said the Taliban were gaining ground, something that is bound to accelerate once the NATO troops give way to Afghan-led forces.
"I think we'd both say that what we found is that the Taliban is stronger," Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, said, seated next to Representative Mike Rogers, Republican of Michigan.

As Dan Spencer noted yesterday, this is a distinct change of tune from 2008, when then-candidate Obama described Afghanistan as "a war that we have to win" and 2009, when President Obama declared:

This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which Al Qaida would plot to kill more Americans.
So this is not only a war worth fighting; this is a - this is fundamental to the defense of our people.

But despite the President's bold words, the Administration never did set a clear definition of victory in Afghanistan. Specifically, while the State Department designated the Pakistani Taliban a terrorist group, it resisted requests by even Democratic Senators to designate the Afghan Taliban as a terrorist group, apparently - at the time - due to an unwillingness to foreclose a negotiated resolution that would bring the Taliban back into the political process. This was not a new problem (the State Department had likewise refused to designate the Taliban as a terrorist group during the Bush Administration even in 2001) but at a time when the nation was ramping up its military commitment to the war in Afghanistan, the broader refusal to define an enemy to be defeated (the essential element of any military action) left the war effort directionless and increasingly difficult to justify to a war-weary public. And now, by withdrawing unilaterally without using the leverage of our arms to force a negotiated resolution on favorable terms, we are essentially washing our hands of the fight against the Taliban.

II. A Premeditated Retreat

Oops David Sanger in the NY Times looks at how President Obama came to this pass. He starts with the 2009 announcement of a 'surge' in Afghanistan that President Obama had reluctantly agreed to after months of requests from the military leadership and which was sold to the public in large part on the basis of the credibility of the military brass:

The aide told Mr. Obama that he believed military leaders had agreed to the tight schedule to begin withdrawing those troops just 18 months later only because they thought they could persuade an inexperienced president to grant more time if they demanded it.
"Well," Mr. Obama responded that day, "I'm not going to give them more time."

A year later, when the president and a half-dozen White House aides began to plan for the withdrawal, the generals were cut out entirely. There was no debate, and there were no leaks.

So much for the views of the commanders on the ground; so much for flexibly or pragmatically re-evaluating the situation; so much for victory. Obama had "narrowed the goals in Afghanistan, and narrowed them again, until he could make the case that America had achieved limited objectives in a war that was, in any traditional sense, unwinnable":

"I think he hated the idea from the beginning," one of his advisers said of the surge. "He understood why we needed to try, to knock back the Taliban. But the military was 'all in,' as they say, and Obama wasn't."
...By early 2011, Mr. Obama had seen enough. He told his staff to arrange a speedy, orderly exit from Afghanistan. This time there would be no announced national security meetings, no debates with the generals. Even Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton were left out until the final six weeks.

The key decisions had essentially been made already when Gen. David H. Petraeus, in his last months as commander in Afghanistan, arrived in Washington with a set of options for the president that called for a slow withdrawal of surge troops. He wanted to keep as many troops as possible in Afghanistan through the next fighting season, with a steep drop to follow. Mr. Obama concluded that the Pentagon had not internalized that the goal was not to defeat the Taliban.

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As Jonathan Tobin notes in Commentary:

[I]t is now apparent that the administration lacked the one thing any country needs in war: a commitment to victory. Without it, the Afghan surge was just a blip on the radar screen and, unlike the Iraqi insurgents who knew President Bush meant business during the U.S. surge in that war, the Taliban were right to discount the possibility that President Obama was just as tough-minded. Even at the outset of the new surge it’s clear now the president saw it as merely a bloody prelude to a withdrawal with, as Sanger notes, no provision for what would happen if the Taliban start their own surge after the Americans leave.
The administration gives itself credit for having rethought strategy and concentrated instead on the real "good war" - fighting al-Qaeda in Pakistan. But if, as Sanger reports, the administration had concluded that there had never been a coherent U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, the same is certainly true of American objectives in Pakistan. In truth, the U.S. has no strategy in Pakistan other than to keep attacking terrorists in the tribal areas with drones, a tactic that is deadly but has no chance of ridding the area of trouble or maintaining Pakistan as an ally in the war against the Islamists. The only thing that recommends this plan is that it requires few American troops and allows the president to adopt the "lead from behind" posture with which he is so comfortable.

President Obama's 2009 decision to stay the course in Afghanistan and use a surge to fight the Taliban was the sort of responsible action that gave the lie to his detractors' assertion that he had little understanding of the strategic imperatives of fighting the country's Islamist foes. But, as we now know, the applause he earned then was largely undeserved. His only real goal was to bug out of Afghanistan but to do so without having lost the country before he ran for re-election in 2012.

This approach is terribly damaging to American credibility, which requires that our allies and enemies alike understand that we finish what we start. However bad Obama's options, he is choosing a path that has emboldened our enemies in the past, most notably Osama bin Laden's famous conclusion from American retreats from Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia (each, perhaps, individually defensible in a way) that America was not the 'strong horse' and could be easily waited out.

III. What Were We Fighting For?

Twin Towers The Afghanistan War began, of course, with the September 11 attacks. As I have previously noted, there were always three war aims:

1. Drive the Taliban, which had supported and sheltered Al Qaeda, from power.

2. Destroy Al Qaeda's training and operations bases in the country, while killing or capturing as many of their personnel as possible.

3. Replace the Taliban with a government that was less repressive, viewed as legitimate by the Afghan people, and would not cooperate with Al Qaeda - a step that inherently involved preventing the revival of the Taliban itself, given its Islamist ideology and thorough integration with Al Qaeda.

Step One was accomplished swiftly in the fall of 2001, and Step Two proceeded apace at the same time; Al Qaeda's leadership was never wholly destroyed (after the November 2001 Battle of Tora Bora, the very top senior leadership fled the country, with Osama bin Laden ending up in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where he was tracked down and killed in May 2011), nor completely routed from the country, but its bases were destroyed and its ability to project power from Afghanistan to outside countries was essentially crippled. Afghanistan by itself has never been a threat to the United States, and since 2002, Al Qaeda has been unable to use the country to project threats outside of its immediate neighborhood. By that measure, victory was already in hand a decade ago, much as our original mission in Iraq was accomplished once Saddam Hussein's regime was toppled.

Step Three was always the diciest as a long-term proposition; as I wrote in early 2003:

Long-term, we would like to establish a secure government in Afghanistan that will consolidate the victory over theocracy and prevent re-establishment of havens for terror. But if we fail in that aim, as we still may, the war will no more be a failure than it is a failure to weed your garden in spring and, the following year, discover new weeds.

Where to go from driving the Taliban from power? The Bush Administration had a short and medium-term strategy, but never really answered that question in the long term. Republicans and conservatives (including Bush, vocally in the 2000 campaign and throughout his presidency when facing calls for interventions in places like Liberia) have generally been opposed to sending troops to foreign lands for "nation-building" purposes, but there is a certain amount of wisdom to Colin Powell's "Pottery Barn rule" (you broke it, you bought it): if you topple a foreign government by force, it is wise and arguably a responsibility to stick around long enough to have some say in what replaces it and try to prevent another hostile regime from being formed. This was the analogy drawn from successful 'nation rebuilding' in Germany and Japan after World War II. And that, at first, was what we did in Afghanistan: help Hamid Karzai form a new government, hold (at the time) reasonably free and fair elections for president in 2004 and the parliament in 2005, engage in combat to defend against threats to the formation of a democratic government, and add in some public works, education and other public-diplomacy endeavors to encourage the Afghans to stick with the new system. More controversially, the Bush Administration treated both the Afghan and Iraqi theaters as opportunities to put on something of a demonstration project on democracy and civil liberty in the Islamic heartland in the hopes of inspiring Muslims across the region to prefer alternatives to tyranny and take responsibility for their own countries' problems rather than persisting in projecting violence towards the U.S., Israel and the West as a proxy for addressing their own societies' failures.

At the time, Democrats blasted the Bush Administration and Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld in particular for preferring a "light footprint" in Afghanistan rather than directing more troops to the country. Much of this argument, in its day, involved Monday morning quarterbacking of the Battle of Tora Bora, but a decade on, the debate specific to Tora Bora and the original invasion strategy no longer has much public policy salience and can be best left to the military historians to judge. And ironically, President Obama has now come around to claim ownership of a version of the (at least stereotypically) Rumsfeldian view of a mobile, quick-strike, shock-and-awe military heavy on technology and light on 'boots on the ground' nation-building:

Out of the experience emerged Mr. Obama's 'light footprint' strategy, in which the United States strikes from a distance but does not engage in years-long, enervating occupations. That doctrine shaped the president's thinking about how to deal with the challenges that followed - Libya, Syria and a nuclear Iran.

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On the specific question of nation-building, it is hard today to find anyone who thinks America has not done enough in Afghanistan. We have bled a decade of young men and women and expended much treasure in exchange for little gratitude. The Karzai government has been an improvement in most every way over most Afghan governments in recent memory, but by any measure - commitment to free and fair elections, civil and religious liberties, resisting corruption, providing security to its people and a loyal ally to the United States - it has fallen far short of the standards set by even second-rate members of the community of free nations. Americans in the Afghan theater have many tales of betrayal by our putative Afghan allies, and a March massacre of 16 civilians by a U.S. soldier has exacerbated the problem.

Winning Afghan hearts and minds always faced some daunting obstacles that are best illustrated with a few facts:

1. The median age in Afghanistan (for both men and women) is 18.2 years. 42% of the population is age 14 or younger. Male life expectancy is 48.45 years.

2. 56.9% of Afghan men over age 15, and 87.4% of Afghan women, are illiterate.

3. Less than a quarter - 23% - of the population is urbanized, compared to 66% in Iraq.

4. In one highly-publicized poll taken a few years ago in the southern Kandahar and Helmund provinces of Afghanistan by the International Council on Security and Development, 92% of Afghan men claimed never to have heard of the September 11 attacks. While it's not clear how reliable this particular finding is, other polls have tended to show a good deal of public hostility in that region to military efforts to defeat the Taliban (see here, here and here).

In short, the average Afghan in the countryside - constituting most of the population, unlike in Iraq - isn't old enough to remember why the United States went to war in their country more than a decade ago, and a largely ignorant and illiterate population is deeply disconnected from any concerns outside their immediate neighborhood.

