Baseball 2008 Archives

Joy of Sox looks at the flier the Red Sox are taking on Brad Penny, who will presumably take over Bartolo Colon's role on the Sox. I guess given Boston's experience with Josh Beckett they are currently more enthusiastic about fragile ex-Marlins than Yankees fans are to see AJ Burnett walk in the footsteps of Carl Pavano.

Pinto:

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

I hate the Hated Yankees as much or more than the next guy, I still think it's bad for baseball that one team should have such vastly larger financial resources than even the other rich teams, and I still support my matching fund idea as a more elegant solution to economic disparities ruining the fun of the game. Pinto's and Drezner's analogies notwithstanding, baseball is a sport before it is a business (as Bill James once noted, the game would survive if the business model collapsed, but the business would never survive if interest in the sport collapsed); we may want Coke and Pepsi to drive lesser soda companies out of business, but the Yankees would not benefit if the Royals ended up folding halfway through a season as was known to happen in 19th century baseball.

All that being said, some of the reaction to the latest Yankee spending spree has been overblown, not least given the huge salaries that are coming off the Yankee payroll this offseason - Giambi, Mussina, Abreu, possibly Pettitte. And of course, the 21st Century may yet see a New York baseball team win a championship, but it hasn't thus far. Teixeira, Sabathia and Burnett are just the Yankees being the Yankees.

For your viewing enjoyment, as you (hopefully) have a day off to lay about the house and enjoy the fruits of Christmas: Tony Oliva playing Wii baseball:

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

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

As you can see, Frisch, Cronin, Smith and Larkin - as befits their reputations - all go up the list by this measure, while Lazzeri, Whitaker, Bell and Durham go down (you will note, amusingly, that this puts Whitaker and Trammell together).

Two small data inconsistencies with the article, which was written after the 2006 season. One, I added Derek Jeter's 2007 (but not 2008) to complete his prime years; two, I adjusted Miguel Tejada's age.

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

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

Rafael Furcal maybe hasn't signed with the Braves; at least, the Dodgers think he's still talking to them.

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

Omar Minaya's work on the bullpen this offseason has been less a restructuring than an exorcism, with the signing of Francisco Rodriguez, the trade of Scott Schoeneweis to Arizona, and the deal sending Aaron Heilman and Joe Smith to, respectively, the Mariners and Indians and bringing home JJ Putz, the Mets have now dumped most of the culprits in the last two seasons' bullpen collapses (Guillermo Mota and Jorge Sosa already being gone and Luis Ayala not offered arbitration and possibly headed to Colorado, although Duaner Sanchez remains) and have two closers (Putz being the setup man as long as K-Rod is healthy) and pretty good odds that at least one of them will be really good. As of now, assuming Wagner's not available to pitch next season, the pen looks like Rodriguez, Putz, Feliciano, Sanchez, the newly-acquired Sean Green, and youngsters (Feliciano being the only lefty in the group).

Keith Law has an overview here of the Putz deal. Putz has great stuff and still had an excellent K rate last season, but really - as we've said so often with the Mets the past few years - it's all about his health. In pure baseball terms, the Mets did give up a lot to get Putz, but a good deal of that was guys like Heilman and Smith who probably needed to be evacuated from Queens. Endy Chavez will be missed for sentimental reasons but is the most replaceable type of outfielder and was barely playing by season's end. The Mets need better bats in the corners, anyway. Mike Carp is the guy I hated to see go - he'll just be 23 this year and batted .299/.403/.471 in AA in 2008, suggesting a guy who could be a legit 1B or LF in the bigs.

As for the other new arrivals, Jeremy Reed was a highly-touted prospect back when he batted .409/.472/.591 in half a season at AA as a 22-year-old, and his career minor league line is .321/.386/.476, but Reed's never recovered his swing after some hand injuries and has at most been a singles hitter in the majors - last year from June 1 to August 16 he hit .297 but still managed just a .337 OBP and .394 slugging. He even hit better at home than on the road in 2008, for a change, so his struggles at the big league level can't be blamed on Safeco.

Then there's Green, who has been very frustrating for Mariners fans in his two full years in Seattle, in which he's posted a 4.29 ERA in 136 appearances (146 if you count AAA). Green keeps the ball down (only 0.31 HR/9 over those two years) but is terribly wild (4.29 BB/9 compared to 7.04 K). He has about the same home and road numbers. But what jumps out, given the fairly large number of games he's appeared in, is a very pronounced tendency to hit the wall in August: in 2007-08 he had a 2.76 ERA through July 31, averaging 7.99 Hits, 0.37 HR, 3.77 BB and 7.71 K per 9; from August 1 through the end of the year, that goes to a 7.35 ERA, 12.86 H, 0.18 HR, 5.33 BB and 5.69 K. Green threw, counting AAA, 45 games through the end of July 2007 and 53 through the end of July 2008 (on the whole, his 82 appearances from 8/1/07 through 7/31/08 ranked him sixth in the majors, albeit ranked behind Heilman and Feliciano and tied with Ayala). I don't know if the late-season fades are preventable, but I'd sure like to see Green kept on a tighter leash in 2009.

On the Schoeneweis deal - as an exercise in comparative agony, consider this Chicago item begging the Cubs to trade Jason Marquis to get Schoeneweis. You can see the minor league numbers here for Connor Robertson, the righthanded reliever the Mets got for Schoenweis; he'll be 27 next year and had a 5.02 ERA in the (admittedly hitter-happy) PCL last season, averaging 3.77 BB/9 and 1.26 wild pitches per 9. On the upside, he's struck out 11.32 batters per 9 innings in his minor league career, and he doesn't have Schoeneweis' contract.

For one of the longer-term projects I've been working on, I've been going over the league-wide stolen base and caught stealing data at Baseball-Reference.com; I've been going back to the beginning of the Retrosheet era in 1956, since that's when the site has defensive stolen base data for individual catchers, although for the NL the site has league-wide figures back to 1951, and the AL to 1920.

Anyway, I thought I'd share the chart I put together for the 1956-2008 period, showing the number of games played, steals and caught stealings for each league, followed by the league-wide average of stolen base attempts per 162 team games and league-wide stolen base percentages.

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

A couple of conclusions:

1. You can see the rapid upward movements in steal attempts in the NL around 1962 (Maury Wills' big year) and 1974 (Lou Brock's), the AL much later in 1965-66 and then around 1974, and the big falloff around 2000 capping a longer-term decline (the NL's one-year spike in 1999 looks like just a fluke).

2. We're at something like a historic happy medium for stolen base attempts. Very low numbers of steal attempts generally mean that a lot of steal attempts are busted hit-and-runs, with a low success rate (the stolen base percentages of the 1950s bear this out), whereas very high numbers indicate a lot of high-risk running.

3. I think a good deal of the shift from the AL to the NL in big base stealing in the late 1970s was driven not just by the DH rule but by managers: Chuck Tanner moved to the NL in 1977, Whitey Herzog in 1980. Tanner in particular left his stamp on the AL in 1976, when he forgot his mother's admonition that if you make that steal sign on Opening Day it might freeze that way. The 1976 A's, on their way to their first failure to win the division in six years (helped along by the exodus of the Mustache Gang's stars) attempted an obscene 464 steals (the only other team in the league over 230 was Herzog's Royals at 322), albeit at an admirable 73.5% success rate. Don Baylor attempted 64 steals, Bill North 104, Sal Bando (!) 26, Phil Garner 48, Claudell Washington 57, Bert Campaneris 66, and the team's two full-time pinch runners, Matt Alexander and Larry Lintz, combined to attempt 69 steals while having only 33 plate appearances.

4. Stolen base percentages were growing steadily for much of the period, but have really entered a golden age only in the last 2-4 years - before 2004-05, it was rare for the AL to reach a 70% success rate, and the NL wasn't able to stay consistently above 70%; since then, we've seen the NL average spiral as high as 75.6%, with both leagues above 73% the past two seasons for the first time ever. The Mets and Phillies, led by Carlos Beltran, Jose Reyes, Jimmy Rollins and Shane Victorino, have been the leaders: in 2007-08, the Mets attempted an average of 210 steals per year with an 80.5% success rate, the Phillies an average of 159 steals with an 86.2% success rate.

It's an interesting question what the cause of this is. Probably the influence of sabermetrics is a part, especially since the growing popularity of Baseball Prospectus, the 2003 publication of Moneyball, the passing of generational torches and other events have helped focus managers' attention on not running themselves out of innings (a process accelerated by the post-1994 scoring/home run explosion that peaked in 1999-2000). I suspect that baserunners have gotten faster at a greater rate than catchers have been throwing harder. I don't think it's the pitchers; if anything, you hardly see the big leg kicks of the 1970s anymore. Looking around the league, it's hard to say that teams are really diminishing the priority they place on catchers who can throw, either (Piazza's not in the league anymore). I don't think equipment is a big factor, especially with artificial turf in declining usage, but better shoes may be incrementally aiding the baserunners.

Anyway, it's yet another reminder of how many different aspects of the game evolve over time, both in terms of strategy and in terms of outcomes.

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

No formal confirmation yet, but the Mets appear to have signed Francisco Rodriguez for 3 years and $37 million. This is good news for the Mets, and of course much worse news for the Angels, who have a fairly big budget of their own to throw around but have a lot of holes to plug.

First, the Angels. They exceeded their Pythagorean record by 12 games in 2008, which means that (1) they're due to fall backwards next year and (2) they relied heavily on a deep bullpen in 2008. Take K-Rod out of the picture, and that will be stretched thinner (Darren Oliver is returning, but he's not cut out to be more than a fifth man in the pen). I assume Jose Arredondo will eventually take over closing duties, though Scot Shields will probably get first crack. And that's before you deal with the challenge of re-signing Mark Teixeira, as well as clearing out Jon Garland and Garret Anderson and Juan Rivera also free agents - all guys (other than Tex) that you can spare, but it's harder to replace them all at once.

From the Mets perspective, I've always liked K-Rod, but I've been suspicious of him as a long-term investment. Some of that may just be a matter of listening to the Baseball Prospectus people fretting about his mechanics for years, of course. But there's also history: as I have noted before, by far the most similar pitcher to K-Rod through age 26 is Gregg Olson, who flamed out at 27, and #3 is Bobby Thigpen, who did the same at 28. Looking at the all-time leaders through age 26, K-Rod is one of 3 relievers in the top 10 in games pitched (the rest are 19th century starting pitchers), and the others are Mitch Williams, finished at 29, and Terry Forster, who threw just 58 innings between age 27 and 29. The top 10 in saves is K-Rod, Olson, Thigpen, Chad Cordero (who was hurt most of this season at age 26), Rod Beck, Williams, Ugueth Urbina, Bruce Sutter (who had his first off year at 30 and broke down starting at 32), Billy Koch, who hit the wall at 28, and Forster. Even bearing in mind that K-Rod has none of Williams' mental problems or Forster's conditioning issues, basically there's two guys on that list who didn't really suffer a sudden loss in effectiveness (Beck and Urbina, although Beck basically never recovered his high strikeout rates) and one (Sutter) who lasted into his 30s before the wheels came off. Turning to the top 10 in games finished, we get most of the same crowd plus Goose Gossage, whose broken hand at 27 was the only bump in the road, Byung-Hyun Kim, who missed most of his age 25 season and hasn't been the same since, and Jorge Julio, who at any rate has come down in the world from when he was 23, was terrible at 26 and 28 and was hurt this season at 29. We may not have a very lengthy track record to evaluate the durability of young relievers who throw a lot of games in their early twenties, but what we do have presents pretty grim odds.

Statistically, there's also K-Rod's declining K rate; although it was still over 10 this year, the trend combined with his high walk rate are worrisome signs.

All of which is why a 4-year contract would have scared me, a lot, and why I still regard K-Rod as a risky acquisition, much as Billy Wagner and BJ Ryan were big injury risks three years ago, and both of them went down. But the Mets needed a closer; Wagner's out most or probably all of next year, and K-Rod was better than the other options on the market. If he stays healthy for two of the three years of the deal, it won't be a bad investment. The Mets took advantage of the fact that there were more closers on the market than demand for them, and played some hardball. They will need more relievers to overhaul the bullpen after the last two seasons' fiascoes, but this was the logical place to start.

One guy they were rumored to be considering: Trevor Hoffman, who would give them three pitchers under contract with a total of 1147 career saves. Hoffman's close to finished and can't carry a huge workload - he threw 45.1 innings this season - but he may have enough left to contribute as a setup man. He had a 2.88 ERA from April 13 to the end of the year, including a 41-5 K-BB ratio. Over the past two years, righties have batted .167/.188/.292 (Avg/OBP/Slg) against Hoffman compared to .295/.355/.472 for lefties, which suggests that he might be more useful in a situational role (of course, I said that earlier this year about Schoenweis - guys with those splits tend to get exposed sooner or later). I'm not saying Hoffman's a good idea, but if he's not too expensive he may have his uses.

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

Joe Gordon has been elected to the Hall of Fame by the Veterans Committee, as other candidates including Ron Santo, Joe Torre, Gil Hodges, Dick Allen, Luis Tiant, and seriously old-time players like Sherry Magee, Bill Dahlen and Deacon White fell short. I'll come back to some of the guys who lost when I have more time to write, but you can go here for my take on Gordon as well as Vern Stephens and Maury Wills, also on this year's ballot. (In fact, I've been meaning to revisit and supplement that essay with an additional point, and will when I get a chance). Basically, Gordon - who died 30 years ago - is OK with me as a Hall of Famer when you give him back the two years he lost to World War II (he probably wouldn't have hit .210 in 1946, either, if he hadn't missed those two years). He was extremely comparable as a hitter to his contemporary Bobby Doerr and to a lesser extent Tony Lazzeri and Frankie Frisch, though less adept at getting on base than Lazzeri and Frisch, and while all four had comparable-length primes, Frisch had a longer career and success as a manager (Gordon didn't, and this excellent Steven Goldman essay I'd been meaning to link to gives Gordon some of the blame, along with Bobby Bragan, for ruining Herb Score's arm).

I also looked here at the 1948 Indians, for whom Gordon played a key role; Gordon is the sixth member of that team inducted to the Hall, as well as the seventh member of the 1938-39 Yankees and the seventh member of the 1941-42 Yankees (incidentally, that 1942 Yankees team, for which Gordon won an MVP award that really should have gone to Ted Williams - Williams won the Triple Crown, led the league in Runs by 18, RBI by 23, Slugging by 135 points and OBP by 82 and times on base by 60 - was a really good team, starring Gordon, the DiMaggio-Keller-Henrich outfield, Rizzuto, Dickey, and a largely forgotten pitching staff, although they were overshadowed by the late-30s editions and the fact that they lost the Series to a Cardinals juggernaut).

NY Daily News has the latest photo tour of CitiField, plus pictures of Shea's slo-mo demolition and Jeff Wilpon looking silly in a hardhat.

The pitching Triple Crown (leading the league in Wins, ERA and Strikeouts) may not have the glamor of the batting one, but its winners make up a pretty distinguished roster. Try your hand at some Triple Crown trivia, answers below the fold.

1. Since 1997, we've had a bumper crop, with five pitchers winning a total of six Triple Crowns. Name them.

2. Name the threeo pitchers to win it three times.

3. Two of the first three winners (Tommy Bond in 1877 and Guy Hecker in the American Association in 1884) aren't in Cooperstown - but between 1889 and 1996, 18 pitchers combined to do it 27 times - name the three of those 18 who are not in the Hall of Fame.

