Baseball 2005 Archives

Jeff Reardon charged with sticking up a jewlery store. Sad.

I was talking to some people about Roger Clemens, and thought I'd take a look at precisely how remarkable it is for a guy who has pitched in a 5-man rotation to win 300 games . . . anyway, what I decided to do was chart out the number of starts and relief appearances made by the 22 men who won 300 games. It's actually surprising, when you look at the numbers, how relatively few seasons of 40 or more starts the post-1900 300-game winners have compiled.

I left off complete games and innings, which is another issue; I wanted to focus just on how frequently these guys started and relieved. The chart lists career wins, starts, relief appearances, total seasons, seasons of 40 or more starts, seasons of 50 or more starts, and career high in starts (which is how I ranked the chart, from low to high):

Pitcher	W	GS	RA	Yrs	40+	50+	High
Tom Seaver	311	647	9	20	0	0	36
Roger Clemens	341	671	1	22	0	0	36
Lefty Grove	300	457	159	17	0	0	37
Early Wynn	300	612	79	23	0	0	37
Greg Maddux	318	639	4	20	0	0	37
Warren Spahn	363	665	85	21	0	0	39
Gaylord Perry	314	690	87	22	3	0	41
Steve Carlton	329	709	32	24	2	0	41
Don Sutton	324	756	18	23	2	0	41
Nolan Ryan	324	773	34	27	1	0	41
Walter Johnson	417	666	136	21	2	0	42
Eddie Plank	326	529	94	17	4	0	43
Phil Niekro	318	716	148	24	3	0	44
Grover Alexander	373	599	97	20	4	0	45
Christy Mathewson	373	551	84	17	3	0	46
Cy Young	511	815	91	22	11	0	49
Kid Nichols	361	561	59	15	9	1	51
Mickey Welch	307	549	16	13	9	5	65
Tim Keefe	342	594	6	14	9	5	68
John Clarkson	328	518	13	12	8	6	72
Old Hoss Radbourn	309	503	25	11	6	5	73
Pud Galvin	364	689	16	15	11	8	75

A few notes. Lefty Grove won 300 games while starting only 457. Even with his high number of relief appearances, just think about that. In fact, Grove started more than 33 games only once. I was surprised to see quite how few starts Walter Johnson got per year for a guy who won over 400 games despite pitching for mediocre to lousy teams until his mid-30s; granted, he completed a ton of starts (all 29 in 1918) and like Grove, he doubled as his team's relief ace. In fact, until you get down to Cy Young, there's really nobody who was a 40-a-year guy for more than a couple of seasons. You can also see here how similar Nolan Ryan's and Don Sutton's career totals are.

I'm working on a longer post on a related topic, but thought I'd tease it with a trivia quiz (answer to follow tomorrow): Name the three 300-game winners to make more than 100 career relief appearances.

So Johnny Damon signs with the Hated Yankees, reportedly for 4 years, $52 million; he'll be with the Yanks through age 35. I guess he's not the greatest leadoff man ever after all. And I can't wait for the day when he and Bernie are in the outfield at once. Opposing teams won't even need third base coaches anymore.

The $52 million price tag isn't that bad, given the current market (e.g., $102 million for AJ Burnett & BJ Ryan) and while Damon seems to me to be a bad bet to be worth it by age 35, he will at least provide some solid value. (On the other hand, this is a guy whose OBP from age 27 through 29 was .339, and he's leaving Fenway for a tougher park - Damon's batted .310/.442/.383 at Fenway the past four years, .281/.440/.342 on the road). Still, were I the Yanks I would have sacrificed some offense, pursued a better, cheaper glove man like Mike Cameron, and tried to come up with a younger solution long-term.

On the other hand, the loss of Damon hurts the Red Sox more than it helps the Yankees - Damon is, at present, still a very good player - and that's worth something to the Yankees by itself. With the loss of Damon, the dumping of Renteria, the continuing efforts to deal Manny and the arrival of Josh Beckett and Andy Marte, the Sox are clearly leaning towards a semi-rebuilding mode, as was made necessary by the collapse of Schilling and Foulke.

UPDATE: Lyford thinks the Yankees are way overpaying Damon, given the various reasons to believe he will be less productive the next four years than the last and the fact that he's no better a leadoff man than Jeter, and rounds up some thoughts from Sox fans. I don't entirely disagree, but the Yankees' decision looks wiser when you consider how it hurts the Sox and the fact that, as I've noted before, it ought to be a seller's market for quality center fielders this offseason.

Also, following up on a point in the comments: in his career, Damon has batted an anemic .252/.346/.301 in 63 games at Yankee Stadium, compared to .298/.438/.373 in 66 home games against that same Yankee pitching.

I'm glad to see Teepee Talk noting that the Indians have signed Danny Graves. Just in case Minaya & Randolph got any ideas about bringing him back.

No-maaaaahhhhh signs another one-year deal, this one with the Dodgers. The Dodgers' infield situation is now something of a jumble, featuring Jeff Kent (2B/3B), Nomar (SS/UT), Rafael Furcal (SS/2b?), Bill Mueller (3B/1B?), Oscar Robles (3B), Cesar Izturis (SS), with Hee Seop Choi and Olmedo Saenz apparently platooning at first. Presumably, the addition of both Furcal and Nomar signals the Dodgers' lack of faith that Izturis will return at all in 2006 from Tommy John surgery. Which is wise; Izturis is at best adequate and at worst horrific with the bat, so it's prudent to make sure he doesn't rush back from surgery and damage his ability to make a full recovery as a defensive player, which is his primary asset.

You could argue, I suppose, that given the age and injury history of Kent, Nomar and Mueller, it just makes sense (budget be damned) to have all three of them around and just play whoever is available (especially as insurance if Furcal gets hurt). But if I were Derek Lowe, I'd be heading for the hills; this is not going to be a pretty defensive lineup.

As for Nomar, I fear he's skipped the "Fred Lynn in Anaheim" stage of his career and fast forwarded directly to the "Fred Lynn in Baltimore" stage. Ask Juan Gonzalez what happens to guys who keep needing to sign one-year deals because their health never holds up, to say nothing of the difficulty of putting up Nomar-style numbers at Dodger Stadium. Still, it should be fun to see if he can pull out a second act.

I don't know who will win the NL Central next year, but it won't be the Cardinals.

Well, with the Mets signing Julio Franco to a contract that runs through age 48, it's time to play "how old is Julio Franco"?

*He was drafted by the Phillies in 1978. Players acquired or traded by the Phillies that year included Davey Johnson, Pete Rose, Jay Johnstone, Gene Garber, Ted Sizemore, Butch Metzger and Joe Charboneau.

*Franco was acquired by the Indians in the Von Hayes deal, along with, among others, Manny Trillo.

*Franco's double play partner in Cleveland, Tony Bernazard, is an assistant to Omar Minaya. Bernazard had a 10-year career in the major leagues and retired 14 years ago.

*Franco is a friend of George W. Bush, who attended Franco's wedding. Franco is closer in age to Bush than he is to Mets veterans Pedro Martinez and Carlos Delgado. He's also older than Bill Clinton was when Clinton was elected president, and the same age as Theodore Roosevelt when he was re-elected as president.

*Franco was born in 1958. Other players born that year include Alan Trammell, Mike Scioscia, Dave Righetti, Wade Boggs, Dickie Thon, Alan Wiggins, Orel Hershiser, Neil Allen, Scott Holman, Tim Leary, Teddy Higuera, Atlee Hammaker, Bruce Hurst, Joe Cowley, Marty Bystrom, Nelson Norman, Dan Petry, Tim Teufel, Walt Terrell, and Rafael Santana.

*Franco is older than Harold Baines and Tim Raines. He's two years older than Cal Ripken, Kent Hrbek, Andy Van Slyke, Frank Viola and Fernando Valenzuela. He's three years older than Kirby Puckett and John Kruk. He's four years older than Bo Jackson. He's five years older than Ozzie Guillen. He's six years older than Dwight Gooden. He's nine years older than Robin Ventura.

*Franco is older than Lawrence Taylor, Marcus Allen, Magic Johnson, Ronnie Lott, Freeman McNeil. He's two years older than Eric Dickerson, Ralph Sampson and Joe Morris, three years older than Isiah Thomas, Terry Cummings, Dan Marino and Boomer Esiason, four years older than Patrick Ewing and five years older than Charles Barkley and Al Toon.

*Hall of Famers Christy Mathewson, Lou Gehrig, Roberto Clemente, Tony Lazzeri, Addie Joss, Ross Youngs, Arky Vaughan, Ed Delahanty, Buck Ewing, Pud Galvin, John Clarkson, King Kelly, Rube Waddell, Frank Chance and Old Hoss Radbourn were all dead by the age Franco will be when his contract is up.

*Franco in 2006 will be the same age Sandy Koufax was . . . in 1983.

Noticed while looking up something else: Placido Polanco's Total Bases the past 5 seasons: 216, 221, 220, 222, 224. And in fairly consistent - the past three years, very consistent - numbers of plate appearances: 610, 595, 554, 555, 551. Polanco's one of baseball's more underrated players, a lifetime .300 hitter with a good glove at two infield positions - how many people even noticed him batting .331 this year?

Quick thoughts:

*Well, the Blue Jays are back in the game with the acquisitions of BJ Ryan, AJ Burnett and Lyle Overbay, and they're not done yet. All are good baseball moves, although spending $102 million on Burnett and Ryan seems like a financial decision they may come to regret, especially given that they're still basically working towards building a third place team unless the Red Sox go into rebuilding mode, which seems unlikely with the acquisition of Josh Beckett and Mark Loretta.

*Tough times, by contrast, in Baltimore, even with the arrival of Leo Mazzone and Ramon Hernandez; Hernandez creates a bit of a logjam with Javy Lopez, and the revival of the Jays only makes the division more competitive.

*The trade of Edgar Renteria for Andy Marte - which I know will make at least one of our regular readers happy - is a fascinating challenge. If you apply the basic principles of modern sabermetrics, this looks like a heist for the sabermetrically-oriented Red Sox, who unload a player who is expensive, 30, coming off two straight off years at the plate and a terrible year in the field, and has lost a significant amount of speed (his signature skill) in exchange for a 22-year-old who the Baseball Prospectus named as the best prospect in baseball entering the 2005 season. (Marte batted .275/.506/.372 in AAA Richmond this year, unspectacular but impressive for a 21-year-old in what, if I recall correctly, is a pitcher's park, plus Marte cut his strikeouts as he moved up, a good sign). Even with the Braves needing a shortstop and even given that the Red Sox are eating part of the contract, I have to say that unless the Braves know more about Renteria and/or Marte than we do, this is a steal.

But you know what? They're the Braves. So there's a good chance that they do know more than you or I or the Red Sox know about these two players.

*I could live, I suppose, with the Mets possibly getting Mark Grudzielanek (thank heavens they wouldn't be playing him with Mientkiewicz), if he's cheap and, ideally, a bench player. But I don't like the idea. Grudzielanek is 36 and only useful if he bats .300, and players of his type tend to hit the wall very abruptly around 35-36 (Tommy Herr was 34 when the Mets got him). On the other hand, Jose Valentin is my kind of player, a guy who has had great range and made up for low batting averages with power, some patience, and an ability to avoid the DP. But he's also 36 and batted .170 last season (he also had a huge spike upward in walks, which Bill James thinks can sometimes be a trouble sign for an old player); I don't want to get the tail end of Valentin's career just because he was useful a few years ago. Mercifully, it appears that they've only signed him to a 1-year deal.

But I'm glad the Mets passed on Bernie Williams. You never know anything for sure in this game, but it's hard to be surer about anything than that Bernie is done. With little range and no arm, he's a liability in the field; he's got minimal power now, and has batted .263, .262 and .249 the last three years. Bernie should retire, but he's apparently returning to the Yankees, to do what I can't imagine.

Julio Franco, I like, but a two-year deal for a 47-year-old?

And the Rangers can keep Laynce Nix and his career .285 OBP in Coors Field South.

*Gee, what were the odds that things would end badly for Roger Clemens in Houston, and over money? I still say, as I've said for the past six years, that this ends with Clemens trying to go into Cooperstown in a Devil Rays hat . . . much as I hate to say so, Clemens owes it to baseball to keep pitching. You can't retire while you're that good, you just can't.

Now, whether I'd take him as a Met is another matter. I guess I could hold my nose, and it would be amusing to have a Clemens/Pedro 1-2 punch. But in all seriousness, I'd bet it's probably the Rangers who win out here.

*Alfonso Soriano remains a talented slugger who can play in the middle infield, but his decline at the plate the past two years really has been masked by the park, plus the Nationals are getting him while they still have Jose Vidro, so if they can ever get Vidro healthy they will have to move one of them. I think the Rangers got the better of this deal, adding a guy, Brad Wilkerson, who has power and a lot of plate discipline, although he did have a poor 2005. Wilkerson's a year younger, and as recently as 2004 hit more homers and scored more runs. I wonder how many fewer pitches opposing starters will have to throw this year by exchanging Wilkerson for Soriano.

More on some of the other moves another day, if time permits. It's been a busy winter.

First of all, I continue to be tied up with work stuff, so apologies if blogging has been a bit light around here . . . I was going to blog on the Kris Benson for Mike MacDougal and Jeremy Affeldt rumor, but that seems to have fallen by the wayside now.

Still, I wouldn't be heartbroken to see Benson go:

1. Pedro-Glavine-Heilman-Trachsel-Seo, possibly with Zambrano as a long man/emergency starter, sounds fine to me. They can afford to part with Benson for help elsewhere, say in the bullpen (presumably, they can't find anyone dumb enough to take Benson with one of the Mets' other starters for a better starter).

2. Benson's K/9 rates by month, 2004-05 (Sept. 04 includes one October start, and he missed April 05):

Month	K/9
Apr 04	6.16
May 04	6.00
June 04	5.86
Jul 04	5.01
Aug 04	4.80
Sept 04	8.45
May 05	7.68
Jun 05	1.97
Jul 05	6.69
Aug 05	4.33
Sept 05	3.26

Call me paranoid, but especially with Benson's poor durability record, that severe dropoff the last two months of 2005 scares me. I'm concerned that Benson is a ticking time bomb, and an expensive one.

For Mets fans, at least, a sad day: John Olerud has retired. Olerud can still play - he batted .289/.451/.344 this season, and he drove in 37 runs, which projects out to 128 RBI per 600 at bats - but he's really a bench player at this stage of his career, and I suppose he didn't want to keep playing in that role. Olerud could possibly have been a Hall of Famer if he'd (1) not had a couple of lost years at age 26-27 with the Blue Jays and (2) kept chugging rather than falling off after age 33; his career .295/.465/.398 line is a very solid one, but like Keith Hernandez he was the kind of player who really needed a long career and some milestones to be immortalized.

You'll never see another player cooler under pressure as Olerud - the guy is absolutely unflappable. Throughout his career, he always had a knack for hitting when the rest of his team was cold. I'll always remember his crucial grand slam off Greg Maddux on September 29, 1999, giving the Mets the juice to snap a 7-game losing skid in the heart of the pennant race and set up their miraculous run to the wild card, as well as his reaching base 14 straight times over a key weekend in mid-September 1998. The Mets might well have won the World Series in 2000 if they'd kept Olerud, and even with his later struggles at the end of his Seattle contract, they would have avoided the Mo Vaughn fiasco. Olerud's three-year tenure at Shea left him as the Mets' career leader in batting, OBP and OPS. At his absolute peak, Olerud was a monster offensive force, a fine glove man, and a calm, steadying presence.

So, the Mets plug another hole by going back to the same well that produced Mike Piazza, Al Leiter, Dennis Cook and Carlos Delgado, trading in two relatively unknown (to me, at least) pitching prospects at the Marlins' garage sale for Paul LoDuca. LoDuca's a solid, unspectacular player, 34 years old now, a lifetime .283 hitter but with only modest power and patience who is owed $6.25 million per year in 2006 and 2007. Not a great pickup in the abstract, but probably cheaper and more durable than Ramon Hernandez and a better bat than Bengie Molina. LoDuca's no great shakes defensively. One good sign is that LoDuca, like Piazza, comes to the Mets from two NL pitcher's parks, so what you see on paper is likely to be what you get.

The big decision, of course, is whether to try to ride LoDuca hard in the first half or rest him with a lot of Ramon Castro; LoDuca is just about the most notorious first half hitter in the game, with a lifetime split of .308/.453/.362 before the All-Star Break and .257/.375/.312 after. The question is whether that's a persistent fatigue issue or just a seasonal pattern. The pattern was nearly absent in 2005 (.286/.375/.338 vs. .279/.388/.328), as he got more time off, which could suggest fatigue, or it could just be a sign of decline that he had a typical second half without the great first half.

I assume that the LoDuca deal, coming on the heels of acquiring Delgado and Billy Wagner, is the end of the Mets' shopping spree - after this, they may still deal, but not from need and not to acquire new salary obligations to mop up all the payroll room they cleared with the departures of Piazza (who is now definitively not returning at any price), Cameron and Looper.

This isn't a lawsuit you see every day.

Via Repoz, I see that there's a campaign afoot to promote Bert Blyleven for the Hall of Fame, including the website Bert Belongs. I strongly support this effort. You can see my case for Blyleven (written in December 2000) here, and more on Bert's place among the great pitchers here and here.

I have to like yesterday's moves by the Mets. I've been arguing for a while that they should prefer BJ Ryan over Billy Wagner, but they simply got outbid on Ryan, and Wagner was certainly the best remaining option. His contract - 3 years, $43 million, with an option of a fourth year pushing the deal to $50 million - is pretty overpriced for a 34-year-old closer with an injury history, but that's the market right now, and with the departure of Piazza and Cameron, the Mets have money to spend. As with Pedro, if Wagner's healthy for at least the first two years of the deal he will be worth it.

They also grabbed 29-year-old free agent center fielder Tike Redman, fresh off playing himself out of a regular job with the Pirates. Redman is a weak bat - he should remind Mets fans of Jermaine Allensworth - but he's reputed to be a good glove, and should spell the end of Gerald Williams' Mets career. Minaya has done a very good job of getting guys like this to upgrade the bench. Hopefully, with Redman and Nady, we shouldn't see any middle infielders in the outfield this season.

Well, looks like JP Ricciardi is even more bullish on BJ Ryan than I was, giving him a 5-year, $47 million contract to come to Toronto, the largest ever for a relief pitcher. Ken Rosenthal thinks the deal is nuts, and as enthused as I am about Ryan, I'm half inclined to agree with him - that's a lot of money for any closer, especially for a team that's a long way from filling all its other roster holes, and that much money is a lot of pressure on Ryan. I can't blame the Mets for not matching a deal that big, even if it does pan out well. Of course, I assume Wagner will use this contract to squeeze more money out of the Mets, Phillies and other bidders.

The Mets get Delgado and $7 million for Mike Jacobs and Yusmiero Petit. Some disjointed thoughts on the deal and on other rumored deals:

1. Hey, if the Yankees had traded Kevin Maas for a big established power hitter after 1990, that would have been a good idea. Jacobs' stock will never be higher. I regard Jacobs as the next Rico Brogna, who came to the Mets at age 24 (same as Jacobs) and batted .351/.626/.380 in 131 at bats, compared to .310/.710/.375 for Jacobs in 100 at bats. Brogna, like Jacobs, could hit for a good average with middling power but had little plate discipline; he had one more good year the following season (.289/.485/.342) but was at best a league-average hittter after that, which is poor for a 1B. (Then again, maybe Jacobs he could pull a Mike Sweeney and take a huge step up with the bat now that he's not catching anymore; he's never had a full season where he wasn't catching).

2. Delgado is a big big improvement over Jacobs. Plus, they get $7 million in the deal - Delgado winds up costing $9 million/year less than Manny would have. Delgado's comparable players at age 34 include a few pretty scary ones (#1 is McCovey, who batted .213 at 34). If he ages like Fred McGriff, he'll be worth it.

3. Delgado is worth Petit, although I do think Petit could be a star at Shea. But he's a pitching prospect with only a handful of AAA innings, and those are always risky. And this way they keep Lastings Milledge, as long as they don't go and stupidly trade him for Soriano or something. I think it makes more sense to get a 1B than an OF, given the internal alternatives of Diaz and Milledge (and, yes, Nady, who can step in if Diaz falters).