After Iraq, the attention of the Islamic world has moved on to popular movements of various stripes against entrenched tyrannies in places like Egypt, Syria, Libya, and Tunisia, some of those movements more promising or alarming than others, but all of them reflecting that the genie of destabilizing revolutions is now out of the bottle for good or ill. We have given the Afghan people plenty of chances to build, as Ben Franklin would say, a republic, if they could keep it. And we have done all we need to do in Afghanistan to encourage a process of change across the Islamic world that is now mostly beyond our control. If we are to stay in Afghanistan for some purpose, it must not be simply nation-building or demonstration of the value of alternatives to Islamist government. It must be the defeat of a defined enemy. And that means that if we stay, we stay to battle the Taliban.

IV. Should We Let The Taliban Go?

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This brings us to the core of the problem. On the one hand, when last in office, the Taliban was effectively organizationally indistinguishable from Al Qaeda, giving it safe haven and relying on it for security assistance; that was why Mullah Omar's government was unwilling to turn over Al Qaeda's leadership even when the alternative was a U.S. invasion. In practice, Taliban governance was the harshest possible form of Islamist theocracy, putting the leadership in ideological sync with the most virulent elements of Islamist terrorism. There is no way to be certain that a reconstituted Taliban, victorious after a decade fighting the U.S., would not reopen its alliance with Al Qaeda (although one could argue, as I did in 2003, that we should just return when we see that happen). There is certainly no reason to think the Taliban have changed their brutal ways.

On the other hand, 42% of the population of the country - Afghanistan's largest ethnic group - is Pashtun, and there is effectively no other political organization that rivals the Taliban for representation of Pashtun interests. In a tribal society, that is an unbreakable hold. This is why - as is often the case in civil wars - some form of political accomodation with some political organ that includes much or all of the Taliban's constituency and probably a good deal of its personnel is perhaps inevitable. But a U.S. departure without engagement in the process of forcing the Taliban to accept coexistence with the rest of the country's factions leaves the enemy in the field on its own terms and in a position to declare victory.

As I think the foregoing should illustrate, the problem of how to define victory in Afghanistan is a hard one; it bedeviled the Bush Administration after the 2004 and 2005 elections there marked the end of the low-hanging fruit of nation-building. Mitt Romney has proposed thus far that we remain flexible and listen to the commanders on the ground, which is better than ignoring them but not really a clear answer either to what our endgame is intended to be (not that Romney will have much control over the evacuation by next January, even if he wins the election). So, unlike the decision to get Osama bin Laden, this is not an easy call for Obama.

But President Obama's unwillingness to back up his own public pronouncements of the importance of the war, to listen any further to the generals, to consider further the conditions on the ground, or to require that any real progress be made against the enemy before abandoning Afghanistan illustrates Obama's limitations as Commander-in-Chief. His record on national security has not been an unbroken record of disaster but a mixed bag with some successes and more than a few pleasant surprises in his willingness to walk away from ridiculous campaign promises. But where Obama has succeeded, he has mostly done so either by doing nothing or by staying the course of directions set in the Bush years. Asked to actually set a meaningful new direction or expend scarce political capital even on an ongoing shooting war, his instinct is to first procrastinate, then kick the can down the road for a while, and ultimately throw in the towel. Rousing the nation to take controversial actions is above his pay grade.

The choices before us are indeed difficult. But we have abandoned Afghanistan before, and lived to regret it. Let us hope that we do not again.

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Posted by Baseball Crank at 4:00 PM | War 2007-12 | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)

POLITICS: Democrats Question Republicans' Patriotism Over Debt Fight

With House Republicans (and their few allies in the Senate) gearing up for another battle over whether to raise the national debt limit without doing anything to cut spending, Democrats (and their many allies in the media) are falling back on their favored tactic of attacking the other side's motives, this time accusing Republicans of deliberately harming the economy for partisan gain. This is either a sign of Democratic desperation or, perhaps, proof that the Democrats are so far down the rabbit hole they cannot even comprehend why anyone would want to reduce spending when the nation has spent itself so deeply into debt.

The irony, of course, is that Democrats are the first people to shriek and run to the media's self-appointed civility police when they feel their patriotism is being questioned; it's always a big applause line for Democrats to claim that they will never question anyone's patriotism...and also a big applause line when they do just that, as this video juxtaposing remarks by Barack Obama in June and July 2008 illustrates:

Of course, Obama has since done exactly what he once said was unpatriotic (adding $4 trillion to the national debt), and in less than half the time - and now, he and his allies are claiming that it's unpatriotic to try to solve the problem. Now, here's Barbara Boxer:

[Y]ou know, it's interesting that they're setting up a big fight, McConnell and Boehner, making it a crisis when it isn't a crisis and demanding more cuts when they didn't live up to the cuts they agreed to. Because they want to create a crisis so maybe say, oh, my goodness, maybe if we change everything, things will be better. Maybe we need a different president.
[CHUCK] TODD: They're doing this to try to help Mitt Romney?

SEN. BOXER: I think they're doing it to hurt the Democrats, to say that the Democrats are in control of the Senate and we're not doing the right thing when the facts show otherwise.

Chuck Schumer, quoted in an AP article helpfully entitled "Is GOP trying to sabotage economy to hurt Obama?":

"The last thing the country needs is a rerun of last summer's debacle that nearly brought down our economy," Schumer said in a statement. In an interview, Schumer added: "I hope that the speaker is not doing this because he doesn't want to see the economy improve, because what he said will certainly rattle the markets."

Josh Marshall of TalkingPointsMemo goes full-on tinfoil hat: "Unfortunately, its pretty much a certainty that republicans are trying to damage the economy to deny Obama reelection." Other liberal bloggers agree.

This a rerun of the rhetoric deployed from the Obama campaign on down last year:

Schumer and other top Democrats have said for months that GOP lawmakers may be trying to strangle the economic recovery for political reasons.
"Their strategy is to suffocate the economy for the sake of what they think will be a political victory," Obama's campaign manager, Jim Messina, wrote in an email to supporters last October, when Congress was debating a jobs bill.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said his Republican counterpart was not cooperating on that legislation "in hopes that he can get my job, perhaps."

Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, told The Associated Press last year that some GOP lawmakers, "through their intransigence, cleverly set up a situation for America's economy to fail, either by needlessly driving us to default, or needlessly driving us into massive public-sector layoffs."

This is not a new rhetorical strategy. In 2008, Joe Biden famously suggested in 2008 that Republicans were unpatriotic for opposing higher taxes. In 2000, we had the Clinton White House charging that Dick Cheney was "talking down the economy".

Predictable rhetorical hypocrisy aside, what the tone and content of the Democrats' attacks suggests is that they either can't or won't deal with the possibility that the problem at hand is too much debt, not efforts to reduce the debt. At this point, they're like junkies resisting rehab, denying that they have a problem and insisting loudly that the real problem is those guys trying to stage the intervention. It's true, of course, that brinksmanship over the debt ceiling is a less than ideal way to handle this situation, but it's the only thing tried that has accomplished anything at all under Obama. The Democrats who control the Senate have not passed a budget in three years (even though a budget resolution doesn't require 60 votes), and have stopped even proposing them for a vote. And they won't vote for the only Democratic budget on the table, as President Obama's budget got zero votes in the House and zero votes in the Senate, after last year also getting zero votes in the Senate. As Paul Ryan explains, this is because the Democrats simply don't want the public to see how much they propose to raise taxes and still not fix any of the nation's fiscal problems. It seems almost quaint to reflect that one of the major controversies of the 2004 presidential campaign was John Kerry's vote on an $87 billion war appropriations bill; today you can have a $111 billion projected increase in one of Obamacare's line items and the Administration barely feels the need to explain it, let alone return to Congress for votes. When the party controlling two-thirds of the branches responsible for taxes and spending won't attempt to fix the problem, the House has little choice but to use the only tools available to it.

We have serious fiscal problems caused by too much spending and not enough private sector growth to pay for it. As we have seen in Europe, the real question regarding our economic future and the federal government's creditworthiness is not what temporary political tempests arise around plans to fix the problem, but rather the question of whether the government will actually adopt such plans and whether they have a meaningful chance of success. That's the question the Democrats desperately want to avoid facing.

Posted by Baseball Crank at 11:15 AM | Politics 2012 | Comments (11) | TrackBack (0)

May 14, 2012

POLITICS: CBS/NYT: Romney 46, Obama 43 Among Registered Voters

In a long election season, it's never wise to get too high or too low over any one poll. Presidential elections are won at the state level, but statewide polling is fairly sporadic at this stage of the race, so we're stuck reading national polls a lot. But the latest poll is bad news for President Obama.

We all know the major issues by now to look for with individual polls: some polls are adults, and are totally useless, because only registered voters can vote. Polls of likely voters, in turn, are vastly more accurate and less Democratic-biased than polls of registered voters, many of whom also don't show up to vote. Most polls are also reported after weighting to achieve some guesstimate of the partisan breakdown of the general electorate among Democrats, Republicans and Independents. Even polls that don't feature egregious hackery are an inexact science, because they rest on the pollster's current assumptions about the D/R/I split and the 'screen' they use to decide who is a likely voter. If the shape of the electorate is not as projected, the poll will be wrong.

Polling averages tend to be steadier than individual polls conducted over a few hundred respondents, and they show a tight race - the RealClearPolitics average shows Obama up 46.5%-45.1%, while the left-leaning TPMPolltracker average shows Romney up 46.1-44.2. Those averages smooth out possible outliers like last Friday's jaw-dropping Rasmussen poll showing Romney up 50-43 among likely voters. And the averages themselves get more reliable as more of the pollsters start polling likely voters - right now, Rasmussen is virtually the only pollster reporting regularly conducted polls that is polling likely rather than registered voters. Looking at RCP, Rasmussen's mid-April poll is the last likely voter poll showing President Obama in the lead.

All that said, the Obama campaign cannot be happy with the results of the latest CBS/New York Times poll - a poll of registered voters done by two organizations notoriously unfriendly to Republicans* - showing Mitt Romney leading Barack Obama 46-43. Some breakdowns below the fold.

1. This is a registered voter poll, which as noted above means it tends to favor Democrats. The weighted party-ID split is 36% D, 30% R, 34% I.

2. The trend is negative for Obama - 48-42 lead in February, 47-44 in March, tied 46-46 in April, down 43-46 in May. Whatever the methodology, if you use it consistently and show a clear trend, that says something.

3. Gender gap? Romney leads 45-42 among men, actually down from a 49-43 lead last month, but after all the "war on women" hoo-ha, Obama's 49-43 lead among women has flipped to a 46-44 Romney lead.