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Chad Billingsley has a fractured fibula from a fall on ice. Hopefully, the prognosis of being ready to go by the spring is on target. The Dodgers have a bunch of talented young pitchers, but as the one who has proven the most so far, Billingsley's probably the single player - even beyond Russell Martin - most important to the franchise's future, as a 23-year-old coming off his first 200 IP/200 K season.

Aaron Heilman wants to start in Queens or start somewhere else. Heilman's failure last season at least takes away the "he's too valuable in the pen" card - I personally think that (1) he needs a change of scenery so badly the Mets probably have to sell low and get rid of him and (2) the logical destination is St. Louis. Heilman's 30 years old, reasonably healthy, has a history of some success but has lacked consistency and has lately been failing - that is, to a T, the profile of the kind of pitcher LaRussa and Duncan have made their careers with, from Dave Stewart to Eckersley to Chris Carpenter to Lamarr Hoyt to Isringhausen to Storm Davis to Looper to Lohse to Todd Stottlemyre, etc.

Needs hip surgery, could be out as long as until June. Given his tail-off this season, that could be very worrisome. Much as I loathe the Phillies, Utley is one of the game's real stars, and this has all the hallmarks of a "he was never the same again" injury. I hope I'm overreacting.

While he was still issuing non-denial denials last night, it certainly looks all but official that Mike Mussina is retiring. It's a shame for the game, and a decision Mussina may regret later on. Mussina can afford to retire, of course - according to Baseball-Reference.com, he's made $144 million in his career - but even if he hung on 2 or 3 more years, he'd still be 42 or 43 years old and never have to work again, with maybe 40+ years of retirement ahead of him. But you only get a limited number of years to play Major League caliber baseball.

Sure, Mussina's very unlikely to have another year like 2008. After a a 4.59 ERA in 2004, a 4.41 ERA in 2005, a 5.15 ERA in 2007 and a 5.75 ERA in his first four starts in 2008, Mussina, who turns 40 in December, can be forgiven for thinking that the pendulum will swing back down sooner rather than later, and deciding to go out on top. But still: the man has won 270 games and is coming off a 20-win season when he struck out 150 batters and walked 31. Mussina almost certainly deserves to go to Cooperstown, as discussed below, but from here on in, even another 5 or 10 or 15 wins is going to make his case that much easier, and it's hardly improbable for him to get to 300 wins; given the exclusivity of that club, it's hard to imagine a competitive professional athlete never looking back and wondering if he could have done that. Plus, of course, Mussina's on the Yankees; if he drops back to a 5.00 ERA next year, he'll still win games. And who wants to retire having pitched 8 seasons with the Yankees and never won a championship?

Buster Olney argues that it's about the age of his kids:

Mussina's logic in retiring now is that he really felt like that if he was going to continue playing, it was going to be because he would pursue 300 victories -- and with 270 wins, he felt that realistically, he probably would have to pitch three seasons to get those last 30 victories. And he did not want to pitch three more seasons, not at a time when his youngest children are beginning to play youth sports and he can coach them.

Well, OK...I get that if his family's in Pennsylvania he doesn't get the same kind of time at home as if they were in New York, and he'd still be 3-4 hours from home even if he signed with the Phillies. But this is a guy who is off for three full months of the offseason, the kids can come to NY for the summer...it's still not a bad life.

Anyway, assuming Mussina calls it quits, will he make the Hall? I'd assume he will - especially now that the "he never won 20" knock is gone, and probably the writers, ever suckers for a human interest angle, will give him a break on falling short of 300 because he could have if he'd wanted to.

And he should. Let's look at the career records of pitchers since 1893 with between 250 and 300 wins, ranked by ERA+ (park-adjusted league ERA divided by career ERA; 100 is a league-average pitcher, higher is better; G+ is games over .500). I've left off here 5 such pitchers who pitched mostly or entirely before the mound moved back in 1893 (Al Spalding, Bobby Mathews, Tony Mullane, Gus Weyhing, and Jim McCormick), of whom only Spalding's in the Hall, since there's no point comparing Mussina to the standards by which those guys are judged:

Pitcher	W	G+	W%	IP	ERA+	HoF?
Randy Johnson	295	135	.648	4039.1	137	n/e
Carl Hubbell	253	99	.622	3590.1	130	IN
Bob Gibson	251	77	.591	3884.1	127	IN
Jim Palmer	266	116	.638	3948.0	126	IN
Mike Mussina	270	117	.638	3562.2	123	n/e
Bob Feller	266	104	.621	3827.0	122	IN
Red Faber	254	41	.544	4086.2	119	IN
Bert Blyleven	287	37	.534	4970.0	118	Out
Ted Lyons	260	30	.531	4161.0	118	IN
Fergie Jenkins	284	58	.557	4500.2	115	IN
Eppa Rixey	266	15	.515	4494.2	115	IN
Robin Roberts	286	41	.539	4688.2	113	IN
Tommy John	288	57	.555	4710.1	110	Out
Red Ruffing	273	48	.548	4344.0	109	IN
Jim Kaat	283	46	.544	4530.1	107	Out
Burleigh Grimes	270	58	.560	4180.0	107	IN
Jack Morris	254	68	.577	3824.0	105	Out

Now, there are two guys on this list who still don't belong here - Randy Johnson will most likely cross the 300-win barrier next season if he's healthy for even about a third of the season, and Bob Feller would probably have won 300 and had better career averages if he hadn't missed more than 3 years of his prime to World War II. And of course, career totals aren't the be-all and end-all (Roberts, in particular, is in the Hall for his dominant prime, not his career totals). That said, two things should jump out at you here: a lot more of these guys are in the Hall than out, and Mussina looks a lot more like the guys who are in with no questions asked than like the guys who are out (243-game winner Juan Marichal comes up as the most similar player to Mussina). He may be superficially similar to Jack Morris, but he's really much more similar to Jim Palmer - all three had good offenses behind them (Mussina probably had less defensive support than Morris, and definitely less than Palmer), but Mussina's record is pretty consistent with his ERAs. The worst you can say is that Mussina, in line with modern practice, has thrown a lot fewer innings, but recall as well that he's thrown an extra 139.2 innings of postseason work. And he's been fantastically consistent - 17 straight seasons winning in double figures with only one losing season, 9 straight 200-IP seasons, 12 straight with ERA+ better than 100. In today's American League in particular, that's more than enough for me.

I just located online Bill James' article from the Fielding Bible following the 2005 season using Derek Jeter and Adam Everett to illustrate different approaches to evaluating shortstop defense. It's an excellent read, as always. From the conclusions:

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In 1967, Elston Howard finished 17th in the AL MVP balloting. The 38-year-old Howard, who appeared in 108 games that season, batted .178/.233/.244 for two teams. Presumably he got named on ballots for his 42 games with the pennant winning Red Sox, for whom he batted .147/.211/.198, scored 9 runs and drove in 11.

As I have noted previously, this year's AL MVP race is a mess because so many of the possible candidates got hurt. Carlos Quentin went down for the season from his own foolishness at a key point in the race for a team that went all the way to a 1-game playoff. Evan Longoria, the best player on the league's best team, missed a month; Ian Kinsler missed more. Curtis Granderson played brilliantly upon his return from injury, but his team was already down for the count when he started his season. A-Rod, the defending MVP, led the league in slugging again but missed 24 games. Milton Bradley was the league's best hitter, but he was only able to appear in 126 games (and the Rangers were happy to get that much from him).

Nor can you really give it to a pitcher. I've explained already why K-Rod is a silly MVP candidate. And Cliff Lee had a great year, but not the kind of super-dominant season necessary to give the MVP to a starting pitcher who threw 223 innings for an also-ran team (I did argue for Pedro as MVP in 1998, 1999 and 2000 - in retrospect, that 1998 column looks kinda silly - so I'm not averse in extreme cases to giving it to a pitcher).

What does that leave? I'm fine with giving the award to a player on a non-competitive team, but not if it's a guy who doesn't play a key defensive position and isn't clearly the best hitter in the league, so sorting through Josh Hamilton (and his gaudy RBI totals), Miguel Cabrera, Grady Sizemore (neither of whom even had a particularly great year by their own standards), Aubrey Huff, and Nick Markakis is pointless. Among the contenders, Justin Morneau likewise was just another good first baseman. You want the award with your bat, you have to seize it.

Probably the best offensive player among the guys who stayed healthy all year and played for a contender was Kevin Youkilis, who batted .312/.390/.569, drove in 115 runs and grounded into only 11 double plays and pitched in as a respectable substitute at 3B in addition to playing first. Youkilis would not be the worst MVP, but fundamentally, it comes down to the two guys who were competitive with him with the bat and contributed more on the defensive side: Joe Mauer and Dustin Pedroia. Let's look at the offensive tale of the tape:

PLAYER	G	PA	Outs	TB	TOB	Avg	OBP	Slg	LgOPS	OPS+	R	RBI	SB	XO
Mauer	146	633	394	242	261	.328	.413	.451	.734	137	98	85	1	22
Pedroia	157	726	474	322	270	.326	.376	.493	.782	122	118	83	20	18

PA=Plate Appearances
TOB=Times on Base
XO=Extra outs (GIDP plus Caught Stealings)
LgOPS=Park-adjusted League OPS, from Baseball-Reference.com
OPS+=OPS/LgOPS

As you can see, you can make a case for either of them with the bat. Mauer has the 37-point edge in on base percentage; Pedroia has the 42-point edge in slugging. Pedroia scored 20 more runs and racked up 80 more total bases on the strength of 93 more plate appearances, but he also used up 80 more outs in those extra 93 plate appearances, so the marginal offensive value to the team was pretty much negative. On the other hand, that also translates to an extra 19 games in the field (Mauer caught 139 games), which is important when comparing two good defensive players at key defensive positions. Pedroia stole 20 bases, something Mauer at age 25 has already stopped doing. But note the LgOPS figure: Fenway was a much more favorable offensive environment this season, so while both players hit better at home than on the road, overall you have to apply a bigger discount to Pedroia's numbers.

Baseball Prospectus' VORP (Value Over Replacement Player), which rates hitters compared to a replacement-level player at the same position, rates Pedroia #3 and Mauer #4 in the league, with A-Rod at #1 and Sizemore at #2.

What about "clutch" performance with the bat? I'm not a great believer in clutch ability as a persistent trait, but there's no question that in determining value in a particular season, it's fair to look at who actually did come through in big situations. Let's look how they hit with men in scoring position, men on base and in the late innings of close games:

PLAYER	PA-RISP	Avg	OBP	Slg	PA-MoB	Avg	OBP	Slg	PA-L&C	Avg	OBP	SLG
Mauer	185	.362	.465	.449	312	.353	.441	.456	105	.318	.429	.553
Pedroia	198	.307	.365	.466	320	.310	.367	.453	107	.368	.419	.526

Both fine performances, but advantage: Mauer for his superior batting and OBP figures with men on base, which is how he managed more RBI in fewer opportunities. Pedroia, of course, finished the season withg a flourish, but Mauer, with his team in a death struggle for the division title, batted .365/.414/.490 the last month of the season, a tough time of year for a guy who's been behind the plate all season.

It's a close call, but at the end of the day, I have to rate Mauer slightly ahead with the bat, given that most of Pedroia's offensive advantages simply come from playing in a better hitters' park and burning a lot of extra outs. And then you turn to the defensive side. That's more subjective, given the difficulty of getting good defensive stats. The Win Shares system, which tabs Mauer as the AL MVP over Youkilis and Morneau (with Pedroia tied for sixth), rates him second only to Kurt Suzuki for the most valuable defensive player in the league (Suzuki's the only catcher in the AL to catch more innings than Mauer), with Pedroia seventh. ESPN's Zone Ratings peg Pedroia as the second-best AL 2B behind Mark Ellis; among the catchers, Mauer's rated #3 behind Suzuki and Dioner Navarro in catching base thieves. The Fielding Bible +/- ratings rate Pedroia at +15, the fifth best 2B in MLB. Clearly, both guys contributed a good deal with the glove.

It's hard to get a good comparison, but good catchers who can hit are really hard to come by, and ones who can stay in the lineup for 633 plate appearances are even rarer. And consider that the 25-year-old Mauer also did such a good job with the Twins' young pitching staff - the overachievement of the Twins' young arms (between Nick Blackburn, Scott Baker, Kevin Slowey, Glen Perkins and Francisco Liriano, the Twins gave 128 starts to four pitchers who had an average of 20 career starts and 126 innings entering the season) was a big part of how they ended up in the race to the season's final day despite being buried by most commentators after the Santana trade. Catchers used to win a lot of MVP awards; that's fallen out of favor (Pudge Rodriguez in 1999 is the only catcher to win the award since Thurman Munson in 1976; Mike Piazza couldn't even win when he batted .362/.431/.638 and drove in 124 runs playing for a contending team in Dodger Stadium), but Mauer is pretty much the textbook example of how a catcher can make a big difference on several fronts, from getting on base to hitting in the clutch to cutting off the running game and handling the pitchers (he's the closest thing we'll likely see in our lifetimes to Mickey Cochrane). He could easily have been MVP two years ago when he became the first AL catcher to win a batting title; between Mauer's offensive and defensive contributions, I'd say he should win it this year after being the second.

UPDATE: Pedroia wins, Morneau finishes second. The tools of ignorance once again get no respect. The good news? K-Rod finished sixth.

SECOND UPDATE: I suppose Pedroia's strong second half was just too much to overcome. Pedroia was batting .262/.313/.365 on the morning of June 14, but from June 15 to the end of the season he hit .375/.422/.590 and scored 78 runs in 88 games. That sort of thing tends to leave an impression. I really have no idea what we should expect from Pedroia next year - my guess would be less power overall, but maybe a few more homers.

Pujols wins the NL MVP, Howard second, Braun third, Manny (!) fourth.

The NL MVP balloting will be announced this afternoon. To my mind, there's only one candidate: Albert Pujols.

There seems to be a fair amount of sentiment for Ryan Howard, as there was before the Mets' collapse for Carlos Delgado, and for the same reasons....but Pujols is the best player in the league, he had arguably his best year with the bat, he's a better defensive player and baserunner than Howard or Delgado or Lance Berkman, he doesn't play in an offensive haven like Philly or Houston, and his team, with a deeply unimpressive collection of supporting talent, won 86 games, was within 2 games of first place on July 22 and 4 games on August 1, and within 2 games of the wild card lead on August 16 and 3 1/2 on September 9. Pujols led the league in Slugging and OPS, was second in batting and on base percentage, and despite missing two weeks with an injury he managed to lead the league in Total Bases and Times on Base and finish third in homers, fourth in RBI, third in hits, second in walks and fourth in doubles (Chipper Jones was the only really comparable hitter in the league in percentage terms, but Pujols had 641 plate appearances to Jones' 534). There's really no serious dispute that if you put Pujols on the Phillies or Mets in place of Howard or Delgado, the team with Pujols would have improved by several games, and the Cardinals would have gone nowhere.

Pujols batted .357/.462/.653 on the season, .335/.443/.613 on the road. Howard batted .251/.339/.543 on the season - a 106 point gap in batting average, a 123 point gap in OBP, and a 110 point gap in slugging. Howard may have had the great September, but Pujols batted .398/.491/.745 in August and .321/.427/.702 in September. With 2 outs and men in scoring position he hit .326/.592/.791. On the whole, Ryan Howard batted .276/.370/.638 with 18 HR and 51 RBI and 38 Runs from August 1 to the end of the season; Pujols, with a lot less help from his teammates, batted .363/.461/.725 with 16 HR, 49 RBI and 35 Runs over the same period.

