31 May 2009

A Singles-Only Party

What do you make of a team that is without its most potent offensive weapon, yet nonetheless sends six of its eight batters (discounting the pitcher) to the plate with .300+ averages? Pretty powerful, huh?

What do you think of a batting order that boasts a cleanup hitter without a home run, pacing a lineup last in its league in long balls? Pretty weak, huh?

Thing is, it's the same team. It's the Dodgers, who tonight sent Juan Pierre, Rafael Furcal, Orlando Hudson, Russell Martin, Matt Kemp and Mark Loretta to take their cuts before they got to a batter who wasn't a speedy slap hitter. (Okay, I'm stretching it with Kemp, who clearly has some power; still, that's the Gashouse Gang at work there.)

Martin, slugging an emaciated .319, has nevertheless knocked in 20 runs. That tells you they're not only filling the bases up in front of him, they're getting within 180 feet of the plate. Rookie fill-in outfielder Jamie Hoffman, in 13 plate appearances, has seven RBI. (That's like a 300-RBI pace over a full year.) It's death to the opponent by a thousand cuts.

So you've probably deduced that the Dodgers rank second in the NL in runs scored despite playing in the park that put Don Drysdale in the Hall of Fame. Combined with the best pitching in the senior circuit, the Hollywood Nine has rocketed to the league's best record and an 8.5-game cushion over whatever flotsam and jetsam has bubbled up to second place in the NL West.

It's hard to keep up the singles hitting, but the Dodgers don't have to. Manny Ramirez returns to the lineup in a month. At least the East and Central are competitive.

b

30 May 2009

Off the Cliff

When Cliff Lee won the Cy Young award with a dominant 22-3 record last season, anyone paying attention had to know that he'd regress this year. So far, he's 2-6. So last year was a fluke.

Not.

In fact, surprisingly, he's pitched almost as well as he did last year. Really.

Lee has a 3.14 RA. That's ERA without regard for whether runs are "earned" or "unearned." Careful observers of the game have noticed that errors are but a small subset of defensive plays that could go either way depending on the fielder. Parsing out only those plays tilts the record in a fairly arbitrary way.

Moreover, the whole system of errors and earned runs is a swirl of capriciousness, from biased official scorers to transparently silly rules. Here's just one example: An error on a two-out play renders all succeeding runs "unearned," even those that are clearly the pitcher's responsibility. Even worse: pitchers get an ERA pass for runs created by errors they have committed.

So Lee's 3.14 RA, which ranks seventh in the AL this year, would have placed him third at the end of last season behind Daiske Matsusaka and...Cliff Lee. But his low 2009 RA is deceiving: he stumbled out of the gate, giving up 11 runs and 17 hits in his first two starts. Since then, he's channeled the '08 (not to mention the '05) Cliff Lee, relinquishing a stingy two runs a game.

But even RA has much to apologize for. It makes no provision for defense and is heavily influenced by the quality of relief pitching. It doesn't account for the parks a pitcher pitches in or the quality of opponents he faces.

Fortuntely, Progressive Field (nee': The Jake) is a fairly neutral park for run scoring and Lee's opponent roster, while considerably easier than Roy Halladay's -- who pitches in the brutal AL East --is nonetheless unremarkable. The Indian defense this year, according to the advanced metrics devised by the eggheads at Baseball Prospectus, has been just a tad below average. So let's dig deeper and see how he's doing.

Lee is eating 6 2/3rds innings per start and striking out 3 1/2 times as many batters as he walks. His 6.5 K per nine innings is another positive. Lee is putting way too many runners on base -- his 1.42 WHIP borders on lousy -- but he's offsetting some of that by keeping the ball in the park. Four home runs in 74 innings is excellent, and reminiscent of last year.

All this indicates that Lee is taking care of business on his end -- walks and home runs are entirely the province of the pitcher -- but being victimized by seeing-eye singles and bloop doubles. Ironically, this is the resume of a ground ball pitcher, but Lee tends towards the flyball. I don't really know what to make of that, but it appears all in all that his strong showing is the real thing.

Still, 2-6 stinks, right? Sure, but it's a team game, and the team around Lee in Cleveland gives him less support than his jock strap. In his last five outings, the Indians have plated a grand total of seven runs, en route to the worst record in the AL so far. Their power core -- Hafner, Sizemore, Peralta and Garko -- have socked 18 home runs combined, two more than the Rays' Carlos Pena.

In baseball, luck tends to even out over time. Lee withdrew a lifetime's share from the karma bank last year, so maybe he's paying it back in '09. But pitching deep into games, striking guys out and keeping the ball in the park are a great foundation for success. If he keeps it up, he'll have a great year, whether or not his won-loss record reflects it.

b

25 May 2009

It All Depends

With Yankee Stadium turning utility infielders into Babe Ruth, it's a good time to look at the importance of context. Fans and sportswriters have understood the concept of context in extreme situations, like Coors Field. But in more subtle cases, it all looks the same to them. That makes sense: I can tell Phyllis Diller from Jessica Alba, but Ashley Olsen could strip and dance the Monkey for me and I still wouldn't know her from Mary Kate. (Note to Ashley: it's nonetheless worth a try. I might be wrong.)