4. Alfonso Soriano's upside is, he'd be an improvement over Matsui, Cairo and Anderson Hernandez (did you see how overmatched Hernandez looked in September? The kid's not ready just yet). And he's a better idea than Mark Grudzielanek, who I'd seen mentioned as a 2B possibility; the track record of 35-year-old singles/doubles hitters is gruesome, especially ones with little plate discipline. But Minaya should not value Soriano as if he is a star; he'd hit .240 at Shea and not give the team as much offense as, say, Mike Cameron did.

5. Pedro's not the only reason for a win-now attitude; the current labor agreement expires after 2006 (Pinto has some info on how the Mets are now in a position to spend money for 2006). (Also, Floyd and Glavine aren't young, though Glavine's not really a key player at this stage). Nonetheless, I do prefer to build for the long run around Wright and Reyes, particularly given the Braves' stockpiling of young talent.

6. I don't trust Vazquez but he would be an improvement over Benson, whose fastball went on vacation the last six weeks of the season. While Vazquez also finished very badly, I'd rather take the guy who's a power pitcher and appears healthy.

7. I don't see anyone left on the Mets' shopping list worth giving up Milledge for.

8. If you want to play to win in 2006, re-up Piazza for another year. He's still a better player than Ramon Hernandez or Bengie Molina, and probably would cost less $$.

I just don't understand this, as I've said before. The Orioles are offering BJ Ryan $18 million over three years, $6 million per. The Mets have offered Billy Wagner $30 million over three years, $10 million per. Ryan put it all together in August 2003; since 8/1/03, here are their numbers (via Pinto's database, except for the Blown Saves numbers):

Pitcher	W	L	SV	BS	G	IP	ERA	H/9	HR/9	BB/9	K/9
Wagner	8	4	72	7	144	153	1.76	5.47	0.82	2.00	10.35
Ryan	6	11	39	10	174	180.1	2.15	6.64	0.40	3.64	12.23

And bear in mind that Ryan is 30, Wagner is 34. Both are lefthanded. Both throw hard. Yes, you can make the argument that Wagner's been the better pitcher, but it's awfully close. Ryan strikes more guys out, he gives up half as many homers - a highly significant fact in big games, as Wagner's been known to get touched by the longball in big situations - and he has age and durability on his side. Yes, the save and save % numbers favor Wagner, but Ryan has certainly proven he can hold a closer job with 36 saves in 2005, and the blown saves figure is always uglier when you're working primarily as a setup man. How can you look at these two guys and think Wagner is worth an extra $4 million per year?

You know, I can understand the theory behind trading Mike Cameron to get rid of his salary. With the Mets looking to add salary at other positions, Carlos Beltran holding down center field, and Victor Diaz ready to get a shot playing everyday as an inexpensive right fielder, Cameron at $8 million for 2006 is an expensive luxury item.

But I can't understand the execution - trading him for Xavier Nady - even assuming that some of these scenarios are in the works, unless it's really the case that some other GM (Chuck LaMar?) lusts after Nady and wants him, specifically, in a deal.

It's not that Nady is a terrible player. He's a decent fourth OF who can also play 1B, and he'll be 27 this year so he could take a modest step up. But if he gets regular playing time he's at best a guy who doesn't kill you; he's a lesser player than Benny Agbayani, Darryl Boston, or Danny Heep. I thought maybe at least there was a thought that he'd improve leaving Petco, which is the toughest pitcher's park in baseball, but he batted .258/.408/.314 on the road the past three seasons.

Viewed strictly as a salary dump, I can't see why the Mets couldn't have held out for more than Nady, though. There are plenty of rich teams without a quality CF. The Yankees could certainly use Cameron. Or the Angels, who have Steve Finley's moldering corpse in CF. Or the Red Sox, if Damon walks. Or the Dodgers, with the completely insane Milton Bradley in center and a new GM who was apparently hired to improve team "chemistry." Or the Orioles, for whom Luis Matos and David Newhan batted a combined .252/.351/.318 in 2005. Surely, one of them would have parted with something more useful to get a guy with Cameron's stellar defense and solid bat.

Maybe the Padres found some missing pieces of Cameron's face in their outfield?

Let's try a quiz that will mostly be easy to the history buffs . . . A surprising number of baseball's great pitchers haven't gone by their given first names, preferring either a nickname or their middle name. See if you can match the pitcher with the first name. First, the pitchers:

1. Bert Blyleven
2. Three Finger Brown
3. Roger Clemens
4. Dizzy Dean
5. Whitey Ford
6. Bob Gibson
7. Lefty Gomez
8. Lefty Grove
9. Kid Nichols
10. Satchel Paige
11. Nolan Ryan
12. Tom Seaver
13. Dazzy Vance
14. Hoyt Wilhelm
15. Cy Young

Now, the first names:

Charles
Clarence
Denton
Edward
George
James
Jay or Jerome (variously)
Leroy
Lynn
Mordecai
Pack
Rik
Robert
Vernon
William

Answers below the fold.

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So, A-Rod wins what should have been his fourth MVP Award, and could easily have been his fifth or sixth; he was robbed of the award in 1996 and 2002, and could easily have won it in 2000 and/or 2001. And yet, you will hear endless cries that he is overrated.

Clearly, on the raw numbers, A-Rod had a better year with the bat, finishing ahead of Ortiz in batting, slugging, OBP, games, runs, total bases, steals, and fewest GIDP. He did this while playing in a much less favorable park, as a better baserunner, and as a good fielding third baseman compared to a DH.

Really, then, the whole case for Ortiz is clutch hitting. Now, there are only three hitters I've ever seen who had such extensive resumes as clutch hitters that you couldn't possibly dismiss them as having a real ability to rise to the occasion - George Brett, Eddie Murray, and David Ortiz. But what is Big Papi's real advantage in clutch situations? Gordon Edes noted that "[a]gainst the other playoff teams, A-Rod hit .325 with 13 home runs and 30 RBIs, Ortiz .273 with 9 home runs and 33 RBIs." (h/t David Pinto). That's one way of looking at it; I looked at how the two hitters' production broke down by the games they appeared in, to examine the charge that A-Rod did all his hitting in meaningless situations:

*A-Rod either drove in or scored at least as many runs as the margin of victory in 21 Yankee wins (including a 12-4 win where he drove in 10 runs, and two 3-run victories over the Red Sox). The comparable number for David Ortiz is 24. By contrast, the Yankees lost 13 games by 1 or 2 runs in which A-Rod neither drove in nor scored a run; for Ortiz, the number was 10. Overall, a slight advantage for Ortiz.

*In the 51 games the Yankees won by 3 runs or less, A-Rod batted .310, slugged .545, had a .430 OBP, scored 35 runs, drove in 36, and hit 13 homers. In other words, he contributed very substantially in games the Yankees won and might otherwise have lost.

*That said, Ortiz did have insane numbers in close games. Overall, in 88 games decided by 3 runs or less, A-Rod hit .278/.506/.379 with 50 Runs and 57 RBI - solid numbers, considering that close games excludes the laughers where people run up big numbers. But Ortiz, in 94 such games, hit .296/.601/.393 with 65 Runs and 80 RBI. In 43 1-run games, A-Rod batted .253/.525/.331 with 26 Runs and 29 RBI, but Ortiz (in 42 games) batted .319/.712/.413 with 33 Runs and 35 RBI.

*So, where did A-Rod make his real mark? Well, besides the 51 victories by 3 runs or less, the Yankees won 44 other games by 4 or more runs. Now, they may not be as dramatic as 1-run wins, but blowouts count just as much in the standings, and they mean an awful lot to a team with a shaky pitching staff.

Was A-Rod just hitting with a big lead in these games? I went through the play by play to see how he had hit in his first and second plate appearances in those 44 games, to see how much he had contributed to putting 44 wins in the bank, a good start for any playoff contender.

In his first plate appearance in those 44 games, A-Rod was 21 for 35 with eight homers, 17 Runs scored, and 14 RBI. In his second plate appearance, he was 11 for 37 with 4 homers, 11 Runs, and 11 RBI. Total batting line: 36 for 72, 6 2B, 12 HR, 28 R, 25 RBI, and a batting line of .500/1.083/.576.

So, A-Rod is a dangerous hitter in close games, if not as dangerous as Ortiz or as he is otherwise. But like the young Mike Tyson, he's very, very good at putting games away early. Who can say the ability to win baseball games with ease isn't valuable?

One of the big question marks for the Mets this offseason is the catching job. Mike Piazza's 7-year contract is up, and all signs point to the Mets looking to go in a new direction.

Now, as long as you don't compare them to the Piazza of old, Mets catchers did OK with the bat: .245/.436/.322 with 36 doubles, 26 HR and 99 RBI. That's about even with the 2005 production of Ben Molina, apparently one of the leading candidates for the job, who batted .295/.446/.336 in a career year with the bat in his walk year at age 30. Molina is a career .273/.397/.309 hitter who hasn't had 450 at bats since he was 25 and would get lapped in a footrace with Piazza. Let's turn to Matt Welch, who's watched Molina on a daily basis:

I'm not sure Bengie's even a good defensive catcher at this point. His throwing has deteriorated -- from 36 of 81 base-stealers (44%) in 2003, to 18/69 (26%) in 2004, to 20/64 (31%) this year; even while his barely younger brother has been improving from 28% to 49% to 53%. And more noticeable on a day-to-day basis is Bengie's increasingly desperate habit of jabbing with his glove at pitches in the dirt, instead of trying to move his fat body in the way.

He led MLB with 10 passed balls this year to Jose Molina's three, but that doesn't begin to tell the story, since official scorers rarely even call passed balls anymore. The real action is in wild pitches: John Lackey -- he of just 71 BB in 209 innings pitched -- ranked third in all of baseball with 18 wild pitches this year; reliever Scot Shields came in seventh with 12 (and K-Rod had eight, and Esteban "I'm Not Even on the Playoff Roster" Yan uncorked five, etc.).

Other than the batting average, Molina's career numbers are a pretty good match for Ramon Castro, the for-the-moment incumbent (.222/.387/.304). Not that I think Castro is up to the job of catching every day, but unlike Molina he's not just a singles hitter with a sketchy history as far as hitting those singles. (I'm assuming for now that Mike Jacobs can't handle the glovework and/or would blow his arm out if he caught everyday; obviously, if he's up to the job, he'd be ideal).

Then there's Ramon Hernandez, who reportedly is interested in the Mets. Hernandez, unlike Molina, can actually hit a little: .283/.463/.330 the past two seasons in the best pitcher's park in baseball. On the other hand, Hernandez is turning 30 and has missed 114 games over those two seasons.

Honestly, I don't think Hernandez gives me a lot of comfort with the bat. He'd never hit nearly that well until he turned 27. More to the point, I took a look at baseball-reference.com's list of comparable players through age 29, and it was a gruesome list of guys who aged badly, including Jody Davis, Rich Gedman, Terry Kennedy, and Tony Pena.

In fact, that got me wondering: who's a better bet over the next two years, a decent hitter just off his prime like Hernandez, or an old superstar like Piazza? I looked at what those 10 catchers did at age 29, 30 and 31. To do the same for Piazza, I only had 5 catchers to work with, since four of his most-comparables are non-catchers and one (Bill Dickey) either retired or went in the military after batting .351 in 1943. Those five were Yogi Berra, Gary Carter, Lance Parrish, Gabby Hartnett, and Carlton Fisk, and I looked at their numbers at 36 (Piazza's age in 2005), 37 and 38.

Let's look at the results. First, Hernandez at 29, followed by his comps at 29, 30 and 31:

Age	PA	AVG	SLG	OBP
29	392	.290	.450	.321
29	372	.259	.391	.316
30	362	.261	.373	.329
31	265	.244	.380	.308

Now, Piazza at 36, followed by his comps at 36, 37 and 38:

Age	PA	AVG	SLG	OBP
36	442	.251	.452	.326
36	363	.271	.467	.333
37	308	.244	.439	.329
38	296	.246	.390	.312

As you can see, while the Piazza-style old guys are still a better bet with the bat, neither player's comps give much in terms of reason to hope (although Hernandez was ahead of his comps the last two years; several of them had hit the wall by 28). If Piazza at one year is a realistic option, the Mets could do far worse than to re-up him and spot Castro in there.

I guess my real bottom line here is this: Hernandez and Molina have value because catchers are scarce . . . but they're just not that good, and they're at least as likely to depreciate rapidly in value as Piazza is. Scarcity or no, you don't win pennants by throwing tens of millions of dollars at players who just aren't that good. Better to save the money, maybe get Castro a cheap platoon partner or something, and spend elsewhere to upgrade with genuine quality.

Oh, and one more thing I saved for last because it seems so implausible: Tom Verducci claims that the Hated Yankees are looking to move Jorge Posada, or - even more bizarrely - shift him to first base. I understand why the Yanks would be unhappy with Posada's $12 million price tag, but look at alternatives like Hernandez and Molina, far inferior players asking $8-10 million per, and Posada doesn't look so bad. (As far as I know, the Yanks' only other internal option is John Flaherty, who barely his enough to survive as Randy Johnson's personal catcher at this point). Of course, the Mets are the one team that would regard Posada as a younger, cheaper replacement for the outgoing incumbent, and they do have one thing the Yankees could use: a Gold Glove-caliber center fielder to spare. If it weren't the Mets and the Yankees, that deal might make some sense.

Bartolo Colon's Cy Young Award raises a question I'd been thinking about late in the year, when Kevin Millwood first grabbed the AL ERA lead: whether this was an unusually weak year for pitchers in the AL. One way to look at that is to look on baseball-reference.com at the league leader in ERA+, the league/park adjusted measure of which pitcher stands furthest below the league in ERA (the stat divides the park-adjusted league ERA by the pitcher's ERA, so the higher the ERA+, the better, with a league-average pitcher clocking in at 100).

Colon's ERA+ this year was 120, not in the top 10 in the AL. The league leader was Santana, at 153. Is that one of the lowest league-leading figures ever? Not really, as it turns out.

I went back and looked over the league leaders in this category going back to the dawn of the National Association in 1871 - 256 major league seasons in all. The league leader in ERA+ has been below 150 in 40 of those (15.6%). The lowest league-leading total was 127 by Tommy Bond in 1879, which is unsurprising; the NL was the only major league in 1879, there were only 8 teams, and each team used one pitcher most of the time, so that the league's top 8 pitchers threw 76% of the innings. Hard to stand out in a crowd that small.

So, I put together a list since 1893 (when the mound moved back to its curtrent 60'6" from 50 feet), which gave a list of 13 pitchers who finished below 144 and yet led their league. Here they go:

Pitcher	Year	ERA+
Sal Maglie	1951	134
Tom Hume	1979	135
Gene Conley	1959	137
Diego Segui	1970	138
Sal Maglie	1956	138
Mike Garcia	1954	139
Bob Stanley	1982	140
Curt Simmons	1961	140
John Denny	1976	140
Alejandro Pena	1984	142
Frank Baumann	1960	142
Tom Seaver	1970	142
Joe Mays	2001	143

Interestingly, other than Seaver and Maglie, a number of these guys were fluky leaders anyway (Denny was sort of fluky, but he did win the Cy Young Award legitimately in 1983). Note that the 50s to early 60s were the golden age of pitcher parity . . . Garcia's ERA+ was 139, but the Indians' ERA+ as a team was 132; that had to be one of the most well-balanced staffs ever.

One name that jumps out here is Gene Conley. Did you know that Conley had been the best pitcher in the National League one year - and still found the energy to go play 1,300 minutes for an NBA-winning Celtics team that offseason, including being third on the team in rebounds? Amazing. I'd always thought of Conley as sort of a failed experiment in two-sport play, but for a while there he really made it work.

More from the rumor mill: Jon Weisman speculates on Adrian Beltre poentially returning to the Dodgers. Hey, I traded Beltre and his $33 salary for Joe Nathan in May on my Roto team; I can only imagine how frustrated the Mariners were suffering through the whole season cutting him real paychecks. A Beltre encore makes some sense, although given how eerily similar his 2005 numbers were to 2001, 2002 and 2003, there's a very real risk that those numbers represent his real performance level at this point.

The Mets will promote Gary Cohen to the lead play-by-play job on their new cable network. Via Repoz, who notes that this spells curtains for Fran Healy. Of course, I get more games on the radio than TV, so I'll be awaiting word on Cohen's replacement.

Who is the oldest player ever to win a Gold Glove?

Answer below.

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I have to say, I was surprised and disappointed in the AL Cy Young vote for Bartolo Colon, a vote that signals the continued sway of W-L record to the exclusion of all else. Yet again, anti-statistics sportswriters prove themselves to be slavishly devoted to a single statistic. Johan Santana was clearly still the best starting pitcher in the league, but given the absence of a dominant starter, I would have given the award to Mariano Rivera, who had a remarkable year (albeit one that exceeded his usual standards mainly just because 2/3 of the runs he allowed were unearned).

Matt Welch takes another swing at know-nothing LA Times baseball columnist Bill Plaschke - this time in the LAT itself (H/T). A sample:

Plaschke apparently never bothered to learn the well-documented basics of the philosophies discussed in "Moneyball," so he could write howlers such as this one on Oct. 4: "It's a vision that has yet to result in a playoff series victory in the three places where it is prominently pushed - Oakland, Los Angeles and Toronto." Every baseball beat writer in the country (including the Times' own capable Bill Shaikin) could tell you that "Moneyball" tenets played a big role in the 2004 World Champion Red Sox, who employed the movement's godfather, Bill James.

In his first column after DePodesta's hiring, Plaschke made the absurdly inaccurate claim that "[Kirk] Gibson's unconventional numbers probably wouldn't have fit the A's system," when in fact Gibson's high on-base percentage would have fit in particularly well in Oakland's (or anybody else's) system.

Reading Plaschke, you'd be convinced that DePodesta's only baseball knowledge came from playing computer games in his underwear. "[J.D. Drew] was the double sixes in Paul DePodesta's giant game of Strat-O-Matic, the scroll wheel on his baseball iPod," Plaschke mused on June 24 (yes, he actually writes like this). "He was the ideal player for those who study the sport at a keyboard and play it in a basement."

Actually, DePodesta played baseball in college. Plaschke? He wrote for his campus newspaper.

Read the whole thing.

Roberto Alomar, that is:

Roberto Alomar [was] reinstated from the voluntary retired list Thursday by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, and . . . filed for free agency.

Alomar. . . who had signed a $600,000, one-year contract with Tampa Bay, filed for free agency to preserve future options rather than with the specific intent of playing next year, agent Jaime Torres said.

Hmmmmm. Via Rob McMillin.

Now that the World Series has concluded with a sixth different champion in six years, it may be time to retire the idea that baseball is suffering from a crisis of lack of competitive teams. That's not to say there aren't imbalances; even rich teams like the Mets, Red Sox and Phillies spent barely half the budget of the Hated Yankees this year, for example. But even if nobody else can be the Yankees, the number of teams that have the chance to be competitive from time to time is much larger than Bud Selig has argued in the past.

I ran a chart four years ago breaking out the last time each team was in the postseason or finished within six games of the postseason (division or wild card). Six may not be a round number but it seemed like as good a line as any - the Indians, for example, finished six games out this year; the Royals finished 7 out in 2003. So, I'll use the same standard again. With that in mind, let's update the chart to show the last time each team was within six games, the last time each team made the postseason, the last World Series appearance and the last championship:

Team	w/in 6	Post	In WS	Won WS
White Sox	2005	2005	2005	2005
Astros	2005	2005	2005	--
Red Sox	2005	2005	2004	2004
Cardinals	2005	2005	2004	1982
Yankees	2005	2005	2003	2000
Angels	2005	2005	2002	2002
Braves	2005	2005	1999	1995
Padres	2005	2005	1998	--
Marlins	2005	2003	2003	2003
Diamondbacks	2005	2002	2001	2001
Indians	2005	2001	1997	1948
Mets	2005	2000	2000	1986
Phillies	2005	1993	1993	1980
Twins	2004	2004	1991	1991
Dodgers	2004	2004	1988	1988
Giants	2004	2003	2002	1954
A's	2004	2003	1990	1989
Cubs	2004	2003	1945	1908
Rangers	2004	1999	--	--
Mariners	2003	2001	--	--
Blue Jays	2000	1993	1993	1993
Reds	1999	1995	1990	1990
Orioles	1997	1997	1983	1983
Pirates	1997	1992	1979	1979
Nationals	1996	1981	--	--
Rockies	1995	1995	--	--
Brewers	1992	1982	1982	--
Tigers	1988	1987	1984	1984
Royals	1987	1985	1985	1985
Devil Rays	--	--	--	--

(Chart corrected per reader comment - when I did this in 2001 I must have missed the 1988 Tigers. My bad.)