Howard batted .241/.317/.514 on the road, making him an easier out on the road than Yadier Molina, Cristian Guzman, Brian Schneider, Kazuo Matsui, Aaron Miles, Marco Scutaro, Jeff Keppinger, or Rich Aurilia (Pujols led the majors in OBP on the road), and a less fearsome slugger away from Citizens Bank than Jayson Werth, Xavier Nady, Casey Blake, Cody Ross, or Mike Cameron (Pujols led the majors in Slugging on the road).

Pujols batted .354/.494/.638 with men on base, compared to Howard's .309/.396/.648 (yes, Howard really did elevate his game with men on base - there is some reason for him being in this discussion). Pujols batted .339/.523/.678 with runners in scoring position, compared to Howard's .320/.439/.589. The difference? Howard had 47 more plate appearances with men in scoring position (223 to 176) and 29 more with men on base (351 to 322). As with Francisco Rodriguez' save opportunities, Howard is an MVP candidate almost entirely because of the opportunities his teammates gave him. He may have raised his game in those situations, but even then, as in the stretch run, he couldn't raise it to Pujols' level.

Berkman had a better year than Howard, but also doesn't stack up to Pujols, and unlike Howard's RBI advantage he did nothing better than Pujols except steal 18 bases. He batted .312/.420/.567, .306/.413/.514 on the road. He had a horrendous September, batting .171/.343/.289.

There are a number of other guys who have good arguments for being on the ballot besides Howard and Berkman - Jones, Delgado, Hanley Ramirez, Tim Lincecum, four other Mets (David Wright, Jose Reyes, Carlos Beltran and Johan Santana), Chase Utley, Ryan Braun, maybe even Manny down at the end of the ballot. But there's only one choice for #1: Albert Pujols.

Excellent move by the Yankees to buy low and pick up Nick Swisher (don't be fooled by David Pinto's headline) coming off a terrible year in which he hit .219. Swisher's only 28, he can play 1B and RF and even play center in a pinch; he was an excellent player in 2006 and 2007, and he had productive stretches in 2008 (in 71 games from June 3 through August 26, he batted .262/.374/.545, averaging 41 HR, 91 walks, 116 Runs and 116 RBI per 162 games). It was really just his batting average that fell off, as his Isolated Power was essentially unchanged from 2007. Swisher will always struggle with his average, but basically he's a good player hitting .255, but not when hitting .220.

Pinto notes that Swisher particularly struggled on the road, so a change of park alone won't help him. It's certainly possible that he's just washed up young, as sometimes happens to young players with his skill set (the Yankees had a similar failed experiment with Morgan Ensberg, who's a couple years older, this season), but the odds favor a return to productivity, similar to Johnny Damon after his off-year at age 27. Swisher was probably miscast as a leadoff man, batting .210/.354/.324 in the role (by contrast, he actually hit better when playing center field than 1B, so you can't blame the strain of a tougher defensive position). My guess is that he's the kind of player who will particularly benefit from a lower-profile role down in the lineup, even on the bigger stage New York provides.

The Yankees got him fairly cheap (cheap enough that I'm left wondering why Omar Minaya didn't go after him, given the Mets' holes in the OF corners). Part of the reason, as usual, was money: Swisher "has three years left on a five-year, $26.75 million contract." Wilson Betemit has his uses but is pretty much your classic expendable utility infielder at this point, and has been used mostly as a first baseman of late. Jeff Marquez, a 24-year-old starter who posted a 3.65 ERA with just 5.45 K/9 in 2007 at AA and a 4.47 ERA with 4.47 K/9 mostly at AAA this season, would appear to be a marginal prospect at best. 23-year-old Jhonny Nunez has a career minor league ERA of 3.64 and has pitched just 27 innings above A ball, and so can't really be projected much; I don't know anything about him but his numbers, but my guess is that a guy his age with good K rates and spotty control will probably get converted to the bullpen. As Pinto discusses, Kanekoa Texeira, the reliever the Yankees got in return, seems a much better prospect than either of them; he "does exactly what a team wants; lots of strikeouts, few walks and a minuscule number of home runs."

Steve Treder has an excellent Hardball Times piece on the best short seasons by hitters, including parts of seasons when a player switched teams. Two current free agents are prominently featured, as you might expect.

Now, we're starting to get some real activity in the baseball offseason. The big news is a projected, non-finalized blockbuster deal sending Matt Holliday to the A's for a package that reportedly includes Greg Smith, Huston Street and Carlos Gonzalez. I'll try to look at the on-the-field angle once we have a final report of the players involved, but this is an interesting deal from the perspective of analyzing the A's franchise, since it represents the A's doing the big-market thing and packaging young players for an established star, represented by Scott Boras, who is going to command a huge salary on the free agent market after the 2009 season (much like when they acquired Johnny Damon, who promptly had a lousy year and then left). It remains to be seen whether Lew Wolff is planning to pull the trigger on a big contract for Holliday now that the A's are heading for a new stadium and a new city.

On that subject, Fremont Mayor Bob Wasserman ran for re-election as a supporter of finally bringing the A's to Fremont by 2012 (his opponent was against the plan), and Wasserman's victory is widely seen as a victory for the new stadium. Wolff sees it that way, and is still hopeful that the park can be ready by 2011:

Despite challenges to building a new baseball stadium, Oakland A's owner Lew Wolff said "we can get it done" in Fremont.

Wolff said Monday at a luncheon of the Associated Press Sports Editors that, "We're getting close to receiving the first drafts of the environmental impact reports," according to ESPN.com. "We've run into lots of things, which every developer does in California."

Some Fremont resident concern about traffic and public transportation access to the project, for example, has dogged the project.

Still, Wolff cited last week's election results in Fremont as a development that broke in his favor. Voters in the city re-elected incumbent Mayor Bob Wasserman, a strong supporter of a plan by the Oakland Athletics to build a $500 million stadium surrounded by 3,150 residential units and enough retail and restaurant space to fill almost nine football fields.

The bad news:

Wolff would change the team's name to the Athletics at Fremont, and the classic brick ballpark, scheduled for completion in 2012, would be named Cisco Field after the computer networking company.

Ugh. I suppose "at" conveys their transience better than "of" ... given the franchise's history, they may as well just call them the Traveling Athletics and be done with it.

A little detour to the days of yore: Looking back in baseball history, no discussion of the least valuable players in any single season can be complete without Joe Gerhardt in 1885.

Baseball in the 1880s had a number of very good 1- or 2-year teams (such as those turned in by NL franchises in Detroit and Providence), but the decade was really dominated by three franchises: in the NL, the Chicago White Stockings (now the Cubs) of 1880-86 and the New York Giants of 1885-89, and in the American Association the St. Louis Browns of 1885-89 (the Browns moved to the NL after the AA folded in 1891, and are now the Cardinals).

The Giants, in fact, got the nickname that stuck with them largely from the 1885 team, which featured six Hall of Famers in their primes:

*Towering, slugging 27-year-old first baseman Roger Connor (at 6'3" a huge man for the era) was probably the second-best hitter of the decade behind Dan Brouthers - Connor held the career home run record until Babe Ruth, although in those days power was mostly about doubles and triples, which he also produced in bulk - and Connor had his best season, batting .371/.435/.495 compared to a league Avg/OBP/Slg of .241/.284/.322, for an OPS+ of 198 (i.e., nearly twice as good as the league-average hitter).

*25-year-old catcher Buck Ewing, at 5'10" also on the tall side even for a mid-twentieth catcher, batted .304/.330/.471 (OPS+ 155). As Bill James has documented, Ewing's peers regarded him as the best player in 19th century baseball; his batting stats don't entirely bear that out, but in his prime he was as good a hitter relative to his leagues as all but a handful of catchers in the game's history, and that's before you get to his defense. We don't have stolen base data before 1886 or caught stealings before the mid-teens, but in 2008 the average team stole 0.57 bases per game in the NL, 0.58 in the AL; in 1886, the NL average was 1.35. So, even adjusting for the open-ended definition of stolen bases in those days, there were a lot of people running. A typical modern catcher averages less than an assist every two games, with around half of those being caught stealings; Ewing, for his career, averaged 1.6 assists per game - a role much more active, between gunning down base thieves and pouncing on bunts, than today's catchers (Ewing's career range factor, measuring number of plays made per game, was 11% better than the league, and 8.6% better at third base, where he played part-time in his later years).

*34-year-old center fielder Jim O'Rourke had a year typical of his long career, batting .300/.354/.442 (155) and scoring 119 runs in 112 games. The team's two other veteran outfielders batted .326/.346/.421 (146) and .293/.317/.362 (118).

*They also had 25-year-old shortstop John Ward, a Hall of Famer more for his pitching and his role as a union organizer and all-around poineer; Ward was the team's second-weakest hitter at .226/.255/.285 (73).

*The team had two ace starting pitchers, both 300-game winners; against a league ERA of 2.82, 25-year-old Mickey Welch had his best season, going 44-11 with a 1.66 ERA, while 28-year-old Tim Keefe went 31-12 with a 1.58 ERA. The two accounted for 89% of the Giants' decisions.

Overall, in the shortened seasons common at the time, the Giants cruised to an 85-27 record, for a .759 winning percentage, a 123-win pace in a modern schedule. (Their Pythagorean record was the same, reflecting the league's second-best offense - by a run and a quarter over #3 - and by far its best pitching/defense team.) But there was one problem:

They finished second.

You see, the White Stockings, behind among others Hall of Famers Cap Anson, King Kelly and John Clarkson - the latter going 53-16 with a 1.85 ERA, the second-highest win total of all time - went 87-25 (.777), a 126-win pace by today's schedule and good enough to take the pennant by two games. They didn't have the Giants' pitching depth and defense, or a hitter as good as Connor, but other than a .209-hitting half-time catcher they had no real holes in their lineup, and so scored a run a game more than the Giants. Despite winning the season series against the White Stockings 10-6, the Giants spent the last two thirds of the season looking up in the standings, and scored just 8 runs in three straight losses to Chicago at the end of September to ice the race.

In the middle of this you had the 30-year-old Gerhardt (himself 6 feet tall), who played every inning of every game at second, and batted a staggeringly anemic .155/.203/.195 (29), considerably worse than the team's pitchers. Gerhardt scored just 43 runs, compared to 51 for the pitchers and a team average of 85 for the other 7 lineup spots. Amazingly for the day, he had more strikeouts than runs scored. He may not have been that fast, either - in a league where everybody ran constantly, he played everyday in 1886 as well and stole just 8 bases. This is just a breathtakingly disastrous offensive showing for a guy on a great team that was having a great season and coming up short. It's hard to think of a team this good that had a guy whose OPS was less than a third of the league playing anything like every single game.

Did Gerhardt make up for it with his glove? At a remove of 123 years, based on the numbers alone, it's hard to say. Manager Jim Mutrie, who won 3 pennants and more than 60% of his career games, must have seen something in him besides the absence of warm bodies on the rosters of the day to justify that awful bat. The Giants were a tremendous defensive team, which speaks well of Gerhardt - while they led the league in strikeouts handily (4.61/game compared to a league average of 3.75), the low ERAs testify more to a great record on balls in play - their defensive efficiency rating (% of balls in play becoming outs) of .701 was almost 30 points higher than that of the #2 team and good even for a 21st century team, let alone a team with guys playing the infield barehanded or wearing gloves that to the modern eye look more like Isotoners; their .929 fielding percentage was likewise 13 points above the nearest competition, and in those days fielding percentages really made a difference, with most fielders making an error one times in ten.

Individually, Gerhardt's numbers don't really stand out. His range factors and fielding percentages had been much higher than the league from 1877-1884, but in 1885 he was at .911 fielding percentage compared to .900 for a league-average second baseman, and 5.95 range factor compared to a league average of 5.70 - good but hardly great for a guy playing every inning. On the other hand, his range factors jumped back up in 1887 when he left the Giants, so some illusion created by the team context may be involved even beyond the fact that Keefe and Welch were comparatively high-K pitchers for the day.

Anyway, the evidence suggests that Gerhardt was probably a pretty good fielder, but it's hard to see at this distance how he could possibly have been good enough to make up for that catastrophic showing with the bat, when a mere .210 hitter would likely have won the Giants the pennant.

Maybe Gehrhardt wasn't as disastrous on both sides of the ball as the famous John Gochnauer, who in 1903 batted .185/.265/.240 (54) and made 98 errors at shortstop (with fielding percentages and range factors far below the league averages of the day) for an Indians team that somehow finished 77-63, and maybe he wasn't as epically futile with the bat as Bill Bergen, who compiled a career OPS+ of 21 including three years at the end of his career as a starting catcher batting .139/.163/.156 (1), .161/.180/.177 (6) and .132/.183/.154 (-4). But in the annals of guys who turned in a total flop at the plate when even ordinary incompetence would have been the difference in a pennant race, Gerhardt's place in history is surely secure.

Bob Feller at 90. A nice profile of the last remaining star of the 1930s (Feller broke in in 1936 and went 24-9 in 1939; he and Stan Musial are reallly the only major stars left from the pre-war era). H/T.

Given how short a pitcher's prime can be (Feller's last year as a great pitcher was at age 28, although he managed a 22-8 record at age 32 and 13-3 as a sore-armed 35-year-old), Feller probably lost more of his best baseball to the war than any other great player; he missed three full seasons and most of a fourth to the war from age 23-26, after winning 24, 27 and 25 games the prior three years and 26 his first full year back, and retired 34 wins short of 300. Granted, we don't know if he would have broken down earlier without that break in his years of carrying a major league workload (the man averaged 309 innings and 26 complete games a year from age 19-22), and we don't know if he would have lasted longer if he hadn't thrown 371.1 innings and 36 complete games for a team going nowhere his first full year back. When I ran my translated pitching stats project some years ago, Feller was one of four pitchers who really stood out as throwing a lot more innings per year in his prime than his contemporaries, the others being Robin Roberts, Phil Niekro and John Clarkson. He was and is, in any event, one of the all-time greats.

Thomas Wayne at Dugout Central looks at where Ken Griffey might land next season. I'm just not sure he brings anything to the table at this point...I mean, would the Mets have use for Griffey to take Endy Chavez' job, for example? Teams keep around reserve outfielders who can do specific things, not just old guys who might or might not have one last good season in them as a part-timer. He notes that they had Moises Alou this year (lotta good that did), but Alou was coming off hitting .341. I just don't see the upside to giving him a roster spot at this point. He'll probably sign somewhere, but the smart move at most is a spring training invite.

Let us consider five relief pitchers' MVP candidacies:

Pitcher	G	IP	ERA	HR/9	BB/9	K/9	SLG%	IR%	SV%
A	69	84.0	1.82	0.21	3.54	13.18	.226	20.0	63.1
B	66	67.1	2.67	0.94	4.28	12.16	.314	35.7	90.0
C	69	73.0	1.73	0.74	3.45	12.08	.333	40.0	92.2
D	64	67.1	2.81	0.40	4.54	12.03	.306	41.2	87.0
E	76	68.1	2.24	0.53	4.48	10.14	.316	38.9	89.9

What would you say if I told you that only one of these pitchers even got a single vote for the MVP, even though Pitcher C pitched for a contending team (a second-place team that finished four games out of first place) and the other four all pitched for division winners? Could you guess which one placed in the MVP balloting?

You might guess A, who carried the largest innings workload, was clearly the most effective (most strikeouts, by far the lowest opposing slugging %), and allowed easily the fewest inherited runners to score. Then again, Pitcher A didn't convert a very large percentage of save opportunities. He did finish fourth in the Cy Young balloting, though.