So far, baseballs are jumping out of the yard at about a 50% greater frequency at Yankee Stadium than at the average MLB park. It's not difficult to translate home runs across this environment; we can do that ourselves. Take a Yankee hitter who bops 25 home runs, 15 at home and 10 on the road. Assume for a second that he plays in an average collection of parks on the road. (It's an assumption that leaves us a few feet farther along the limb than we'd like to be considering the unbalanced schedule, but it actually won't affect the numbers much here.) Those 15 Bronx homers are the equivalent of 10 "average park" homers. Comparing this player to league norm, he's a 20-home-run hitter.

The same adjustments can be made for any stat in any stadium, as long as you know where a player plied his trade and how those ballparks affect offense. It would help you observe, for example, that while Raul Ibanez is raking like never before, he's played half his games in Citizens Bank, a known stat-expander, plus a series in the Bronx.

The same adjustment can be made across time as well, so that we can normalize Tony Oliva's pedestrian 1968 batting accomplishments of .289/.357/.477 with 18 homers and 68 RBI to an average year. Recall that 1968 was the Great Depression for offense, when the American League batting average was in the .230s. In fact, Oliva finished second to Yaz in the batting race, and when adjusted to the mean season his line looks like this: .315/.385/.569 with 26 homers and 87 RBI. Oliva was a legitimate mid-ballot MVP candidate.

Most parks and seasons walk the line more narrowly. Even Coors, post-humidor, pumps only about 10% more volume into batting stats. Offense stutters a few percent in Comerica and Telephone Company Field (S.F.); it sings a few percent louder in Fenway. If you're comparing Kevin Youklis to Miguel Cabrera, it can make a big difference that Youklis gains 15 points on his batting average and Cabrera loses 15 points because of his home park. It's important to account for these differences whenever we evaluate players.

By the way, I've greatly simplified the discussion. Some parks add doubles but bring back home runs. Some parks are pitching disasters during the day, but the wind blows differently at night. Lefties are advantaged at in some stadiums, but righties aren't, and so forth.

All of this leads naturally to Todd Helton, who recently notched his career's 2,000th hit. Helton has been a Rockie stalwart for a decade, an accomplished glove man at first and a power and average bat who gets on base with the regularity of a laxative commercial. His .329/.428/.573 slash stats with 316 dingers and 1146 RBI, stellar defense and more walks than strikeouts may be Hall-worthy under normal circumstances. But ordinary fans and baseball writers understand that his career has corresponded with a perfect storm of offensive conditions: the most offense-infused ball park in the most offense-infused era. Translating to normal, Helton's .297/.397/.513 line, 296 homers and 996 RBI don't get the knob turned on the door in Cooperstown, particularly when you account for a power brown-out in his 30s. Unless Helton can provide top-5 first base production into his 40s -- he's now 35 -- he'll be enshrined only in the Hall of Very Good. That will be one case where baseball writers can justifiably pat themselves on the back for understanding a nuance of the game.

b

18 May 2009

RBIculous

"Isn't a hitter's role to knock in runs?" asked Paul from Oakland, defending Ryan Howard's MVP candidacy after last season.

The AP writeup of yesterday's Rangers' 3-0 whitewashing of the Angels supports this view. In a two-sentence summary it notes that David Murphy's sacrifice fly helped Texas extend a seven-game winning streak.

The Texas left-fielder certainly broke a scoreless tie in the 7th inning with his fly ball. For that, the record books will wink at the out he produced. That's probably a bit of charity in the first place. I'm a lot more impressed with the Hank Blalock double that made the run possible. According to Paul and the summary writer, it's the RBI that counts.

Love of the RBI is derived from the quaint notion that this statistic probably came the closest to approximating who got the big hit in the key situation the most. After a few years of use, we stopped paying attention to the modifiers and simply equated RBI with clutch hitting.

In fact, modern analysis has shown this to be utter nonsense. RBIs occur at the intersection of opportunity and performance -- performance that's easily calculable in other, better, ways. David Murphy got credit for an RBI when all he did was avoid making a bad out.

By the way, in the 8th inning, Omar Vizquel tripled and scored the almost-as-important second run. That second run, whose existance David Murphy made less likely when he failed to reach base safely, increased the Rangers' chances of winning about half as much as the first. That's why Hank and Omar deserve the bulk of the offensive credit (granting in advance that Scott Feldman and a triumverate of relievers really won the game) and not David Murphy, RBI not withstanding.

b

16 May 2009

Wanted: Lost Testicles. Contact: Fox Sports

Did someone do a gonadectomy on Fox Sports since last week?