As you can see, two things are clear from this chart. One is that, much as it still bothers me on a number of levels, the wild card really has opened up a lot of playoff opportunities (without the wild card, even the Red Sox would not have appeared in the postseason since 1995). And second, the number of true have-nots in the game is pretty small. 21 of the 30 teams have been at least seriously competitive for a playoff spot in the past six seasons, and only three of those have failed to make the playoffs in that period, one of whom (the Rangers) had just ended a run of winning three division titles in four years and followed that up by signing the largest free agent contract in the history of sports. Another, the Phillies, plays in the largest one-team market in the nation. The Blue Jays were also coming off a successful run in the early 90s and have generally drawn well, but have suffered partly from poor management and partly from sharing a division with the Yankees and Red Sox.

Of the remaining nine hard-core long-term losers, one has been given a solution to its economic problems, as the Nationals got a new city and are on their way to a new stadium and new ownership. The Rockies have a substantial and growing market to themselves, but have been victimized as much by altitude and bad management as by economics. The Orioles are always big spenders but share Toronto's problem of being in the AL East. Four of the six of the remaining sad sacks (Reds, Pirates, Tigers, and Brewers) play in brand-new ballparks, plus the Devil Rays opened in 1998. Only the Royals combine all the worst problems of baseball's underclass - low payroll, small city, old ballpark, and a track record of poor management.

Now, in a game with winners and losers, someone has to lose, and baseball's always had teams that spent a long stretch in the wilderness (read the history of the Phillies and A's some time). I would, for now, classify four teams as being genuinely handicapped by economic circumstances, not as a complete excuse for failure but as a contributor to long-term stagnantion: the Reds, Pirates, Brewers, and Royals. Three others have serious long-term futility problems, but less economic issues: the Tigers, Devil Rays and Rockies. It is a legitimate concern that even new parks don't seem to do much for the hard-core underclass of the game. But the good news is, the chance to be competitive has rarely been so widespread as it is today.

UPDATE: Another interesting note here, after the last two seasons: there's now no team whose last World Championship came between 1955 and 1978. There's 19 teams that have won the Series in the past 27 seasons, plus 8 expansion teams that have never won it (3 of whom entered the league since 1977), leaving just three teams (the Cubs, Indians and Giants) with a serious long time wait since their last flag. The fourth longest drought is the Rangers.

*Ryan McConnell has a big roundup of Mets and other news, including the Mets picking up the 2006 option on Steve Trachsel but not on Doug Minky and Braden Looper. Good riddance to the Blooper.

*Kevin Cott on why you see fewer African-American players these days:

Before the MLB Draft was instituted in 1965, teams relied on training academies to find and develop young talent. But with the draft, it was no longer economically efficient to spend money developing players that, upon turning 18, could then be drafted away by other teams. Teams eventually found a loophole to this by turning to Latin American countries, where the players weren't subject to the same draft eligibility (unlike basketball, where the draft is international). That's why there has been such an accelerated growth in Latin ballplayers - early scouting still pays off. The other result is that baseball development in the States is now dictated largely by socioeconomic conditions - it's a more expensive and specialized sport. So you could argue that the onus is on baseball to establish more inner-city clinics and developmental programs, but that's about it.

In other words, there's two tracks: an expensive track for homegrown players, which favors white players from areas with the financial werewithal to have good Little Leagues and the like, and a cheap track for foreign players. The poor, inner-city or rural Americans who used to be baseball's lifeblood are thus less common (they're more apt to turn to basketball in the cities and football in the rural areas), and black players feel the impact of that disproportionately, especially when you take away the black players who go into baseball because their dads played in the big leagues.

*Matt Welch gives what for to Bill Plaschke, the LA Times columnist who spent the past two years trying to run Paul DePodesta out of town for the offense of being a smart young guy who questioned traditional ideas. Welch also links to some other good commentaries on DePodesta's departure, including Jon Weisman. And Will Carroll draws larger lessons from the White Sox' World Championship as a "Moneyball" backlash. Really, There's only one solution that makes sense at this point. Three simple steps:

1. Give Plaschke the GM job.
2. Give DePodesta a daily column in the LAT.
3. Buy popcorn.

*Pinto has some thoughts on Derek Jeter's Gold Glove, and also links to a fan ballot for Hall of Fame announcers, where you can - I swear I am not making this up - cast a ballot for Fran Healey.

*Tom G notes that Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito clings to a bizarre, irrational and superstitious faith: that's right, he's a Phillies fan.

*Leo Mazzone's departure for the Orioles is certainly the biggest news to hit the NL East thus far in the offseason. Recall, of course, that while Mazzone deserves enormous credit for his accomplishments in Atlanta, Bobby Cox did have good pitching staffs in Toronto, too. Also, Mazzone has already proven he can't do much for Bruce Chen.

*Mike's Baseball Rants declares the 2005 World Series the closest sweep ever and compares Brandon Backe to other pitchers who rose to the occasion in postseason play.

*On a similar theme, Son of Brock Landers looks at Roger Clemens' playoff rap sheet and why he has a bad reputation in the postseason. Actually, the answer is simple: Clemens' reputation stems from his time with the Red Sox - he had just 1 win in 9 postseason starts with them, and a 3.88 ERA in the postseason compared to 3.06 in the regular season. By the time he started a postseason game in another uniform, he'd been in the league 16 years and cemented the reputation.

*Geoff Young is skeptical that Trevor Hoffman is worth the money he wants from the Padres.

*Jeff at USS Mariner links to a rundown of possible Japanese imports to Seattle or other major league teams.

*Meant to link to this before the Series: the parallel lives of Frank Thomas and Jeff Bagwell.

*Bill Simmons and Begging to Differ on the departure of Theo Epstein.

History buffs will know this: the AL, of course, has been in existence since 1901, the NL since 1876. Name the only two NL teams that have been part of the league continuously since 1876.

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Chris Lynch looks at Paul DePodesta's moves as Dodgers GM. The record is a pretty solid one, not worthy of getting him fired, although you can argue that, for example, the Derek Lowe and Jeff Kent signings are worse in combination than taken separately, given that Lowe requires a good middle infield defense. (On the other hand, Lynch doesn't discuss the non-signing of Adrian Beltre, which doesn't look that bad right now). And it does seem that DePodesta botched some of the other parts of the job, specifically backing out of deals that other GMs thought they had with him, a problem that may have resulted from the Dodgers' decisionmaking process. That smells like a combination of rookie mistake and perhaps meddling by ownership.

On the whole, I'd be glad to have DePodesta running my team. And, hey: he was a great #2, and Jim Duquette is gone . . . the Mets could do far worse than trying to get him on board, although he is doubtless looking for another #1 job.

You will notice that I have added a new tool on the left-hand column: a search box you can use to go directly to the minor league statistics of current and recent minor leaguers, through 2005, at The Baseball Cube. I've used the Cube myself for a while.

Just rememeber to come back here when you're done!

Deja vu all over again. Congrats to the White Sox and their long-suffering fans.

You have to feel for the Astros, who fittingly went down 1-0 in the last game of a season where they struggled all year to score runs; after staging four of the toughest postseason games you will ever see, all anyone will rememeber within a few years is that they go swept. Let the record show that, unlike the 2005 Cardinals and 1999 Braves, this team did not go down easy. Instead, in a season when they lost Carlos Beltran and Jeff Kent, started without Lance Berkman and had to weather most of the season without Jeff Bagwell, they fought their way through some of the most epic postseason games in history and ended up going further than any Astros team ever has. Well played.

An informed source sent me a copy of this morning's Chicago Tribune print edition, which contains an early version of this Phil Rogers column, referencing events through the 8th inning of last night's game, in which Rogers noted that White Sox pitchers like Dustin Hermanson were getting a chance to brush off the rust and get into the series, but concluding:

"It's too bad for the likes of Geoff Blum that playoff baseball rarely features garbage time."

This post seems pretty relevant right now.

UPDATES: Really, I had harbored hopes of doing a detailed post on this game, but at this point I'm just gonna go to bed when this is done. I may add to this in the morning.

A few random thoughts from my notes about the game that probably did the Astros in:

*Adam Everett being hit with the pickoff throw in the 3rd definitely brought back memories of Reggie, one of the earliest World Series moments I vividly remember.

*"Scooter" explaining what the pitches are doesn't bother me as much now that I'm watching the game with kids.

*When Crazy Carl was cursing out Oswalt, the cameras caught a little much of Garner telling Carl Everett, "f__ you motherf___". At least, that's sure what it looked like to me.

*Doesn't Cliff Politte look just like Dann Florek, who's played Capt. Cragen on two of the Law & Order shows? He even has the same grimace.

*Joe Buck managed to squeeze in a totally non sequitur Bill Buckner/1918 reference in the fifth inning.

*There was a huge roar from the crowd when Berkman was called for a strike on a check swing trailing 5-4 in the eighth; you could tell, at that point, that the crowd was palpably desperate.

*Why was I not surprised to learn that the three White Sox who made a Journey song the team's theme song were Crede, Rowand and Pierzynski?

Bill Simmons asks:

Just throwing it out there to sidetrack the Baseball Crank's day, but after Brad Lidge's second demoralizing walkoff homer, is there any way to figure out the ratio of "Closer eventually bouncing back and becoming effective again" to "Closer who was never the same"? For instance, Calvin Schiraldi was probably the best pitching prospect in the Boston farm system before the '86 playoffs - look at his regular-season stats in 1986 compared to everything that followed in his career. And what about Byung Hyun-Kim, Donnie Moore, Mitch Williams, Mark Wohlers, Tom Niedenfuer ... really, the only guy I can remember who kept chugging along was Dennis Eckersley after the '88 World Series. Anyway, let's see what the Crank can dig up on this.

Well, I can't well turn down that challenge, can I? So, I decided to walk through every example I could find of a relief pitcher blowing the big game in the postseason, and see how they fared the next few years. A few observations:

*I limited myself to the postseason and season-ending playoffs rather than the regular season.

*I limited myself to relievers. That knocks out both starters who blew the big one (think: Mike Torrez), and starters pitching in relief, which eliminated Ralph Branca in 1951, Ralph Terry in 1960 (Mazeroski's homer), Bob Moose in 1972 (the wild pitch that ended Game 5 and the NLCS), Pat Darcy in Game 6 of the 1975 WS (the Bernie Carbo Carlton Fisk homer; Darcy never pitched effectively again), Jack McDowell in Game 5 of the 1995 ALDS, Kenny Rogers in Game 6 of the 1999 NLCS, Derek Lowe and Rich Harden in Games 1 and 3 of the 2003 ALDS, Tim Wakefield (the Aaron Boone homer), Jeff Weaver (2003 WS Game 4), and Esteban Loaiza (2004 ALCS Game 5). I also left off Aurelio Lopez (1986 NLCS Game 6), an aging veteran who was just the last guy left on a staff.

*I ended up limiting the study to 1972-present. Before that period, there just weren't enough examples of relievers blowing the big game; starters tended to stay in longer, and before 1969 the postseason was a lot shorter. The only one that came to mind was Johnny Miljus throwing the wild pitch that ended the 1927 World Series; while Miljus struggled the next season and was swiftly put on waivers, I have a hard time thinking a guy who contributed to his team being swept by the 1927 Yankees was much of a goat.

*I noticed that the combination of more relievers, longer playoffs, more scoring in general and more home runs in particular has led to a massive upswing in recent years of huge game-breaking reversals of fortune in the postseason. Just in 2003-04 I counted 17 pitchers, counting guys who collaborated in big collapses including three in the 2003 Red Sox-A's ALDS and four apiece in the 2004 NLCS and ALCS.

Here we go. I broke the pitchers into three categories: guys who survived, guys who were ruined, and guys who came away in some sense damaged but not destroyed.

Dave Giusti, 1972 NLCS Game 5:

Moose threw the wild pitch, but it was Giusti, the Pirates' veteran closer, who blew the 3-2 lead in the ninth inning of game 5 of a best-of-5 series. Mitigating factor: the Pirates were already the defending champs. Giusti was just-y (hah!) fine the next season. Survived.

(Side note: Pittsburgh's Game 5 starter, 19-game winner Steve Blass, mysteriously lost the strike zone the next season).

Rawly Eastwick, 1975 WS Game 6:

The 24-year-old Eastwick served up Fisk's Bernie Carbo's home run. (UPDATE: It has been pointed out to me that I went through the box score for this one too quickly and mixed up Eastwick and Darcy - it was Eastwick who gave up the big blow, the 3-run homer to Carbo that tied up the game in the 8th when the Reds were just four outs away from their first World Championship in 35 years). Mitigating factors: It was a tie game, and the Reds came back and won the next day. He was just as effective the next year. Survived.

Mark Littell, 1976 ALCS Game 5, 1977 ALCS Game 5:

Our first serial offender, Littell gave up Chris Chambliss' home run and the following year participated with four other pitchers in blowing a 3-1 lead in Game 5. Mitigating factor: Littell wasn't mainly responsible for the 1977 disaster. He was traded after 1977, but pitched effectively for two more years. Survived.

Rich Gossage: 1980 ALCS Game 3:

Gave up George Brett's massive game-breaking homer to cement a humiliating ALCS sweep. Mitigating factors: the series was a sweep, and the Goose already had the 1978 playoff game and championship under his belt. Gossage would also allow a famous but less crushing home run to Kirk Gibson in the 1984 WS. Posted an 0.77 ERA the next season, and kept on cruisin'. Survived.

Dave Stewart, 1981 NLDS Games 1 & 2:

A few mitigating factors: these weren't notably crushing losses, and the Dodgers won the series and went on to win the World Series. Stewart, a rookie reliever, pitched decently the next two years before the struggles that would land him in Oakland, but took years to establish himself as a star. We can count him as Damaged.

Luis Sanchez, 1982 ALCS Game 5:

Blew a 3-2 lead in the 7th inning of the deciding Game 5. A solid setup man rather than a closer, Sanchez continued in the same vein for two more years. Survived.

Lee Smith, 1984 NLCS Game 4:

The backbreaking Steve Garvey homer. Smith was fine. Survived.

Dan Quisenberry, 1985 ALCS Games 2, 4:

These were fairly routine losses. The Quiz had some decent years thereafter, but dropped from 37 saves in 1985 to 12 and never recovered as a big-time closer. May have been his age and workload, but the postseason shot to his confidence may have contributed. Damaged.

Tom Niedenfeur, 1985 NLCS Games 5 & 6:

The Ozzie Smith and Jack Clark homers; Niedenfeur, a successful closer through 1985, is the best comp for what has happened to Brad Lidge. Fell off sharply in 1987 and, while he had a few effective moments, was never the same again. Ruined.

Todd Worrell, 1985 World Series Game 6:

Major mitigating factor here - everyone blamed 1B umpire Don Denkinger, not the rookie closer. Worrell Survived.

Dave Smith, 1986 NLCS Game 3:

Gave up the walkoff homer to Lenny Dykstra. Survived. Teammate Charlie Kerfeld didn't handle postseason failure that well, though.

Donnie Moore, 1986 ALCS Game 5:

The Dave Henderson, one-strike-from-the-World-Series homer. Moore was mostly hurt in 1987, but never recovered as a pitcher and eventually shot himself. Ruined.

Calvin Schiraldi, 1986 ALCS Game 4, 1986 World Series Games 6 & 7:

Schiraldi had only a half-season of good pitching under his belt before beaning in the tying run in the 9th in Game 4; Games 6 and 7, you know about. Ruined.

Bob Stanley, 1986 World Series Game 6:

The Steamah was running out of steam by 1986 anyway, and the Sawx converted him back to a starter the next year with disastrous results. He did pitch OK in 1988, but was done as an effective year-in-year-out pitcher. We can count him as Damaged.

Dennis Eckersley, 1988 World Series Game 1:

The Kirk Gibson homer. Eck, with a long and checkered career already behind him (a no-hitter, living through the 1978 collapse, battle with the bottle), shrugged it off and got even tougher. Survived.

UPDATE: An emailer also calls attention to Eck allowing a 2-run homer to Roberto Alomar to blow Game 4 of the 1992 ALCS.

Alejandro Pena: 1991 World Series Game 7:

Pena wound up losing the classic Morris-Smoltz duel. This brought an end to his string of effective years. He pitched OK in 1995, including in the NLDS and NLCS, before losing Game 3 of the 1995 WS in extra innings. We can count him as Damaged.

Stan Belinda, 1992 NLCS Game 7:

The Francisco Cabrera/Sid Bream game, which the Pirates led 2-0 when Belinda entered the game. Belinda was sent packing the following season, but his overall effectiveness in 1993-95 was about the same as in the prior three years. Survived.

Mitch Williams, 1993 World Series Games 4 & 6:

Before the Joe Carter game was Game 4, a raucous 15-14 affair where the Phils had a 4-run lead when Williams entered the game in the 8th. Williams was utterly Ruined and threw less than 40 more major league innings.

Mark Wohlers, 1996 World Series Game 4:

The Jim Leyritz home run. Wohlers actually saved 33 games the next year before falling apart, so we'll list him as Damaged, but he was never quite the same.

Mariano Rivera, 1997 ALDS Game 4, 2001 World Series Game 7, 2004 ALCS Game 4:

Rivera survived blowing three huge season-killing postseason games, beginning with the Sandy Alomar home run, for the same reason Bill Gates survives losing $10 million in a bad day for Microsoft stock. Survived.

Armando Benitez, 1997 ALCS Game 6, 1999 NLCS Game 6, 2000 World Series Game 1:

This is the abridged version of Benitez' regular- and postseason rap sheet of big game disasters. Let's list him as Damaged; he's never let the big ones stop him from being an effective closer, but you have to think the long series of big-game implosions are more than just a coincidence and have fed off each other.

Jose Mesa, 1997 World Series Game 7:

Two outs away in the bottom of the ninth, and Mesa couldn't shut the door. He has had successes since then, but 1998-2000 was a stretch in the wilderness. We'll list him as Damaged.

Tom Gordon, 1998 ALDS Game 4, 2004 ALCS Game 5:

The 2004 debacle was partly mitigated by the fact that four pitchers (including the revered Rivera) participated in it, and the 1998 game wasn't a really unusual loss, nor a particularly close series. Gordon has Survived untouched.

Matt Mantei, 1999 NLDS Game 4:

The Todd Pratt walk-off series-ending homer. I'll list Mantei as having Survived, since his on-and-off effectiveness before and after the homer were the results of injuries; he remained the same pitcher he was before.

Kevin McGlinchy, 1999 NLCS Game 5:

McGlinchy, a promising rookie, had the lead entering the bottom of the 15th of the Robin Ventura "grand slam single" game. I guess we can label him Ruined since he has pitched just 8.1 innings since then, although this was due to injury.

Aaron Fultz, 2000 NLDS Game 3:

As a rookie, surrendered Benny Agbayani's walk-off 13th inning homer in a tie game, which turned the series. Fultz was the same mediocrity he'd been before for the next four years, before finding himself in 2005. Survived.

Arthur Rhodes, 2000 ALCS Game 6, 2001 ALCS Game 4:

The main one is the 2000 David Justice homer, but the game-tying Bernie homer in 2001 hurt too. The Colossus went on to the best years of his career in 2001-02, so he Survived. (Jose Paniagua, the losing pitcher in the Justice game, didn't fare so well).

Steve Kline, 2001 NLDS Game 5:

The great Morris-Schilling duel was a tie game when Kline took over in the 9th. He has Survived allowing Tony Womack's series-winning single.

Billy Wagner, 2001 NLDS Game 1:

Allowing a back-breaking homer to Chipper Jones in a tie game was actually the last of Wagner's postseason failures; we'll list him as Damaged, as his record is a smaller version of Benitez' and he has kept blowing big regular-season games. Personally, I expect Lidge to follow the Benitez-Wagner career path.