You might well guess C, who had the best ERA, the best save percentage, the second-most games and innings, and the fewest walks, although his home run rate was the second-highest. Unless you count him out for his team losing the pennant race. He, too, finished fourth in the Cy Young balloting.

What about Pitcher E? He appeared in the most games, and had a better ERA than Pitchers B and D, but he also pitched less than an inning per game, significantly fewer innings than A or C; his save percentage was only the third best on the list; his strikeout rate was easily the lowest without offsetting advantages in the walks or homers column.

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Lester Munson at ESPN has a long and interesting look at what Obama's election means for baseball and the world of sports in general, including his likely strong support for the 2016 Olympics in Chicago:

Japanese Olympic officials already have expressed their concern that Obama could turn the tide in favor of Chicago when the IOC votes in October.

"Mr. Obama is popular and good at speeches, so things could get tough for Japan," said Tomiaki Fukuda, a senior Japanese Olympic Committee board member.

If Sen. John McCain had won the election, the U.S. bid to play host to the 2016 Olympics might have been negatively affected. Many IOC members remember McCain's scathing investigation of the bribery scandal involving IOC members who helped award the 2002 Winter Olympics to Salt Lake City. Two members of the Salt Lake City bid committee were indicted, and McCain's investigation led to major changes in the IOC and the U.S. Olympic Committee. Many IOC members remain bitter over McCain's aggressive efforts for reform.

An Olympics in his home city of Chicago in the late summer of 2016 would be a grand finale for an Obama presidency that would be about to wind down if he were re-elected to a second term.

(OK, I didn't have to include that paragraph about McCain, give me more than a day on that reflex...the irony is that the bribery investigation led to Mitt Romney taking over the Salt Lake City Games, which led to Romney's political rise - talk about your chains of unforeseen consequences).

A rare combined baseball and politics post - well, sort of; this is obviously intended to be a little more lighthearted. Updating and correcting this June 2003 post - the Hated Yankees haven't won a World Series with a Republican in the White House since 1958. Counting since 1921 (their first pennant), the Yankees are 19-3 in the World Series (with just three playoff losses) in 40 years of Democratic Administrations, but just 7-10 in the World Series (with five playoff losses) in 48 years of Republican Administrations. They've gone 0 for the last five GOP Administrations while failing to bring home a championship on the watch of only one Democratic president, Lyndon Johnson.

The breakout, by World Series W/L/No Pennant:

Harding/Collidge/Hoover (R): 4-3-5
FDR/Truman (D): 11-1-8
Eisenhower (R): 3-3-2
JFK/LBJ (D): 2-2-4
Nixon/Ford (R): 0-1-7
Carter (D): 2-0-2 (one loss in playoffs)
Reagan/Bush (R): 0-1-11
Clinton (D): 4-0-4 (two losses in playoffs, one strike)
Bush (R): 0-2-6 (five losses in playoffs)

So, you know, if you're not a Yankees fan...

UPDATE: Corrected. Somehow my brain blocked out the Yankees losing the Series in 2001 & 2003.

1. Baseball content, and in general a more normal balance of content, should resume around Thursday.

2. Sadly, I never did get to the end of my list of posts to write up before the election. I'll be rolling a few more things out if I have the time.

World Champion Philadelphia Phillies, for only the second time in 126 years.

Not the way I wanted this season to end - it's been a rough 7 1/2 weeks all around - but congrats to the Phillies phans out there.

I can almost hear the Rays fans tonight:

You mocked our domed stadium.

You derided our domed stadium.

You told us how much prettier yours was than our domed stadium...

UPDATE: I believe this may be the first suspended game in the modern postseason, and certainly the first time it has happened to an elimination game in the World Series. In the years before lights, there were, of course, World Series games called for darkness - Game One in 1907 was called 3-3 after 12, Game Two in 1912 was called 6-6 after 11, and Game Two in 1922 was called 3-3 after 10, all of which were declared ties. The most famous weather event in World Series history was Game Seven in 1925, played in Washington between the Senators and Pirates; as I described that game in an essay on the 1925 Pirates:

Although they were forced to rely on their pitching while the team was twice handcuffed by a 37-year-old Walter Johnson in the World Series, the Pirates' knack for hitting the ball with authority finally paid off handsomely in one of the wildest Game 7s in World Series history, played in a torrential downpour at Forbes Field without the benefit of lights. The Pirates mauled Johnson, battering out 15 hits, including 8 doubles and two triples (the 25 total bases absorbed by Johnson in going the distance is a World Series record unlikely to be broken), including the game-winner, a 2-run ground rule double by [Kiki] Cuyler into the darkness in right field with two outs in the bottom of the eighth (Goose Goslin said later that he never even saw where the ball went).

There were other disputes over fair/foul and strike calls in the darkness and the rain, unsurprisingly. Henry Thomas, in his book Walter Johnson: Baseball's Big Train, recounts at p. 282 the scene with the Senators leading 6-4 after six innings:

As the sixth inning ended, a waterlogged [Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain] Landis, enduring the downpour from his box seat, turned to [Senators owner] Clark Griffith, sitting next to him. "You're the world champions," the commissioner told him. "I'm calling this game." Incredibly, Griffith talked him out of it. "No, you can't do it," he replied. "Once you've started in the rain you've got to finish it."

Last night's loss by the Rays drops the all-time World Series home record of teams in domed stadiums to 12-3. The Twins went 8-0 at the Metrodome in 1987 & 1991 (and 0-6 on the road), including the legendary Morris-Smoltz Game 7 in 1991, and the Blue Jays went 4-2 at home in 1992-93 (and 4-2 on the road), including the Joe Carter game. All four dome teams won the Series.

This is actually only the second World Series in my lifetime (after 2000's Subway Series) in which I have already visited both ballparks (Serieses where I've been to both subsequent to the Series? 1986, 1981, 1977-78, and if you go back before my lifetime and include Old Yankee, 1963. The longest-ago Series where the two parks are still standing is 1918, of course.).

Following up on the issue of the Rays' improvement in keeping runs off the board, Jay Jaffe at Baseball Prospectus studies the issue ($) and concludes that since 1954 - as far back as BP's database goes - they had the largest single-season improvement by a bullpen by two different measures.

Am I the only one who thinks David Price reminds me an awful lot of Tim Duncan?

In 2007, Tampa Bay scored 782 runs and finished 8th in the league in scoring, scoring 98.6% as many runs as the average AL team.

In 2008, Tampa Bay scored 774 runs and finished 7th in the league in scoring, scoring exactly as many runs as the average AL team (the AL average dropped from 4.83/game to 4.78/game).

What changed, obviously, was all the pitching and defense. The Rays reduced their runs allowed from 944 runs, the highest in MLB, to 671 runs, a staggering 28.9% reduction in a single year.

Bleg - I'm thinking of looking for historical comparisons to see what precedents there are for a team reducing its runs allowed so dramatically in one season (I had looked briefly before the season while scoffing, obviously prematurely, at Baseball Prospectus' notion that the Rays would do just that, but now we have a genuine point of comparison). Can anyone tell me if a study has been done on that? I may have missed it if somebody looked at this already and don't want to reinvent the wheel if it's already been done somewhere else.

Anyway, if you boil that down even further you see how much of their success is pure glove:

Year	HR/9	BB/9	K/9	ERA	UERA	DER	F%
2007	1.25	3.58	7.52	5.53	0.41	.650	.980
2008	1.02	3.25	7.06	3.82	0.33	.708	.985

Rays pitchers reduced their homers buy a good chunk this year and cut their walks, and those are certainly steps forward, but they also struck out fewer batters - but the dropoff of 300 fewer hits allowed and 27 fewer errors is mainly attributable to radically improved defense, as they went from the MLB-worst .650 Defensive Efficiency Rating on balls in play to an MLB-leading .708. The dropoff in unearned runs reflects that.

Well, the nation last night got its formal introduction to David Price, and barring injury we're going to see a lot more of the man who is generally regarded as the best pitching prospect in baseball - Price's pennant-clinching ninth inning probably cements him a key, K-Rod-in-2002 type role in the Rays' pen in the World Series, and he left veterans like Mark Kotsay and Jason Varitek (granted, not exactly Ruth and Gehrig at this stage of their careers) looking sadly overmatched.

OK, since I have admittedly been deficient in delivering baseball content lately - an open thread for readers who want to kick around tonight's game.

UPDATE: BJ Upton goes deep! 2-0 Rays. Upton is part of the real disjunct with the Rays - this team was ninth in the AL in runs scored, but they really can be a better offensive team than that when you consider the off years and/or injuries to Upton, Crawford, Baldelli and Longoria, all of whom are now healthy.

UPDATE: Two more homers, from Pena and Longoria (again), and it's 4-0. Dice K does not have it.

5-0.

7-0. Papelbon in a 7-0 game. That says it all, doesn't it?

UPDATE: BIG PAPI WILL NOT GO QUIETLY! 3-run homer, 7-4 Rays.

7-6 after Drew goes deep. Wow, this is a game. And that's why you use Papelbon down 7 in a game like this.

Tie game! Amazing. It's 2004 all over.

Best Joe Morgan line ever: Miller: "Can you analyze Joe Maddon's managing tonight?" Morgan: "You don't want me to do that."

Unfortunately, he then proceeded to.

Ball gets by....Gross! Red Sox win! Red Sox win!

That was some amazing baseball. Man, the Red Sox are drawing on their vast account at the karma bank.

If you were wondering, no, I didn't have the heart to watch the Phillies wrap up the pennant last night.

Boy, this has been a fun last five weeks, hasn't it?

I really do have to feel for the Cubs fans today. I mean, there are more wrenching ways to end a season, as I have been forcefully reminded the past three years, but this was a team that had a sufficiently long run as the best record in the league that their long-suffering, century-without-a-championship fans, really had good reason to expect a long march through an exciting postseason, with a good shot at the NL pennant for the first time since 1945 and a fighting chance to reclaim the World Championship at last...and three games in, they are just gone with hardly a ripple, without winning a single game. It's just so deflating. Even the Mets in 1988 and 2006 went seven games, and in 2006 they had won the NLDS first. For Cubs fans, it's just...empty.

Do Cubs fans have a long period of success ahead of them to recover from this? I'm not so sure. Ramirez and Lee are still in their primes and Soto is young, but Theriot, Soto and Mike Fontenot, who may have had a career year this season (he's 28 and his career minor league slugging % is .437), are the only significant non-pitchers under 30. The rotation depends on the much-the-worse-for-wear Zambrano and the brittle Rich Harden. Other than Harden, Fontenot and DeRosa there aren't a lot of guys here who obviously can't repeat their 2008 seasons next year, but this is also not a team stocked with young talent in bloom.

Wait 'til next year.

One of the broadcasters on the Brewers-Phillies game actually just said, on national television, that Geoff Jenkins left the Brewers because he got tired of watching young players like Jeromy Burnitz and Carlos Lee come out of the Brewers system and then leave.

Wow. Reminds me of the time Howard Cosell said during a Monday Night Baseball Mets-Reds game in about 1986 that Keith Hernandez had begged him not to mention on the air that Keith's lifetime batting average was .152. I'd love someday to ask Hernandez how he kept a straight face for that one.

I've admittedly been in hiding a bit on the baseball front the past few weeks, partly out of bitterness/depression over the end of the Mets season, partly with stuff going on at work, and of course partly due to being wrapped up in the election and the bailout and having some labor-intensive posts on the topics (I have some long-brewing baseball posts as well but none that are close to completion).

Anyway, hope to be back on the beat at least in time for the LCS...for now, about the last bit of news the Mets bullpen needed was an arrest warrant out for Ambiorix Burgos for killing two women in a hit and run accident (although perhaps needless to add, for perspective it helps to remind yourself that this turned out worse for the women than it did for the average Mets fan). I assume this is curtains for Burgos' baseball career.

UPDATE: If it makes you feel any better, Brian Bannister had a 5.76 ERA this season. Actually Bannister seems like a good guy, I hope he rights the ship, but it's a reminder that a good head without a real good arm isn't really that much more useful than the opposite.

Another year, another grim defeat.

The Mets have now faced baseball's classic do-or-die game - win and advance, at least to a 1-game playoff or the next round of playoffs, lose and go home - for three straight years and lost each in excruciating fashion, losing on late inning homers in 2006 & 2008 and a first inning meltdown in 2007. This is not unprecedented in baseball history, of course - the Brooklyn Dodgers, for example, also did it three years in a row when they lost the pennant on late inning homers on the season's last day in 1950 and in the legendary playoff in 1951 and lost a 7-game World Series in 1952, plus they lost the Series in 7 in 1947, 5 in 1949, and 6 in 1953. If there's any consolation, most Mets fans were pretty numb by the time the ax fell.

Although the offense came up fairly empty, it was the bullpen in the end that was left to do the team in, and I found a sort of macabre justice in seeing the guys responsible for getting the Mets in this mess finish them off. I definitely want Schoenweis (and Heilman) gone next year, so we have a fresh group without the same ghosts, and I'm not thrilled about Ayala either, although he may just need a new season to get right again. With Schoenweis I argued all year that he was at least useful if used properly to face only lefties, but today he was brought in, the first batter was pinch hit for with a righty, and he served up the gopher ball that broke the camel's back. It's time to move on.

Oliver Perez was, ultimately, what you expect: in a big game he kept the team in the game but couldn't get past the sixth inning. That's who he is.

Endy Chavez really is an amazing glove man, and his great running catch against the wall in the top of the seventh brought back memories. I actually wondered down the stretch why he wasn't starting in right against lefties (like today) with Church in such a funk.

Random observation: Alfredo Amezaga was wearing enough lampblack to make a mask.

The broadcast team noted that Wright, Reyes, Beltran and Delgado were the first quartet of teammates to each appear in at least 159 games since the 1968 Cubs (another team not known for its strong finishes, the late-60s Cubs); those guys really did play their hearts out all year. The Mets entered this season with four major stars in their primes - Wright, Reyes, Beltran and Santana - and you could not realistically have hoped for more from them. They entered with three formerly major stars - Delgado, Wagner and Pedro - and got collectively what you tend to get with a group like that (one major resurrection, one effective but erratic and injury-shortened season, one wipeout). Perez was a bit off what you'd like but won a lot of big games, and the rise of Pelfrey offset the struggles of Maine. Brian Schneider gave the Mets the best you would have reasonably hoped from him...basically, this was a good team whose front-line players did about what they should have, but that just had too many holes, and the bulk of those in the bullpen. Management will still have that core next year, but it needs to do a better job of bringing in new relief arms and sorting through the pile of young players to figure out who is going to actually help.

Nice to see Ralph Kiner in the Shea booth one last time. You can tell Ralph's mind is still there, the words just don't come as cleanly as they used to.

I guess the upside is, I can say I was at the last Mets win at Shea.

I was out at Shea today, undoubtedly for the last time (even if they make the playoffs, I'm not going to be able to score tickets and the free time to go), and witnessed what was probably the second-best clutch, must-win pitching performance in Mets history, behind only Al Leiter's 1-hitter in the 1-game playoff in 1999. Santana was just amazing, not messing around but going right after hitters and thus keeping his pitch count low enough to go the distance on three days' rest to pull the Mets back into a tie. And unlike John Maine, who pitched an even more dominating game in precisely the same situation last season, Santana had only two runs to work with, and thus was facing the tying run at the plate all the way to his last pitch.

Amazingly, Santana now finishes with the best ERA of his career, albeit not the most impressive of his seasons given the switch to a lower-scoring league and park. He's clearly been the second-best pitcher in the NL this season, behind only Lincecum. Nobody can say Santana hasn't earned every dollar of his massive salary this year.