4. Oddly, Obama for once is polling behind his approval rating, which is up to 50% in this poll. One of the common themes of the past few years is that he tends to poll above his approval rating - people tend to like him or say they do, but don't think he's getting the job done. This, compared to the general personal and political unlikeability of Mitt Romney, is one reason why I tend to agree with Michael Barone's third scenario that there's a good chance that undecided voters wait until the last minute to resign themselves and break for Romney, much as happened in the primaries among reluctant voters who felt they had run out of better options.

The poll dropped some of the questions in last month's survey about Romney, but that poll had him tied even though voters said by 60-34 that they can't relate to him and by 62-27 that he says what people want to hear, not what he believes. In other words, it's only Romney's inherent flaws as a candidate that are even keeping this race close - people neither especially like nor trust Romney but are still dissatisfied enough with Obama to give him a shot. The longer the polls look tied, the worse things get for Obama, because it means voters haven't bought his various efforts to make Romney radioactive. Remember, all this occurs against a backdrop of voters unhappy with the direction of the country and thus predisposed to change horses.

4. Despite its near-unanimous popularity among the media, entertainment and academia, Obama's support of same-sex marriage is not an asset; by 25-16 (22-14 among independents), more voters say they are less likely rather than more likely to vote for Obama after his change of position on the issue, whereas by 23-17 (20-20 among independents), voters say they are more likely to vote for Romney as a result. Just under 60% of voters don't consider the issue a factor. Notably, the poll found that the public, by 50-46 (50-47 among independents) favors amending the U.S. Constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman. Meanwhile, by 67-24, voters think Obama's change of position on the issue is politically expedient rather than principled. In other words, the voters think he's being political and doing something unpopular. This is not where you want to be in an election. Yet another reason why I refer to Romney-Obama as the collision between a resistible force and a movable object.

6. 62% of voters named the economy as the number one issue and another 20% named the budget, the deficit or health care. This race will be dominated by the big-picture domestic issues, not foreign policy or social issues, as much influence as those have on the baked-in partisan divides.

* - The National Journal has some thoughts on the oddities of the CBS/NYT poll's methodology.

POSTSCRIPT: Bad polling news for Obama is also bad for his campaign for another, more immediate reason. Both of these candidates are unusually dependent on raising vast sums of money. Obama, as a number of press accounts recently have noted, has mostly lost the confidence of Wall Street fundraisers, who were a huge element of his fundraising in 2012. Romney, by contrast, as a former private equity guy, has a natural base of support throughout the financial industry. But many potential donors are terrified of donating to Romney and seeing Obama win, given this White House's well-known efforts to target and intimidate private citizens who donate to the opposition. Perceptions shifting away from an inevitable Obama victory could have a disproportionate effect on the fundraising balance of power.

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Posted by Baseball Crank at 8:00 PM | Politics 2012 | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

May 7, 2012

POLITICS: Operation Counterweight Comes To Indiana

Indiana Republicans go to the polls tomorrow to decide whether to re-nominate 80-year-old 36-year Senate veteran Richard Lugar or to pick instead State Treasurer Richard Mourdock, running as the conservative alternative. In the usual course of events, my advice for activists and pundits alike in these races is to not forget that every race is unique, based on the individual candidates, the state or district, and the issue environment of the day. Not every state is Utah or Rhode Island; not every conservative is Marco Rubio or Christine O'Donnell; not every moderate is Chris Christie or Jim Jeffords. Often (but not always), the better candidate wins, whether or not that candidate is the most conservative, the most Establishment-backed, or considered the most 'electable' by pundits and political pros.

That being said, the conditions of 2012 - specifically, the now-certain nomination of Mitt Romney as the Republican candidate for president - call for conservatives to take a harder line than ever in supporting Operation Counterweight (William Jacobson's term), in particular to seek in Senate races what David Freddoso has called "an un-bossable Senate." Party insiders expect conservatives, Tea Party-style outsiders and single-issue social conservatives to show up to vote anyway for a party whose leader is a man many of us distrust on nearly every issue. Politics, they remind us, is compromise. And that's precisely my point: it is exactly because one side of the party got Romney that the other can less afford to swallow Romney-like figures in the Senate. That doesn't mean backing the most conservative candidate in every single race without considering any other factor - but it does mean giving more than usual preference to the more conservative and/or less establishment option in Senate races. It's not about demanding absolute party purity - it's about recognizing that Romney has sopped up most of our tolerance for impurity already. If you want a Senate that will hold Romney's feet to the fire, you have to start by replacing men like Dick Lugar and, in Utah, 78-year old Orrin Hatch.

Republican voters have a tremendous opportunity to write on a clean slate in 2012's Senate races. Out of 33 Senate races, only 7 feature a Republican incumbent, and only three of those have been in office for a full term: Bob Corker of Tennessee (running for his second term, having been first elected in 2006), Lugar, and Hatch, who like Lugar was first elected in 1976 on the coattails of Gerald Ford (who carried both their states that year against Jimmy Carter).

Considered solely from the vantage point of partisan loyalty, you might regard Lugar as a good Republican, and Hatch an excellent one. And indeed, Lugar came to Washington in the 70s as very much a mainstream Republican, not significantly less conservative within the context of his times than Mourdock, and Hatch arrived as a movement conservative, much like his current opponent, State Senator Dan Liljenquist. But 36 years in the Senate will make all but the hardiest souls go native. Indeed, in Hatch's case that was his campaign theme in 1976, running against three-term Democratic incumbent Frank Moss: "What do you call a Senator who's served in office for 18 years?" "You call him home." Even if you think these men have done more good than harm in the Senate, it is time to replace them with younger, better alternatives.

As I've noted before, besides the various ideological and cultural divides within the GOP, a core dividing line is over a sense of urgency to contain the runaway growth of federal spending and the reach of the federal government. It is difficult to picture Lugar and Hatch, as a pair of courtly octogenarians, having the necessary energy not only to seek what is apt to be a difficult partisan confrontation over these issues, but to put pressure on a president from their own party. And while Utah voters will surely be excited to go to the polls for Romney, conservative voters in other states like Indiana will need more encouragement - not yet another message that the establishment has shut them out. That's good news in Ohio, where a fresh face (State Treasurer Josh Mandel) is on the ballot facing accused wife-beater Sherrod Brown; it may be more difficult to manage in some other races. And building a critical mass of such candidates (Mandel, Liljenquist, Mourdock, Ted Cruz in Texas, Jeff Flake in Arizona, Don Stenberg in Nebraska, Mark Neumann in Wisconsin, possibly a few others who haven't proven themselves just yet) will make it easier to convince conservatives nationwide that even with Romney at the top, and even with some Senate races where we are resigned to moderates (Dean Heller, Scott Brown, Linda Lingle) or establishment-minded conservatives (George Allen), the party has not completely lost touch with the lessons of its victories in 2010.

In the presidential race, we go to war with the nominee we have. And we should unite behind him, because he's the only thing standing between us and another term of Obama. But this is not Mitt Romney's party, it's ours. We deserve a Senate that will stand up to both Romney and Obama. That's why it's time for voters to give Lugar and Hatch the gold watch after 36 years in the Senate, and try something new.

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Posted by Baseball Crank at 2:00 PM | Politics 2012 | Comments (8) | TrackBack (0)

May 4, 2012

BASEBALL: Doubled Up

Looking through the baseball-reference.com Play Indexes, which have this data back to 1948, yields some interesting nuggets.

Highest opposing BABIP, 100 or more innings: Glendon Rusch in 2003 (.381). You can beat the balls in play if you're good enough: BABIP vs Pedro Martinez in 1999: .325.

Most 2B allowed in a season since 1948: 68 by Rick Helling in 2001. Tied for second: 66 by Helling in 2000.

Most 3B allowed in a season since 1948 is a 4-way tie at 17, but Larry Christenson managed it in 1976 in just 168.2 IP. That 1976 Phillies team frequently had Greg Luzinski in LF, Ollie Brown or Jay Johnstone in RF, Garry Maddox in CF.

Most steals allowed in a season: 60 by Dwight Gooden in 1990. Tied for second: Gooden with 56 in 1988. Fewest: 200 innings in a season without allowing a steal has been done 10 times, four of them by Whitey Ford; Kenny Rogers in 2002 is the only one since 1968. Most career steals allowed: 757 off Nolan Ryan, and it's not even close, Greg Maddux is second at 547. Gooden allowed 452 steals in just 2800.2 innings.

Then there's the things besides steals that get buried in a pitcher's line, even looking at BABIP numbers, most of all double plays, doubles and triples. Tommy John induced 605 double plays in his career. Since 1948, Jim Kaat is second with 462, a huge gap. For the 61 pitchers to throw 3000 or more innings over that period - admittedly an elite group - I broke out their GIDP, steals, doubles, triples, and total bases allowed on doubles and triples (23B/9, counting triples twice) per 9 innings. The results are obviously heavily influenced by era and park and teammates, but interesting nonetheless - Tommy John and Dennis Eckersley are as dominant in the most- and least-DP business as Ryan and Whitey Ford are in allowing the most and least steals. I sorted the table by GIDP/9, so for the others:

SB/9: Most - Ryan, Tim Wakefield, Joe Niekro, Eckersley; Fewest - Ford, Billy Pierce, Warren Spahn, Rogers.

3B/9: Most - Robin Roberts, Bob Friend, Curt Simmons (Roberts' longtime teammate). Fewest - Chuck Finley, Randy Johnson, Jamie Moyer (Johnson's Seattle teammate).

23B/9 (largely the same list as 2B/9): Most - Rogers, David Wells, Livan Hernandez, Wakefield. Fewest - Juan Marichal, Ryan, Bob Gibson, Ford.

All of which went a long way to explaining to me why Whitey Ford was so successful in an era when the truly fielding-independent paths to success (K, BB, HR) were limited - few pitchers in the 50s had especially low BB/9, high K/9 or huge variances in HR/9. Not to say there was no variations, but not nearly enough for a pitcher to really distinguish himself (it's a study for another day to ask whether BABIP was as pitcher-independent in that era as today). But what's clear is that, with the help of a superior defense and possibly park effects (see here and here), Ford cut off the running game, induced a lot of double plays, and rarely allowed doubles or triples, which in addition to a fairly low HR rate explains how a guy with a 1.37 K/BB ratio from 1950-60 could be such a dominating pitcher year in and year out.

The table is below the fold.