Kaz Sasaki, 2001 ALCS Game 4:

Walk-off 2-run homer to Soriano in a tie game effectvely finished a 116-win team that was down 2-1 in the ALCS. Sasaki Survived, though he quit the majors two years later.

Byung-Hyun Kim, 2001 World Series Games 4 & 5:

Kim had a great 2002 and solid 2003 but hasn't been the same since, and can't pitch in the postseason or against the Yankees. Damaged.

Tim Worrell, 2002 World Series Game 6, 2003 NLDS Game 3:

Worrell was the chief culprit in the Game 6 fiasco, bounced back with 38 saves in 2003, then blew a 1-run lead in the 11th inning in the 2003 game. Survived.

Robb Nen, 2002 World Series Game 6:

Nen's arm gave out over thr course of the last half of 2002, culminating with the Troy Glaus double that sealed the Giants' fate, and he hasn't pitched since. We'll list him as Damaged, since this wasn't really a psychological thing but he did see his career end.

Felix Rodriguez, 2002 World Series Game 6, 2003 NLDS Game 4:

Rodriguez was already in decline by 2002, and has Survived since his role in these two late-inning collapses.

Keith Foulke, 2003 ALDS Game Four:

Foulke found the best way to get over David Ortiz' 2-run double that blew a 1-run lead in the 8th: join Ortiz' team. His 2004 performance showed he Survived.

Kyle Farnsworth, 2003 NLCS Game 6:

The real goat of the 2003 Cubs' demise was Farnsworth, not Steve Bartman or a tired Mark Prior. The mercurial Farsnworth recovered this year after a lousy 2004; while he'd always been inconsistent, we'll label him Damaged.

UPDATE: An emailer points out that Farnsworth's damage assessment should also include Game 4 of this year's NLDS.

Francisco Rodriguez, 2004 ALDS Game 3:

Another David Ortiz victim. K-Rod had a rough postseason again this year, but I'll count him among those who Survived.

(UPDATE: A commenter notes that I remembered wrong - it was Washburn who surrendered the Ortiz homer. K-Rod, of course, had also been the losing pitcher in Game 2. So you can discount him from the list if you like).

Dan Miceli, 2004 NLDS Game 1 2, 2004 NLCS Games 2 & 6:

The Edmonds homer was the final straw in a horrific postseason for Miceli, who was ineffective in brief action this season after being exiled to Colorado. For now, we can mark him Ruined.

Paul Quantrill, 2004 ALCS Game 4:

An overworked Quantrill ran off the rails in the middle of 2004, so his ALCS meltdown was just part of an ongoing process on his way from 2003 star to 2005 batting practice pitcher. We'll mark him Damaged.

Jason Isringhausen, 2004 NLCS Game 5:

The Jeff Kent homer. Izzy's team lived to win the series, and he had a career year in 2005. Survived.

Conclusion: Even using a fairly broad definition of "Damaged," and understanding that in any season a certain number of successful relievers will fall off, we come up with a list of 22 relief pitchers (55%) who Survived a major postseason disaster, 12 (30%) who came away in some sense Damaged, and just 6 (15%) who were thoroughly Ruined by the experience, those being a mixture of young guys (Schiraldi) and established veterans (Niedenfeur, Williams).

UPDATE: Comments closed on this post.

Mr. Lidge? Mr. Lidge? Mr. Niedenfeur on line one.

Early in the game, my 8-year-old son predicted that the game would go extra innings, the Astros would score and take the lead, and the White Sox would then rally and win. Now, mind you, this is the first year he has followed the baseball standings (as opposed to just watching individual games), and when the White Sox jumped out to a big lead early in the regular season, he kept saying they were going to win the World Series, and I kept explaining to him that no, they really aren't that good. Bear also in mind that he was insisting during the early innings of tonight's game that Scott Podsednik was the White Sox' best hitter, and asking how many home runs he had hit this year.

I may never again convince him that I am right and he is wrong.

I thought the Red Sox last year had the hammerlock on the record for most bad baseball karma reversed in one postseason, but really, what more can break the Pale Hose's way? Jermaine Dye gets hit on the barrel of the bat with two outs and very mistakenly awarded first base, and does the blown call pay off? Next batter, BAM! Konerko hits a grand slam. (You can't even get odds right now on Konerko signing an extravagantly large offseason deal with the Mets and batting .246 with 7 home runs at the 2006 All-Star Break).

You know, with the beard and all, Willy Taveras certainly looks like Frank Taveras.

You gotta give some serious credit to Jeff Bagwell for triggering the Astros' game-tying ninth inning rally by singling off Bobby Jenks. Bagwell didn't really look any less overpowered than last night, but he managed to fight a pitch into center field, and that was enough. And that game-tying slide by Chris Burke was just amazing - it was like a Lance Johnson slide. You couldn't duplicate the way Burke managed to land with his body in front of the tag and the hand that actually touched the plate behind the tag. It's one of those reminders of how elevated the quality of postseason baseball is; it's practically a different game from what you see in April.

Humorous Joe Buck quote of the night: calling Jose Vizcaino (career OBP: .318; career high in slugging: .397) a "professional hitter." Of course, then McCarver brought back ugly memories of the 2000 Subway Series . . . I was looking back in the Win Shares book one day and noticed that, in 1995, Vizcaino led the Mets in Win Shares. When Jose Vizcaino is your franchise player, you have problems. But he came up big tonight, for what it was worth for one exciting half-inning.

A few random thoughts on a good, solid Game One:

*Well, I guess the White Sox' record of not facing a healthy #1 starter continues. Those are the breaks people forget three years later when they're trying to remember how the heck that team won the World Series.

*It was a wierd sort of deja vu sitting with my 8-year-old son watching Clemens go out of a big game early - I remembered back when I was in college, seeing Clemens get ejected from the deciding game of the ALCS for arguing balls and strikes, or back to when I was 15, watching Clemens and Dwight Gooden both get shelled early in Game Two of the World Series. On a related note, I loved the graphic showing that the White Sox' GM, manager and coaches had more career at bats vs. Clemens than their players.

*They don't give points for style - it counted just like Albert Pujols' moonshot - but it's pretty hard to hit a less impressive home run than Mike Lamb's shot to tie the game at 1-1 - not only did it clear the fence by just a foot or so, it was caught pretty much on the fly by a middle-aged woman in the first row.

*Dumbest quote of the night, from Joe Buck: "Even with the DH, the White Sox are showing they are not getting away from small ball in the World Series." Yeah, funny how an American League team adjusts to playing with the DH.

*I really felt bad for poor Jeff Bagwell facing Bobby Jenks in the 8th inning - here Bagwell has had shoulder surgery and barely swung a bat against live pitching in months, and he's facing a guy throwing 100 mph heat. Two or three years ago he would have put a heater like that in orbit, but now, after Jenks' first pitch, Bagwell had a distinct look on his face that said "I'd really rather be watching that pitch from a recliner in my living room."

UPDATE: Laurence Simon is checking the warranty.

I find this one a tough one to call. Rational analysis gets you only so far in the postseason; I often find it more effective to look backward at which storyline seems more likely to unfold. On the one hand, the Astros have better front-line talent; they have two big-time bats (Berkman & Ensberg) to the Sox' one (Konerko), they can go 1-2-3 with an inner-circle Hall of Famer who had his best career ERA, followed by a guy who has four World Series rings and posted his career-best ERA, followed by the only picther in baseball to win 20 games each of the past two years. They have the fire-breathing closer (granted that Lidge doesn't seem as scary after the Pujols Bomb). The White Sox, by contrast, have depth - four real good starters vs. three great ones, four tough relievers vs. the Astros' three, a leadoff man who gets on base (Houston has nothing of the sort at this juncture), and an overall deeper lineup. All in all, they're pretty well-matched teams.

It's worth noting that the Sox got this far by beating two teams that were without their ace starter, whereas the Astros have three of them. In fact, let's rank the starters the White Sox have faced or will face in the playoffs by ERA+ (for those of you who are unfamiliar, ERA+, the baseball-reference.com stat, adjusts ERA for league and park - the higher the better):

1. Clemens 221
2. Pettitte 174
3. Oswalt 141
4. Washburn 131
5. Lackey 122
6. Byrd 112 (twice)
7. Wakefield 106
8. Wells 99
9. Clement 96
10. Santana 90
11. Backe 87

So, you have to figure they will have a lot more trouble with the Astros, other than Backe. And the small-ball approach will have trouble against Clemens (because of the strikeouts) and Pettitte (who can strangle the running game with baseball's best pickoff move).
In general, the front-line stars usually outshine the deeper teams.

For all of that, I have the feeling that this is, at long last, Chicago's year. The team is deep and well-balanced, and the storyline of Ozzieball seems destined to be written. This will be a tight, tough series (although expect one or two high-scoring games, just because baseball is like that). White Sox in Seven.

For what it's worth, the Pythagorean record of both the White Sox and Astros this season was 91-71.

While I was rooting for Houston, I must say my one disappointment from the NLCS was missing the chance to see two first place teams in the World Series for the first time in four years. In the past 9 seasons we've had 7 Wild Card teams in the Series, which just feels like too much, especially given that only one of those teams - the 2000 Mets - lost the series to a first-place team. Overall, Wild Card teams are 24-17 in postseason serieses dating back to 1995, and that just doesn't seem right.

. . . Chicago White Sox?

. . . Houston Astros?

Either way, should be a novelty. The Astros led the NL in ERA this season; the White Sox were second in the AL. The lesson: never underestimate teams with outstanding frontline starting pitching in the postseason.

Blez has a nice tribute to A's announcer Bill King, who died earlier this week.

Man, what a back-breaking ending to the Astros' hopes of putting away their first pennant last night. That was, if possible, a tougher ending than the Notre Dame-USC game on Saturday, which is saying quite a lot. Roger Clemens, sitting in the Houston dugout, had a distinct "I've seen this movie before and I don't like how it ends" look on his face. The home run itself was as impressive as its context, like George Brett's homer off Goose Gossage in 1980; that's what happens when a guy as strong as Pujols makes soldi contact off a guy who throws as hard as Brad Lidge.

Pujols is one of those guys you have to take in while he's in his prime, because we'll be telling stories about this one for years. As I noted after last season, baseball-reference.com not only says that the most similar player at the same age is Joe DiMaggio, but that the most similar player at the same age to Joe D is Pujols. That's amazing. In fact, Pujols is a better hitter, if you adjust for the fact that the late-30s AL was even higher scoring than today . . . DiMaggio was still better because of his glove, though; in fact, a good modern analogy for DiMaggio is a guy who hits like Pujols and plays center field like Andruw Jones.

(By the way, I noticed that George and Barbara Bush stayed through the bitter end again last night at Minute Maid, like Giuliani at Yankee Stadium. One of the benefits of being a retired politician is you get to stay for the whole game.)

Can you tell the difference between these two pitchers?

PITCHER	IP	HR/9	BB/9	K/9
A	128.2	0.98	4.20	5.04
B	134	0.81	4.30	5.71

I'd say Pitcher B is clearly the better pitcher, but only by a small margin - a few less homers, a few more Ks, but also a few more walks.

A: Jorge Sosa, 2003 (4.62 ERA)

B: Sosa, 2005 (2.55 ERA).

The difference? A drop in the opponents' batting average on balls in play from .302 to .268. Looks like Sosa was more a beneficiary of Andruw Jones than Leo Mazzone.

Former A's prospect and sometime Rockie Mario Encarnacion died recently in Taiwan, where he was playing professionally:

Professional baseball player Mario Encarnacion of the Dominican Republic was found dead yesterday morning in his dormitory. The cause of death is not yet known pending an autopsy, but investigators said his room had not been broken into and that a post-mortem examination found no signs of external injury.

Encarnacion played with the Chinese Professional Baseball League's (CPBL) Macoto Cobras.

At a press conference held yesterday afternoon, CPBL secretary-general Lee Wen-ping said, "Encarnacion failed to pass a steroids exam in May and he was suspended from playing games for two weeks."

Lee said Encarnacion explained to the league that he had taken weight-loss medicine which may have contained steroids. Encarnacion was worried that his weight was affecting his performance.

But Lee warned the media not to jump to conclusions.

"Before prosecutors finish an investigation, please do not suspect that his death was related to him taking medicines prohibited by the league," Lee said.

Investigators said an autopsy would be conducted in a few days to determine the cause of death.

A Cobras coach, Lu Ming-shih, told reporters the team believed Encarnacion's death might be related to gastroenteritis, which he had suffered from for a long time.

Stay tuned.

Well, anyone who predicted before the season that the Chicago White Sox would win the American League pennant, stand up and take a bow. My own Established Win Shares Levels system was very mildly optimistic before I adjusted for age, picking the Sox as the best of a bad lot in the AL Central, but the final age-adjusted numbers had them in second place at 78-84. More on that later. The Sox are, of course, yet another testimony to what you can accomplish in the postseason with good starting pitching.

One guy who has to be kicking himself now is Shingo Takatsu. Takatsu, himself a famously dominant postseason performer in Japan, was lights-out as the White Sox closer in 2004, and opened 2005 not only as the closer but as one of the team's strengths. By the end of the season, he was in the Mets' reclamation heap with Danny Graves, hanging on to any kind of a major league job.

As for last night's game, I have to wonder whether the umps would have upheld the original call in favor of the Angels in that disputed play at first base if Kelvim Escobar had sold it better - the fact that Escobar made a throw after tagging Pierzynski killed any chance the Angels had of claiming with a straight face that he had made the tag.

UPDATE: By the way, I'm glad to see some chatter building about my theory that the White Sox are the real cursed franchise (first suggested in 2001).

I can't think of any major league ballplayer who did more in 2005 to help his chances of possibly making the Hall of Fame someday than Andy Pettitte (and yes, if you're clicking the link, baseball-reference.com now has the 2005 stats up). Entering 2004, Pettitte was a guy who'd racked up an impressive number of career wins (regular season and postseason) through age 31, but had never pitched away from the Yankees, had posted an unspectacular-looking 3.94 career ERA, and always seemed to be on the verge of an arm injury that would derail his career. In 2004, Pettitte played down to those expectations, losing half the season (including the Astros' magical playoff run) to an injury.

So, this season's comeback of 17 wins, a career-low 2.39 ERA, and 222.1 injury-free innings, and some solid postseason starts has done wonders for Pettitte's credentials. With 172 wins through age 33, Pettitte has a plausible outside shot at 300 wins and a pretty good shot at 250; he has just 5 fewer victories than John Smoltz and 20 fewer than Curt Schilling, both of whom are 5 years older (granted, Pedro Martinez, who is the same age as Pettitte, has 27 more wins, but you don't have to be Pedro to make the Hall of Fame). Better yet, Pettitte started, in 2001, transitioning to a top-notch control pitcher, but this was the first time since then that he was able to sustain that kind of control record (1.66 BB/9) over a full season without getting tagged for a very high number of hits (1997 was the only year of Pettitte's Yankees career that he allowed less than a hit per inning). The ability to throw a lot of strikes without getting totally shelled is something that will serve Pettitte well in his 30s.

Predicting where Pettitte goes from here is another matter. Baseball-reference.com's list of similar pitchers through age 33 is loaded with active and recent pitchers: Mike Mussina and Jimmy Key are the two guys over 900 in similarity scores, and Kevin Brown is on the list as well. There are two Hall of Famers on the list, at #9 and 10: Warren Spahn and Lefty Gomez, neither of whom really had a similar career, although both - like Pettitte - pitched in pitchers' parks in high-scoring eras for powerhouse offensive teams most of their careers. Tommy Bridges, pitching hero of the 1935 World Series, is perhaps a better comparison, but pitcher career paths are notoriously hard to compare anywyay.

In the style of Jeff Goldstein:

Grumpy Old Sportswriter: That Billy Beane sure thinks he's smart, writing that Moneyball book.

Me: Um . . .

Grumpy Old Sportswriter: Not that I've read the book. That would be wrong.

Me: Of course.

Grumpy Old Sportswriter: But him and his number-crunching friends don't understand baseball. You know how you can tell that? Because his teams don't win in the playoffs. The playoffs are the real thing. That's what separates the men from the boys.

Me: So, who's the best GM?

Grumpy Old Sportswriter: John Schuerholz. The Braves are the anti-Moneyball team. That's how you run a major league organization. Old school, my friend.

Me: So, how have the Braves done in October?

Grumpy Old Sportswriter:

Me:

Grumpy Old Sportswriter:

Me:

Grumpy Old Sportswriter: RALLY MONKEY!!!!

Here's a fact for you: until this season, the only franchise to beat the Yankees in two consecutive postseason matchups was the New York Giants, who defeated them in the Yankees' first two World Series appearances in 1921 and 1922 (before the Yanks got revenge when Yankee Stadium opened in 1923). The Red Sox, Marlins, Diamondbacks, Indians, Mariners, Royals, Reds, Pirates and Braves have each beaten the Bronx Bombers just once in the postseason, and the teams that beat them twice each took at least one defeat in between: the Dodgers lost in 1977 and 1978 between the 1963 and 1981 World Serieses, and in 1956 between 1955 and 1963. The Cardinals lost in 1943 between the 1942 and 1964 Serieses, and lost in 1928 between the 1926 and 1942 Serieses.

The Angels, in 2002 and 2005, become the second.

So, like the overweight David Wells in 2003, the overweight Bartolo Colon pulls up with a bad back shoulder in a critical playoff game. Ouch.

Maybe it's just my Yankee-hatred and pessimism working together, but I was convinced, when the Angels had a 2-0 lead last night in the 6th inning, that if they didn't hold the lead, their moment, their chance to win this ALDS was gone. So I'll be very surprised if they recover tonight to take Game 5.

The Houston Astros have now played 45 postseason games - and 11 of them have gone extra innings, including an 18-inning game yesterday, a 16-inning game in 1986 (both series-deciding), and three 12-inning games (in 1986, 1999 and the 2004 NLCS), for a total of 34 extra innings. Put another way: the average Astros playoff game lasts 9.76 innings. So, yesterday's marathon takes its place among the classics, but the Astros already have quite a collection, from the heart-stopping 2004 NLCS, to the 1986 NLCS that featured a walkoff homer in game 3 and 12- and 16-inning games on consecutive days in New York and Houston, to the 1980 NLCS that concluded a best-of-5 series with four consecutive extra inning games.

Well, the Hated Yankees are certainly up against it now, having lost last night with Randy Johnson on the mound and having drained the bullpen to do it. I knew the Yanks were really in trouble when Scott Proctor and his 6.04 ERA came trotting out, although of course by then, Al Leiter (6.13) had already done his share of damage in one of his last steps on the way out of the majors. One thing that struck me last night was the extent to which the game felt like an elimination game, and the managers approached it with that urgency. One thing you have to say about Joe Torre as a playoff manager is that he has a great sense of what games and moments are really important, and throws everything he has at them. If the game had been at all close at the end, we would have seen Mariano Rivera.

That leaves the Yankees' season in the hands of Shawn Chacon, an unthinkable turn of events six months ago. Chacon isn't a terrible pitcher, just a mediocrity (career ERA of 4.39 away from Coors Field), but like last night's losing pitcher, Aaron Small, he has won the trust of Yankees fans by a few months of solid pitching. Against Jarrod Washburn, fourth in the AL in ERA and the winning pitcher in the Game 4 elimination of the Yankees in the 2002 ALDS, the Yankees will probably need to depend on their bats and Mariano.

Name the only pitcher since 1920 to throw 4,000 or more innings with a career ERA below 3.00. Answer below the fold.

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Bill Simmons, on getting to touch the Red Sox World Championship trophy:

During Saturday's game, some of the Red Sox employees were kind enough to bring me and my buddy J-Bug into their offices to show us the 2004 trophy. At least, I think that's what happened -- laying eyes on that trophy was like seeing someone remove their head, then hand it to you and say, "Hey, here's my head." There's simply no adequate reaction other than complete disbelief -- not just that it was the World Series trophy, but that it belonged to the Red Sox.