With the Cubs in New York on the 100th anniversary of their greatest moment here, it's worth a look at Tom Elia's post with a video tribute to the Merkle Boner.

Among the solutions being mooted about for the Mets' ghastly bullpen problem is relying more on hard-throwing rookie Robert Parnell...if there was ever a mark of desperation, this is it. Parnell certainly throws hard, and it makes all the sense in the world to consider him for a relief job next season, but look at his career: the guy (1) has a 4.03 career ERA in the minor leagues, (2) has made a grand total of 8 appearances above AA ball, and (3) has made just 2 appearances as a reliever in his 94 games in the minors. In 151.2 IP this season over three levels, mostly at AA, he's averaging 0.83 HR, 3.92 BB and 6.94 K, none of those especially impressive figures.

You can make a live arm into a productive reliever even when he has a mediocre record like that, but if this is the best option the Mets have left to throw to the wolves right now, the situation is dire indeed (we saw graphically last night how this is not the time for a talented young pitcher's growing pains). John Maine's return, of course, would be welcome news, but at this point the only question is whether the bullpen's implosion takes the Mets clear out of the Wild Card race, or whether it continues to haunt them in the playoffs.

I'm going to be frank here: I won't miss Yankee Stadium.

Yes, yes, in part that's a reflection of how I feel about the Hated Yankees. And yes, it's also colored by the fact that it's extremely inconvenient to get back and forth to Yankee Stadium from where I live in Queens, and that most of my experiences there over the years have been night games in the upper deck. And yes, I know that most of the nostalgia about any baseball park is about the memories of great moments there - that's as it should be - and Yankee Stadium has had more than its share.

But as to the structure itself, I always found it an unpleasant place to watch a baseball game, and of the six other big league parks where I've seen games (Shea, Fenway, Dodger Stadium, Citizens Bank Park, Camden Yards, and Tropicana Field) I can't seriously rate it ahead of any but the Trop, and there largely because of Tampa Bay's horrendous parking situation and some of the curious decisions made about its scoreboard. The clogged arteries at the heart of the stadium - the steep, narrow staircases leading to and from the higher decks - make entering and exiting the place slow, hot, crowded and claustrophobic. The interior of the stadium is dark and grim. Yankee Stadium lacks the intimacy of Fenway or the charm, bells and whistles and better sightlines of the newer parks, and isn't a family ballpark in the way that Shea is or a relaxed, sunshiney place like Dodger Stadium. Much as I despise the Yankees, their franchise has long deserved a better home.

You know, Pedro Martinez may well not be done as a quality pitcher; I would not bet against him returning to a second act as a winner. But he has basically all but run out of things he can do to signal that he is done.

Rany Jazayerli looks at Adam Pettyjohn's long road back to the majors from ulcerative colitis.

One of the really remarkable things that has happened thus far this season is Cliff Lee - almost certainly the AL Cy Young Award winner - not just bouncing back from a horrendous 2007 when he posted a 6.29 ERA to toss an MLB-best 2.28 mark (and it's for real: a staggering 157-28 K/BB ratio and just 10 HR allowed in 210 IP), but racking up a 21-2 record for a team having a dismal year. The Indians are 72-77 (.483), a respectable but unspectacular 7th in the AL in runs scored but with a wrecked bullpen (Jensen Lewis leads the team with 8 saves). It's unusual for an ordinary pitcher to have such a great year, but doubly so to do it for a severely struggling team. For a comparison, CC Sabathia, who some people are touting for the NL Cy Young, posted a 2.16 ERA in 14 starts for the Indians between April 22 and July 2 (during which he pitched 3 complete games, two of them shutouts, and averaged 7.45 IP/start) - and went 6-5.

How hard is it to do this? Well, I looked at the all-time leaders in winning percentage, and Baseball-Reference lists 37 pitchers in the game's 133 year history who won 85% of their decisions. 8 of those pitched mainly in relief, which skews W-L records, 2 pitched for the 1884 St. Louis Maroons who dominated the Union Association (a 1-year league that was barely "major" in any sense) and 3 of those are this season. In other words, prior to this year, in 133 years of NL, AL, Federal League and 19th century AA seasons, it's been done by a starting pitcher only 24 times, only 21 times since the mound was moved back to its current distance in 1893.

Anyway, of the 24 prior starting pitchers to crack 85%, all but two of them pitched for teams that won 55% or more of their games. The only exceptions were Randy Johnson in 1995 going 18-2 for a Mariners team that won the division playing .545 ball and Mike Nagy, who went 12-2 for the 1969 Red Sox, a .537 team. Lee's accomplishment of reaching 20 wins while winning 90% of his decisions for a losing team is entirely unprecedented.

And yet, he might not be completely alone. One of the other two pitchers who will finish at or above an .850 winning percentage if he avoids losing over the season's final two weeks is Dice-K Matsuzaka, 16-2 for the powerhouse Red Sox, but the other is Tim Lincecum, who stands at 17-3 for a truly horrendous Giants team - they're playing .456 ball, but outside of Lincecum it's .395, as the team is 14th in the NL in Runs Scored and 10th in ERA.

In baseball, even after a century and a quarter, you truly can see something new every year.

I had started writing this up when I got back from my vacation in August and got sidetracked - I'll just offer up a truncated version here.... we spent a week in Lake George and the last few days in Cooperstown making a pilgrimage to the Hall of Fame. It was the first time I'd been back since the inductions in 1982. The Hall seemed different in a number of ways, although it's always hard to tell how much of that is not being 11 years old anymore. There are a lot more Hall of Famers, now, of course - you can basically go by a set of panels that collect in one place the stars of the 70s, and by now the 80s collection is fairly well-stocked as well. When I was there in 1982, there was basically nobody there I'd seen play; now there are guys like Ripken and Boggs I remember as rookies, and even one guy (Kirby Puckett) who came to the majors, played his whole career, retired, got inducted in the Hall, and died since the last time I was there. Oddly, at random places there were a few shiny new plaques for Hall of Famers who'd been in a while - I guess guys like Ruth and Bob Feller needed their original plaques replaced at some point. (Odd promotion: they were advertising for 9/10 year olds to do a sleepover in the Hall itself, on its hard stone floors among the plaques. That seems very cool but also kinda ghoulish).

The Hall, of course, is a must-make pilgrimage for any serious baseball fan. It's still basically a museum you can cover in one day - although I got rushed through one or two sections because of the kids, we basically covered the whole place with hours to spare. (One thing that struck me in the equipment exhibits: Honus Wagner used a much thicker-handled bat than guys who played at or shortly after the same time, like Sam Crawford. Also, I hadn't known that in the 1880s they used color-coded uniforms, like today's NFL numbering schemes, to distinguish the different fielding positions). I also stopped in the day before at the library (it's only open M-F) - I'd still like to do a book someday if I get the free time, so I wanted to get a concrete sense of how research is done there and what's available. It's basically a one-room reading-room by-request operation, no public stacks at all, but nonetheless very user-friendly.

If I had one beef with the Hall, it's that the caliber of the stuff in the gift shop didn't match up to the souvenirs we got 26 years ago. Back then, we came home with, among others, a book collecting pictures of all the plaques and a punch-out book of cardboard replicas of actual old baseball cards of all the Hall of Famers. I went looking for similar things for my kids this time and came up empty, as too much of the selection was generic MLB merchandise.

We also took some time after lunch to check out a "Heroes of Baseball Wax Museum" down the street. This was a bit less of a serious fan site, but it was a fun mid-day diversion you can cover in an hour or so. The exhibits are eclectic - amidst the ballplayers there's George Costanza, a League of Their Own exhibit, Joe D and Marilyn, even George W and Rudy at Yankee Stadium after 9/11. But they also clearly made use of their unauthorized status to get a hookup with Pete Rose (they seem to have a fair bit of stuff that came from Rose himself) and an exhibit on Joe Jackson. Definitely worth seeing if you have kids.

Driving around upstate New York, you realize how many vast stretches of sparsely-populated greenery and farmland there still is in what people in the rest of the country still think of as a densely-settled urban state. After you've driven through stretches like that in New York, Pennsylvania, even Connecticut and western Massachusetts, and then compare them on the map to the size and scale of the whole rest of the U.S., you really start to appreciate how enormous this country is and how little of it looks like New York City and its immediate surroundings, where I have spent most of my life along with the Boston-Worcester area, northern New Jersey, and Washington DC.

A brief political note: we did see an Obama TV ad or two in Lake George, which struck me as odd since I couldn't see why he'd be advertising in New York (the closest neighboring state is Vermont). We saw a lot of ads for the incumbent Congresswoman, Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand, who was still ripping the Iraq War but solely on grounds that it costs money that could be spent in her District.

I hate to jinx the Mets, but I can't get around the feeling that last night's win was the one that iced this division race. Yes, it's just a gut feeling about momentum. Yes, the lead is 2 1/2 games with 18 to play. But there you have it.

Oliver Perez entered tonight's game with a 5.84 ERA this season, and 5.45 career, against the Nationals. That will go up considerably. You hate to go to the bullpen this early, given that with Wagner now out until late next season at the earliest, that's like getting on a bus with no brakes. This one's gonna be a long slog, even with the Mets having tied the game at 7 through 4 innings.

UPDATE: Nationals grab 8-7 lead, Beltran & Delgado homer to make it 10-8 Mets. What a seesaw.

Mets win 10-8! I am staggered that they made this stand up.

You know, looking at Luis Ayala's record before 2008 and with the Mets this season, you have to wonder what the Nationals were doing this year to screw him up so badly.

If the Mets win this game tonight - I write this in the middle of the 4th inning - you will probably hear a little more of Carlos Delgado for MVP on the strength of a 2-RBI single off Cole Hamels to make this must-win game (the Mets nursing a 1-game division lead and this their last game against Philly after losing the first two in the series) 3-1 in the first and a long homer in the third to make it 4-2, answering a homer by Ryan Howard.

It's a nice sentiment for the importance of Delgado's comeback with the Mets, but don't believe it; he's still the team's 4th or 5th most valuable player, behind Wright, Reyes, Beltran and maybe Santana. Delgado does nothing that doesn't show up in the box score - he's at best mediocre in the field as a 1B, a liability on the basepaths, and his .346 OBP is OK but nothing special, 12 points below the average NL first baseman.

You can beat that to be MVP as a slow, slugging first baseman only if you are truly the league's preeminent slugger and RBI man. But Delgado is, entering tonight, 8th in the league (and third on the Mets behind Wright and Beltran) in RBI, fifth in the league in HR, and second on the team and not in the league's top 10 in Slugging. That's a heckuva season for a 36-year-old who spent the spring on the verge of being cut, but it's no MVP.

UPDATE: Delgado adds a HR in the fifth, another bomb off Hamels, and the crowd chants "MVP". I stand by my point, but man is his timing good right now.

Yes, I realize I have been terribly delinquent on the baseball side of the blogging ledger the last 2 weeks, being absorbed with the political conventions and the VP selections as well as having a lot of stuff going on outside the blog. It really doesn't seem like this should be it, but here we are: the last Mets-Phillies series of the season, 3 games at Shea, Mets up by 3 in the standings. Amazingly, the Mets have actually scored more runs than the Phils this year, 693 (4.95/game) to 676 (4.83/game), the margin being 5.08-4.74 on the road, so this is not solely a factor of Shea being more homer-friendly this season. So much for a team with only one reliable outfielder (Endy Chavez, batting .272/.311/.336, is second among Mets outfielders with 265 at bats), no regular second baseman (Damion Easley, batting .265/.318/.361, leads Mets 2B with 294 at bats) and a defense-first catcher being unable to keep up with the vaunted Phillies offense (go back and see my preseason preview on why the Phillies' offense is overrated, but please do not look at my preseason previews of the AL East and the two Central divisions while you are there....)

In marked contrast to last season, the Mets have thus far faced down their division opponents head to head. They are 10-5 against the Phillies, accounting for more than the margin of their lead in the division, and explaining why the Mets are 10 games over (32-22) vs the NL East, while the Phils are 4 over (29-25).

A sweep by the Phillies would erase all of that; a sweep by the Mets would effectively end the race, with Philly lacking the head-to-head matchups to repeat last year's late charge. It's a big weekend.

All I gotta say on the last two nights' Mets-Phillies games is, maybe sometimes it is better not to have the early lead.

In case you have missed it, The Hardball Times has had two recent looks at Mets starting pitchers and where and how they are locating their pitches - Johan Santana and Pedro Martinez. Santana may yet end up leading the league in ERA and innings pitched, but THT notes his alarming drop in strikeout rate, which I had assumed was tied pretty directly to lost velocity, but THT's numbers indicate no loss compared to 2007 (there's no data shown for his Cy Young campaigns) and seems more concerned about movement on his fastball declining from outstanding to just good. Santana has a 2.13 ERA since June 1, third best in the game in that period, but he's done it by controlling the high HR rate that plagued him in 2007 and early 2008, possibly at the expense of the K rate. Meanwhile, it seems that Pedro's lost velocity is making his slider far less effective. Meanwhile, Maine is back on the DL. The Mets have no good options, although if they intend to give Neise a shot, better to try him out now rather than have to throw him to the wolves with no margin for error as they did to Phil Humber last year.

Following up on last night's thoughts on the Mets' rotation and their ability to go deep in games, here are the key numbers for the Mets' five primary starters:

Pitcher	IP/G	BF/G	P/G	BF/IP	P/IP	P/BF
Santana	6.81	27.88	103.35	4.10	15.19	3.71
Martinez	5.31	23.85	90.69	4.49	17.09	3.80
Maine	5.60	24.13	101.21	4.31	18.19	4.20
Perez	5.73	24.88	97.62	4.34	17.03	3.92
Pelfrey	6.16	26.40	102.28	4.29	16.60	3.87

The thing that really jumped out at me is that Maine has thrown at least 7 full innings in a start only twice this season compared to 11 times for Pelfrey, 6 for Perez and 16 for Santana (Pedro's done it once). At the opposite end of the scale, Perez has twice failed to throw 2 innings in a start, which pulls down his averages, while Pedro's injury-shortened first start is the only time any of the others has thrown less than 4 full innings.

As you can see, Santana and Pedro are both efficient with batters, while Maine is extremely inefficient. Pedro's problems are his lack of effectiveness (the high number of hitters per inning) and durability (the low pitch count), while Maine's innings are held back almost entirely by the number of pitches he eats up getting through each hitter; he throws nearly as many pitches per start as Santana and Pelfrey.

You know, I was just thinking something last night that was borne out completely by tonight's Mets game, in which Mike Pelfrey went the full 9 innings, throwing 108 pitches: if you go into a big series or the postseason without Wagner, your #2 starter behind Santana has to be Pelfrey. I am not sure I really trust Pelfrey quite enough to think him more effective in a big game than Maine or Perez; but I'm quite certain that I trust his ability, more than theirs (or certainly Pedro's) to go 7 or 8 or 9 innings. And if your starter goes 8, for example, you retain the ability to go lefty-righty-lefty with the specialists and not have to rely on the closer you don't have.

PS: Daniel Murphy is the new Ty Wigginton. Discuss.

With the news of Carl Yastrzemski having chest pains resulting in open-heart surgery, it's worth remembering - while he is still with us, hopefully still for many years to come - what a ballplayer Yaz was. He's one of those guys whose career is subject to a number of cross-cutting statistical illusions: he played his prime years in a hitters' park in a pitchers' era, was an excellent glove man in the outfield (as a left fielder he averaged 15 assists per 162 games for his career) who nonetheless spent seasons as a 1B and DH and even was given a short-lived experiment as a 3B*. But the biggest one is the fact that - like Ernie Banks, Robin Roberts, Robin Yount and Craig Biggio - Yaz had a very long career (he's second only to Pete Rose in plate appearances) yet should be best remembered for the handful of seasons when he was really a dominating ballplayer.