Player	IP	GDP	GDP/9	SB	SB/9	2B	2B/9	3B	3B/9	23B/9
Tommy John	4710.3	605	1.16	240	0.46	699	1.34	117	0.22	1.78
Claude Osteen	3460.7	394	1.02	76	0.20	497	1.29	79	0.21	1.70
Whitey Ford	3170.3	354	1.00	29	0.08	376	1.07	84	0.24	1.54
Andy Pettitte	3055.3	339	1.00	176	0.52	605	1.78	57	0.17	2.12
Mike Torrez	3043.7	324	0.96	238	0.70	502	1.48	73	0.22	1.92
Kenny Rogers	3302.7	350	0.95	63	0.17	719	1.96	69	0.19	2.34
Lew Burdette	3067.3	325	0.95	67	0.20	449	1.32	93	0.27	1.86
Jerry Reuss	3669.7	375	0.92	189	0.46	560	1.37	73	0.18	1.73
Jim Kaat	4530.3	462	0.92	168	0.33	706	1.40	132	0.26	1.93
Kevin Brown	3256.3	330	0.91	180	0.50	493	1.36	53	0.15	1.66
Orel Hershiser	3130.3	314	0.90	181	0.52	525	1.51	65	0.19	1.88
Bob Friend	3611.0	345	0.86	142	0.35	472	1.18	120	0.30	1.77
Chuck Finley	3197.3	305	0.86	269	0.76	577	1.62	40	0.11	1.85
Tom Glavine	4413.3	420	0.86	226	0.46	786	1.60	76	0.15	1.91
Larry Jackson	3262.7	308	0.85	89	0.25	470	1.30	94	0.26	1.82
Livan Hernandez	3139.3	291	0.83	159	0.46	631	1.81	82	0.24	2.28
Rick Reuschel	3548.3	320	0.81	204	0.52	599	1.52	102	0.26	2.04
Milt Pappas	3186.0	279	0.79	161	0.45	473	1.34	71	0.20	1.74
Gaylord Perry	5350.0	451	0.76	236	0.40	708	1.19	142	0.24	1.67
Greg Maddux	5008.3	422	0.76	547	0.98	817	1.47	84	0.15	1.77
Jerry Koosman	3839.3	319	0.75	190	0.45	597	1.40	94	0.22	1.84
Dennis Martinez	3999.7	332	0.75	422	0.95	651	1.46	107	0.24	1.95
Mike Mussina	3562.7	293	0.74	182	0.46	719	1.82	53	0.13	2.08
Warren Spahn	4812.7	391	0.73	77	0.14	596	1.11	120	0.22	1.56
Jamie Moyer	4049.0	328	0.73	314	0.70	812	1.80	59	0.13	2.07
Rick Wise	3127.3	251	0.72	252	0.73	525	1.51	89	0.26	2.02
Phil Niekro	5404.0	431	0.72	446	0.74	734	1.22	124	0.21	1.64
Joe Niekro	3584.3	282	0.71	415	1.04	508	1.28	88	0.22	1.72
Don Drysdale	3432.0	270	0.71	95	0.25	471	1.24	74	0.19	1.62
Bert Blyleven	4970.0	389	0.70	424	0.77	712	1.29	116	0.21	1.71
Jack Morris	3824.0	299	0.70	373	0.88	572	1.35	91	0.21	1.77
Vida Blue	3343.3	261	0.70	197	0.53	458	1.23	88	0.24	1.71
Steve Carlton	5217.7	405	0.70	314	0.54	807	1.39	137	0.24	1.86
David Wells	3439.0	266	0.70	268	0.70	741	1.94	65	0.17	2.28
Curt Simmons	3339.3	255	0.69	112	0.30	512	1.38	104	0.28	1.94
Doyle Alexander	3367.7	256	0.68	234	0.63	587	1.57	95	0.25	2.08
Bob Gibson	3884.3	292	0.68	196	0.45	457	1.06	83	0.19	1.44
Jim Perry	3285.7	245	0.67	80	0.22	416	1.14	77	0.21	1.56
Frank Tanana	4188.3	309	0.66	305	0.66	694	1.49	91	0.20	1.88
Tim Wakefield	3226.3	232	0.65	448	1.25	672	1.87	54	0.15	2.18
Billy Pierce	3296.7	232	0.63	50	0.14	413	1.13	94	0.26	1.64
John Smoltz	3473.0	244	0.63	182	0.47	605	1.57	67	0.17	1.92
Mickey Lolich	3638.3	255	0.63	161	0.40	564	1.40	74	0.18	1.76
Jim Palmer	3948.0	273	0.62	265	0.60	512	1.17	88	0.20	1.57
Early Wynn	3495.3	240	0.62	116	0.30	488	1.26	86	0.22	1.70
Charlie Hough	3801.3	260	0.62	398	0.94	563	1.33	83	0.20	1.73
Bob Welch	3092.0	209	0.61	213	0.62	482	1.40	72	0.21	1.82
Roger Clemens	4916.7	330	0.60	446	0.82	796	1.46	84	0.15	1.76
Tom Seaver	4783.0	315	0.59	409	0.77	675	1.27	120	0.23	1.72
Danny Darwin	3016.7	195	0.58	262	0.78	544	1.62	72	0.21	2.05
Robin Roberts	4688.7	295	0.57	182	0.35	794	1.52	168	0.32	2.17
Randy Johnson	4135.3	252	0.55	456	0.99	660	1.44	58	0.13	1.69
Fergie Jenkins	4500.7	274	0.55	284	0.57	732	1.46	99	0.20	1.86
Curt Schilling	3261.0	193	0.53	105	0.29	612	1.69	60	0.17	2.02
Juan Marichal	3507.0	207	0.53	176	0.45	396	1.02	70	0.18	1.38
Nolan Ryan	5386.0	314	0.52	757	1.26	649	1.08	106	0.18	1.44
Luis Tiant	3486.3	203	0.52	182	0.47	524	1.35	100	0.26	1.87
Jim Bunning	3760.3	210	0.50	208	0.50	556	1.33	95	0.23	1.79
Don Sutton	5282.3	292	0.50	432	0.74	728	1.24	107	0.18	1.60
Catfish Hunter	3449.3	183	0.48	202	0.53	525	1.37	70	0.18	1.74
Dennis Eckersley	3285.7	146	0.40	380	1.04	571	1.56	71	0.19	1.95

« Close It

Posted by Baseball Crank at 5:00 PM | Baseball 2012-13 • | Baseball Studies | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)

BASEBALL: Exit Sandman

The torn ACL suffered by Mariano Rivera shagging fly balls in the wet Kansas City outfield last night most likely ends his career at age 42. Even the most determined Yankee hater like myself - or the most determined skeptic of the modern closer role - had to appreciate and respect Rivera's talent, his accomplishments, his cool under pressure, his Christian faith and quiet dignity. And he did it, basically, with one pitch.

A few numbers to give the scale of Rivera's greatness, which will undoubtedly carry him swiftly to Cooperstown:

-Rivera exits still at the top of his game. His ERA and ERA+ thus far this season were both better than his career averages for the fifth consecutive season...from age 38-42. Counting the postseason, he was working on strings of 21 straight appearances without an unintentional walk and 28 straight appearances without allowing a home run. This season, he'd struck out 8 (above his career K/9 ratio) and allowed (excluding intentional walks) 6 baserunners out of the 32 batters he faced. Absent injury, who knows how long he could have kept that up? But after 1051 big league games without a significant injury, he can hardly complain.

-Rivera appeared in 848 games in which he was not charged with a run, the third-highest total of all time, behind Jesse Orosco (951) and Mike Stanton (864). Rivera threw more innings in those appearances than either of them, although four pitchers since 1918 threw more innings in scoreless appearances (Hoyt Wilhelm, Rollie Fingers, Rich Gossage and Kent Tekulve), plus presumably Walter Johnson (with 110 career shutouts) would top Rivera on that score. Rivera was unscored-upon in 560 of his career saves; only one other pitcher (Trevor Hoffman) even had a career total number of saves within 80 of that.

-Counting the postseason, Rivera's career ERA as a reliever was 1.91. In 1310.2 innings over 1137 appearances. (That drops to 1.90 in 1318.2 innings over 1145 appearances if you throw in the All-Star Game, in which he pitched 8 times, 8 innings, allowing just 5 hits and a single unearned run).

-Rivera's career ERA+ (park-adjusted ERA compared to the league average) of 206 dwarfs the #2 pitcher on the list with at least 1000 innings (Pedro Martinez at 154) - yes, Rivera's career ERA, relative to the league, was 33% better than any other pitcher, ever, and twice as good as the league average. Only 4 other pitchers have career ERA+ above 200 in more than 40 career innings, and all four are young relievers still getting started (Craig Kimbrel, Johnny Venters, Andrew Bailey and Al Albuquerque). Rivera had 12 seasons of 60 or more innings with an ERA+ of 200 or better - second-most is a tie between Pedro and Joe Nathan with 5 apiece (Walter Johnson and Billy Wagner did it four times each). Rivera also ties Walter Johnson with the most seasons (11) of 60 or more innings with an ERA below 2.00, with three others (Hoyt Wilhelm, Cy Young and Grover Alexander) tied with 6 each.

-Rivera allowed 0.9 homers per 9 innings in 2009, the only time in 17 seasons after his rookie year he was above 0.6. He walked 3 men per 9 innings in 2000, the only time in those 17 seasons he was above 2.8 and only the second time he was above 2.5. He had a 3.15 ERA in 2007, the only time he was above 2.85 in those 17 seasons, and in 71.1 innings that year he allowed 4 home runs, struck out 74 batters and allowed 10 unintentional walks, so the ERA was mostly a fluke. That kind of consistency is just unreal.

-Rivera's average of 0.42 homers per 9 innings since 1996 is easily the lowest average in that period for pitchers with 1000 or more innings pitched in that stretch. Out of 167 pitchers, only 63 were below 1 homer per 9, 12 were below 0.75, and just 4 below 0.69: Rivera, Kevin Brown (0.56), Tim Lincecum (0.58) and Brandon Webb (0.63). Rivera did this while pitching in the American League straight through the heart of the power-mad steroid era. In the same time frame, he allowed the 11th fewest walks per 9, the 15th-most K/9, the 5th-best K/BB ratio, and - despite what was often a shaky Yankee middle infield defense - easily the lowest batting average on balls in play, .262 (only Matt Cain is below .270).

(If there was one area where Rivera's regular season record was pedestrian, partly reflecting the way he was used, it was with inherited runners - he allowed in 28.98% of such runners, 79th best among the 296 pitchers to make 400 or more relief appearances; Ricardo Rincon is the best at 18.96%, followed by Trevor Hoffman at 20.23%).