Working backward from Baseball Prospectus' daily odds of each team making the playoffs (a calculation that appears to take in things like the standings, schedule strength, and games remaining at home), Clay Davenport rates the collapse of the 2005 Indians as the eighth-worst of all time, given that at as of Sunday, September 25, Cleveland rated as having a 96.5% chance of making the playoffs, slightly higher than the best odds held at any point by the 1964 Phillies. Davenport rates the seven biggest collapses, by odds of making the playoffs as of August 1 or later:

1. 1995 Angels (99.9%)
2. 1951 Dodgers (99.7%)
3. 1934 Giants (98.8%)
4. 1993 Giants (98.1%)
5. 1969 Cubs (98.0%)
6. 1942 Dodgers (96.9%)
7. 1983 Braves (96.6%)
8. 2005 Indians (96.5%)

Amazingly, there are no Red Sox teams on this list, whereas the Dodgers and Giants take a beating. A few of these teams, notably the 1993 Giants and 1942 Dodgers, are more noted for how well the team that caught them played. The 1983 Braves mainly unraveled because of the loss for the season of Bob Horner, who'd been integral to the team building a big lead in the NL West.

You can see the 1983 Braves' collapse - which brought to a gruesome close the one brief moment between 1969 and 1991 when the Braves were a contender - by viewing their batting stats through and after August 10, and their pitching stats through and after August 10. You can see that the other major culprit on the offensive side was Chris Chambliss (who dropped off from .290/.521/.377 to .248/.358/.333). On the pitching staff, Pascual Perez dropped from 13-3, 3.02 ERA to 2-5, 4.41, Pete Falcone from 8-1, 2.96 to 1-3, 6.23, Steve Bedrosian from 7-5, 2.84 and 16 saves to 2-5, 5.74 and 3 saves. Phil Niekro also pitched poorly down the stretch, leading to his release after 20 years as a Brave. Of course, the panic trade for Len Barker, completed after the season with Brett Butler and Brook Jacoby, didn't help. Joe Torre was fired a year later.

Somehow, like clockwork, I always wind up being swamped at work just as the playoffs start, and thus unable to offer a proper playoff preview. This year being no exception, I'll just offer a few quick picks:

*ALDS: Hated Yankees over Angels. Yes, I know the Angels match up well with the Yanks and give them fits, but this Yankees team has too much firepower to go down this quiclkly.

*ALDS: White Sox over Red Sox. The Pale Hose finished with a rush after an extended slump, and are hot again at just the right time. They have better pitching than the champs, and while they're not as good a team all around, I don't see a Red Sox-Yankees replay in the cards. So, I pick the White Sox to win their first postseason series since throwing the 1919 World Series.

*ALCS: Yankees over White Sox. If this is indeed the matchup, I predict a sweep.

*NLDS: Braves over Astros. On paper, the Astros are a better team with better frontline pitching, but there's a history here - the Astros have drawn Atlanta in the first round in their last four playoff appearances and five of six playoff appearances since 1997. Last year, when Beltran went bonkers, was the only time they won. Of course, the health and stamina of Clemens and Smoltz is key. Maybe it's my superstitious awe of Bobby Cox and Leo Mazzone, but I go with the Braves.

*NLDS: Cardinals over Padres. St. Louis' pitching has unraveled in the last few weeks, but the Padres give them the chance to get healthy again. Probably a 3-1 series.

*NLCS: Cards over Braves. Pujols & Co. are on a mission; the Braves by this point will be firmly in over their heads.

*World Series: Cards over Yankees. All bets could be off if Carpenter and Mulder can't get straightened out, but otherwise this St. Louis team is the class of the field, and so I'll predict them to win it all. I'm not counting out the Yankees, but they are definitely vulnerable with their pitching.

Of the other six teams, probably the best bet to stage a surprise run would be Houston, with the Big Three. But I'll go with my picks.

Many things can be said about Jose Reyes' season, but getting from start to finish without missing a beat due to injury has to be a huge accomplishment. If you had "696" in the "how many at bats will Reyes have" pool, you can tip your cap. Yes, Reyes has a lot to learn in terms of plate discipline, but you can't learn the game until you can play the game. Getting a true full season in the big leagues under his belt is a big one.

I was out at Shea today, and it was a nice sendoff for Mike Piazza (hint: teams that expect to re-sign a free agent don't do a video montage retrospective so the fans can say goodbye). It was also, in other ways, a fitting end to the Mets careers of Victor Zambrano and (please) Danny Graves, both of whom got roughed up. I wish Zambrano well, but I have to figure he'll be non-tendered and go somewhere where he won't be haunted by the rise of Scott Kazmir. Graves, meanwhile, should consider a career that does not involve throwing a baseball.

The Red Sox, coming into their series with the Hated Yankees this weekend, ran into a buzzsaw in the person of Frank Catalanotto. And there's nearly nobody in baseball who gets hotter - at least relative to how good he is otherwise - than Frank Catalanotto.

Over the past 9 games, Catalanotto is batting .417/.722/.464. That may sound like quite a hot stretch for a career .296/.454/.359 hitter, but it's really pretty common for Catalanotto:

Start	End	G	PA	AVG	SLG	OBP
8/12/98	9/2/98	20	71	.397	.667	.437
4/21/99	5/21/99	20	74	.348	.609	.392
7/4/99	7/24/99	12	37	.424	.636	.443
4/4/00	5/18/00	12	41	.588	.794	.634
7/28/01	8/24/01	23	100	.500	.659	.560
4/18/03	5/1/03	12	51	.429	.592	.451
5/19/03	6/6/03	18	76	.358	.657	.421
8/24/03	9/7/03	10	39	.484	1.000	.590
4/24/04	5/13/04	19	69	.450	.617	.493
6/11/04	7/21/04	7	26	.435	.609	.500
5/20/05	6/3/05	6	22	.611	.778	.682
7/7/05	7/24/05	12	53	.449	.755	.491
9/22/05	9/30/05	9	39	.417	.722	.464

And the total line from these thirteen red-hot streaks, amounting to about a full season's worth of at bats:

AB	H	2B	3B	HR	R	RBI	BB	HBP	AVG	SLG	OBP
620	272	62	8	24	125	117	55	15	.439	.681	.490

Wow. Those are Rogers Hornsby numbers. Unsurprisingly, Catalanotto's career line drops off sharply if you take these streaks out; the rest of the time, he's a .252/.385/.318 hitter. Now, it's true enough that you can cherry-pick hot streaks from any hitter's career. But I have to think that few guys I can remember have been as consistently streaky as Catalanotto.

Who replaced Tim McCarver with Moe Green?

I received in the mail about a month ago a review copy of The Numbers Game, by Alan Schwarz, which is now out in paperback and which I had somehow missed when it was first released in hardcover. I strongly recommend this book; if you like baseball statistics half as much as I do, you will enjoy it too.

The Numbers Game is a history of baseball statistics and the people who take them seriously, from the beginnings of box scores and newspaper tabulations up through the modern age of sabermetrics, live-updated internet stats, and Rotisserie madness, covering everything in between: stats in the broadcast booth, stats in tabletop games, controversies over batting titles, stats on baseball cards. It's an easy read; Schwarz uncorks a few good one-liners, but mainly his writing style is clear and straightforward, as he's content to let the story tell itself. If there's one flaw, albeit an unaviodable one, it's that there's only so many ways to tell the basic biographical background story of "but as a kid, what really fascinated him was baseball statistics . . . other people thought he was wierd . . . he did it on the side for his own enjoyment for years before he found an outlet . . ." This essential formula is repeated over and over in the book, as it is indeed the story of so many of the book's protagonists.

Schwarz begins with Henry Chadwick, the inventor of box scores and the game-scoring system and, essentially, the father of baseball statistics. One of the themes of the book's opening chapters is that many things we take now as newfangled modern innovations - from on base percentages and range factors to the obsession with rating players by the numbers in the first place - were there from the very beginning in the work of Chadwick and others in the 1860s and 1870s. Schwarz notes that one of the early enthusiasts about using statistics to manage a roster was Harry Wright, player-manager-proprietor of baseball's first-ever professional team. Today's stathead-bashing old fogeys may think they are old school, but it is not possible to be more old school than Chadwick and Wright.

The first challenges for the author of a book about a subject I know so well already are to (1) not leave out the stuff I know and expect to see in the book, and (2) tell me some things I don't already know. Schwarz succeeds on both fronts. Every time I kept thinking he needed to discuss a particular topic, he got to it. And there were a lot of new tales told along the way.

The older parts of the book were familiar to me from Bill James' work, among others; for example, James' book on the Hall of Fame had already recounted the stories of Ernest Lanigan and Lee Allen. And the more recent parts were familiar from having lived through them, from a chapter on James to the story of STATS, Inc. and Project Scoresheet to a summary of Voros McCracken's findings to the whole Oakland A's/Moneyball saga. Although I had not been familiar with the work of Eric Walker, who Schwarz identifies as the man who passed the torch of OBP to Sandy Alderson before it went to Billy Beane. (And I hadn't previously read about how the teenaged Beane used to set underperforming Strat-O-Matic cards on fire, a mental image that should chill anyone who plays for him today). And Schwarz makes the point about baseball owners that, hesitant as they were to use statistical analyses to evaluate their players for the mere purpose of winning games, they were much faster to adapt to new ways of thinking when it came to winning salary arbitrations, where money was on the line.

In between is where the real new-to-me material lies: profiles of the men who developed baseball's historical records and kep the spirit of inquiry alive through the dark ages from about 1910 through the stats bonanza that followed the 1969 publication of the Macmillan Baseball Encyclopedia (the compilation of which is the subject of its own chapter in Schwarz's book). The book's villian is Seymour Siwoff of the Elias Sports Bureau; Schwarz tries to give Siwoff's story a sympathetic rendering, and makes clear that his feud with Bill James was in large part a result of James' own prickly personality and iconoclastic writing style. But Siwoff just keeps popping up, fomenting litigation, pushing around idealistic rivals and upstarts, sneering at things in public while selling them in private, and generally playing Scrooge. (Of course, Siwoff's not the only bad guy - even Barry Bonds makes a cameo to deliver a gratuitous insult - but he's the one who persists throughout the book's second half).

Like I said, it's a fun book - a book about my people, as it were. Enjoy.

So, Pedro Martinez finishes with 217 innings pitched, as compared to 217 in 2004.

Tom Glavine finishes with 211.1 innings pitched, as compared to 212.1 in 2004.

Both pitchers struck out fewer batters than the previous year, but sharply cut their walks and home runs allowed; Pedro also reduced his hits allowed from 193 to 159, while Glavine allowed more hits.

I have to say, I gave up on Glavine repeatedly from 2003 through early this season, but after altering his pitching style (i.e., recognizing that he couldn't win anymore doing the same old thing), he really rebounded to be a whole new pitcher the second half of the season.

Well, the Mets were finally eliminated from the wild card race last night, but at least they made the Astros win to do it, putting an end to a classic too-little-too-late charge. Not being eliminated until September 27 is a decent moral victory, if you're counting them. With the team standing 80-77 and 4 of its last 5 games at home against the hapless Rockies, there are still a few more candidates:

*2 wins gets them a winning record.

*3 more wins gets them their best record since the 2000 NL Champions.

*They're a half game up on the Marlins and Nationals, so holding third place is a realistic goal.

*They're 2 games up on the Padres, who are in first place.

The most amazing number about Jimmy Rollins' 31-game hitting streak entering tonight's game - which apparently ties the club record set by Ed Delahanty - is that he has hit 17 doubles in 31 games.

Jay Caruso wonders what happens if the Red Sox, Yankees and Indians all end up tied. A commenter provides this 2003 response from Major League Baseball:

Scenario #5: If three Clubs in a League are tied with identical winning percentages at the end of the championship season and two of those tied Clubs are from the same Division and are also tied for first place in that Division and the third tied Club has the highest winning percentage among the second-place Clubs in the remaining two Divisions, the Division Champion shall first be determined by a one-game playoff on Monday, September 29. Any playoff games played to determine a Division champion shall not count in determining which Clubs are deemed tied for a Wild Card designation. Clubs that were originally tied with a Club or Clubs for a Wild Card designation shall still be considered tied.

Example of Scenario #5: The Houston Astros, St. Louis Cardinals and Florida Marlins all have identical winning percentages at the end of the championship season. The Astros and Cardinals are tied for first place in the NL Central and the Marlins have the highest winning percentage among the second-place Clubs from the NL East and NL West. The Astros and Cardinals would play a one-game playoff on Monday, September 29. The winner shall be declared the Division Champion. Despite the loss, the losing Club would still be considered tied with the Marlins for the lead in the NL Wild Card. Those two Clubs would play a one-game playoff on Tuesday, September 30. The winner of that game shall be declared the Wild Card.

Neo-Neocon offers an ode to baseball's appeal to old and sick people:

Baseball's season is long, and a game occurs virtually every day. Someone cooped up and housebound can have a daily appointment with something outside of his/herself, an activity that lasts a number of hours and becomes engrossing, when there are precious few other activities that fit that bill.

Read the whole thing.

To give him his due, Jose Reyes has managed to score 93 runs this year despite a dismal .303 OBP (to say nothing of the quality of the Mets' #2 hitters and the disappointing production of Carlos Beltran). Alfonso Soriano has scored 99 runs with a .310 OBP.

Reyes, at least, still has an outside shot to be the first player to score 100 runs in a season with an OBP below .300 since Jake Beckley and Tom Brown in 1892, back when the average NL team scored 1.82 unearned runs/game (recall that reaching via error counts as an out in OBP); it was done 6 times between 1883 and 1892.

Five players since 1894 have scored 100 runs with an OBP below .310, all of them between 1984 and 1999: Juan Samuel twice, and Neifi Perez, Tony Armas and Devon White once each, with Armas' .304 OBP in 1984 being the lowest, as well as the only example of a guy managing the feat mainly through power rather than speed. Thus, if Reyes scores 7 more runs without raising his OBP, he will have the lowest mark for a player scoring 100 runs in 113 years.

(List of players scoring 100 with a .309 or lower OBP here).

As I noted below, the Mets may well be in the market for a free agent closer this offseason, and if they are, Orioles closer BJ Ryan should be at the top of their list. If you're wondering why Ryan - a stud closer in his prime, pitching for a team with deep pockets - would be on the market, the O's are apparently looking at 23-year-old rookie reliever Chris Ray as a potential closer of the future, and could either let him close in 2006 or give the job to a stopgap veteran (Ray's minor league numbers are here).

I'm not a huge fan of building through free agency generally, or of free agent closers in particular (they tend to be overpriced), and of course the Mets do have some passable internal options, notably Heath Bell. But I don't see Bell as a highly reliable closer in 2006; he looks like a guy who needs more seasoning in a setup role. And Ryan is the real deal, 30 years old next season, just hitting his stride in late 2003 and blossoming over the last two seasons. Of course, given the heavy investment in the great-now-who-knows-later Pedro, and Cliff Floyd entering the last year of his contract, the Mets are sensibly in win-now mode despite the extreme youth of some of their key players.

(The only Mets closer I ever really trusted was Randy Myers - Benitez blew too many big ones, Franco, McDowell, Orosco and Neil Allen all lived too close to the edge, and Looper, Dale Murray and Skip Lockwood were all just arsonists.)

I'd certainly much rather go after Ryan than Billy Wagner; Wagner's a wonderful pitcher, but he will be 35 in July, has had injury problems in the past, and has had a bad case of Benitez Disease in big games (7.71 career postseason ERA). And the other options aren't that appealing: Trevor Hoffman is still deadly effective, but he will be 38 next year, presumably prefers to re-sign with San Diego, and wants big bucks to leave, and Octavio Dotel may not pitch again until 2007.

A free agent closer makes more sense if the Mets are shedding some other salary this offseason (Piazza, for example, will either re-sign for less or go elsewhere, and Cameron could be dealt) and aren't pursuing other free agents. The rest of the crop is fairly slim. AJ Burnett is the prize, but other teams more desperate for starting pitching will lead the chase; Kevin Millwood is the only other starter worth looking at. Johnny Damon will inspire bidders, but the Mets have two expensive center fielders already; the surplus of outfield options will probably also keep them from chasing Hideki Matsui, Brian Giles or Milton Bradley (although Matsui would be worth it). The Mets aren't going to pursue Nomar, and presumably wouldn't sign Rafael Furcal to play 2B. Ramon Hernandez, reputedly a catching option, isn't all that impressive, and I'm not thrilled about Paul Konerko, although he'd be a major upgrade (Bryan Smith has more on the 1B market).

Oh, and: signing Ryan would keep him away from Atlanta . . . forcing them to get a 1.50 ERA and 35 saves out of some minimum-wage journeyman instead.

Braden Looper, having now lost his closer job, proves tonight that he's equally capable of blowing a lead in the 8th. Time to shut Looper down for the season and have the doctors get to work on whatever's been sapping his sinking fastball.

Go to #3 on this list for the guy the Mets need to pursue this offseason. (And for those of you having Benitez-vu, he's also #2 on this list over the same time period).

For me, one of the funniest parts of this hilarious card collection is how many of these cards I specifically remember owning (via The Intern).

This would not be a good idea.

Following on yesterday's thoughts, you can see the list here of all players, through 2001, who posted a .370 OBP in a season of 500 or more at bats with a slugging percentage below .400. 27 players have done the feat more than twice, and thus established themselves, at least at some point in their careers, as "pure" OBP guys; I will group them by era.

1871-1919
Jimmy Barrett
Bob Bescher
Donie Bush
Topsy Hartsel
Dummy Hoy
Miller Huggins
Fielder Jones
Clyde Milan
Jimmy Sheckard
Burt Shotton
Roy Thomas

1920-1959
Luke Appling
Richie Ashburn
Lu Blue
Elbie Fletcher
Jim Gilliam
Billy Goodman
Stan Hack
Johnny Pesky
Pee Wee Reese
Eddie Stanky
Eddie Yost

1960-2001
Brett Butler
Rickey Henderson
Tony Phillips
Willie Randolph
Ozzie Smith

It does seem to me that a disproportionate number of these guys played for a lot of successful teams, notably Henderson, Randolph, Ozzie, Gilliam, Reese, Sheckard, Stanky, Hack, Pesky, and Jones.

1969 Mets World Series MVP Donn Clendenon has died, taking with him another piece of Mets history.

Where did all the good leadoff men go - or were they always this rare? It seems, at least, like finding guys who do the basic job of getting on base is awfully hard these days, especially if you think of a leadoff man in the traditional terms of a guy who can run and steal some bases but isn't a big power hitter. I decided to compare this season to some seasons in the not-too-distant past to see how much has really changed.

What I did was to look at all players with an On Base Percentage (OBP) of .370 or higher (in at least 450 plate appearances), which is a good cutoff to identify the mark of excellence in getting on base (it's 40 points above the MLB average). Then, I asked two questions:

1. How many of these guys can steal any bases?
2. How many of these guys wouldn't be used as leadoff men because they are big sluggers? Nobody's gonna lead off Albert Pujols, after all. And more to the point, as anybody who has played Rotisserie baseball, WhatIfSports or any other fantasy or simulation game can easily understand, in an age of tight budgets, it's a lot harder to afford a good leadoff man if you have to pay for one who's going to hit 40 home runs.

Of course, I quickly discovered that I needed a control group to measure how unusual the distribution of the OBP leaders was, so I compared 2005 to 1977 and 1987. I chose 1977 and 1987 because they were the seasons in the 1970s and 1980s most similar to today in terms of league offensive production: In 1977, the NL batted .262/.396/.327 and the AL .266/.405/.329. In 1987, the NL batted .261/.404/.327 and the AL .265/.425/.332. In 2005, the NL is batting .262/.413/.330 and the AL is batting .268/.424/.330. You can see the league leaders in OBP for 1977 here, 1987 here (both based on a full-season 502 plate appearances) and 2005 here.

Let's look at the breakdown of the .370-and-up OBP crowd in each league by steals and slugging. First, as base thieves:

Year	40+	30-39	20-29	15-19	10-14	0-9	TOTAL
1977	3	2	2	7	3	14	31
1987	6	4	2	5	3	20	40
2005	0	1	1	6	6	20	34

Of course, since steals are a cumulative category, you'd expect 2005 to be just a little low, since the season's not over yet. But still: in 1977, 7 of 31 of the top OBP guys stole 20 or more bases; in 1987, the figure is 12 of 40. In 2005, it's just two guys - Bobby Abreu, whose .515 career slugging percentage makes him awfully expensive to use as a leadoff man, and Brian Roberts.