In Yaz's case, he was a productive hitter most of the years from age 22 (1962) to 43 (1983), including some very good seasons here and there, mostly for bad Sox teams, but it was four seasons (1967-70) when he was truly one of the very best players in the game. For those four years, swimming against the tide of the late-60s pitchers' era, he batted .302/.414/.554 and averaged 106 R, 102 RBI, 37 HR, 110 BB, 30 2B and 15 SB - numbers that ranked him first in the majors in Runs, second in OBP, third in slugging, fifth in HR, 6th in RBI and 7th in batting average.

The true Fenway faithful, of course, remember him the best for the magical 1967 season that transformed a franchise that had been adrift since the early 1950s. More than anybody, the left fielder from Long Island created what we now think of as "Red Sox Nation" - it may seem hard to believe now, but between 1959 and 1966, the Red Sox finished in the bottom half of the league in attendance 6 times in 8 years; from 1961-66 they never averaged as many as 12,000 fans per game, and dropped below 10,000 twice. Attendance in 1967 doubled, and the Sox have remained the centerpiece of the Boston sports world ever since. Yaz was everything that year - MVP, Triple Crown, led the league in OBP and Slugging and Runs and Total Bases, won the Gold Glove, had 3 hits in the All-Star Game, carried his team to the pennant in an airtight race with a blistering stretch from August 19 through the end of the year when he batted .358/.466/.723 with 16 HR and 40 RBI in 45 games (including .523/.604/.955 with 16 RBI in the last 12), batted .331/.434/.662 with RISP and .367/.467/.674 when batting with two outs, and hit .400/.500/.840 3 HR in the World Series. It was an amazing season for a great player.

* - Ever notice how many Hall of Famers who played the bulk of their careers at other positions spent at least part of a season as regular third basemen? The list includes Yaz, Johnny Bench, Cap Anson, Jimmie Foxx, Mel Ott, Tony Perez, Cal Ripken, Jackie Robinson, Harmon Killebrew, Ryne Sandberg, Buck Ewing, Frankie Frisch, Joe Sewell, Honus Wagner, Luke Appling...some of these guys played the hot corner at the beginning or end of their careers or were just migrant sluggers - none were really third basemen - but several of them were, like Yaz, basically mid-career experiments to plug a hole.

While the Mets have been going pretty well of late, it's still quite clear that they just can't close out games without Billy Wagner, so the news that an MRI of Wagner's elbow shows inflammation that could put him out for the season is dire indeed. The acquisition of Luis Ayala over the weekend (for Anderson Hernandez, batting .203/.262/.307 at AAA) seems more like hope than strategy:

The Mets are hoping they can fix Ayala in much the same way they repaired Guillermo Mota in 2006. Their scouts have determined Ayala has regained most of the velocity he lost in '06 when he underwent reconstructive surgery on his right elbow, but they also believe he has lost the sink that made an effective reliever with the Expos in 2003 and '04.

They believe an adjustment in the angle of his arm will help him regain the sink.

Leaving aside Mota's substantial role in losing the NLCS that year, you can't just extrapolate from Rick Peterson's modest success with a struggling Mota that the current Mets brain trust can do the same for Ayala just because he's been bad. And make no mistake: Ayala's long been an excellent pitcher, but he's been horrid this year to the tune of a 5.77 ERA and crummy peripheral stats to match.

Obviously, my previous optimism about Aaron Heilman was misguided. But Duaner Sanchez hasn't shown any consistency either, and really nobody else is a credible candidate (Feliciano's really a specialist - righties are batting .322/.412/.517 against him and .318/.413/.500 against Schoenweis, while lefties are batting .318/.434/.455 against Joe Smith). And I continue to think, as I did before they called him up, that Eddie Kunz' AA numbers don't suggest a guy who is big league ready, and it's dicey to take a starting pitching prospect like Jon Niese and toss him into a MLB closer job. The only starter they could spare now is Pedro, who probably could not really transition well to working multiple days in a row (El Duque maybe, but he probably won't be ready to pitch until 2009, if ever). I'd suggest a deal (Huston Street?), but not only is it past the deadline but the acquisition of Ayala suggests that the Mets tried already and that was the best they could do.

Ugh.

As a general rule, on grounds of not boring the audience, I don't write that much about my fantasy baseball teams other than an annual roundup of my draft (which I was too busy to get to this year) and the occasional aside about who I do and don't own as a way of explaining who I'm watching more closely. But permit me here a moment of despair.

I have three teams - an AL-only traditional Roto team and two AL/NL Yahoo autodraft teams. At this writing I'm tied for fourth in the former and in first and second in the latter two. The roto team is my 'main' team, consuming the most effort because you have to dig much deeper on AL rosters to fill out your squad. My active lineup this season has featured such luminaries as Denard Span, Joe Inglett, Brian Buscher, Guillermo Quiroz, Morgan Ensberg, Shawn Riggans, Andy Marte, Jonny Gomes, Chris Shelton, Willy Aybar, Brandon Boggs, Ben Broussard, Jose Vidro, Grant Balfour, Ryan Rowland-Smith, Jason Jennings, Sean Green, Dustin Moseley, Arthur Rhodes, Jesse Carlson, and Ross Ohlendorf.

Anyway, thus far I have survived the injury to my $27 ace pitcher, Erik Bedard (thank you, John Danks, Dice-K, Joakim Soria and BJ Ryan). I have been surviving the injury to my $38 top offensive player, Carl Crawford. I have been surviving the injury to the revived Joe Crede, and disappointing years from Nick Swisher and Adrian Beltre.

But if Ian Kinsler is out for the season with a sports hernia, I am even more thoroughly doomed than the Rangers are. Kinsler's batting .319, he's leading the majors in hits, he has 18 HR, 26 SB and 71 RBI, and he's been on fire in recent weeks. He and Crawford account for more than half my team's steals.

This has been an unusually busy summer for trades and an unusually busy August, in particular, for injuries. In both real and fantasy baseball, the healthiest will have a huge leg up to outlast the competition.

Posted by Ricky West

---

I know Crank is a lot like most new-age baseball fans & pays close attention
to OPS (on base plus slugging), as do I.  Like batting average, though,
that can take into account a player's value only when he's on the field which
can be deceiving for a player who is as likely to be injured or on the DL as he
is to be on the field.  Take Nomar Garciaparra, for instance, always good
for a high batting average & decent OPS but also rarely available for more than
130 games per season.  My fantasy league has created what we feel to be the
true barometer for a player's value when it comes to performance on the field:
the overall total base.   The calculation for this category is quite
simple, MLB's total bases plus walks plus HBP plus steals.  So, other than
when a batter/fielder moves the runner up, this formula encapsulates what a
player has done on the field during the season.  Does this really
matter?  Well, ask any rotisserie (or MLB) owner of Milton Bradley or
Chipper Jones, who have been day-to-day seemingly since June.  Currently,
for players with more than 200 at-bats, the top 20 OPS performers in MLB are:

Player	OPS
A. Pujols	1.080
C. Jones	1.066
L. Berkman	1.038
M. Bradley	1.036
M. Holliday	1.032
A. Rodriguez	1.001
R. Ludwick	0.994
M. Ramirez	0.965
C. Quentin	0.952
X. Nady	0.952
P. Burrell	0.950
J. Drew	0.948
B. McCann	0.942
K. Youkilis	0.938
C. Lee	0.937
C. Utley	0.934
R. Braun	0.925
J. Dye	0.924
J. Hamilton	0.921
A. Soriano	0.918

Diehard fans look at that list and know that Pujols was on the DL last month. 
Chipper, #2 on the list, has 327 at-bats (David Wright has 453).  Milton
Bradley, fourth on the list, has two plate appearances in the last week and a
half.  Alfonso Soriano, #20, has missed over a third of the season. 
Fantasy owners know all too well that there are two categories that are of the
utmost importance: at-bats and innings pitched.  If they don't play, they
don't help you.  Here are the current overall total base leaders through
Sunday's games, and chances are that means these are the fantasy 'studs' in your
league:

Player	TB
G. Sizemore	340
L. Berkman	338
H. Ramirez	336
J. Reyes	327
I. Kinsler	325
C. Utley	322
D. Wright	321
A. Pujols	320
M. Holliday	318
J. Hamilton	315
C. Quentin	312
R. Braun	312
B. Roberts	308
N. McLouth	302
N. Markakis	299
P. Burrell	297
J. Bay	296
M. Teixeira	294
C. Lee	292
P. Fielder	292

Yes, Shady Grady Sizemore is the complete total base champ of baseball, at
this juncture.  Yes, he has a high number of at-bats & a mediocre batting
average  (.269).  At the end of the day, though, when your fantasy
league is tallying up runs, homeruns, rbi and steals (and, maybe, MLBs total
bases) you're more likely to wish for Mr. Sizemore's presence on your squad than
Xavier Nady, J.D. Drew or Jermaine Dye.  The old commercial may have said "chicks dig the long ball" but fantasy owners dig players who are on the field. Honesly, who is happy that they picked Howie Kendrick and his batting average?

Assuming that there is no reliable specific data that one can point to in order to judge a player's worth, does this truly account for a player's numerical fantasy value? Thoughts? Reactions?

Posted by Ricky West

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Scott Boras, infamous for being a first-class jerk who nonetheless is constantly able to garner big bucks for his clients (often much more than they’re worth), may have been able to offset some of the bad PR throughout the entire A-Rod debacle, where he came out the big loser. He was able to snag a $36 million dollar deal (2 years) for Andruw Jones, who statisticcally appears to be the worst player in the majors. Say what you will about Boras, and there's not much positive that I can conjure, but knowing that his client is guaranteed well into fiveeight figures next season is quite a feat when you consider that with the acquisition of Manny Ramirez, Jones has lost his grasp on the 4th outfielder's slot in Los Angeles.

The year-to-date figures are staggering when one considers that Carlos Delgado almost matched the home-run and RBI figures in the Mets game of June 27.

-

Ricky normally doesn't blog very much any more at blog.rjwest.com, but in his spare time he enjoys baseball, fantasy baseball, Baseball Tonight on ESPN and knowing that he can renew Tim Lincecum for a pittance on his fantasy team next season. On the downside, he realizes that Andruw Jones would probably be the third outfielder on this season's Braves team. Plus, his phone service has been on the fritz for about 18 hours, so he's hoping that he'll be able to provide Crank with some material early on in his well-deserved vacation.

There are any number of interesting things you can stumble across on the web, and this public-domain collection of old-timey (1880s-1910s, mainly 1901-06) baseball photos from the Boston Public Library is pretty impressive. Among others you can find Honus Wagner shaking hands with Nap Lajoie, a 1906 Cubs team picture, a picture of Hugh Duffy in mid-career, an 1895 picture of four of the stars of the old Baltimore Orioles, and a 1901 team picture with Cy Young at the center.

Below the fold you can see one series of pics from 1901 of Hall of Famer Kid Nichols demonstrating for a photographer his pitching grip & motion (granted, the motion's a bit artificial since it has to be stopped for still photos in a studio). Nichols, largely forgotton today, was easily one of the 10 best pitchers in the game's history - he won 63% of his career decisions with a 2.95 ERA pitching mainly in the offense-crazy 1890s, his career ERA+ of 140 means he was 40% better than the league for his career (among pitchers with over 3,000 career IP, only Lefty Grove, Walter Johnson and Roger Clemens can top that, and Nichols threw a thousand more innings than Grove), his average record from age 20-28 was 31-15, his decision to be a player-manager in the Western League for two years in mid-career is probably the only reason he didn't join Cy Young and Walter Johnson as a 400-game winner, and he was durable and tremendously consistent despite carrying a heavy workload from an early age (over 420 innings a year from age 20-24). The picture at the side here is of Nichols as a 20-year-old rookie in 1890. It's funny; I've known a fair bit about Nichols for a long time and this is the first time I've seen anything like action shots to give a sense of what he looked like on the mound.

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Amidst the collapse of a previously overachieving A's team (in part an unavoidable risk of Billy Beane dumping Rich Harden, Chad Gaudin and Joe Blanton), one high point has been Brad Ziegler, who entered tonight unscored upon in 34 innings over 26 appearances.

Ziegler attracted notice last week for breaking George McQuillian's 101-year-old record for most consecutive scoreless innings to start a career. He may be approaching the record for consecutive scoreless games to start a season as well; baseball-reference.com's database, going back to 1956, lists the record as 33 by Mike Meyers in 2000, albeit over only 17.2 innings. Since high-turnover relief pitching was in its infancy in 1956, that's probably the record. He's also passed the club record for consecutive scoreless innings by a reliever.

I'm less sure if it's the record for consecutive scoreless innings to start a season. Walter Johnson's AL record 55.1 consecutive scoreless innings started on Opening Day 1913, but the Yankees got a first inning run against the Senators that day, and I assume Johnson was the starting pitcher, so he must have allowed that run.

Jerry Manuel confirms that he'll turn to Aaron Heilman as the closer with Billy Wagner on the DL. This makes sense to me - Duaner Sanchez just hasn't been consistent this year, and while he can be quite effective at times, I suspect it's still physical problems from his injury rehab that cause him to be erratic. Feliciano, Smith and Schoenweis are better suited to righty/lefty work. Whereas a lot of Heilman's periodic struggles (like he had this weekend) seem mental as much as physical, and the challenge of closing may help lock him in - Heilman's exactly the sort of pitcher who probably has a streak of 11 straight saves in his arm at some point in his career.

Of course, the loss of Wagner for any stretch is still a big blow and one that cascades down the line in the pen - Heilman closing means Sanchez has to be the go-to 8th inning guy, etc. Ruddy Lugo is being called up to add to the pen, which of course will be leaned on hard if Maine and/or Pedro can't get back to contributing a reliable 6-7 innings every fifth day some time soon. The upside is that if Wagner does come back at full strength, the rest may make him fresher for September and possibly October than he's been in past years.

Try as I might, I just can't bring myself to write about this weekend. Have at it, or anything baseball.

Cerrone summarizes Omar Minaya's press conference on why the Mets made no deals at the deadline. Realistically, having dealt Milledge and stripped much of the farm system's tradeable chips in the offseason to get Santana, the Mets could not compete for the likes of Manny or Jason Bay. Bay brought home 4 prospects - the Mets only really have two prime time prospects now, outfielder Fernando Martinez and LHP Jon Niese, and with a long-term core of Wright-Reyes-Santana-Beltran-Maine (if healthy)-Pelfrey in place, they don't want to totally abandon the future to win now just because they are running near the end of the line with Delgado, Pedro, Wagner and maybe Perez (I won't mention Alou and El Duque here since they aren't contributing now anyway). It's frustrating, since this is a pretty good team now that just has some gaping holes to fill, especially with Church's status perenially uncertain, but I guess we are now wedded to Fernando Tatis as an everyday player, and hoping the 33-year-old Tatis doesn't wake up one morning and realize the 1990s are over.

Cerrone runs down the longer list of guys Minaya talked about as prospects. A quick look:

*Martinez, 19, is batting .292/.332/.420 at AA and has is ailing again, this time his hamstrings. .292 with doubles power is not bad for a teenager at AA, but with no HR power yet and a 14/56 BB/K ratio he's clearly not going to be of any use to the big club this year and probably needs a full year in the minors in 2009 before you can talk about him as a serious major league regular.