-Yankee Stadium did Rivera no favors: his career ERA was 2.46 at home, 1.95 on the road. Oddly, the home ERA breaks down as 2.61 in Yankee Stadium and 1.73 in New Yankee Stadium. Rivera had a 1.99 career ERA with Jorge Posada catching him, 1.94 with Joe Girardi.

[UPDATED: I looked a little more at the home/road splits. A little is due to bad outings at home as a rookie. A big split is 1999-2002 (home ERA 3.08, road ERA 1.83), as compared to 2009-12 (home ERA 1.73, road ERA 1.96). In 2005, Rivera had a 2.28 ERA at home, but a preposterous 0.26 ERA - one run in 34 appearances - on the road. Although Rivera's K/BB ratio at home has been an insane 94/10 in the new Stadium, the main distinction seems to be on balls in play: BABIP of .275 at old Yankee Stadium, .261 on road, .225 at the new Stadium. I wonder if the infield surfaces or grass have anything to do with that. I can't get a good fix on grass/turf or indoor/outdoor, but Rivera was at his deadliest in domed stadiums, regardless of whether the roof was up: a 1.07 ERA and 1 HR in 50.1 IP at Tropicana Field, a 1.30 ERA and 1 HR in 27.2 IP at the Metrodome, a 1.85 ERA in 43.2 IP at Skydome, a 2.19 ERA in 12.1 IP at the Kingdome, and a scoreless inning at the Tokyo Dome, for a total of a 1.47 ERA in 135 innings]
-Rivera allowed a home run to Reed Johnson last June in a game against the Cubs (he still got the save). That's noteworthy because Rivera pitched 40.1 career regular season innings against the NL Central and NL West, and that's the only earned run he allowed to either division.

-There was no good way to get Rivera. Opposing batters hit .201/.236/.281 against him when leading off an inning, .209/.270/.290 with men on base. Opposing hitters still hit .239 and slugged .346, both very weak figures (albeit with a .534 OBP) after getting three balls on Rivera. But he went to a 3-ball count only 698 times in 4752 batters faced for which baseball-reference.com has count breakdowns, less than 15% of the time, compared to 2591 times he got to two strikes on a batter. On a 3-2 count, opposing hitters hit .202/.403/.283.

-In 1990, his one season as a reliever in the minors before the Yankees tried to make him a starter, Rivera had a 0.17 ERA in rookie ball - in 52 innings he struck out 58, walked 7 and allowed 17 hits (2.9 hits per 9 innings). His career ERA in the minors was 2.35.

-As good as Rivera was in the regular season, he was rather literally twice as good in the postseason (twice the workload, half the ERA), and probably the most valuable postseason pitcher ever (maybe the most valuable postseason player ever). Anyone who says the Yankees can just slot in Rafael Soriano and David Robertson and not miss Rivera that much because closers are overrated is missing this crucial dimension.

The Yankees played 156 postseason games between 1995 and 2011, just about a full season's schedule of games. The postseason can be brutally unforgiving, as I noted when reviewing Billy Wagner's career, and normally it's a victory to play the same in October as you did all year. Rivera's now-apparently-final line in a season's worth of postseason work: 96 games, 141 innings (nobody's thrown 140 innings in relief in a regular season since Mark Eichhorn in 1986), 8-1 record (Game Seven of the 2001 World Series being his only loss), 42 saves, 78 games finished, 0.70 ERA (0.83 even if you include unearned runs), only two home runs allowed (the famous Sandy Alomar homer that decided the 1997 ALDS and Jay Payton's home run in the Mets' furious but futile comeback in Game Two of the 2000 World Series, the only time in 96 postseason appearances that Rivera allowed more than one earned run - he allowed 2), allowing just 86 hits, 21 walks (4 of those intentional; Rivera's 2 walks in the ill-fated Game Four of the 2004 ALCS was the only postseason appearance where he walked more than one batter), and striking out 110. Counting 3 hit batsmen, that's 111 baserunners in 141 innings, only one more than his strikeout total. Rivera pitched 2 or more innings in a postseason game 33 times, allowing a run in only 4 of them; he pitched more than 1 inning 58 times. In the postseason, his opposing BABIP dropped to .219, his inherited runners scored dropped to 19%. He'd actually gotten better; his postseason ERA since 2006 was 0.31 in 24 appearances. Rivera was ice in October. We will never see the like of that again. And he did it with a huge workload: you throw 141 high-leverage innings with a 0.70 ERA in the regular season, you should and will win the MVP award.

PS - Speaking of worthiness of respect, Stan Musial's wife Lil died yesterday. Stan and Lil were married 73 years. Now that is a life.

Posted by Baseball Crank at 9:46 AM | Baseball 2012-13 | Comments (8) | TrackBack (0)

May 3, 2012

BASEBALL: 2012 NL West EWSL Report

Part 6 of my now very belated "preseason" previews is the NL West; this is the last of six division previews, using Established Win Shares Levels as a jumping-off point. Notes and reference links on the EWSL method are below the fold; while EWSL is a simple enough method that will be familiar to long-time readers, it takes a little introductory explaining, so I'd suggest you check out the explanations first if you're new to these previews. Team ages are weighted by non-age-adjusted EWSL, so the best players count more towards determining the age of the roster.

Prior: AL Central, AL East, AL West, NL Central, NL East.

Some players are rated based on less than three seasons or given a rookie rating. Key:
+ (Rookie)
* (Based on one season)
# (Based on two seasons)

Arizona Diamondbacks

Raw EWSL: 236.50
Adjusted: 246.53
Age-Adj.: 239.48
WS Age: 28.9
2012 W-L: 93-69

POS	Age	PLAYER	Raw EWSL	Age Adj
C	28	Miguel Montero	20	20
1B	24	Paul Goldschmidt*	3	8
2B	30	Aaron Hill	14	13
SS	29	Stephen Drew	14	14
3B	31	Ryan Roberts	11	9
RF	24	Justin Upton	21	27
CF	28	Chris Young	18	18
LF	30	Jason Kubel	14	12
C2	40	Henry Blanco	4	2
INF	34	Willie Bloomquist	6	5
OF	25	Gerardo Parra	13	16
12	35	Lyle Overbay	10	7
13	37	John McDonald	5	3
SP1	27	Ian Kennedy	14	12
SP2	25	Daniel Hudson#	11	15
SP3	24	Trevor Cahill	11	12
SP4	31	Joe Saunders	10	8
SP5	26	Josh Collmenter*	5	11
RP1	35	JJ Putz	9	8
RP2	27	David Hernandez	8	7
RP3	32	Brad Ziegler	6	5
RP4	31	Craig Breslow	5	4
RP5	42	Takashi Saito	5	3

Subjective Adjustments: None, but I expect Goldschmidt to easily surpass 8 Win Shares if healthy.

Also on Hand: Position players - Geoff Blum, Cody Ransom (who has now played 10 years in the majors without once having 100 plate appearances), AJ Pollock.

Pitchers - Joe Paterson, who is off to about the worst possible start imaginable: Paterson allowed as many earned runs (11) in April as he did in 62 appearances all last year. In 2.2 innings he's faced 26 batters and allowed 18 baserunners (including 2 homers and 4 doubles), and he hasn't struck out a batter yet. Also Bryan Shaw, Jonathan Albaladejo, Wade Miley, Mike Zagurski, Joe Martinez, Patrick Corbin and Barry Enright.

Analysis: The D-Backs remain the class of this division based on established major league talent, and were the logical preseason favorites. Obviously, the Dodgers’ 4-game lead through May 2 could turn out to be decisive in the long run even if LA comes back to earth. Arizona has also been banged up early, including injuries to Hudson, Drew and Saito. Upton remains a very logical potential MVP candidate.

Henry Blanco is still playing at 40, Matt Treanor at 36, Brian Schneider at 35, Rod Barajas at 36, Dave Ross at 35, Jose Molina at 37. If you know young football players, advise them to consider catching as a career. A little talent, toughness and work ethic will give them a longer, happier career than a lot of NFL stars seem to have.

I haven't run the numbers, but the Diamondbacks have to have made the most trades involving the largest number of contributing major league players over the past 2 years or so.

San Francisco Giants

Raw EWSL: 209.00
Adjusted: 221.64
Age-Adj.: 213.06
WS Age: 28.9
2012 W-L: 84-78

POS	Age	PLAYER	Raw EWSL	Age Adj
C	25	Buster Posey#	11	16
1B	24	Brandon Belt*	3	7
2B	34	Freddy Sanchez	11	10
SS	25	Brandon Crawford*	3	6
3B	25	Pablo Sandoval	19	23
RF	28	Nate Schierholtz	10	10
CF	30	Angel Pagan	17	16
LF	27	Melky Cabrera	15	15
C2	22	Hector Sanchez+	0	4
INF	35	Aubrey Huff	17	12
OF	28	Gregor Blanco	2	2
12	32	Ryan Theriot	12	9
13	27	Emmanuel Burriss	1	1
SP1	28	Tim Lincecum	16	15
SP2	27	Matt Cain	16	14
SP3	22	Madison Bumgarner#	9	14
SP4	34	Barry Zito	4	3
SP5	34	Ryan Vogelsong	7	6
RP1	30	Brian Wilson	13	11
RP2	32	Santiago Casilla	7	5
RP3	33	Jeremy Affeldt	6	4
RP4	34	Javier Lopez	5	4
RP5	29	Sergio Romo	8	7

Subjective Adjustments: None, because I’m trying to avoid biasing the results with events since the season started, but clearly Brian Wilson will not be contributing to the Giants this season, and now Sandoval is out with a busted hand. Freddy Sanchez has also been hurt, and it’s not really clear whether he or Burriss ends up as the second baseman once Sanchez is healthy.

Also on Hand: Position players - Brett Pill, Joaquin Arias, Eli Whiteside.

Pitchers - Clay Hensley, Guillermo Mota, Dan Otero, Eric Hacker.

Analysis: As noted above, San Francisco's injuries make it a lot harder for the Giants to pick themselves off the mat. They have a lineup only Brian Sabean could love, despite the presence of three talented young bats (Sandoval, Posey and Belt). The outfield seems particularly symptomatic of a failure to learn anything from the Aaron Rowand signing. I needn't belabor the obvious point that Belt needs to be just stuck in the lineup until he figures things out; he batted .320/.461/.528 in the minors last season after .352/.455/.620 in 2010, but the Giants seem unwilling or unable to live with any growing pains.