Then, slugging:

Year	Sub-.400	.400-49	.450-99	.500-49	.550-99	.600+	TOTAL
1977	1	7	7	9	6	1	31
1987	2	8	10	9	10	1	40
2005	1	4	5	12	8	4	34

Now, your real slap hitter, with a slugging percentage below .400, is hard to find here in any era: in 1987, even Brett Butler slugged .425. But in each of the two older seasons, you could find a decent selection of guys below .500: 15 of 31 in 1977, 20 of 40 in 1987. This year? 10 of 34. And that group of 10 includes two bona fide mashers who are just below .500 (Abreu and Brian Giles), two slow-moving catchers (Victor Martinez and Joe Mauer), and three guys who don't run particularly well and have had careers marked by injury and inconsistency, to the point where nobody would have banked on them as leadoff men (Sean Casey, Nick Johnson, and Marcus Giles). That leaves three guys you would legitimately consider as elite leadoff hitters: Derek Jeter, Luis Castillo, and Placido Polanco.

The era of Raines and Rickey, this is not. A corollary is that it may be worth it for more teams to give up on locating a traditional leadoff man and just stack the top of the lineup with sluggers who get on base, especially if they run well (e.g., 1-Beltran, 2-Wright . . .)

If there's anything in baseball more depressing than watching a team that had been hanging around contending suddenly go into free fall and start losing all the time and playing listless baseball, it's watching this happen for the fourth year in a row. The Mets, 68-60 on August 26, are now 3-14 since . . . they're like the Bizarro Mets: Kaz Matsui's hitting about .350 in that stretch, and the rest of the team is helpless. Ugh.

UPDATE: Numbers for the 17-game-and-counting swoon here and here. Matsui's hitting .353/.529/.382, most likely ensuring himself the chance to compete with Anderson Hernandez for the starting job again next year, Beltran's hitting .338/.492/.411, and Castro and Piazza are hitting a combined .260/.520/.356, and basically nobody else is hitting anything. On the pitching side, the big disaster (aside from Looper, which was entirely predictable) has been Benson, who's been a batting practice pitcher for the past month.

SECOND UPDATE: My prediction (linked above) had been two games blown by Looper against NL East foes in September. Well, we're only halfway through the month and he just blew #2, the first being the game in Atlanta on September 7 where he blew two leads, one in the 9th and one in the 10th, to go with two games (September 1 and 13) where he coughed up an insurance run in the 9th inning of a 2-run loss. This follows two losses and a blown save (in a game they'd led by 8 runs against the Nationals) in August. It's time for Looper to leave town, now. (And Matsui, Ishii, Offerman, and Gerald Williams should be right behind him).

OF COURSE, elsewhere, it's Benitez time.

Who has the highest strikeout/inning ratio in baseball since the All-Star Break? Read it, and weep.

Also: in one of my fantasy leagues, I bailed out and traded Dontrelle Willis (for BJ Ryan, a deal that makes sense only if Dontrelle was out of gas) at the end of July. But Willis has a MLB-best 1.23 ERA since August 1.

Yes, this is basically an edited version of the email Bill posted. And in my defense, I didn't see his email in my Yahoo! box until at least a half hour after he sent it . . .

Bill Simmons and I were having a discussion about how much precedent there is for Chris Carpenter having the sort of dominant, Cy Young-caliber season* he's had this year, given that Carpenter is 30 years old and has had a mediocre, injury-riddled career.

The obvious precedent is Mike Scott. Scott through age 29 had career bests of 10 wins, a 3.72 ERA, 154 innings, and 83 strikeouts. At age 30, Scott went 18-8 with a 3.29 ERA and 137 K, and the next year exploded on the league, going 18-10 with a 2.22 ERA in 275 IP, striking out 306 batters, throwing a division-clinching no-hitter, and winning the Cy Young Award.

So, who else is similar to Carpenter? Well, recall first that, like Scott, Carpenter built up to this with what looked, just a year ago, like a career year: he was 15-5 last year with a 3.46 ERA (121 ERA+) and 7.52 K/9. I don't think anyone predicted this season after he broke down (yet again) at the end of last year (me, I've been arguing for years that he should be converted to a closer due to his fragility). If you look at guys with big bust-out seasons in their 30s, there's a bunch of examples of less dramatic turnarounds by guys who were inconsistent or injury-prone in their 20s (Mike McCormick, Kevin Brown, Curt Schilling, Mike Cuellar, Bob Tewksbury), were previously relievers (Wilbur Wood, Hank Aguirre), pitched OK and got huge run support (Steve Stone) or just didn't get a shot in the majors until they were past 30 (Dazzy Vance, Spud Chandler, Sal Maglie). But I could think of four others who have a similar profile:

1. If you look at the top 10 most similar pitchers to Carpenter entering 2005 on baseball-reference.com, you'd find Jason Schmidt at #9. Schmidt's career-bests through age 29 were 13 wins, a 3.45 ERA, and 196 K, all set or matched at age 29 (his age-29 season is quite similar to Carpenter's). At 30, Schmidt went 17-5, 2.34 ERA, 208 K, pitching comparably to Carpenter, if winning a few less games and throwing a few less innings.

2. Bucky Walters, through age 29, had career bests of 15 wins (at age 29) and a 4.17 ERA. At 30, he went 27-11 with a 2.29 ERA and won the MVP Award; other than Scott, he's probably the most similar case.

3. John Tudor's career bests were 13 wins and a 3.27 ERA, until at age 31 he posted the 1.93 ERA in 275 innings and won 21 games. Getting out of Fenway and getting Ozzie behind him had a lot to do with that, of course.

4. Dave Stewart's career high in wins through age 29 was 10, and he'd never tossed 200 innings before. Stewart at 30 started the string of four consecutive 20-win seasons, although he didn't instantly dominate the league.

I could be forgetting someone - I didn't exactly do a systematic study - but I think those are the most dramatic examples.

* - I'll save for another day the Carpenter vs. Roger Clemens Cy Young debate. Suffice it to say that Carpenter's season is of legitimate Cy Young quality; the question is whether you can give the award to someone other than Clemens, given how well he's pitched.

How's this for a split? Mike Mussina, 2004-05:

Day games: 7-4 in 14 starts, 3.02 ERA in 92.1 IP
Night: 17-13 in 41 starts, 5.01 ERA in 244.1 IP

The odd thing is, Mussina's K/9 and BB/9 are about the same in both situations - but his HR/9 rise from 0.88 by day to 1.33 by night, accounting for the difference. Mussina hadn't shown a similar pattern before 2004, so it's hard to say if this is just random luck.

Well, it's too soon to give up hope for 2005 (and at this writing it's still too soon to abandon hope for tonight's game), let alone a full accounting of the goats in the event that the Mets fail to make the postseason. But I can say this: Braden Looper is very high on my list.

UPDATE: Can the same pitcher be charged with two blown saves in the same game?

UPDATE: !#^$#^ Looper. I can't really blame Takatsu, who came into an impossible situation (bases loaded, nobody out), and nearly got out of it, although it would have been nice if he'd put the game away once he got the first two outs.

*If you've been following the team closely this season, of course, you'll know the answer to this one. But still: look at the following table and tell me which one of these players signed a $119 million contract before the season:

PLAYER	AVG	SLG	OBP
A	.287	.402	.335
B	.269	.491	.349
C	.267	.421	.331
D	.254	.462	.328
E	.247	.425	.332

Answer below the fold. Yes, Beltran's had injuries. Yes, he's hit well in clutch situations. Yes, he's played wonderful defense and run the bases well. Still can't avoid the fact that the Mets are not in the position in the wild card race they'd be in if Beltran was hitting like Beltran.

*Kaz Matsui is really running well now, and actually starting to hit; he looks healthy and lively for the first time in more than a year. Too little, too late, although at least the Mets now have a reputable second baseman for a few weeks.

*Shingo Takatsu looks sort of like a Japanese Dennis Cook. And David Wright looks like he could have stepped out of an old black-and-white baseball photo from the 20s or 30s. With his compact frame, Wright is built sort of like Rogers Hornsby (of course, Hornsby was even better, younger than Wright, leading the league in slugging as a 21-year-old shortstop).

*Jeff Francouer really has to be the NL Rookie of the Year, doesn't he? So much for the historical unlikelihood of a late-arriving candidate.

I'll have to do a more careful player-by-player analysis, but it's clearly the rookies like Francouer who made the difference from the Opening Day roster that my EWSL projections rated as the weakest team in a strong NL East.

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I can barely even think about the Mets at this juncture, let alone blog about them. Man, this is depressing.

There's charity drives springing up all over for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, and you can see a list over at Instapundit. Personally, once I sit down with my wife and figure out how much to give, I'll probably chip in to the Red Cross, which has the relevant experience in this type of thing, or possibly to Catholic Charities.

But here's one more for your attention: the Baseball Think Factory crowd is looking for volunteers and donations to bring baseball equipment to people displaced by the hurricane. It's not the most immediately urgent need, but it can do some good once things settle down a bit.

Mets announcers just reported the Mets are calling up Kaz Ishii, Shingo Takatsu, and Tim Hamulack when the rosters expand tomorrow.

*Ishii, we know all too well; he has pitched well at Norfolk (1.76 ERA in 15.1 IP)

*Takatsu, who had a terrible year that started with him as the White Sox closer and ended with him getting released, could be useful; he pitched very well in June (0.96 ERA, 9 IP, 4 H, 1 HR, 3 BB, 10 K) before backsliding in July, and he's pitched fairly well in Norfolk, although he's continued to be homer-prone.

*Hamulack is a hard-throwing lefty who has been great at Binghamton and Norfolk (1.13 ERA, 64 IP, 40 H, 1 HR, 15 BB, 61 K), although he's 28 and has a checkered minor league career.

Over the next 30 days, starting with tonight's game against the Phillies, the Mets play 28 consecutive games against teams with winning records that are either in the playoffs (the Cardinals), probably in (the Braves), or still in the race (Phillies, Marlins, Nationals). This would be an excellent time for Carlos Beltran to have a month of hitting like Carlos Beltran, among other things, and for Kris Benson to shake off whatever has been bothering him his last two starts.

This is, of course, what we Mets fans have been waiting for. But I can't help but feel that, when it's all over, we will be looking back at two or more of these games that were blown by Braden Looper as being the point where it all got away.

UPDATE: Seconds after I post this, Beltran goes deep for the first time in a month.

Well, the Diamondbacks can't see Mike Jacobs leave town too soon. But the bigger question is, what do the Mets do with him? Jacobs is just up from spending most of the season at AA Binghamton, where he batted .321/.576/.389 in 433 at bats, impressive numbers but not necessarily numbers that scream "big league star" in a 24-year-old in his second crack at AA (he batted .329/.548/.376 there in 2003 before having 2004 ruined by injury: Baseball Prospectus translated that as .285/.493/.328). The major issue is patience - 35 walks and 94 K this year, 28 and 87 in 407 at bats in 2003, 25 and 95 in 467 at bats in the Florida State League in 2002. He's reportedly not much of a defensive catcher and has little defensive experience at first base. In short, he looks a lot like Jason Phillips 2.0.

But projecting him to stardom or even giving him the everyday 1B job now (Minky has hit well when healthy since his horrendous May, so the Mets will want him back when he's ready) or the everyday catcher's job next year is one thing; sending him back out when he's this hot is another. Even if everyone gets back healthy, I'd keep him as a bat on the roster over, say, Jose Offerman (Jacobs has hit 4 home runs in a week; Offerman's never hit more than 9 in a full season).

UPDATE: Combined batting line for Wright, Reyes, Floyd, Piazza, Castro, Diaz, Mientkiewicz and Jacobs since the All-Star Break:

AB	H	2B	3B	HR	R	RBI	BB	K	SB	CS	AVG	SLG	OBP	GDP
669	215	46	6	35	124	141	71	103	31	6	.321	.565	.387	16

Wow. The highlights include Wright batting .383/.667/.448 (making him fifth in the majors in slugging, fourth in OBP, first in batting average, tied for first in runs, and second in RBI in that stretch; his OPS of 1115 compares well to Pujols at 1113 and Manny at 1130), Reyes batting .321/.457/.355 (leading the majors in hits and steals and tied for second in triples), and Castro with 20 RBI in 58 at bats. Now, if they can just get Beltran's home run swing back . . .

I was discussing this over the weekend with family, and decided to do a little digging: what player or players won the most World Serieses without winning one with the Hated Yankees? I looked at all the non-Yankee teams to win the World Series, and came up with a list (I excluded guys like Babe Ruth and Wally Schang who won multiple championships away from the Bronx and won with the Yankees). Of course, the list was complicated by the number of guys who appeared in a season for a World Championship team as opposed to the guys who were actually part of the team in the postseason. The record for most non-Yankee World Championship teams played for in a season without playing for one with the Yankees is five. Two trivia questions, and then the answers after the break:

1. Name the three four players to play in a season for five World Championship teams without winning one with the Yankees. Each of these guys appeared in four of the five World Serieses. Hint: they were all (UPDATE: three of the four were) teammates on a team that won three Championships.

2. Name the three players to appear in the World Series for four non-Yankee World Champions since 1920. Hint: one appeared four times for the same team, one three times for the same team, and one twice each for two teams.

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The Mets' chief opponents this season are the 4 other NL East teams and the Astros, who are the only non-NL East team seriously in the Wild Card hunt. So, how has Pedro Martinez performed against these 5 teams?

Well, first of all, he's faced them in 12 of his 25 starts (10 vs. the East and two vs. the Astros), a scheduling feat (even in light of the imbalanced schedule) for which Willie Randolph deserves credit, and which accounts to some extent for the fact that the Mets, along with the Braves, are the teams in the NL East that have played better against their own division.

Look at these numbers:

W	L	ERA	GS	IP	H	HR	BB	K
7	2	1.76	12	87	51	3	13	91

That "hits" column is especially staggering. The only blight on Pedro's record here is three frustrating no-decisions, which were not his fault.

Now that we've added "entering in the 7th with an 8-run lead" to the list of "situations in which it is not safe to bring Danny Graves into the game," I think it's high time the Mets sent him packing.

The Mets are now in the unfortunate position of having to do continued triage on their roster, while still hanging on the edge of the wild card race (the division race is probably over and in Atlanta's hands again), and while it is too late in the season to do too much about it. They've got too many starters, no first or second baseman, injury-created lack of depth in the outfield and at catcher, and a bullpen that's getting grants from FEMA.

Ryan McConnell at Always Amazin' has some priceless examples here and here.

A few more baseball links:

*A patented way to locate the exciting parts of a baseball game? (via the Primer). Of course, this is like identifying the exciting parts of a mystery and only showing you whodunit - the concept that excitement is something that builds over time is lost on these guys.

*1870s-style baseball, complete with "cranks". Cool.

*The collective record of the NL East this season outside of the division is 202-162, a .555 winning percentage (i.e., a 90-win pace - for an entire division). On Baseball Tonight the other night, they were waxing enthusiastic about Florida's chances at the Wild Card. Well, I was high on the Marlins before the season and I'm certainly not giving up even on the Mets, but let's face facts: given that the NL East will play itself in September, the Astros have to be the overwhelming favorites to win the Wild Card just by virtue of their schedule. The Astros have 12 games remaining against teams above .500, compared to 32 for Florida, 28 for the Phillies, 28 for the Mets, and 29 for the Nationals.

There's been a lot of buzz lately, and justifiably so, about Felix Hernandez and the way he has thus far (through three starts) lived up to even the most extravagant hype. We will yet see how good Hernandez is really going to be in the short run, but barring injury I don't doubt he'll be good, and maybe great, possibly very soon. Aaron Gleeman pens a fine tribute to King Felix here, and Joe Sheehan provides some perspective here (subscription required, I think).

Sheehan studies the past track records of pitchers who made the majors as teens. It's a fine study, but I had a different angle I wanted to look at. What if Hernandez really does become an instant superstar - what does that mean for his long-term career prospects?

I decided to look at the greatest phenoms in the game's history since 1900 (before then, it was common to see very young pitchers atop the leaderboards). I pulled together a list of pitchers who were, or could plausibly be argued to be, one of the two best pitchers in their league in a season at age 22 or younger.

This turned out to be a fairly demanding test, but I did come up with 23 pitchers who fit the bill, including four who won the Cy Young Award at that age - Dwight Gooden, Vida Blue, Bret Saberhagen and Fernando Valenzuela (yes, I'm working with his reported age here). I may have missed someone who could arguably have qualified, but I don't think I missed anyone glaring. Based on the earliest season in which they qualified, here's the list:

19 Years Old
Wally Bunker

20 Years Old
Bob Feller
Don Drysdale
Fernando Valenzuela
Dwight Gooden

21 Years Old
Harry Krause
Babe Ruth
Mark Fidrych
Vida Blue
Bret Saberhagen

22 Years Old
Christy Mathewson
Ed Reulbach
Walter Johnson
Smoky Joe Wood
Bill James
Dutch Leonard
Herb Score
Sam McDowell
Larry Dierker
Bert Blyleven
Frank Tanana
Ramon Martinez
Mark Prior

As you can see, the list includes a phenomenally talented group of pitchers - but also a very high proportion of just the worst horror stories you can imagine. Nobody wants to see their favorite young pitcher compared to Fidrych, Score, Wood, or even Tanana. The list also includes a high proportion of extreme power pitchers, although there are a few glaring exceptions. The two guys who didn't strike people out even as young phenoms - Fidrych and Bunker - were effectively finished by age 23, while the guys who were merely above-average in the power department (Reulbach, Leonard, Dierker, James, Saberhagen, Krause, Ruth) were more of a mixed bag (Mathewson was a big strikeout guy in his first few years, at least by his time's standards).

Let's take a year-by-year look at how, on average, these guys fared. Keep an eye on the # column, which shows how many of the 23 pitchers in the sample actually pitched at that age. A few notes: I excluded the pitching numbers for Mark Prior for 2005, so he drops off the chart after age 23. I excluded Ruth and Wood for years when they were used almost exclusively as outfielders, so Ruth drops off after age 24 and Wood after age 27. And Feller was in the military ages 23-25:

Age	#	W	L	IP	ERA	ERA+	K/9
17	2	3	2	36	3.17	154	10.27
18	5	3	3	66	3.43	116	7.57
19	14	7	6	119	3.23	119	6.61
20	17	12	9	185	2.59	138	6.40
21	21	14	10	211	2.54	135	6.33
22	23	18	10	250	2.45	149	6.96
23	22	15	9	209	2.75	130	6.56
24	20	13	9	197	2.84	136	6.07
25	18	16	9	223	2.69	134	6.07
26	17	13	10	203	2.88	123	6.08
27	18	14	10	216	2.79	131	6.11
28	16	14	11	219	3.05	121	5.61
29	16	12	10	194	3.52	105	5.59
30	13	12	9	182	2.75	139	5.31
31	12	11	9	175	2.97	135	5.11
32	13	11	8	158	3.62	112	4.62
33	12	9	7	148	3.74	105	4.62
34	9	10	9	171	3.79	107	4.72
35	9	11	8	166	3.68	110	5.43
36	6	11	9	175	3.82	113	5.61
37	5	9	8	145	4.16	106	4.81
38	3	15	11	229	3.52	114	4.54
39	3	7	10	148	4.80	83	4.72
40	0	0	0	0	--	--	--
41	1	8	12	133	4.74	84	4.74

I'm not sure the chart quite captures the horrific attrition rate for these guys, although you can see that barely half of them were still pitching at 30, an appalling figure (even if we throw out Ruth and Prior it's 13 of 21) for such a talented bunch. Even among the best of the group in terms of longetivity, Mathewson was finished by 34 and retired by 36, Drysdale was done at 32, Blyleven needed arm surgery at 31; even Walter Johnson had a sore arm at 32, although Johnson gradually recovered his effectiveness. Tanana was a shell of his former self after age 24, Valenzuela after age 26, Feller after 29. McDowell was done at 29, Wood at 25, James at 23, Krause at 22. Gooden tore his rotator cuff at 24. Saberhagen threw 200 innings for the last time at 25, Leonard at 29. Others declined more slowly, like Blue, Reulbach and Martinez.