*Niese, 21, has just been bumped up to AAA. I assume we see him for a September cup of coffee, earlier only if Maine's rotator cuff is worse than the Mets are letting on. He has a 2.95 ERA and his per 9 ratios are 8.15 K, 3.15 BB and 0.41 HR in 23 starts. His ERA was 4.29, but with similar peripherals, in A ball last year. He seems to project as a third starter type, maybe a #2 at best.

*Robert Parnell, the #2 starter behind Niese at AA Binghamton, pitched really well his first season in low A ball in 2005, but has a 4.39 ERA since then, including 4.32 this season, averaging 6.56 K, 4.32 BB and 0.93 HR. I can't see what in his performance record makes him a prospect any time in the near future.

*Dan Murphy, 23, has good numbers at AA this year (.308/.374/.496 with 26 2B, 13 HR, and 14 steals). Unfortunately, Murphy's a third baseman (and an error-prone one at that, career fielding % of .920) and has little prior track record of minor league success; to be useful to the Mets he would need a new position, but breaking in a new position makes a guy hard to trade while he's learning it.

*Eddie Kunz, 22 and also at AA Binghamton, is a RH reliever who has never allowed a home run in 59 pro innings, has a 2.87 ERA and 7.85 K/9 this season, but also 4.40 BB. Like Murphy, he's only done anything to merit appearing on the prospect radar this season. I can't see the use in rushing a guy like that until his control improves.

There's also Nick Evans and Mike Carp, of course, who will presumably battle it out for the 1B job next season assuming Delgado is allowed to walk (anything else would be nuts) and the Mets finish second in the Teixeira sweepstakes.

One more note: the Mets officially do not miss Paul Lo Duca, who was cut by the Nationals along with Felipe Lopez and Johnny Estrada.

As deadline deals go, this is a biggie: Manny Ramirez to the Dodgers, Jason Bay to the Red Sox, a package of prospects to Pittsburgh:

Third baseman Andy LaRoche and right-handed pitcher Bryan Morris will go to the Pirates from the Dodgers. Outfielder Brandon Moss and right-handed pitcher Craig Hansen will leave the Red Sox organization for Pittsburgh.

The core of the deal is the contract status of the two stars. "Ramirez is in the final guaranteed season of an eight-year, $160 million contract. It also contains club options at $20 million each for 2009 and 2110," while Bay "has one year and $7.5 million left on his four-year contract and will make $7.5 million in 2009."

Sox fans seem to be split on this, with the majority being steaming mad and a dedicated minority happy to finally reach the end of Manny's annual rituals of exasperating the fans, teammates and front office. Pirates fans are like a wino without the energy to grab the bottle after it tips over and drains out on the sidewalk. They just sit there, watching it flow....although in the long run, they did get a decent package of players, as LaRoche has some good pop at 3B and Hansen has a decent arm, although he has yet again been ineffective at the big league level. As always with a team like the Bucs, the question is less the guys they got in return than what this says about their business model and whether it includes ever being competitive.

For the Dodgers, this is a win-now move, and one borne of the weakness of their division and the parlous state of their lineup, which is 13th in the NL in runs. I'm not sure win-now makes a ton of sense for a team that by all rights should get squashed in the playoffs, but recent history has been kind to weak teams in the playoffs.

The major attention will focus on the Sawx, though, since they are the ones dumping a Hall of Fame talent who is having a good year (.299/.398/.529, 66 Runs, 68 RBI - not the Manny of old but not bad for age 36) and who, after many years of underachieving in October, has batted .317/.548/.438 and averaged an RBI a game in the playoffs since 2004, as the heart of the Sox two World Championship teams. They deal him for Bay, a 29-year-old .281/.375/.515 hitter who is batting almost exactly that (.282/.375/.519, 72 Runs, 64 RBI) this season. (Both players are hitting marginally better at home, but Bay has been working in the comparatively weak NL Central).

How you value the deal depends entirely on whether you think the loss of Manny's bat in the postseason is worth trading a half season of Manny for a year and a half of Bay (the Sox are eating Manny's contract so it's not a financial savings). I tend to think it's a defensible deal, in the 50s Yankees sense of trading a guy a year too early rather than too late, although I frankly probably would not have made this deal myself. The Sox are, after all, defending a World Championship, and even though this has been something of a reloading year for them, they are still very much in the hunt, 3 games behind an overachieving Rays team and leading the Wild Card race. On the other hand, Manny has been enough of a distraction, and Bay is good enough, that at least the players are unlikely to look at this as a surrender.

I'm not sure where Ken Griffey would fit in with the White Sox. Frankly, Griffey looks pretty close to done at this point. I suppose the Sox can always use insurance against an injury by Dye, Thome or Konerko.

The interesting thing about the Pudge Rodriguez for Kyle Farnsworth deal is that both teams are trying to sell high. Farnsworth, coming off consecutive poor seasons in 2006-2007, has been pitching well in 2008, albeit not so well that anybody really trusts him, especially allowing 2.23 HR/9 IP, which is a recipe for catastrophe. Before getting rocked in his last outing, he had a 2.11 ERA in 23 outings since May 27, with only 3 HR allowed in that period. The Yankees figured they could unload him before he blew up again to a Tiger team whose bullpen has been a wreck.

Rodriguez is the same story, though - he's 36, he showed signs of age when he batted .276/.290/.444 in 2005, and after a bounce-back 2006 he hit .281/.294/.420 last season and .245/.286/.349 through June 8 of this year (He's also no longer absolute death to opposing base thieves, although his rate of catching a third of them over 2007-08 is still quite good, just not in the 50% neighborhood of yore). But Pudge got blazing hot since then - .382/.429/.536 over his last 30 games. The Yankees, desperate for catching with Posada down, obviously figured it was worth the gamble that he could stay over .300, where he needs to be to have any offensive value at all given his minimal power, no patience and negative speed at this juncture.

Of course, for Detroit this means Brandon Inge is now the long-term starting catcher, which I find a relatively dubious choice but they did not have a lot of other options, or indeed any others.

UPDATE: OK, I can't possibly top David Pinto's take: "With A-Rod and I-Rod in the fold, can E-Rod, O-Rod, U-Rod and sometimes Y-Rod be far behind!"

Diagnosis for John Maine after his MRI, as just reported on WFAN: mild strain of the rotator cuff. The "mild" part is good; the "rotator cuff" part is not. Hopefully this can be treated with a little rest - Maine's supposed to rejoin the team shortly. But the Mets should take this one more carefully than they did with Ryan Church's head injuries.

PS - In case I don't get to it in more detail, the Mark-Teixeira-to-the-Angels deal is huge on several levels...definitely comes as close as a deal like this can to locking down the AL West for the Angels, clearly signals that the Braves have given up (not irrationally), and puts the Angels in the drivers' seat to sign Tex and keep him off the market, which is bad news for teams like the Mets and Yankees that have big-ticket 1B coming to the end of their contracts.

In honor of Goose Gossage's Hall of Fame induction, go here for my Armchair GM piece arguing for the Goose in the Hall. I'd been making the case for Gossage since this January 2001 column, but the Armchair GM piece pretty much sums up all the best stuff I'd written about him in the intervening years.

Well, two pitchers who are living on the edge were on the mound last night. Livan Hernandez, his job threatened if the Twins decide to promote Francisco Liriano, did not pitch especially well (5 runs in 8 innings), but he did what he does best, going the distance (119 pitches).

Then there's Edwin Jackson, the winning pitcher for Tampa with 2 runs allowed in 5 innings. I have to figure that Edwin Jackson is hearing footsteps at this point from the approach of top pitching prospect 22-year-old David Price, who may yet be brought up for the stretch drive for the first place Rays.

Ex. A: Price is now at AA and is 8-0 with a 2.01 ERA on the season. His Ks are down below 1 per inning and his HRs are up (4 in 37.1 IP) since going to AA - his numbers to this point look a good deal like Mike Pelfrey's at the same stage. In other words, he's beating AA hitters but not utterly overwhelming them as top prospects often do, and thus he's no guarantee to dominate immediately at the big league level. But given everything I've heard about his stuff and the fact that he's a polished college pitcher, the 6'6" power lefty is a prime time talent and almost certainly ready to help the big club. I could easily see him coming up and giving Tampa 10 starts and a 3.60 ERA.

Ex. B: Jackson's the likely odd man out if you looked at how Tampa's 5 young starters are pitching from June 1 entering last night. Note the perilous drop in his K rate to go with the 4.99 ERA over that stretch. I foresee a demotion to middle relief in Jackson's near term future. Jackson probably does too, and I assume that was on his mind last night.

The Yankees obviously made a good deal, or at any rate a necessary one, picking up Xavier Nady and Damaso Marte from the Pirates for four youngsters, RHP Ross Ohlendorf, RHP George Kontos, LHP Phil Coke and OF Jose Tabata.

There are a few cautions on Nady. He's never had 500 at bats in a season. His .330/.383/.535 line way ahead of his career .281/.337/.456 line at age 29. He's a career .281/.336/.476 hitter in the first half and career .300/.355/.448 hitter in August, but .266/.329/.392 in September. But then, the Yankees are looking for a capable fill-in, not expecting a .330 hitter with power. The 33-year-old Marte, of course, has always been an effective reliever and his control has only improved in recent years. If anything, his 47/16 K/BB ratio suggests that he's pitching better than his 3.47 ERA would indicate - and he has been, with a 2.35 ERA since April 5 after allowing 6 runs in 2/3 of an inning in his first two outings, and allowing just 4 of 29 inherited runners to score since then.

I've been a fan for a while of the 25-year-old Ohlendorf, who has struck out 45 batters in 46.1 IP in the bigs and has excellent K/BB numbers in the minors, but his control hasn't been good this season and since joining the Yankee organization he's been too prone to the longball. Presumably the Pirates will give him a long trial as a starter and can afford to wait out his growing pains.

Tabata is supposed to be a big prospect and he's only 19, so he has time. Like Fernando Martinez, he's generally been young for his league and responded by hitting a lot of singles and doubles and little else, but he's been overmatched so far in AA, hitting .248/.320/.310. The Pirates can wait, and the Yankees can look into him again when he approaches free agency.

The 25-year-old Coke and 23-year-old Kontos, both at AA, also seem like decent prospects, especially Coke, who in 344.1 IP since 2006 (split between A and AA; he was only just promited to AAA before the deal) has averaged 7.82 K, 3.03 BB - both decent numbers, nothing special - but just 0.44 HR/9.

Continuing the last-365-days view, Carlos Delgado dating back to this time last season is now batting .265/.351/.473, and is one of a reputable (not truly exclusive) club of 40 major league hitters with at least 25 HR and 90 RBI over that period (Delgado has 27 and 94). When you adjust for the Citizens Bank Park effect, that actually makes Delgado's productivity comparable - not quite even, but comparable - to Ryan Howard, who over the same period is hitting .244/.346/.522 (with 225 strikeouts!). Granted, Howard's stayed in the lineup more, giving him an eye-popping 49 HR and 143 RBI, but given Delgado's age, hand injuries and early season haplessness, merely keeping the Mets competitive with Howard at first base is a major accomplishment. I remain skeptical that Delgado has enough in the tank to get another everyday job next season, but here's hoping he has one last drive in him.

The New York media would eat Jose Reyes alive if he missed a key game the Mets lost to the Phillies because he showed up late. Jimmy Rollins isn't getting off much easier for doing just that in today's loss to the Mets.

Three major league players have 40 doubles, 30 homers and 20 steals over the past 365 days. Name them.

Answer here.

I believe tonight's game officially ends the honeymoon for Jerry Manuel. The manager can't be blamed for his closer not being available, but there will be a lot of questions about why Johan Santana wasn't left in to finish the game with a 3-run lead after throwing 105 pitches, instead letting three middle relievers (Sanchez, Smith and Feliciano) blow the lead.

I still maintain that I trust Heilman more than I trust Sanchez.

UPDATE: This was not as excruciating a loss as some of the losses last fall, if only because the circumstances are not as dire. But combined with the narrow escape in the last game of the last Phillies series, it was pretty horrible, just one of those endings that leaves you gaping in shock that this actually happened.

September 14, 2005. Before Sunday, that was the last time Carlos Beltran was caught stealing third base.

Sportswriter Jerome Holtzman has died at age 82. I can't say I ever read much of his work, so to me and generations of baseball fans to come, Holtzman will be best remembered as the inventor of the save rule, the statistic that probably does more than any other to shape the way the game is played, as managers since the late 1970s and especially since the early 1990s have increasingly defined the job of the relief ace as that of a "closer" who pitches when, and only when, the rule defines his job as a "save situation."

Anyway, Holtzman didn't anticipate that; his idea was a reasonable enough one at the time, but it created a Frankenstein's monster.

RIP.

A more detailed breakdown of what Mike Pelfrey has been doing differently (this is before yesterday). Via THT.

So Francisco Liriano's agent wants a players union investigation of the Twins for not bringing Liriano up to the majors:

Greg Genske has asked the players' union to investigate why Liriano remains in Rochester despite going 7-0 with a 2.73 ERA in his past nine starts.

"I think that Francisco is dominating down there," Genske said Thursday. "The club concedes that as well. We're a little frustrated he hasn't been called up."

...Genske said the delay has had an adverse effect on Liriano's service time, which determines when he is eligible for arbitration. After three years in the big leagues, a player qualifies for arbitration. Liriano has two years and 45 days.

Seriously, get over yourself. Three points:

1. Genske seems to have amnesia here. After he missed the 2007 season with elbow surgery, the Twins rushed him back to the big club on April 13 of this season. Liriano wasn't ready, he lost three straight starts with an 11.32 ERA and walked 13 men in 10.1 innings. The Twins are in the middle of a pennant race, 1.5 games out of first place. They could certainly use a healthy Liriano, but I can understand why they want to make extra certain that he's ready this time. Liriano has pitched well in the minors, but his 3.34 ERA isn't really that much more impressive than the four Twins starters presently between 3.47 and 4.26 for the big club. I'd be ready by now to slot him in for Livan Hernandez (5.44 ERA, third straight season above 4.80), but that effectively means giving up on Hernandez, and teams are often slow to make those decisions. It's not like Liriano would be stepping into an open hole or bumping a struggling rookie.

2. I'm no expert in this area, but since when does the collective bargaining agreement give the union authority to supervise these kinds of decisions? The CBA makes arbitration and free agency dependent on the amount of major league usage a team gets from a player. That system has some benefits to the players, specifically guys like Liriano who come up pretty young (personally, I'd prefer a minimum age) but also creates some perverse incentives; that's the deal. Small-market teams have regularly played games with service time (why do you think Evan Longoria started the year in the minors?), albeit at a cost to their own competitiveness on the field, but unless there's something in the CBA saying they can't, I don't see what stops them.

3. Personally, I'd have brought Liriano up by now....before he did this. Now, if I were the Twins, I would definitely keep him cooling his heels a bit to make a point about who runs the team, because if they let the agents dictate this kind of stuff, they will have problems well beyond this one incident (plus, they will need to negotiate with Genske and Liriano in the future - you need to demonstrate that they can't just dictate terms). Bill James made this point emphatically when Whitey Herzog traded Ted Simmons when Simmons refused to move out from behind the plate - if the manager can't tell the players what to do, he's no longer the manager of anything. Ron Gardenhire understands that:

"I just back into town and I hear all this stuff, and Buster Olney is making my team up now and [Genske] wants to tell me who is going to pitch here," Gardenhire said. "No one is going to tell us who to put on our team and no one on ESPN is going to tell us who should pitch for my team....

