Full Plates

One of the many cool features of David Pinto’s Day by Day Database is the charts showing the percentage of baserunners driven in by different hitters. You can look here at the total chart for 2000-06 for guys who batted with 1500 or more men on base (note that driving yourself in doesn’t count; Pinto subtracts homers but includes the runners driven in on homers). Mike Sweeney and Larry Walker check in as the #1 & 2 best RBI men of the era, the punchless Luis Castillo the worst, with free-swinging Adam Dunn, Jose Cruz and Corey Patterson the worst with any power. A-Rod ranks a good deal higher than Jeter.
One interesting feature is the rankings by total baserunners. Here is the 11 seasons over the last 7 years in which one batter hit with 525 or more men on base – John Olerud, who doesn’t do terribly on the overall chart, is the only one to drive in less than 100 runs, apparently due in large part to batting behind the glacially slow and often-on-first Edgar Martinez:

Player Runners On Runs Batted In Home Runs RBI Pct. Year
Bret Boone 556 141 37 18.71 2001
Miguel Tejada 546 150 34 21.25 2004
John Olerud 539 95 21 13.73 2001
Alex Rodriguez 534 121 35 16.10 2006
Andruw Jones 531 116 36 15.07 2003
Jeff Kent 530 125 33 17.36 2000
Vinny Castilla 529 131 35 18.15 2004
John Olerud 529 103 14 16.82 2000
Mike Sweeney 527 144 29 21.82 2000
Jeff Kent 527 106 22 15.94 2001
Edgar Martinez 525 145 37 20.57 2000

Power-Speed Combination

So now Bonds may have failed a drug test for amphetamines and blamed it on teammate Mark Sweeney. Is Bonds saying he routinely consumes things from other people’s lockers without asking what’s in them?
Anyway, the guy I really feel bad for at this point is Hank Aaron. Will Aaron fly around the country to be on hand to congratulate Bonds for breaking the record? I’m not sure I would. Of course, it would be a terrible blow to Bonds to get snubbed by Aaron – Aaron took a lot of grief for passing Ruth, and while some of it was simply people miffed that the record would fall to a guy who wasn’t as good as Ruth, the worst of it was the outpouring of open and virulent racism. Bonds has consistently tried to paint all of his travails as springing from the same illegitimate sources – but it’s a lot harder to do that without Aaron’s blessing.

Ripken and Gwynn

Pinto says the Hall results are out early.
UPDATE: Here’s the voting results.
SECOND UPDATE: Five-year voting trend for the continuing candidates:

PLAYER 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007
Sandberg 49.2 61.1 76.2 IN IN
Sutter 53.7 59.5 66.7 76.9 IN
Gossage 42.1 40.7 55.2 64.6 71.2
Rice 52.2 54.5 59.5 64.8 63.5
Dawson 50.0 50.0 52.3 61.0 56.7
Blyleven 29.2 35.4 40.9 53.3 47.7
L. Smith 42.3 36.6 38.8 45.0 39.8
Morris 22.8 26.3 33.3 41.2 37.1
John 23.4 21.9 23.8 29.6 22.9
Garvey* 27.8 24.3 20.5 26.0 21.1
Concepcion 11.1 11.3 10.7 12.5 13.6
Trammell 14.1 13.8 16.9 17.7 13.4
Parker 10.3 10.5 12.6 14.4 11.4
Mattingly 13.7 12.8 11.4 12.3 9.9

* – Last year on the ballot for Garvey
(2006 ballot here, 2005 here, 2004 here, 2003 here).
Looks like the Goose almost has it locked up, as I expected due to Sutter’s election; Rice is also still in the hunt, Blyleven and Dawson still in limbo, with Blyleven increasingly likely to have to wait for the Veterans. Notice that reading the chart diagonally down from left to right produces some pretty vivid trends. Albert Belle, unjustly, falls off the ballot. McGwire gets just 23.5% of the vote, a very loud protest against a guy whose ballplaying credentials are undeniable.
THIRD UPDATE: I’m guessing neither of the two people who voted for Bobby Bonilla was Bob Klapisch. And a reader points out that Ken Caminiti got two votes; I will go out on a limb and say those two writers did not withhold their votes from McGwire.