The chart does suffer from some illusions. You can see the tremendous dropoff in strikeout rates, but (1) it would be more severe than that except that Fidrych and Bunker drag down the average for the younger years, and (2) the uptick at age 35 is mostly the result of Mathewson retiring, as Mathewson had been an extremely low-K pitcher throwing 300+ innings a year in his early 30s. Also, the small sample size goes haywire from 30 on: Johnson's staggering ERAs at age 30 and 31 have a large single-handed effect, and by age 38, only Johnson, Blyleven and Tanana were still pitching, and the first two had good years (their last). Finally, among those who survived into their 30s, a large number of them moved into much more hitter-friendly conditions: Blyleven, Blue and Tanana came out of the pitcher-happy 70s, Gooden and Saberhagen had to deal with the 90s, Johnson hit the lively ball era at 32. The "League ERA" from which the ERA+ is calculated (which bottoms out at 3.44 for the age-21 sample) jumps up from the 3.57-3.82 range to 4.01 at age 31, then to 4.32 and 4.40 at age 36-37. Thus, the ERA+ column may be more instructive.

The more complicated question is whether the gruesome health record (and other factors: Wood tripping on a baseball, Score getting drilled by a line drive, Gooden's and Blue's drug problems, McDowell's drinking, Feller going to war, Ruth's hitting prowess) was the result of overuse at a young age, or whether it's just been the case either that (1) guys who have this sort of gift at a young age are usually destined to burn out early as well or (2) no matter what age you start at, there's only so many good pitches in most guys' arms. That will be a tough one for the Mariners if Hernandez can scale the hieghts the way these others did. My own sense is that life has its own plans: you don't want to see Hernandez throw 270 innings a year, but if he can do the job of a front-of-the-rotation starter now, he should be asked to do it while he has that precious gift.

If you're wondering how the A's, after a dismal start, wound up the hottest team in baseball, going 43-14 since May 30, David Pinto's Day by Day database provides answers yet again:

Oakland Batting 5/30/05-8/2/05

Oakland Pitching 5/30/05-8/2/05

A few quick thoughts:

*The return from injury of Bobby Crosby and the arrival of Dan Johnson seem to have coincided with the awakening of Eric Chavez, Nick Swisher and Jason Kendall from deep slumps, giving the A's the offensive core they'd lacked in the early going. They actually now look like a pretty good offensive team, if still not the Yankees.

*Harden, Zito and Haren are 24-3 over that stretch, bringing back memories of the May 2002-May 2003 golden age of the Big Three, when Hudson, Zito and Mulder went a combined 61-16 over a 162-game stretch.

*If Ryan Glynn hadn't gone 0-4 with a 6.88 ERA subbing for Harden, the A's would look really scary.

*Smoked Joe Blanton has actually been striking people out, a crucially important development.

*Huston Street is already one of baseball's elite closers. And Justin Duchscherer and Kiko Calero are one heck of a 1-2 setup punch.

*Of course, some credit should go to Bobby Kielty, who was one of the few guys hitting before this run.

Palmeiro wasn't the only one; Mariners starter Ryan Franklin has also been suspended for violating the steroids policy. And look what steroids did for Franklin: helped make him the losingest pitcher in baseball in 2004-05. (More here).

I have never intentionally used steroids. Never. Ever. Period, . . . Ultimately, although I never intentionally put a banned substance into my body, the independent arbitrator ruled that I had to be suspended under the terms of the program.

Perhaps, in retrospect, the denial under oath before Congress was a bad idea. On the other hand, Bill Simmons looks like a prophet for writing this last week:

The current era of juiced balls, ravaged pitching staffs and a drug program best described as "Um, you guys shouldn't do that stuff" has rendered everything else irrelevant.

As Palmeiro closed in on the 3,000-hit/500-HR club last week, the media swirl had a guess-we-have-to-cover-this feel, almost like when Ryan Seacrest got a star on Hollywood Boulevard. That's no knock on Raffy . . .

Please note: I'm not accusing Palmeiro of anything. He was at the right place at the perfect time, just like Judd Nelson peaking when over-the-top performances in enjoyably cheesy movies were all the rage. Whether either guy needed drugs to complete the effect is beside the point. . .

POSSIBLY UNRELATED NEWS STORY: Barry Bonds will not play this season.

UPDATE: If you like, you can take this survey on steroids and Palmeiro.

From Baseball Prospectus 2005 (p. 385-86):

With apologies to Jon Landau, we have seen the future of pitching, and his name is Zack Greinke. There are two sets of opinions on Greinke. There's the camp that thinks all the talk about his being the most extraordinary young pitcher of his generation is overblown hype. Then there's the camp of people who have seen him pitch.

[snip]

His profile is so unique that trying to project his future is a fool's errand, although the fact that PECOTA projects a collapse rate of 0% is astonishing for a young pitcher. All we can say is that in the past 30 years, the pitcher Greinke best compares to as a rookie, both statistically and stylistically, is [Bret] Saberhagen. As a sophmore, Saberhagen won the Cy Young Award.

(More on that "just about zero chance of collapsing" bit here).

Observant fans will note, at this point, that Greinke is a bit of a long shot for the 2005 AL Cy Young Award, seeing as how he is 3-13 with a 6.14 ERA. I think it's safe to say that the Greinke hype from this year's edition of BP will not be listed on the cover of next year's book.

Now, we all make mistakes and bad predictions. But in this case, there was a major and obvious red flag that BP should have warned its readers about. As I noted back in March, in previewing the Royals:

Then there's nearly the team's sole cause for optimism, Zack Greinke, who Jay Jaffe and Studes have identified as a guy who could take a step back this year because he was lucky on balls in play in 2004. I wouldn't go shining that Cy Young Award the Baseball Prospectus guys are hinting at just yet.

Specifically, Greinke's FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching) stats for 2004 had him at 4.94, about a run higher than his 3.97 ERA. In other words, Greinke was likely to regress this season unless he improved enough in other areas to offset the likelihood that he would not be so lucky on balls in play, a factor over which pitchers have far less control than other aspects of the game. In fact, he actually has improved in the one major area he needed to work on (home runs) but has seen his K/BB numbers fall off a bit:

Year	HR/9	BB/9	K/9
2004	1.61	1.61	6.21
2005	1.14	2.65	5.46

Greinke's problem is that he has done far worse on balls in play than just revert to the mean; in fact, his defensive support has been so bad (unsurprisingly, considering the team that plays behind him) that his ERA exceeds his FIP by a greater margin than any pitcher in baseball this season except for Mark Hendrickson of the Devil Rays; the Hardball Times gives him a FIP of 4.63, which is actually better than last season, but opponents' batting average on balls in play has risen from .267 to .333, resulting in the unsightly ERA. And it's been getting worse: overall, the league hit .383 against Greinke in June and .343 in July.

At the end of the day, if you look just at the HR/9, K/9, BB/9 and FIP figures, Greinke is just a very young pitcher, well thought of by scouts, who has yet to become more than a slightly below-average major league pitcher. There's no shame in that; you could have said the same of Greg Maddux or Tom Glavine at the same points in their careers, and Greinke could yet develop into a star if he can keep cutting down on the home run balls (his Groundball/flyball ratio increased this year, a positive sign in that direction), get a few more strikeouts, avoid losing his confidence over the debacle of 2005 (in fact, Greinke may be a poster boy for the need to have a stat guy on hand who can help explain to a young pitcher that he's not as far from success as it looks), and get himself onto a team where good pitching is at least occasionally rewarded with offensive and defensive support.

But that said, BP missed a big one here, when the reason to be cautious was staring them in the face.

While I do miss the drama a bit, I can't say I'm disappointed that the Mets didn't make any deadline deals, especially when you consider how ill-advised last year's moves were. The main deal under discussion, of course, was the three-way trade that would have brought Manny Ramirez to Shea for Mike Cameron, Lastings Milledge and possibly Aaron Heilman. I might well have done that deal; Milledge is a fine prospect, but the odds on him ever being as good as Manny are pretty slim, and while the Mets should be building for the future, as long as the team is built around Pedro, that future is 2006-07, not years down the road. But hanging on to Milledge and the team's other chips is hardly a bad idea.

Another rumor I saw floated was some variation on Heilman and Yusmeiro Petit for Danys Baez. Given that Baez was supposed to go to Shea in the Manny deal, I'm unwilling to leap to any conclusions about Minaya from the fact that this may have been discussed, but obviously nobody in their right minds trades two young pitchers with the capacity to be starters for a non-elite closer in his thirties, particularly not to a team still as far from championship-caliber as the Mets.

Tougher times, though, for the Yankees, adding neither Randy Winn (or anybody else capable of playing center) nor a creditable starting pitcher. The Yanks will finally, for once, have to sink or swim with the team they assembled in the offseason.

Naturally, the Braves did improve, grabbing the rejuvenated Kyle Farnsworth from Detroit to shore up their bullpen and apparently not giving up a lot in return.

There's a long, long history between the Hated Yankees and the Red Sox, and as any baseball fan can tell you, over that time the Yankees have tended to outplay the Sox down the stretch run, even when the two teams appear to be evenly matched.

OK, we know that. But by how much? Let's look at the numbers. I went through every season since the Yankees' 1903 arrival in New York in which both teams were in some sense still in the pennant race - i.e., both were within 10 games of first, or one was and the other was just a few games behind them - on July 31, and then compared their records from August 1 through the end of the season. Overall, that amounted to 38 seasons.

The net result? In the 38 seasons, the Sox were 2130-1676 (.560) through July 31, and the Yanks were 2190-1615 (.576). But from August 1 on, the Sox teams slowed to 1255-1070 (.540), while the Yankees heated up to 1360-968 (.584). Overall, the Yankees gained ground on the Sox, in absolute terms, 23 times, while the Sox gained ground 15 times (oddly, not once did they share the same post-August 1 record; the closest seasons were in 1904, 1948 and 2000, when the two teams were separated by a half game down the stretch). The biggest gains for the Yankees were 1952 (+14.5 games), 1985 (+13.5 games), 1937 (+12.5 games), and 1955 and 2001 (+10 games). The biggest gains for the Sox were 1973 and 1991 (+12.5 games), 1916 (+9 games), 1972 (+6.5 games), and 1949 (+6 games). The longest number of consecutive seasons in the study when the Yankees gained ground: 8, from 1934 to 1945. Longest for the Sox: 4 from 1986-91.

Of course, the Yankees, on average, started ahead. 1937 is probably the season in the study closest to the edge: the Yanks had a 9 game lead on the Sox, and were never really in any danger of not winning the pennant. Even in relative terms, though, the effect held up: the Yankees did better than the Sox relative to their winning percentage through 7/31 in 25 of 38 seasons.

Let's break the numbers out by groups of seasons:

Years	Sox 7/31	Yanks 7/31	Sox 8/1	Yanks 8/1+	NY Tot
1904-16	.594	.580	.558	.556	-0.5
1934-40	.560	.627	.512	.640	+47.5
1944-55	.562	.592	.537	.622	+39
1970-79	.565	.540	.569	.594	+9
1982-95	.541	.534	.517	.510	-3
1999-04	.563	.610	.564	.594	+10.5
Total	.560	.576	.540	.584	+103.5

Seasons in study: 1904, 1910, 1916, 1934, 1935, 1937, 1938, 1939, 1944, 1945, 1948, 1949, 1950, 1951, 1952, 1955, 1970, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1982, 1983, 1985, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1993, 1995, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004.

Lyford has some thoughts about the Red Sox' problem child. Read the whole thing.

Fact one: The Mets are last in the National League in OBP at .320 (the Phillies and Marlins are first at .346 each).

Fact two: Since his arrival in Texas, Alfonso Soriano's batting line on the road is as follows:

G	AB	H	2B	3B	HR	R	RBI	BB	K	SB	AVG	SLG	OBP
119	501	121	21	1	23	63	64	27	120	18	.242	.425	.280

Conclusion: Yes, I'd take Soriano; his power and speed would still be an upgrade on Miguel Cairo, and I'd expect him to hit a little better than the numbers above. But I wouldn't give up much of value for him - nothing on the order of, say, Lenny Dykstra, Roger McDowell and Tom Edens or Jeff Kent and Jose Vizcaino.

*I wasn't a big fan of the Kris Benson contract, but you certainly can't complain about the results so far. His wife has even produced more than the expected comic relief.

*I know I've made this point before, but Carlos Beltran this season is hitting .388/.653/.423 in the late innings of close games, .320/.569/.374 with men on base, .295/.547/.351 with runners in scoring position, .353/.569/.450 with runners on base and two outs, and .458/.958/.438 with a man on third and less than two outs. Complain, if you will, that Beltran has not hit enough, in general. But complaints that Beltran hasn't risen to the occasion in clutch situations are absurd. His problem has been the opposite of the A-Rod issue: he's come up with the big hits when needed, but he hasn't done enough to put games away in the first few innings.

*I've never seen a systematic study of the issue, but Marlon Anderson's remarkable success this year is further support for the idea that slap hitters who make a lot of contact are uniquely well-suited to pinch hitting duty.

*I was having the discussion again about Jeff Kent as a Hall of Fame candidate, a subject I intend to return to in more detail later. But here's the amazing thing: when the Mets traded Kent for Carlos Baerga, Kent had done nearly nothing to make himself a Hall of Fame candidate, and Baerga was washed up. Today, Baerga is still playing - and in the time since he proved himself decisively over the hill, Kent has been able to amass an arguable Hall of Fame career. Amazing.

*As frustrating as Jose Reyes has been - and doubly so, Willie Randolph's failure to understand that Reyes is not a leadoff man - consider that the average NL #1 and #2 hitters are batting .274/.285/.336 and .266/.396/.327 (and both of those OBP figures are up quite a bit in the past two weeks). So, the Mets aren't the only ones having trouble getting guys on base.

*Doug Minky's numbers, projected to 600 at bats: 29 homers and 72 walks. For all the concern about bringing in a 1B without any punch, that hasn't been the problem; it's his .227 batting average that's been killing him. Since June 1, Minky is batting .265/.515/.333. More of that, please.

For what it's worth, Tom Glavine's 269th career win yesterday pushes him ahead of Jim Palmer on the all-time list.

UPDATE: Let's update this chart through July 20:

Pitcher	Thru 35	At 36-37	Thru 37	At 38	Thru 38	After
Maddux	257	32	289	16	305	*8
Carlton	249	36	285	15	300	29
Clemens	233	27	260	20	280	*55
Seaver	245	19	264	9	273	38
Grove	223	34	257	14	271	29
Spahn	203	43	246	21	267	96
Sutton	230	28	258	8	266	58
Glavine	224	27	251	11	262	*7
Wynn	201	34	235	14	249	51
Perry	198	33	231	15	246	68
Ryan	205	26	231	10	241	83
R.Johnson	160	40	200	24	224	*32
Mussina	211	*9	*220	--	*220	--
Martinez	*193	--	*193	--	*193	--
Niekro	131	32	163	16	179	139

* - And counting

Pedro, of course, is still just 33.

As I have stressed repeatedly (see here and here), today's off day is decision day for Mets management. Given the need to gain ground on the NL East, I argued that the Mets needed to go at least 11-6 against the NL East in their now-concluded stretch of playing 17 of 23 against their own division, and at least 3-3 in the other six games. As it turned out, they went 10-7 against the East and 4-2 in the other six, for the same 13-10 14-9 record, but with less impact on the rest of the division. But they are still in last place, 7 games back of Washington and - far more important - 5.5 games behind the Braves. Maybe someone will pull Bobby Cox's Braves down from behind some day, but it hasn't happened yet.

The Mets now won't see their own division again until August 30. It's possible that they could hang around, maybe gain a little ground in the interim, and then get blazing hot in September. That possibility is fairly distant, and they shouldn't fool themselves into surrendering anything of real future value to chase it.

Then again, the value of staying in the race is nothing to sneer at. Even if the Mets win 83 games, they can say they've posted their first winning record in four years and their best record since winning the pennant in 2000, and that would be something positive to build on for next year.

More to the point, the team isn't bursting with guys with a high ratio of present trade value to future value. Piazza's the top "old guy who's contract's up," but (1) the dropoff in 2005 to Ramon Castro is severe, and (2) Piazza's hitting has been mediocre enough that he wouldn't draw a lot of value. Floyd and Cameron would, but they're also signed for one more year apiece (I believe) at reasonable enough prices. Looper is at a low ebb right now, and might be more useful in the future.

As a result, perhaps the best posture for the Mets entering the deadline is to listen to offers - I wouldn't hesitate to deal any of those three guys - but not feel the need to trade them. In other words, rather than letting the desire to win now panic you, use it to convince people they need to make it worth your while to drop out of the race.

That said, there are guys they should dump. Glavine still has his moments, but the Mets should not want to pick up his option for next year. If a contender is willing to part with anything at all, they should move him. Ishii should be given his walking papers if no one will take him, and Graves should be sent back to AAA. Matsui would be addition by subtraction at this point, although no one would be interested in him for the 2005 stretch run.

Fans always like to be buying or selling at the deadline, and for the right price the Mets could sell. But if the right price doesn't come, they should know when to hold em.

Following yesterday's look at teams that have departed from their preseason EWSL numbers, I decided to take a look at the Brewers, who are #2 on the list of teams furthest from their EWSL, and first compared to their Pythagorean record thus far this season; EWSL is prorated to 88 games (through the Break):

Pos	Age	Player	EWSL	WS	WSAB	+/-
C	35	Damian Miller	4	5	0	+1
1B	28	Lyle Overbay	9	9	3	-
2B	30	Junior Spivey	5	2	-2	-3
SS	22	JJ Hardy	7	3	-1	-4
3B	29	Russ Branyan	3	6	4	+3
RF	30	Geoff Jenkins	7	7	1	-
CF	32	Brady Clark	4	12	5	+8
LF	29	Carlos Lee	10	16	9	+6
C2	30	Chad Moeller	2	2	0	-
INF	29	Wes Helms	3	2	0	-1
OF	28	Chris Magruder	1	2	0	+1
12	25	Bill Hall	4	9	4	+5
13	35	Jeff Cirilllo	1	4	1	+3
2B	22	Rickie Weeks	--	4	2	+4
1B	21	Prince Fielder	--	2	1	+2
OF	23	Dave Krynzel	--	0	-1	0
TOT			60	85	26	+25

WSAB is a measure of marginal Win Shares against the number expected of a replacement-level player with a similar amount of playing time. I included it here so you can see which guys are falling short of their EWSL due to poor quality play vs. lack of playing time. I included three players here (Weeks, Fielder and Krynzel) who I hadn't projected in the preseason but who have contributed. Of course, adding three extra players means the team should come in a bit ahead of its preseason numbers.

You can see a substantial improvement in the lineup, which only promises to get better as Hall, Weeks, Branyan and Cirillo (!) soak up the playing time previously given to the departed Spivey. Aside from Hall and Weeks, Brady Clark and Carlos Lee have been the big improvements, although in Lee's case I'm a little puzzled, as he's having your basic Carlos Lee season. I'm less optimistic that Clark can sustain quite this level - he's 32 and never played regularly until last year - but even so, he's been quite a find and should continue to help.

Now to the pitchers:

Pos	Age	Player	EWSL	WS	WSAB	+/-
SP1	26	Ben Sheets	8	4	2	-4
SP2	29	Doug Davis	5	6	2	+1
SP3	26	Chris Capuano	1	8	4	+7
SP4	28	Victor Santos	1	4	1	+3
SP5	28	Gary Glover	2	-1	-3	-3
CL	26	Michael Adams	3	1	1	-2
R2	35	Ricky Bottalico	1	2	1	+1
R3	25	Jeff Bennett	2	-	-	-2
R4	29	Matt Wise	1	4	2	+3
R5	28	Wes Obermuller	2	2	1	-
RP	27	Derrick Turnbow	--	6	4	+6
RP	32	Julio Santana	--	2	0	+2
RP	31	Tommy Phelps	--	1	0	+1
RP	24	Jorge De La Rosa	--	1	0	+1
SP	29	Tomo Ohka	--	1	0	+1
TOT			26	41	15	+15

The extra share for the pitchers is smaller, in large part because Ben Sheets has been hurt and because Gary Glover has underperformed some very low expectations. It's hard to see Victor Santos as part of the solution when he's 2-9, but he's pitched well. Capuano and Turnbow, the rookie closer, have been the big steps forward.