As for the rotation, there's been a huge variation thus far in the batting average on balls in play vs various Giants pitchers, and their early successes and failures should seem a lot less dramatic as these even out over the course of the season; it's why I'm not so worried about Lincecum in particular, whose peripheral numbers are still solid:

PITCHER	BABIP
Dan Otero	0.452
Jeremy Affeldt	0.417
Guillermo Mota	0.367
Tim Lincecum	0.351
LEAGUE AVERAGE	0.295
Ryan Vogelsong	0.292
TEAM AVERAGE	0.277
Madison Bumgarner	0.245
Santiago Casilla	0.192
Clay Hensley	0.188
Barry Zito	0.188
Matt Cain	0.158

Los Angeles Dodgers

Raw EWSL: 204.67
Adjusted: 215.23
Age-Adj.: 200.51
WS Age: 30.2
2012 W-L: 80-82

POS	Age	PLAYER	Raw EWSL	Age Adj
C	31	AJ Ellis#	3	3
1B	28	James Loney	17	17
2B	35	Mark Ellis	13	9
SS	24	Dee Gordon*	6	8
3B	32	Juan Uribe	9	7
RF	30	Andre Ethier	20	18
CF	27	Matt Kemp	28	29
LF	29	Tony Gwynn jr	8	7
C2	36	Matt Treanor	4	3
INF	36	Adam Kennedy	8	6
OF	33	Juan Rivera	11	9
12	36	Jerry Hairston jr	11	8
13	26	Justin Sellers*	2	4
SP1	24	Clayton Kershaw	19	21
SP2	27	Chad Billingsley	8	7
SP3	33	Chris Capuano	4	2
SP4	36	Ted Lilly	10	9
SP5	34	Aaron Harang	6	4
RP1	26	Javy Guerra*	4	9
RP2	24	Kenley Jansen#	5	7
RP3	37	Jamey Wright	5	4
RP4	35	Mike MacDougal	4	3
RP5	33	Matt Guerrier	6	4

Subjective Adjustments: None, but as with Goldschmidt, you can assume a pretty high likelihood that Dee Gordon beats 8 Win Shares if he stays healthy all year.

Also on Hand: Position players - Ivan De Jesus jr, the third of the Dodgers’ junior brigade, and Jerry Sands.

Pitchers - Todd Coffey, Blake Hawkesworth, Josh Lindblom, Scott Elbert, Rubby de la Rosa (on the DL) and Ronald Belisario (same).

Analysis: The frontline talent is strong and in its prime, but the rest of the team is ancient and creaky. Obviously, banking on Matt Kemp to hit .411/.500/.856 all year is not a wager I would take. Kemp has now raised his career April line to .343/.405/.618; his .297/.354/.526 line in June is the only one even close. Color me unpersuaded that this is really a 90+ win team unless significant help is added to the roster.

The Dodgers' long-term prognosis, of course, is vastly improved by the end of the McCourt Era, in which - ironically - Frank McCourt proved unable to competently manage even the one part of the team he had experience running (parking lots).

Colorado Rockies

Raw EWSL: 181.83
Adjusted: 193.87
Age-Adj.: 177.50
WS Age: 30.6
2012 W-L: 72-90

POS	Age	PLAYER	Raw EWSL	Age Adj
C	36	Ramon Hernandez	11	8
1B	38	Todd Helton	13	9
2B	36	Marco Scutaro	14	10
SS	27	Troy Tulowitzki	25	26
3B	26	Chris Nelson*	1	2
RF	33	Michael Cuddyer	16	14
CF	26	Dexter Fowler	15	16
LF	26	Carlos Gonzalez	20	22
C2	23	Wilin Rosario+	1	4
INF	27	Jonathan Herrera#	4	4
OF	26	Tyler Colvin#	4	5
12	27	Eric Young	3	3
13	41	Jason Giambi	6	3
SP1	24	Jhoulys Chacin#	9	13
SP2	49	Jamie Moyer	2	1
SP3	25	Juan Nicasio*	2	4
SP4	33	Jeremy Guthrie	10	7
SP5	31	Jorge de la Rosa	7	5
RP1	37	Rafael Betancourt	9	7
RP2	32	Matt Belisle	7	6
RP3	27	Matt Reynolds#	2	2
RP4	29	Josh Roenicke	1	1
RP5	24	Rex Brothers*	2	5

Subjective Adjustments: None. Jorge de la Rosa is expected back in June and will be welcomed by a tattered rotation, but his numbers reflect his injury last season

Also on Hand: Position players - Jordan Pacheco, Eliezer Alfonzo, Hector Gomez.

Pitchers - Drew Pomeranz, who is presently the third or fourth starter pending the return of de la Rosa and Guthrie (also Chacin, just sent to AAA), Tyler Chatwood, Esmil Rogers, Guillermo Moscoso, Edgmer Escalona, Zach Putnam, Josh Outman.

Analysis: I've had a lot of fun on Twitter doing "how old is Jamie Moyer" facts (eg, he was the second-oldest player on the Mariners when he arrived in Seattle in August 1996), but the amazing thing is how dependent the Rockies have been on Moyer. His 3.14 ERA is deceptively low given the unearned runs he's allowed and a low BABIP, but he's basically the same old Moyer, which is a valuable thing on a team in Coors Field with terrible pitching.

A further retrospective on the careers of Moyer, Helton and Giambi is something I should return to later.

San Diego Padres

Raw EWSL: 159.67
Adjusted: 178.57
Age-Adj.: 172.33
WS Age: 28.7
2012 W-L: 71-91

POS	Age	PLAYER	Raw EWSL	Age Adj
C	28	Nick Hundley	11	11
1B	25	Yonder Alonso*	2	5
2B	34	Orlando Hudson	15	13
SS	32	Jason Bartlett	15	12
3B	28	Chase Headley	16	16
RF	29	Will Venable	12	12
CF	25	Cameron Maybin	12	14
LF	29	Carlos Quentin	14	14
C2	31	John Baker	3	2
INF	26	Andy Parrino+	0	4
OF	28	Jesus Guzman*	7	13
12	31	Chris Denorfia	7	6
13	28	Jeremy Hermida	4	4
SP1	28	Ednison Volquez	1	1
SP2	28	Clayton Richard	6	5
SP3	27	Cory Luebke*	4	6
SP4	30	Tim Stauffer	7	6
SP5	24	Anthony Bass*	3	6
RP1	28	Huston Street	9	8
RP2	26	Ernesto Frieri#	3	4
RP3	28	Luke Gregerson	6	5
RP4	25	Andrew Cashner#	1	2
RP5	29	Micah Owings	4	3

Subjective Adjustments: None, but again, I expect Alonso to step up with full-time playing time.

Also on Hand: Position players - Kyle Blanks (now out for the season), Mark Kotsay, Blake Tekotte, Logan Forsythe.

Pitchers - Joe Thatcher, Joe Wieland (presently in the rotation), Josh Spence, Brad Brach, Dale Thayer, Jeff Suppan (recently exhumed from the minors - he's now in his 20th professional season. He's also 13 years younger than Moyer), Dustin Moseley (out for the season).

Analysis: What's worse - that the Padres are hitting .216/.302/.331 as a team, or that that doesn't even make them the lowest-scoring team in the league (the Pirates are scoring almost half a run per game less)? Yet, the lineup (partly due to a number of good glove men) isn't full of untalented guys, so much as it lacks anybody with star-level talent, plus the big bat (Quentin) hasn't played yet, with Guzman subbing for him. It's actually the rotation, which the park makes look respectable, that's really weak, and the bullpen is less impressive as well than it seems.

Posted by Baseball Crank at 2:45 PM | Baseball 2012-13 • | Baseball Studies | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

May 1, 2012

WAR: With The Death of Osama bin Laden, We're All Hawks Now

One year ago today, a Navy SEAL team killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, the culmination of many years of intelligence-gathering. The operation was personally authorized by President Obama, over the objections of Vice President Joe Biden. While national security leaders had, properly, publicly downplayed the importance of getting bin Laden - it was more important to focus on dismantling the operational network of Al Qaeda and similar groups, and overemphasis on one man hiding in isolation would give the fugitive bin Laden an unnecessary propaganda victory - it was nonetheless a significant longstanding priority of three Administrations to get him, and a great day for America when he was killed. The Obama campaign, recognizing that there is broad bipartisan agreement on this point among voters, has done everything possible to capitalize politically on the President's role.

There are three real lessons to be drawn a year later:

1. In the big picture, we're all national security hawks now.

2. As a matter of policy specifics, the hawks won and the anti-war movement lost every round.

3. As a matter of partisan politics, the side that loses the debate over the death of bin Laden will be the side that overplays its hand the worst.

I. We're All National Security Hawks Now

The first takeaway from Obama's emphasis on hogging credit for the bin Laden takedown - besides the obvious fact that everything Obama does these days is designed to distract the public from his domestic policy record - is that there is bipartisan agreement that being seen as the more hawkish candidate is an unmitigated political positive. No politically significant figure or group is left making the policy argument that the aggressive, unilateral projection of American military power overseas to kill our enemies is a bad thing. Obama's partisans today make no real effort to hide the fact that they are following the Bush 2004 playbook and trying to run to Mitt Romney's right on national security toughness. Even with war-weariness in Afghanistan increasingly crossing partisan lines, we are all hawks now.

II. The Hawks Won the Policy Debates, Too

The victory of the hawks is not just atmospheric or partisan. The bin Laden raid vindicated many policies championed by Bush-era national security hawks, several of which were opposed by Obama and other Democrats or were subjected to seriously overwrought criticisms during the Bush years. To the extent that any Obama policy deserves any of the credit for the death of bin Laden, it is only a hawkish, unilateral policy orientation towards Pakistan. Obama can claim a win, but the antiwar movement lost every round.

I detailed this observation last year (as did Ace), and streiff hit a few of the major examples as well earlier today. While my analysis a year ago was based on preliminary reports, we actually have not learned that much new since then on any of the relevant issues. Let's summarize the key points:

A. Guantanamo and CIA Detention Centers

What we know, based on what's been made public, is that bin Laden was located primarily by means of following a trail of intelligence that revealed that he was communicating with the outside world mainly via a single faithful courier, Ibrahim Saeed Ahmed, who went by the nom de guerre of Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti. And the leads that gave us that knowledge came from the interrogation of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and CIA "black site" detention centers. Those detainees included 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Al Qaeda operational chief Abu Faraj al-Libi, "20th hijacker" Muhammad Mani al-Qahtani, and Hassan Ghul, an associate of Al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

None of this would have been possible if these detainees were treated as ordinary prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions, to be asked only the proverbial name, rank and serial number. Barack Obama campaigned against these detention and interrogation sites, closed the CIA "black sites" his first week in office, and is still promising (albeit in increasingly empty fashion) to close Guantanamo. The killing of bin Laden is an unambiguous victory for the detention and interrogation policies of the Bush Administration. And with those sites not accepting new detainees and the Administration switching emphasis to killing rather than capturing and interrogating enemy combatants, it is questionable whether that success can be replicated in the future, with terrorist leaders like Ayman al-Zawahiri and Mullah Omar still at large.