The Middle Infielders

Ripken.jpg
If you are wondering where all my baseball blogging time has gone lately, wonder no more – I have a column up at The Hardball Times this morning examining the Hall of Fame cases of Cal Ripken and the other middle infielders. Like its companion piece on the slugging outfielders and first basemen, the article uses a fairly simple formula to translate batting statistics into a common context to enable easier comparisons of players from disparate parks and eras. Feel free to discuss the article here.
UPDATE: Matt Welch is still on the Bobby Grich train.

Put Him In Already

McGwire.jpg
I’m not going to belabor this point, which has been beaten to death by sportswriters who never met a high horse they couldn’t mount, but when they announce the Hall of Fame balloting this afternoon, I do hope they put in Mark McGwire. Yes, I accept that McGwire used illegal steroids, and on some level that was cheating even before it was formally against the rules of the game. McGwire should be embarrassed by that revelation, as should Palmeiro, Bonds, and Sosa (I’d say Canseco too, but Canseco brings to mind George Will’s line about Senators – that you can no more embarrass a Senator than a sofa). He should carry an informal asterisk, in discussions of the great ones. And everything possible should be done to get steroids out of the game.
But let’s be real here. Cheating of one sort or another has always been rampant in baseball – the old National League Orioles used extra baseballs in the outfield, skipped bases, mauled baserunners, etc. Multiple spitballers are in the Hall, including guys from the era when “everybody did it” (e.g., Ed Walsh) and guys who were clearly breaking the rules (Whitey Ford, Gaylord Perry, Don Sutton). Leo Durocher’s 1951 Giants made a science of illegal high-tech (for the 50s) sign-stealing. Do we really need to discuss corked bats here? Or, for that matter, segregation?
Ballplayers who cheat take risks; sometimes, that costs them, and costs their Hall of Fame cases as well. And Lord knows, many of the Hall’s most honored members had lengthy moral or legal rap sheets of one sort or another on and/or off the field. The Hall isn’t about retrospectively rewriting the competitive conditions of particular eras – it honors the best in the business at each point in time. And more than anything else, the Hall should not be about the moral agendas of sportswriters, who are hardly the most reliable judges on that score. McGwire put wins on the board, and in the time he played he didn’t get caught. Unlike Shoeless Joe, he never tried to take wins off the board. Hang a scarlet “S” on the man, that’s all fine with me. But the Hall will be poorer without him.

Landing the Unit

My discussion the other day of the Yankees’ deal of Randy Johnson overlooked the other side of the equation: what it means for the Diamondbacks, who have now shelled out $26 million for two years for Johnson’s age 43 and 44 seasons.
Money-wise that may sound crazy, but again, recall that the Mets have committed $12 million to El Duque, Adam Eaton is drawing $8 million a year, Ted Lilly $10, Barry Zito $17, etc. For the D-Backs this deal is driven by two factors, one rational, one non-rational.
The rational factor is the relative weakness of the NL West. If Johnson puts together a solid season this year, Arizona could suddenly become the frontrunner. That’s worth a gamble; Johnson at that price wouldn’t make sense for, say, Baltimore or Pittsburgh.
The non-rational factor (not to call it irrational, as it’s not) is the desire to cement in the public mind (including the folks in Cooperstown who put the hats on the plaques) the identification of Johnson (and perhaps his 300th win, if he has 20 more in him) with the Arizona organization. For a young organization, you can’t underestimate that desire to have a stamp in the history books.

Unit, Over and Out

Looks pretty likely now that Randy Johnson really will be shipped back to Arizona. Let’s do a little Q&A:
What are the Yankees trying to do right now?
Win now. I was going to say, “as always,” but with the age of Mariano, Posada, Giambi, and Mussina and knowing that the other key guys (A-Rod, Jeter, Abreu, Matsui, Damon, Pettitte) are also nearing the slow downward slope, the task will remain especially urgent. You simply can’t and shouldn’t rip this team up and rebuild, but you can decide to shave off a few older guys and try to reload.
Does this deal help them win now?
Johnson’s peripheral numbers weren’t horrible in 2006, but he clearly was often ineffective due to injuries, and his age makes him a poor long-term bet to stay healthy. But he’s a smart pitcher who now has solid control, and the enormous leverage he generates means that if he’s healthy he could easily be much more effective in 2006. Dealing him for one fairly effective middle reliever (32-year-old Luis Vizcaino) and prospects looks like a short-term setback. On the other hand, there’s also a significant chance that Johnson is finished, and with Mussina, Pettitte, Wang, and Igawa, the Yankees aren’t totally strapped for starters, though they once again face some real depth issues unless the Arm Fairy pays a visit to Carl Pavano.
The deal makes much, much more sense if they really are close to bringing back Roger Clemens, who remains as effective as any pitcher in baseball.
I don’t buy the idea that these Yankees can’t win with bad chemistry in the clubhouse, but of course, like Sheffield, Johnson is a royal pain in the butt and only likely to be moreso in his decline.
What would they get in return?
Vizcaino is a useful guy, though his career has been pretty inconsistent. In 2003, his HR/9 jumped from 0.67 to 2.32 in a year, pushing his ERA from 2.99 to 6.39. Last year, his K/9 shot up from 5.53 to 9.92 for no reason I’m aware of. Then again, unlike many of the current Yankees, he has a World Series ring.
The main prospect they would get is Ross Ohlendorf:

The 230-pound righty, described as “an absolute horse” by his college coach, ex-Yankee Scott Bradley, has a power sinker that should improve as he refines his breaking pitches. Ohlendorf pitched most of last year at Double-A and was a candidate to make the Diamondbacks out of spring training, but likely will start at Triple-A for the Yanks.

Between him and Wang, the Yankees could be heavily dependent on their infield defense before long – which makes more sense of the Minky signing, if Ohlendorf actually stands a chance of entering the rotation this year. Ohlendorf walked less than 1.5 men per 9 this year between AA and 1 start at AAA, though he threw 15 wild pitches, suggesting that the sinker may have more action than a AA catcher can handle. His K rates are solid but nothing special (7.36 for his minor league career) and he allows a lot of hits, so he’s probably more of a Wang-type pitcher. Hard to project from just the numbers if he is actually a major prospect or just rotation filler.
Teammate Stephen Jackson had better numbers than Ohlendorf in 2006 but posted a 5.33 ERA in A ball the previous year (in which he struck out 89 guys and allowed 205 hits), and so is unlikely to be ready for the Big Show until he’s built more of a track record. The Yanks get the Attorney General as well, but he seems like a backup shortstop at best.

Wrapping the Market

The last free agents are mostly falling in line now. The Hardball Times has a list of the stragglers; Geoff Young wonders why the Royals don’t pursue Craig Wilson, which is a fair question. KC is in rebuilding mode, of course, but Wilson, a career .265/.480/.354 hitter just turning 30, may come cheap and could replicate some of what they got from Matt Stairs in recent years. Keith Foulke signs with Cleveland, a deal that will turn entirely on his health. Doug Mieienckxieacawiczkx signs with the Yankees – Minky is no great shakes, but his .283/.411/.359 line last year is pretty well in line with his career numbers, and with his glove, even if he reverts to his Mets form with the bat he would be a solid caddy for Giambi if Giambi can play first. More questionable is whether it makes sense to DH Giambi to get Minky in the lineup in lieu of Melky, although Giambi’s knees (and glove) appear to make that necessary. There’s also talk that Minky could platoon with the perenially tantalizing Josh Phelps, acquired in the Rule V draft last month; Phelps is only 28 but as far removed from his prime as Minky, having had his last good year in 2003. He’s worth a flyer.

Joel the Closer

In 2000-01, the Mariners brought along two talented young pitchers: Joel Piniero and Gil Meche. Both have battled injuries and declining effectiveness ever since.
Meche signed with the Royals for 5 years and $55 million; now Piniero signs with the Red Sox for 1 year and $4 million.
The decision to make Piniero a closer is an eccentric one, since it formalizes the move of baseball’s best closer in 2006, Jon Papelbon, into the rotation (on the theory that a solid starter is more valuable than an invulnerable closer) and (subject to Craig Hansen as insurance) stakes the Sox bullpen on a guy who hasn’t been effective in years. And while Piniero’s contract is puny compared to his longtime teammate, $4 million is a lot for a mediocre mopup man. If he doesn’t stick as the closer, this move is a failure.
That said, it’s not a terrible gamble, if you believe as I do that closers are less valuable than starters and easier to breed from a failed starter. But a gamble it is.

Flipping the Calendar

As usual this time of year, I’m creating new categories for the new year. This is especially important for those of you who come here directly to the baseball category page, which should now be here. Update your bookmarks accordingly. Also note that posts about the 2008 presidential race will be in the Politics 2008 category.