Check out Al Bethke's roundtable on the Brew Crew's first half for a more in-depth look.

While we're stopped for the All-Star Break, I thought I'd look at the projected standings I did before the season (see the NL standings here and AL here) by comparison to the actual standings at the break. I'm presenting the teams in order from the teams most overachieving compared to their EWSL standings to those falling furthest off the pace (I've prorated the EWSL wins to the number of games each team has played so far):

Team	Wins	EWSL	+/-
ChW	57	41	+16
Mil	42	33	+9
Cle	47	40	+7
Was	52	46	+6
Atl	50	45	+5
Tex	46	41	+5
Det	42	37	+5
StL	56	52	+4
Bal	47	44	+3
Hou	44	41	+3
Min	48	46	+2
Tor	44	42	+2
LAA	52	51	+1
Pit	39	38	+1
SD	48	48	--
Az	43	43	--
NYM	44	45	-1
KC	30	32	-2
LAD	40	43	-3
Col	31	34	-3
Bos	49	53	-4
Oak	44	48	-4
ChC	43	48	-5
Sea	39	44	-5
Cin	35	39	-5
Fla	44	50	-6
Phi	45	52	-7
NYA	46	54	-8
TB	28	37	-9
SF	37	47	-10

Overall, the divisions come in as follows: AL Central, +28; NL Central, +7; NL East and AL West, -3 each; AL East and NL West, -16 each; AL overall, +7; NL overall, -12; MLB in total, -5, which means that some of the differences here can be explained just by rounding. On average, AL teams were 5.21 games off their EWSL records, NL teams 4.25 off, MLB as a whole, 4.7.

That's not a great record, but it's too early even now to declare it a big failure. Some teams will always deviate from even the most perfect pre-season estimates, due to trades, unforeseeable injuries, unexpected rookies.

No surprise that the biggest underachievers have been the Giants, since the pre-season EWSL standings were predicated on them having Bonds for half the season, and he hasn't arrived yet.

Also unsurprisingly, several of the teams that are out of whack with their EWSL numbers tend to be the same teams that are way over or under their Pythagorean projections - in other words, their players are playing closer to expectations than their records would suggest. Conspicuous examples include the White Sox (+16 vs. EWSL, +6 vs. Pythagorean record), Nationals (+6/+8), and Mariners (-5/-3). But there are counterexamples as well: the Brewers are +9 vs. EWSL while being -4 vs. their Pythagorean record, the Braves (+5/-4), the Indians (+7/-2), and the Diamondbacks (0/+7). On the whole, the average distance between the EWSL and Pythagorean records is 4.7 games - just exactly the same as with actual records.

I was surprised to discover that EWSL had consistently failed to grasp how bad the really bad teams would be - all the moreso because I thought before the season that the method was being unduly harsh on the Royals, Rockies and Devil Rays. Not hard enough, apparently.

Anyway, I may take a look at some of the big outliers, and I'll have to go back at the end of the year and see how EWSL did, and why, and whether there are further refinements to the method that will improve its predictive value, or whether its shortcomings as a predictor are just the inherent limitations of using past performance to predict the future.

You know, it's easy to get cynical about the All-Star Game when you've seen so many of them and seen the way they are treated as something of a circus, with players run in and out of the games to get everyone an at bat. I've almost reached the point where watching the game is a chore, something I do as much as anything to make sure I don't miss something memorable, in case something memorable happens (like the year they ended the game in a tie - that was about the most excitement we've had in an All-Star Game the past 15 years).

So it was quite a different experience last night watching the game with my son. It was his 8th birthday, so we let him stay up late to watch most of the game, and he and I set up on the living room floor watching the All-Stars and building Star Wars-themed Lego sets; does it get better than that? Once I explained the concept of the game, he really got into rooting for the National League, and kept complaining "that's not fair" when, say, Carlos Beltran hit into a double play. (I had some difficulty explaining the difference between David Wright and Cliff Floyd being the Mets best hitters this year vs. Beltran and Piazza starting the All-Star Game, but that's another issue; at least the DH rule meant that I didn't have to explain why Albert Pujols wasn't starting the game even though he's the best player in baseball right now).

Anyway, some other random thoughts that came to me:

*I guess the Carlos Lee for Scott Podsednik deal has worked out about as well for both sides as could possibly be imagined, with Lee leading the NL in RBI and S-Pod (OK, never mind that one) leading off for the team with the best record in baseball.

*I had to explain to my wife why Kenny Rogers was booed, and that this was for different reasons from why he would be booed at Shea Stadium, which is for for different reasons from why he would be booed at Yankee Stadium.

*Fox is premiering a new sitcom called "The War at Home" . . . on September 11? Please tell me that's a mistake.

*I was retelling the story about how Bret Saberhagen's wife gave birth during the 1985 World Series and didn't tell him until after he'd pitched. Then it hit me: Saberhagen was 20 then, and that was 20 years ago, so the kid is now the same age Saberhagen was at the time. That really made me feel old.

*Ex-Mets and ex-Mets farmhands in the All-Star game: Jeff Kent, Jason Bay, Melvin Mora, Kenny Rogers, Jason Isringhausen. Please don't ask me what they got in return for any of those guys.

It would be difficult - especially in a non-division game against a mediocre team - for the Mets to suffer a more demoralizing loss than Friday night's game, in which they squandered all the momentum from taking 3 of 4 from the first-place Nationals by blowing a 5-1 lead over the Pirates in the ninth inning. I'm not yet expecting a second-half collapse such as the team had had in each of the past three years, but it's hard to watch a game like Friday's and not come away convinced that this team will never get far from .500.

Looking at the standings, it's obvious that this is Atlanta's division to lose. Only the Braves and Nationals are more than two games over .500, and the Nationals have allowed more runs than they've scored and are hobbled until Nick Johnson, their best player, returns from injury; they've lost 5 of their last 7 games. The Braves, meanwhile, have reloaded rapidly with young players, plus they're the Braves. I'm not optimistic about the second half being anything but a replay of the last decade.

I said two weeks ago that the Mets needed to go at least 11-6 against the NL East in their current stretch of playing 17 of 23 against their own division, if they wanted to remain sufficiently serious 2005 contenders to justify hanging on to veterans they could otherwise deal at the deadline. With yesterday's victory over the Nationals, the Mets are now 7-5 in that stretch, leaving them 42-42 and in last place, two games behind third place Florida, five behind wild-card-leading Atlanta and nine behind the overachieving Nats (who have allowed more runs than they've scored, strongly suggesting a second-half collapse). I stand by what I said: the Mets are still just outside the race looking in, and if they can't take the dramatic step of taking four of five between today's game against Washington and the four game set against Atlanta, they shouldn't be maneuvering themselves for a futile pennant chase this fall.

How hot are the Indians? Just check out their numbers since May 21, via David Pinto's Day by Day database:

Batting

Pitching

If you're in a Rotisserie league, I hope you were able to snap up Victor Martinez, Travis Hafner and Jake Westbrook while their stock was down earlier in the year (I was able to snag Martinez in one of my leagues). And has their been a bigger dark-horse rookie this year than Jhonny Peralta?

Pedro is now allowing 0.817 baserunners per inning pitched. If he keeps this up, he will place 7th on the all-time single-season list (the record is 0.737, set by Pedro in 2000; Greg Maddux in 1995 is the only other pitcher to place in the top 10 since 1913).

I'll believe that the Mets are or were close to dealing Mike Cameron and Miguel Cairo for Gary Sheffield when I see such a deal go through. That's a deal that sounds like something a Mets fan would get laughed at for peddling on WFAN, not something Brian Cashman would agree to, no matter how desperate the Hated Yankees are for a center fielder and how well Cameron has hit this season and how much Joe Torre loved Cairo and even how willing the Mets might be to take on additional salary. Aside from the various quotes from Sheffield about how he won't go anywhere, Sheffield is the Yankees' third-best player at the moment, a career .298/.527/.400 hitter who shows no sign of slowing down, and the Mets could get him without parting with a pitcher or anybody under 30? That only makes sense if he's in more hot water over the steroids issue than we know.

Would I do the deal if it was offered, were I the Mets? Of course. The Mets lose nothing from their ability to win in the future, and greatly help their odds to win now. But it's not gonna happen. George wouldn't green-light something that carries such a large risk of looking bad at the expense of the Mets.

Of course, that guy in the background has a distinguished record.

It is officially time to worry about Keith Foulke. After last night's debacle, Foulke has a 6.03 ERA and the numbers to back it up - he's allowed 8 homers and 14 walks in 37.1 innings, compared to 8 and 15 in 83 innings last year. His K/9 are down to less than 7 from close to 9. This is now past the point of "bad start" to "bad year," and maybe then some. I have to wonder if he's physically 100%.

The link on CBSSportsline to this article read "Boss summons his minions to Tampa." I figured Steinbrenner must be the only person in public life who gets to have "minions." Then again, this Google News link suggests the term is more commonly used than I thought.

As you will recall, my preseason Established Win Shares Levels analysis concurred with the general consensus that the Hated Yankees had the most talented team in the American League. But the 2005 season has thus far had other plans for the Yanks. Over at The Hardball Times, we can look at the semi-current (through last Thursday, when they were 37-34) Win Shares totals for the Yankees. Where have they gone wrong? Let's compare the EWSL totals, projected over a 71 game season, to the Yankees' actual Win Shares through 71 games to identify the culprits. First, the non-pitchers:

Pos	Age	Player	EWSL	WS	WSAB	+/-
C	33	Jorge Posada	7	9	4	+2
1B	37	Tino Martinez	5	4	1	-1
2B	35	Tony Womack	4	2	-3	-2
SS	31	Derek Jeter	9	10	4	+1
3B	29	Alex Rodriguez	12	15	9	+3
RF	31	Hideki Matsui	9	10	5	+1
CF	36	Bernie Williams	7	4	0	-3
LF	36	Gary Sheffield	11	16	11	+5
DH	34	Jason Giambi	7	5	2	-2
C2	37	John Flaherty	1	0	-2	-1
INF	37	Rey Sanchez	2	0	0	-2
OF	39	Ruben Sierra	3	2	1	-1
INF	27	Damian Rolls	1	0	0	-1
2B	22	Robinson Cano	--	3	0	+3
OF	28	Bubba Crosby	--	0	-1	0
TOT			78	80	31	+2

WSAB is a measure of marginal Win Shares against the number expected of a replacement-level player with a similar amount of playing time. I included it here so you can see which guys are falling short of their EWSL due to poor quality play vs. lack of playing time. I included one player here (Damian Rolls) who I had projected in the preseason but hasn't played, and two (Crosby and Cano) I didn't project who have. Of course, adding one extra player means the team should come in a bit ahead of its preseason numbers.

As you can see, while the Yankee lineup has some problems - principally the aging support players Giambi, Bernie, Tino and Womack falling short of even their modest, age-adjusted expectations - the Yanks have more than covered this by getting greater even than expected performance from their stars, notably Sheffield, A-Rod and Posada.

You know what that means. The pitchers:

Pos	Age	Player	EWSL	WS	WSAB	+/-
SP1	41	Randy Johnson	7	6	2	-1
SP2	36	Mike Mussina	5	6	3	+1
SP3	29	Carl Pavano	5	2	-1	-3
SP4	40	Kevin Brown	4	2	0	-2
SP5	29	Jaret Wright	3	-1	-2	-4
CL	35	Mariano Rivera	4	6	3	+2
R2	37	Tom Gordon	4	3	2	-1
R3	36	Paul Quantrill	3	0	-1	-3
R4	32	Felix Rodriguez	2	0	0	-2
R5	38	Mike Stanton	2	0	0	-2
SP	25	Chien-Ming Wang	--	3	2	+3
RP	34	Tanyon Sturtze	--	3	1	+3
RP	39	Buddy Groom	--	1	0	+1
SP	24	Sean Henn	--	0	-1	0
TOT			39	31	8	-8

There you have it: a falloff of 15 Win Shares (5 whole wins) from the guys who were counted before the season, and a net loss of 8 Win shares (almost 3 wins) even including the guys who weren't counted. The damage was mainly done at the back of the rotation and bullpen: Mussina at +1 and Randy Johnson at -1 vs. their expected Win Shares are actually a wash, and Mariano, like the stars in the lineup, is doing his best to carry the stragglers. But Pavano, Brown, Wright, Quantrill, Stanton and Felix Rodriguez at -16 are just killing the Yanks; all that money spent on added pitching depth in the offseason went straight down the tubes.

Looking at these numbers also reassured me that my age adjustments weren't too harsh, and in some cases were too mild: the eight Yankees age 37 and over are at a net loss of 11 Win Shares against even their diminished expectations.

Not much to add to last night's bitterly disappointing missed opportunity to sweep the Hated Yankees while they were playing defense like a beer league softball team that had gotten out of shape over the winter. Braden Looper just blew it, with a little help from David Wright not guarding the line with a man on first, nobody out and a 1-run lead in the bottom of the 9th. Looper's not a terrible closer and he's not a particularly expensive one, but he's definitely not a positive in his role.

David Pinto notes Manny Ramirez' progress in chasing Lou Gehrig's career record for grand slams.

The Wall Street Journal had an entertaining article Friday ($) about how home teams screw around with the schedule to have more night games on getaway days, leaving the visitors to depart bleary-eyed; apparently this has become a particularly common tactic in an escalating war of minor indignities fought between the Devil Rays and the Hated Yankees.

The NY Times also had an interesting article - no longer web-available - on the question of what to call the Mets' new stadium, which presumably will not be named after William Shea, the lawyer who brought National League baseball back to New York. Of course, Shea's family has no cause to complain (as, mostly, they don't) - it was honor enough that the Mets played in a park bearing his name for four decades, and that five four World Serieses (the four by the Mets plus 1976) were played there, and one All-Star Game.

UPDATE: Dr. Manhattan reminds me that Yankee Stadium was, in fact, open in time for the 1976 World Series.

As I should have noted, the candidates for a new Mets stadium name would be either Jackie Robinson Stadium or a corporate sponsor. I'm fine with a corporate sponsor as long as it is (1) not something ridiculous (I think my favorite, from college football, is the infamous Poulan Weedeater Independence Bowl), and (2) not a bank, telecom company or other company likely to change its name every three years.

Vinny Castilla, month by month:

Month	AVG	SLG	OBP	OPS
April	.347	.613	.395	1008
May	.245	.327	.339	666
June	.176	.257	.215	472

Yup, after that hot start, Castilla has been worse than worthless. Another reason why my Hacking MASS team over at Baseball Prospectus has surged to #65 out of 1,859 teams. My roster:

Position	Player	2005 ESPN
Catcher	Mike Matheny	10
First Base	Darin Erstad	19
Second Base	Tony Womack	71
Third Base	Vinny Castilla	25
Shortstop	Alex Gonzalez	22
Left Field	Scott Podsednik	23
Center Field	Marquis Grissom	36
Right Field	Jacque Jones	8
Pitcher 1	Jose Lima	97
Pitcher 2	Russ Ortiz	49
Total		360

The interesting question is whether the Nationals will eventually bail out on Castilla. Naturally, the hot April has made it that much harder to do.

It's not just Bill James and Voros McCracken crunching numbers for Theo.

Well, Pedro quieted the howling masses at Yankee Stadium tonight, with a little help from two great center fielders and some horrible defense by the Hated Yankees. You know, the whole "who's your daddy" chant is just tiresome. And worse: it's a clear message that you should never show respect for the Yankees, because it will just get rammed back down your throat for the rest of your career. Good riddance, for one night, at least.

I was down this road last week, but I thought it would be worth revisiting in more detail today. The Mets through 72 games now stand 35-37. Does that mean that this team is going to finish around .500, let alone contend? Hardly, given recent history:

Year	Thru 72	After
1991	39-33	38-51
1992	36-37	37-53
2002	37-35	38-51
2003	33-39	33-56
2004	36-36	35-55
2005	35-37
Avg	36-36	36-53

The "average" does not include 2005. Clearly, this Mets team the past three years, like the early-90s Mets, has shown the ability to hang around for about half a season and then run off the rails. Now, with the NL East as close as it is, it would be silly to run up the white flag today. But Mets management needs to be preparing in every way for the possibility that, by the time mid/late July rolls around, they will be dealing from the position of a team rebuilding for 2006-07, rather than contending. That means putting people like Floyd and Cameron and Glavine on the table.

Specifically, a final decision will have to be made on the Mets' scheduled off-day of Monday, July 18. Counting the just-completed series in which the Mets took 2 out of 3 from Philadelphia, the Mets are in a stretch where they play 17 of 23 games between June 21 and July 17 against their own division, culminating with a 4-game set at Shea against the Braves. To my mind, they need to win at least 11 of those in-division games, while at least splitting the other 6, if they are going to be anything like serious contenders the rest of the way; otherwise, they are just treading water. Of course, if - like last season - the team suddenly runs off the rails the last 10 days of July, they should reconsider any effort to make trades to help in 2005. But by preparing themselves mentally and emotionally now to play for the bigger game later, Mets management can help avoid a repeat of last season's futile panic deals near the deadline.

On a gut level, I liked the Nationals' gamble in dealing Tomo Ohka for Junior Spivey, at least as far as the fact that Ohka has been playing with fire thus far this year and is likely to crash and burn.

As for Spivey, he's a lot less impressive than he seemed a few years ago. But he may have a role. The righthanded hitting Spivey, for his career, is batting .305/.568/.409 against lefthanded pitching, as opposed to .257/.379/.331 against righties. If Spivey is used as a role player, he can be spotted more against lefties.

Of course, dealing a starting pitcher, even a combustible one, for a role-playing infielder isn't usually a long-term winning strategy. But if Frank Robinson uses Spivey properly, he can get the most out of this deal.

If you are a Mariners fan, you really don't want to see "Felix Hernandez" and "shoulder" in the same sentence.

Minky and Daubach both go deep in the 8th inning tonight, proving either (1) that competition is a good thing or (2) that batting against Ugueth Urbina is a good thing.

I'm not sure there are easily fox-able answers to what ails the Mets at the moment - especially the lack of a second baseman - but I do know at least a few things that will help and a few that won't.

Do:

1. Dump Mike Dejean, as the Mets did last night. The Mets have a bevy of young pitchers with potential upside - Heilman, Seo, Bell, Ring, Koo. Each of them has some reason to believe they could pitch effectively in the majors now or very soon. And even Manny Aybar has posted great K/BB ratios. DeJean, alone among the bullpen crew (since the departure of Felix Heredia) offered no cause for optimism. Might as well at least see what the kids can do backing up Looper and the rejuvenated Roberto Hernandez.

2. More Daubach, which we're starting to see. Brian Daubach's nothing special, but Minky has been so totally lost at the plate that you need to try somebody with a little power.

3. Get Reyes out of the top of the lineup. Reyes in the lineup every day is a good thing despite his low OBPs; he can hit for a good average (despite recent slumps), give you extra base power, speed and defense, and he's learning and improving. But there's no rational excuse for a guy with a .280-ish OBP (lowest in the majors over the past year) batting ahead of the big boppers. At this point, I'd just set the table with Cameron and Wright.

4. Replace Ishii with Heilman. Ishii's just not getting the job done. I don't know if he can hack it in the bullpen, but the more important thing is getting starts from guys who can keep you in the game.

Don't:

1. Boo Beltran. Really, do we need another Bonilla or George Foster situation with a guy with a seven-year contract? Beltran's yet to get really hot, but he was hitting at about 80-90% of his expected production until he got hurt. When healthy, Beltran will be fine. As is, he's batting .327/.561/.385 with men on base, .306/.486/.375 from the seventh inning on, and .417/.722/.447 in the late innings of a close game. Can you say "clutch"? Give the guy a break.

2. Fire Willie Randloph.. Rookie managers have to learn, and by all appearances Randolph has handled the "respect of the players" part of the job well, and has done some things (like sticking Heilman out there) that have paid dividends. But if he's going to succeed long term, he really needs to show he understands the basics by getting Reyes out of the top of the order; he's finally at least taken the first step by dropping him to #2 lately.

I see that Rocco Baldelli, who is almost recovered from a torn ACL, will now miss the rest of the season with Tommy John surgery. (I guess the $5 I gambled on Baldelli in my Rotisserie draft is now officially wasted).