B. Iraq

Of the detainees questioned on the path to tracking al-Kuwaiti, the one that investigators have described as the "linchpin" of the whole investigation is Hassan Ghul. And where did we capture Hassan Ghul? In Iraq in 2004, reportedly by a Kurdish security checkpoint on the Iranian border carrying a message from Zarqawi to bin Laden asking for bin Laden's support in the insurgency. Of course, none of this would have happened had Iraq remained a Saddam Hussein-run police state hostile to the United States. If we hadn't invaded Iraq, we would not have captured Ghul, and bin Laden would still be alive. Does that, all by itself, justify the Iraq War? I wouldn't go that far - there are a whole battery of considerations that we've all exhaustively beaten to death in that debate. But yet again: Barack Obama opposed the war, and without it, he wouldn't have had the intelligence to get bin Laden.

C. NSA Surveillance

Electronic surveillance also played a key part in locating al-Kuwaiti: at some point between when the CIA pieced together his identity around 2007 and when he was located in 2009, the NSA surveillance net - the subject of much criticism back in the 2005-08 period - was set out to track calls between al-Kuwaiti's his family members and associates and anyone in Pakistan. I've seen no reference anywhere to a warrant ever having been obtained for this eavesdropping, and it worked exactly as defenders of warrantless eavesdropping predicted it might. As I argued back in 2005, there was never a policy reason to object to this sort of thing, as long as it was targeted as described (which it was here: to known associates and relatives of al-Kuwaiti).

As a legal matter, was a warrant needed, under the theory of the critics? It's not clear one was, as most of the public sources indicate that al-Kuwaiti's relatives (at least the ones he was caught communicating with) were in the Persian Gulf, not inside the United States. But it's clear that the very same tool at issue in the FISA controversy was crucial to locating al-Kuwaiti and therefore bin Laden.

D. Coercive Interrogation

The three points above have barely even been contested by the once-noisy critics of Bush Administration policies; they have circled all their wagons around denying that coercive interrogation produced any returns, in line with their longstanding insistence that such interrogation has never, ever worked in any situation and never, ever conceivably could in any possible situation.

But the facts are more complex. The Bush Administration authorized the use of waterboarding on only three detainees, but Khalid Sheikh Muhammad was one of them, and he later provided key intelligence; you can draw your own conclusions as to whether confessing to the good cop means the bad cop accomplished nothing, but it's safe to say that if this was a criminal trial, bin Laden's lawyers would be arguing that any information obtained after waterboarding was "fruit of the poisonous tree." Ghul appears to have been subjected to a number of the lesser coercive tactics, and al-Qahtani seems to as well. While basically everyone agrees that it's preferable to use non-coercive interrogation techniques when possible, the record here suggests that a little humility by those calling for a total ban would be advisable.

E. Unilateralism

Not one of the policies that led to bin Laden being located had originated with the Obama Administration. As noted above, several were harshly criticized by Obama and his allies, and some have been discontinued by Obama. Does that mean Obama's policies get no credit at all?

There is one argument for crediting Obama's policies, besides the decision to to authorize the mission itself - but it's an argument for a more hawkish, unilateral posture in the War on Terror. The Bush Administration treated Pakistan, from very early on, as an ally, albeit an often recalcitrant one, and generally conductied under-the-public-radar incursions into Pakistani territory that nobody would admit to publicly. During the 2008 campaign, Obama made a point of arguing publicly that if bin Laden or other high-value Al Qaeda targets turned up in Pakistan, he'd authorize unilateral incursions into Pakistani territory. A variety of other candidates - Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, John McCain, and Mitt Romney among them - ripped Obama for this pronouncement, especially in conjunction with his (oft-repeated, since-abandoned) promise to meet without preconditions with the leaders of hostile states like Iran, Cuba, North Korea and Venezuela.

It's easy to overstate the importance of this debate in retrospect, as McCain in particular placed most of his emphasis not on the idea that going into Pakistan was a bad idea - he famously promised to follow bin Laden "to the gates of Hell" - but on the idea that it was naive and dangerous to announce publicly in advance that you'd do so ("you don't say that out loud," was McCain's memorable debate line):

Nonetheless, if you credit Obama in this regard, bear in mind that it's crediting him for being more hawkish and more unilateralist than Bush or McCain. Nobody has suggested that Obama should have worked with NATO or the UN before taking action. As I said: we're all hawks now.

III. The Side That Overplays Its Hand Worse Will Lose the Partisan Debate

As I noted last year, the American people give Obama high marks for getting bin Laden, but also recognize the importance of the work done by the Bush Administration to get us to that point in the War on Terror - sort of the mirror image of the public's view of the economy. It would be dangerously ungracious for Republicans not to give any credit to Obama under those circumstances, even when coupled with legitimate criticisms (eg, former Attorney General Mukasey's point that Obama's premature announcement of bin Laden's death may have compromised the value of intelligence collected from his compound). Mitt Romney is right that the decision to go after bin Laden is one that even Jimmy Carter would likely have made - but Romney is only making that point in self-defense, Robert Gibbs having suggested that Romney would not have made the same call in the same circumstances, and Obama running ads suggesting the same thing. As noted above, there is more than enough room for Republicans to make the affirmative policy case that the intelligence trail that led to bin Laden was paved with conservative, hawkish policies, and to use the success of the bin Laden operation to cement bipartisan public support for those policies. When you are winning the policy debate, don't let the immediate needs of an election season get in the way of driving that victory home.

For Obama, the flip side is that he should resist the trap of John Kerry's military service, i.e., overselling a positive to the point where it becomes a negative. Americans get it; they don't need to be beaten over the head with the point, not when they have a very long list of other reasons to doubt Obama's leadership and are more than a little weary of him insisting at every turn that all bad things to happen on his watch are entirely the fault of conditions he inherited from Bush. And yet from last May, things like the registration of www.gutsycall.com and the dispatching of flacks uniformly lauding Obama for making a "gutsy call" suggested that Obama was going to milk this one, not-very-difficult decision as far as he could take it. As I noted at the time, this smacked of the proverbial guy acting like he'd never been in the end zone before, and he still runs the risk of alienating some voters who may not like the effort to put the President, personally, at the center of a military and intelligence triumph for obvious electoral purposes (precisely the thing his own party spent the past decade accusing President Bush of doing). FDR didn't tweet pictures of himself on D-Day.

The issues of a president's leadership and policies on the national security front are legitimate issues, the subject of legitimate debate, but must be handled with the seriousness that respect for the subject matter demands. Both candidates should tread carefully here, because the real partisan political danger lies in overplaying their hands.
____

Besides my lengthy discussion here, additional sources of varying types and credibility on the hunt for bin Laden and the critics of its methods here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

« Close It

Posted by Baseball Crank at 4:00 PM | War 2007-12 | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

BASEBALL: 2012 NL East EWSL Report

Part 5 of my now very belated "preseason" previews is the NL East; this is the fifth of six division previews, using Established Win Shares Levels as a jumping-off point. Notes and reference links on the EWSL method are below the fold; while EWSL is a simple enough method that will be familiar to long-time readers, it takes a little introductory explaining, so I'd suggest you check out the explanations first if you're new to these previews. Team ages are weighted by non-age-adjusted EWSL, so the best players count more towards determining the age of the roster.

Prior: AL Central, AL East, AL West, NL Central.

Some players are rated based on less than three seasons or given a rookie rating. Key:
+ (Rookie)
* (Based on one season)
# (Based on two seasons)

Atlanta Braves

Raw EWSL: 215.17
Adjusted: 248.24
Age-Adj.: 260.94
Subj. Adj.: 257.94
WS Age: 28.6
2012 W-L: 99-63

POS	Age	PLAYER	Raw EWSL	Age Adj
C	28	Brian McCann	21	21
1B	22	Freddie Freeman*	10	34
2B	32	Dan Uggla	22	17
SS	22	Tyler Pastornicky+	0	11
3B	40	Chipper Jones	17	9
RF	22	Jason Heyward#	13	28
CF	29	Michael Bourn	20	20
LF	28	Martin Prado	15	15
C2	35	Dave Ross	7	5
INF	34	Jack Wilson	6	5
OF	34	Matt Diaz	6	5
12	34	Eric Hinske	6	5
13	28	Jose Constanza*	2	3
SP1	25	Tommy Hanson	10	11
SP2	25	Brandon Beachy*	4	8
SP3	26	Jair Jurrjens	10	11
SP4	36	Tim Hudson	14	13
SP5	22	Randall Delgado*	1	3
RP1	24	Craig Kimbrel#	10	13
RP2	27	Johnny Venters#	11	11
RP3	27	Eric O'Flaherty	8	7
RP4	26	Kris Medlen	3	3
RP5	24	Mike Minor#	2	2

Subjective Adjustments: I docked Freddie Freeman 3 Win Shares, down from 34 to 31, and that still seems conservative. Is Freddie Freeman really a reasonable bet to be better than Joey Votto in 2012? That's where EWSL has him, on grounds of being 22 and coming off a 19 Win Shares season. You have to admit, Freeman's batting line looks a lot more impressive when you account for his age...but still. Really?

On the other hand, I refuse to adjust Jason Heyward, the team's other 22-year-old regular, downwards from 28 Win Shares. I can totally see that happening.

Also on Hand: Position players - Juan Francisco, who subbed as the everyday 3B until Chipper was ready to go, and likely will again the next time Chipper gets chipped.

Pitchers - Chad Durbin, Livan Hernandez, and two injured pitchers, Robert Fish and Arodys Vizcaino.

Analysis: EWSL is out on a limb here because 22 year old hitters are its weakness, but the Braves are potentially loaded. They fit the classic profile of a team ready to rip the ears off the division, like the 1986 Mets or the 1984 Tigers: a young team with a few key veretans that had a couple of tough endings and is starting to get written off, but could suddenly gel and hit the stratosphere. The tough part is how cutthroat this division is, but maybe no moreso than the AL East in 1984.

Note that this is the second year in a row that EWSL had the Braves winning the division.