As Gardenhire noted, Liriano should let his arm do the talking, not his agent:

"He's pitching well, and he's trying to force the issue," Gardenhire said. "And what should all Minor Leaguers try to do? Try to force the issue. That's the greatest thing in the world. We have depth, now. We have a guy that is knocking on the door and trying to take someone's job. What is wrong with that? I don't get it."

Still, the skipper was cognizant of future ramifications that could arise from bending to the will of others outside the organization.

"We have a guy that has 18 homers in Double-A and his agent is going to start calling if we start letting all this happen," Gardenhire said. "You don't let other people dictate what we do."

Precisely.

UPDATE: It would be unfortunate for the Twins if this keeps Liriano in the minors too long, but as I said, they gotta do what they gotta do now. Ironically, you will remember that Tom Kelly had something of a power struggle back around 1999-2000 in which he pointedly sent a bunch of guys back to AAA and made them rot there - the incident ended up holding back the careers of Doug Mientkiewicz, Todd Walker, AJ Pierzynski, and to a lesser extent Matt LeCroy and David Ortiz, but the Twins improved by 16 games in 2001 once all those guys were back in the lineup.

You know, I've been more down the more I think about it on the Rich Harden deal from the Oakland standpoint - yeah, Harden's value is ephemeral given his injury history, but why'd they throw Chad Gaudin, who had value of his own, into the deal? I get that Billy Beane thought Matt Murton could help his offense ASAP, which makes sense when you look at some of the people they are running out there these days. Sean Gallagher looks like a serious prospect, albeit one who is not yet even with Gaudin as a major league pitcher. Eric Patterson doesn't. Josh Donaldson tore up low A last year but has crapped the bed this season in high A and thus has to be a few years away, if anything.

But even if you write off Harden, following up by dealing Joe Blanton to the Phillies for prospects really smacks of Beane having decided up front that no matter how competitive the A's are, they would stick to a rebuilding schedule this season. Yes, Blanton's pitched poorly (5-12, 4.96 ERA), yes the A's still have a lot of pitching, and yes Blanton's a free agent in the offseason. (You can read my offseason analysis of Blanton here).

There is some logic to deciding that 2008 is not Oakland's year. They're 6 games back of the Angels, who have the game's best record. They are third in the wild card race, five games behind Tampa in the loss column and with the Yankees breathing down their throats. Still, that's certainly a team that could still pull out a playoff slot. It's hard to sell the fans on coming to the park when you are so clearly signalling surrender when you are 7 games over .500 at the break.

I suppose the counterargument is just that the Oakland fans have had enough of first round playoff exits. Playing to bring home another one may be secondary to stockpiling young talent for a run later on, when the new stadium arrives.

So, what about the returns? The delightfully named Josh Outman is a 23-year-old reliever in AA with good K and HR rates but a poor control record. Adrian Cardenas, a 20-year-old 2B in high A, was presumably expendable to the Phils with Chase Utley in the way; Cardenas smacked 30 doubles last year as a teenager and is batting .309/.374/.444 with 16 steals, so he may be a real prospect but hasn't yet proven himself as a real high upside guy. His teammate Matt Spencer is two years older, an OF and a career .254/.318/.405 hitter with a more than 2-to-1 K/BB ratio, so I would assume he's a throw-in. Not a terrible yield for Blanton compared to letting him walk, but I don't see a major established blue chip here, either. I have to think Beane just feels that Blanton's not going to be that useful the rest of the season (to Oakland; to the Phillies, a 4.96 ERA looks real tasty). But he's really putting the fans' faith in him to the test.

This Slate article does a pretty good job of capturing why anybody who takes statistical analysis of baseball even remotely seriously ends up sooner or later writing about Derek Jeter's poor defensive performance. (Note, of course, that most of those analysts don't dispute that Jeter is justly headed to Cooperstown - analysts may feel Jeter is overrated by the media and Yankee fans who think he walks on water because the Yankees win the World Series every year, but, as I argued last January, his bat still makes him one of the all-time greats at his position). I would quibble with just this part, at the end of the discussion of the many complex and sophisticated defensive statistics that have been developed and their unanimity that Jeter has been a bad defensive shortstop for most of his career:

Until defensive numbers have the same score-at-home simplicity of ERA or batting average, Jeter's reputation is probably safe (as long as he keeps his error totals down).

First of all, errors also couldn't dent Jeter; he was second in the league in errors in 2000, and it didn't leave a mark (although for his career, Jeter's error rates have been pretty good - not great, but good). Second, you don't need complicated statistics at all to suspect that Jeter's a bad defensive shortstop - Range Factor is the simplest of defensive stats (it asks how many plays a guy has made per game or per 9 innings), and Jeter's Range Factors have often been quite bad. Per 9 innings, the average AL shortstop over Jeter's career has turned 4.58 balls into outs; Jeter's rate is 4.18. Jeter was slightly below average by this easy-to-tabulate measure in 1996 and 1997, and again in 2004, and above average in 2005; otherwise he's been way below, and frequently dead last in the league - making only 84.8% of the league average number of plays in 2001, 83.5% in 2002, 82.6% in 2003.

The burden of proof of invoking complex (and more accurate) measurements of defense, then, is on Jeter's defenders, who must substantiate their excuses for why he doesn't make more plays. As it turns out there have been some mitigating factors - the Yankees had a high-strikeout, high-flyball pitching staff in the early 2000s (the 2001 team set the AL strikeout record, whiffing 22% more batters than average), and Jeter's numbers got better by virtually any measurement in 2004, when Roger Clemens left the team and A-Rod joined. One of the problems with individual defense (not just in baseball but in other sports) is the tendency to think of it as a fixed characteristic, rather than a matter of performance that varies from year to year and changes over time just like hitting or pitching - most analysts agree that even aside from the illusions created by the pitching staff, Jeter really did improve with the glove for about two years there. But there is nonetheless unanimity among virtually every statistical measurement in the business that Jeter has been a significantly below-average fielder for the balance of his career (and, indeed, the more concrete measures of team defense have shown the Yankees to be a poor defensive team for much of this decade), which is why the argument is not between simple and complex measurements of performance but between those who are interested in measuring performance and those who simply refuse to accept the idea that defensive performance can be measured by anything but the eyes of sportswriters. And that is why analysts return to this issue again, and again, and again.

Who has been baseball's best and worst RBI men this season? Well, RBI alone won't tell you that, any more than the hits leaders tell you who has the best batting average. I decided to divide the number of RBI with men in scoring position by the number of plate appearances each player had with men in scoring position. It's not a perfect measurement, since (1) this excludes driving in runners from first and (2) players on good offensive teams are more likely to bat with multiple men in scoring position and/or with a man also on first. Still, for a rough cut on the data, it's useful and interesting. I excluded intentional walks from plate appearances for these purposes, since it would be unfair to penalize the guys who are sufficiently feared to regularly get the bat taken out of their hands. Minimum number of plate appearances with RISP to count: 50. Source is David Pinto's database.

Best in MLB this season? Jesus Flores. No kidding.
Worst? His teammate Dmitri Young.
The full chart is below the fold.

Read More »

Before the season, my Established Win Shares Levels assessment had the Tampa Bay Rays as a 71-win team based on the established major league performance of their roster, and I explained why I was optimistic about the Rays but unwilling to buy into the idea that the most likely outcome for them was 88 or more wins.

Well, here we are at the break, and the Rays until recently had the best record in the game, and even if you assume (as I do) that they are likely to tail off in the second half, they are highly likely to win more than 85 games. How have they exceeded their track record? Let's look at Win Shares through July 10 on the Hardball Times website and compare the pre-season EWSL to the per-162 game pace of the Rays as of that date:

POS	Age	PLAYER	EWSL	WS	WS/162	Diff
3B	22	Evan Longoria+	12	15	27	+15
OF	30	Eric Hinske	5	11	20	+15
C	24	Dioner Navarro	7	10	18	+11
SP5	24	Edwin Jackson	1	6	11	+10
SP3	24	Matt Garza#	3	7	12	+9
2B	29	Akinori Iwamura*	13	12	21	+8
CF	23	BJ Upton#	19	15	27	+8
SP4	25	Andy Sonnanstine*	3	6	11	+8
RP1	38	Troy Percival	2	4	7	+5
1B	30	Carlos Pena	13	10	18	+5
RP3	30	Dan Wheeler	7	5	9	+2
SP2	26	James Shields#	11	7	12	+1
INF	25	Willy Aybar	4	3	5	+1
13	27	Ben Zobrist#	1	1	2	+1
SP1	24	Scott Kazmir	12	7	12	0
C2	33	Josh Paul	2	0	0	-2
RP4	31	Gary Glover	2	0	0	-2
RP5	29	Juan Salas*	2	0	0	-2
RP2	37	Al Reyes	4	1	2	-2
RF	35	Cliff Floyd	8	3	5	-3
DH	27	Johnny Gomes	9	3	5	-4
SS	28	Jason Bartlett	14	5	9	-5
LF	26	Carl Crawford	24	10	18	-6

As you can see, most of the Rays' improvement against expectations came from young (25 and under) talent coming together all at once - Longoria, Jackson, Garza, Navarro, Sonnanstine, Upton - the classic recipe for a 'surprise' team. This exploits a known issue with EWSL: it may project rapid improvement from some base of major league success for a young player, and it gives a certain amount of standard credit for a rookie like Longoria, but what it doesn't do (since there's no reliable way to do this at present) is project leaps forward based on minor league numbers. I expect those guys as a group to cool off a bit in the second half, but it won't be a huge upset if they don't, at least in the case of Longoria and Upton; given the unimpressive K/BB ratios of some of the starting pitchers (notably Jackson), I expect less from them in the second half, especially if Jason Bartlett's knee doesn't heal 100%. Either way, though, hats off to the young players who have made so much difference for this team.

Hinske is the one real and unpredictable surprise (none of the people touting the Rays in March mentioned him), but if he tails off that could be offset by Carl Crawford, who traditionally has had a lot of good second halves (career: .288/.327/.428 before the break, .301/.332/.442 after).

By the way, my rough adjustment this year assumed that the average team, historically, gets 38.57 Win Shares from players not on the pre-season 23-man roster I run the numbers from; that should translate to 21.67 Win Shares so far, and the Rays have 26, so they have been only mildly dependent on a better-than-expected showing from guys who came out of the woodwork, some of which is simply the fact that Riggans and Howell have stepped in in place of Paul and Salas.

POS	Age	PLAYER	EWSL	WS	WS/162	Diff
RP	25	JP Howell	0	6	11	11
OF	28	Gabe Gross	0	6	11	11
RP	30	Grant Balfour	0	3	5	5
C	27	Shawn Riggans	0	3	5	5
SP	25	Jason Hammel	0	2	4	4
RP	35	Trever Miller	0	2	4	4
		Four others	0	4	7	7

Honestly, when I added that up, it surprised me; I thought they were more dependent than that on the large number of guys performing well in limited at bats and innings, but some of those have fizzled a bit in recent weeks.

Last night's game was, when you stripped away the hype and the usual nonsense that surrounds the All-Star Game these days, just some really, really good baseball. I think the guy I came away most impressed with was Russell Martin - I can't remember the last time I saw a catcher handle that many plays at the plate in extra innings in one game, topped off by the game-saving throw by Nate McLouth to cut down Dioner Navarro at the plate (you would not have gotten odds before the season on Nate McLouth throwing out Dioner Navarro in the All-Star Game).

Highlight of the night from the fans:

1. The Yankees, at least in theory, hope to be in the World Series this year.

2. The outcome of the game had the chance to make it easier or harder for them, if they do so, to win the World Series.

3. Papelbon came in to pitch for the AL in a key late inning situation. If he could help the AL win, it could help the Yankees, if they make the World Series.

4. The Yankee fans decided to taunt Papelbon.

5. Papelbon responds by giving up the tying runs.

Great work, Yankee fans!

A few other random thoughts:

*My two-year-old daughter got confused and annoyed that we were watching a baseball game and not all chanting "Let's Go Mets".

*Yogi is still the coolest guy in baseball.

*Joe Buck called Yankee Stadium "our Coliseum". Does that make the Red Sox the Christians?

*I don't know who Josh Groban is, but I now know he's a weenie. He sang "God Bless America" like he wanted America to go to bed with him.

*It will be a shame if Yankee Stadium goes out without one last "Steinbrenner Sucks" chant.

The national ESPN audience got to see last night what Mets fans have been seeing for a few weeks now: Mike Pelfrey has become a major league pitcher, and the Mets' insistence on keeping him in the rotation this season has paid off. In his last nine starts through last night, Pelfrey is 6-0 with a 2.26 ERA.

To start with the obvious problem he still has: Pelfrey still needs a strikeout pitch. Pelfrey is averaging 5.3 K/9 on the season; even in his eight "quality starts," in which he has a 1.29 ERA in 55.2 IP, he's averaging a pedestrian 5.98 K/9. Strikeouts are a pitcher's most potent weapon for keeping men off the bases without the assistance of his defense, and Chien-Ming Wang aside, few pitchers get to the front of the rotation if they can't get past 6 K/9 or so. That said, Pelfrey's K rate has been going up lately, a positive sign.

But when the Ks aren't there, you have to max out in other areas, and a guy with Pelfrey's hard, heavy sinker and good control has the weapons to do that. First, he has cut his already low HR rate to microscopic levels - at 0.33 HR/9 he's second in the majors to Dana Eveland. Opposing batters are slugging .381 against Pelfrey on the season, compared to .374 against Scott Kazmir, .376 against Johan Santana, .380 against Cole Hamels. Second, cut off the running game - with the help of Brian Schneider, Pelfrey has allowed one stolen base all year (in five attempts). That helps set up the DP - Pelfrey's induced 14 GIDP on the season (the MLB leader, Mark Buehrle, has 23, but Pelfrey is among the leaders if not that close to the top), and 9 in his last 8 starts. Durability helps too - Pelfrey's averaging 104 pitches per start and has thrown at least 95 pitches in every start this year. It helps to be big, young, strong and have good mechanics (this is also a byproduct of not throwing a lot of breaking balls). And the more times a guy like Pelfrey throws a full game's worth of pitches to major league hitters, the more he learns about how to command those pitches and what works and doesn't work in getting hitters out.

Command is key. Pelfrey's always around the strike zone; he never struggles to find the plate. But he gets in trouble when he nibbles or just can't place his pitches exactly where he wants them. His 3.56 BB/9 and opposing OBP of .359 are way too high for a control pitcher. Even in the last 9 starts, Pelfrey's walk rate is 2.87 BB/9, decent but not where you want a low-K ground ball pitcher to be.

Again: Pelfrey still has his weaknesses. He's been reliant on Shea Stadium - his ERA is 2.35 at home, 5.56 on the road. Lefties are batting .317/.398/.457 against him on the season, sitting on his sinker; his K/BB ratio is 45/15 against righthanded hitters, but an unsightly 19/28 against lefties. All of which explains why, for now, he's still a fifth starter. But what you ask of your fifth starter is to go out there, eat innings, and keep his ERA around the league average, and Pelfrey has gotten good at the first and, for the moment at least, now exceeded the second. He's still got more to learn, but he has rewarded the Mets' preference for starting him rather than sending him back to AAA while they start the likes of Claudio Vargas or Tony Armas in his stead. And if Pelfrey can give us more in the second half of what we have seen in the last 9 starts, he may find himself ahead of Oliver Perez on the depth chart before the season is over (maybe Pedro too, but that will be all about what Pedro does, not about Pelfrey).

Welcome to the big leagues, kid.

UPDATE: I checked, and Justin Verlander has the largest number of consecutive starts this season (20) throwing at least 95 pitches; Pelfrey is third behind Verlander and Ervin Santana.