Philadelphia Phillies

Raw EWSL: 285.67
Adjusted: 293.00
Age-Adj.: 247.33
WS Age: 32.0
2012 W-L: 96-66

POS	Age	PLAYER	Raw EWSL	Age Adj
C	33	Carlos Ruiz	18	15
1B	32	Ryan Howard	22	17
2B	33	Chase Utley	23	19
SS	33	Jimmy Rollins	20	17
3B	36	Placido Polanco	16	12
RF	29	Hunter Pence	22	21
CF	31	Shane Victorino	23	19
LF	34	Juan Pierre	14	12
C2	35	Brian Schneider	3	2
INF	34	Ty Wigginton	5	5
OF	31	Laynce Nix	6	5
12	28	John Mayberry	6	6
13	41	Jim Thome	13	7
SP1	35	Roy Halladay	23	19
SP2	33	Cliff Lee	19	13
SP3	28	Cole Hamels	16	15
SP4	24	Vance Worley*	6	12
SP5	31	Joe Blanton	4	3
RP1	31	Jonathan Papelbon	12	9
RP2	33	Chad Qualls	4	3
RP3	27	Kyle Kendrick	6	5
RP4	26	Antonio Bastardo	5	6
RP5	25	Michael Stutes*	3	6

Subjective Adjustments: None.

Also on Hand: Position players - Pete Orr, Freddy Galvis.

Pitchers - Joe Savery, Jose Contreras, Brian Sanches, David Herndon, Michael Schwimer.

Analysis: After threatening for years, the piper has come to Philadelphia, and he will be paid. 32 year old Ryan Howard, 33 year old Chase Utley, and 33 year old Cliff Lee are all on the DL. Almost as old as the Yankees, this team is: outside of Worley and the bullpen, the "kids" are 28 year old Cole Hamels and 29 year old Hunter Pence. For all of that, this team won't go down easy: before the age adjustments, this is a 111-win team, so even when you discount them for age, they are still knocking on the door of triple digits. And if you draw a healthy Halladay, Lee and Hamels in a short series, you're still in deep yogurt; there has maybe never been a more skillful pitching staff assembled.

Miami Marlins

Raw EWSL: 215.50
Adjusted: 226.27
Age-Adj.: 227.44
WS Age: 28.6
2012 W-L: 89-73

POS	Age	PLAYER	Raw EWSL	Age Adj
C	31	John Buck	14	11
1B	28	Gaby Sanchez#	14	17
2B	30	Omar Infante	17	15
SS	29	Jose Reyes	20	19
3B	28	Hanley Ramirez	18	18
RF	22	Giancarlo Stanton#	14	30
CF	27	Emilio Bonifacio	13	14
LF	24	Logan Morrison#	9	13
C2	28	Brett Hayes#	2	3
INF	33	Greg Dobbs	4	4
OF	27	Chris Coghlan	8	9
12	29	Donnie Murphy	2	1
13	32	Austin Kearns	4	3
SP1	28	Josh Johnson	12	11
SP2	33	Mark Buehrle	14	10
SP3	28	Anibal Sanchez	10	9
SP4	29	Ricky Nolasco	6	5
SP5	31	Carlos Zambrano	8	7
RP1	34	Heath Bell	13	10
RP2	28	Edward Mujica	6	6
RP3	27	Mike Dunn#	3	3
RP4	26	Ryan Webb	4	4
RP5	26	Steve Cishek*	3	7

Subjective Adjustments: None; I haven't downgraded Stanton for the same reason as Heyward. This season has a bumper crop of 22-year-olds who will put EWSL's age adjustment to the test: Heyward, Stanton, Freeman, Eric Hosmer, Brett Lawrie, Starlin Castro, Ruben Tejada, and Jose Altuve. Note that, as usual, that group is split between guys whose playing time is stepping up to full time (Lawrie, Hosmer, Altuve, Tejada) and those who were already everyday for a full season (Heyward, Castro, Stanton, Freeman). It's the inevitable growth of the former group that tends to artificially over-project the latter. The effect is most pronounced on 22 year olds because guys who are playing everyday at 21 or 22 tend to be really good.

Also on Hand: Position players - Scott Cousins.

Pitchers - Randy Choate, Chad Gaudin, the potentially ineligible Juan Oviedo (f/k/a Leo Nunez), the injured Jose Ceda.

Analysis: If you can buy this as a third-place team, you see how deep this division is now.

Jose Reyes gets more attention, as does the Miami Medusa in center field that goes off when the Marlins hit a home run:

But the most interesting issue to watch is whether Hanley Ramirez, now batting .236/.330/.381 since the start of 2011, can bounce back. Also, whether Giancarlo (don't call me Mike) Stanton's prodigious power will be held back by the new stadium's cavernous dimensions. So far, so good from the team's perspective - the Marlins have hit 9 homers at home, 9 on the road, compared to allowing 4 at home and 12 on the road, and Stanton's lone longball this season came at home - but he's started slowly overall.

Washington Nationals

Raw EWSL: 185.17
Adjusted: 195.33
Age-Adj.: 195.34
WS Age: 28.2
2012 W-L: 78-84

POS	Age	PLAYER	Raw EWSL	Age Adj
C	24	Wilson Ramos#	8	12
1B	32	Adam LaRoche	9	7
2B	25	Danny Espinosa#	12	18
SS	26	Ian Desmond#	12	15
3B	27	Ryan Zimmerman	19	20
RF	33	Jayson Werth	20	17
CF	32	Rick Ankiel	6	5
LF	33	Xavier Nady	4	3
C2	27	Jesus Flores	1	1
INF	30	Michael Morse	16	14
OF	28	Roger Bernadina#	7	8
12	37	Mark DeRosa	4	3
13	32	Chad Tracy	1	1
SP1	23	Stephen Strasburg#	3	4
SP2	26	Jordan Zimmermann	6	7
SP3	28	Edwin Jackson	12	11
SP4	26	Gio Gonzalez	13	14
SP5	26	Ross Detwiler	2	3
RP1	35	Brad Lidge	4	3
RP2	25	Henry Rodriguez#	2	3
RP3	27	Tyler Clippard	10	9
RP4	24	Drew Storen#	9	12
RP5	29	Sean Burnett	6	5

Subjective Adjustments: None.

Also on Hand: Position players - Wunderkind Bryce Harper, Mark Teahen, Brett Carroll, Steve Lombardozzi (the younger one), Tyler Moore.

Pitchers - Tom Gorzelanny, Craig Stammen, Ryan Mattheus, Chien-Ming Wang.

Analysis: The "K Street" Nationals' hot start has brought back memories of Davey Johnson teams of yore; four starters have ERAs in the ones, three relievers have ERAs ranging from 0.00 to 2.00, and the team is averaging 8.7 K/9. And they're not really kids, either - Strasburg is already a Tommy John surgery veteran, and he and Henry Rodriguez are the only guys on the staff under 26. For a team that in its seven prior years in DC finished 16th in the NL in pitcher strikeouts twice, 15th three times, 13th once and as high as 10th only in its inaugural season, this is revolutionary. For the first time, it will actually be the offense that has to carry the ball.

Bryce Harper may well be a superstar in the making, but he's closer in age to Justin Bieber than he is to Strasburg. Harper was 8 years old on 9/11. When he was born, Jamie Moyer was mulling a coaching job offer from the Cubs, his MLB pitching career widely considered over. In other words: don't expect too much too soon. Harper reached the majors without slugging over .400 above A ball. There are 72 players (including a few pitchers and managers) in the Hall of Fame who had 200 or more plate appearances their first season in the majors; only 18 of those 72 slugged above .450, and only 11 of those were 22 or younger, the youngest being age 20; the highest among the teenagers was Mickey Mantle at .443 (Mel Ott is the only Hall of Famer to slug .450 as a teenager - .524 as a 19 year old in 1928 - and Ott wasn't a rookie, having 241 plate appearances over the prior two seasons). Barry Bonds hit .223/.330/.416 as a rookie.

New York Mets

Raw EWSL: 162.50
Adjusted: 185.94
Age-Adj.: 183.04
WS Age: 29.3
2012 W-L: 74-88

POS	Age	PLAYER	Raw EWSL	Age Adj
C	25	Josh Thole#	8	10
1B	25	Ike Davis#	8	12
2B	27	Daniel Murphy	9	9
SS	22	Ruben Tejada#	6	13
3B	29	David Wright	18	18
RF	26	Lucas Duda*	6	12
CF	34	Andres Torres	14	12
LF	33	Jason Bay	14	12
C2	29	Mike Nickeas*	1	1
INF	27	Justin Turner*	8	16
OF	32	Scott Hairston	6	4
12	29	Ronny Cedeno	9	9
13	24	Kirk Nieuwenhuis+	0	4
SP1	33	Johan Santana	7	5
SP2	37	RA Dickey	11	9
SP3	25	Jonathan Niese#	4	5
SP4	26	Dillon Gee*	4	6
SP5	28	Mike Pelfrey	6	6
RP1	32	Frank Francisco	7	5
RP2	27	Bobby Parnell	3	3
RP3	33	Jon Rauch	6	4
RP4	30	Ramon Ramirez	7	6
RP5	38	Tim Byrdak	3	2

Subjective Adjustments: None; I'm trying to keep these limited to preseason rankings, so I did not dock Mike Pelfrey.

Also on Hand: Position players - Mike Baxter (I could have rated him in the same place as Niewenhuis, but Niewenhuis is likely the guy I'll be rating down the road), Zach Lutz, Jordany Valdespin, Brad Emaus, Freddie Lewis.

Pitchers - Miguel Batista, Manny Acosta, Pedro Beato, DJ Carrasco, Chris Schwinden, Jeremy Hefner.

Analysis: The Mets, realistically, are not aiming for a first place finish this season, but for .500 and respectability. And maybe not last place, which will require one of the other competitors here to have a very disappointing year. The main thing that needs to happen, for that to occur, is to keep the front four of the rotation healthy (Mike Pelfrey is headed for season-ending Tommy John surgery today), as well as Wright and Davis; some of the youngsters also need to step up, as Tejada, Thole and Nieuwenhuis have so far (I admit, I never expected Tejada to be a major league hitter). Santana, of course, has been miraculous, averaging over 10 K/9 for the first time since his first Cy Young season in 2004 and not having yet allowed a home run. The lesson is never bet against great pitchers - but also, be cautious, as I can recall Dwight Gooden having some outstanding stretches in the years after shoulder surgery, but never again sustaining it over a full season.

Posted by Baseball Crank at 1:15 PM | Baseball 2012-13 • | Baseball Studies | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)