Don't ask why, but I was watching the last few minutes of This Week In Baseball when they took a retrospective gander at the 1970 All-Star game and the incomparable Pete Rose. Endlessly replaying the famous crash at the plate with Ray Fosse that won the game, they ran countless teammates and opponents paying homage to his competitiveness and all-out play.

They never once mentioned that the play effectively ended Fosse's career. Or even hurt him. The show was a total whitewash of what was a fairly controversial play.

Then the Mets-Giants game, with Kenny Albert and Eric Karros at the mics. At least there'd be truth to power on this broadcast, I mentioned to a wife who, were she a ceramic dish, would have evinced equal interest.

It took just two batters for Karros to demonstrate that he would apply the same apologist philosophy to his broadcast as I'd seen on the MLB-produced propaganda piece that preceded it.

The Mets led off the game against Randy Johnson with a pair of singles and in each case, the runner stole second on Giant backstop Bengie Molina. On the second play, a decent throw would have nailed Alex Cora, but it faded high and right for 13th consecutive victimization of Molina in two games and one inning. Clearly, the Mets have determined that Molina's gun is shooting blanks -- for whatever reason -- and are exploiting it.

Karros, however, would have none of that. He twisted himself into an double-jointed pretzel to defend Molina, opining instead that the Mets were stealing off the pitcher. Albert didn't add or subtract from this monologue, I assume because the illogic was so stunning that he decided simply to disassociate himself from it.

Next, Carlos Beltran stroked a fly ball to center that Fred Lewis's glove successfully eluded for a double. Instead of first and second with one out, the Mets had a man on second with none out and two runs in thanks to beneficent defense on the San Francisco side. Nary a word from the broadcast team, lest it ruffle feathers.

But Karros wasn't done. Later he mentioned that the Giants were floating above the .500 mark purely on their pitching and needed to "be more consistent at the plate."

The Giants are plenty consistent at the plate. They have no hitting. The problem isn't that their big boppers have yet to get untracked; their problem is that they're genetically bopless. Their best hitter is...nobody. Maybe Pablo Sandoval, a rookie third baseman inhabiting Cecil Fielder's body, will finish the season as their most potent bat. He has all of three dingers to this point. Cleanup hitter Bengie Molina has yet to walk this year. Prize free agent signing Aaron Rowand is an average-hitting second baseman, which would be fine were he not a center fielder.

This isn't the players' fault. GM Brian Sabean has assembled a roster that has no chance of supporting Lincecum, Cain, Johnson, et. al. But Eric Karros, whom I'd never previously noted to be an apologist, wasn't prepared to tell you any of that. He seems to have lost at least one and possibly both of his testicles.

Isn't Fox Sports supposed to be the edgy network? The no-hold-barred sports channel? The folks who reflect the "he sucks" approach of the average fan? Someone had better tell those responsible for their baseball coverage, because it's more white bread than June Cleaver.

p

13 May 2009

Who's Up First?

Remember the housing boom and the stock market boom that preceded the current economic meltdown? That's what's going to happen to Dodgers fans currently thrilled to have Juan Pierre leading off.

Pierre is currently hitting .404/.456/.505 and making Chavez Ravine go all Alzheimer's about Manny Ramirez. With the Dodgers sporting the best record in baseball, fans can be forgiven for thinking Joe Torre is the Stephen Hawking of baseball.

Problem is, Juan Pierre is a leadoff hitter like I'm a Mariachi band. Sure, I taught myself to make some sounds on the trumpet when I was younger, but I've lost most of what little ability I once had. Pierre's on base average the last four years have been .326, .330, .331 and .327. As Bill Parcells pointed out, that's who Pierre is.

Who Pierre is, is not a leadoff hitter. A guy who puts you in the one-out, no-one-on hole two thirds of the time is a number eight batter. The fact that he can't reach the warning track in two swings shouldn't count as a stroke in his favor when considering who should be the appetizer in the lineup. (Twice in his career he's snagged 13 triples in a season. That's his lifetime home run total.)

When Pierre regresses to his rightful place -- .280/.330/.350 -- he's going to cost LA runs in the #1 spot. With Andre Ethier (.298/.367/.482 lifetime), Matt Kemp (.297/.341/.474) and even Mark Loretta (.297/.362/.398) in the lineup, it's not as if Torre doesn't have alternatives. It's that he made a bad choice that's going to cost his team a game sometime before Ramirez returns.b

08 May 2009

Baloney Being Baloney

As a former reporter, the part of the Manny Ramirez saga that bothers me most is probably different from the one that bothers you.

I long ago stopped worrying about steroids in baseball. Gaylord Perry cheated his whole career, but I don't recall any0ne ever bemoaning his diminished ethical standard, his abdication of role model responsibility or his unholy tinkering with the record books.

Moreover, we now have a critical mass of Hall of Fame candidates with steroids links: Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Alex Rodriguez, Rafael Palmeiro, Roger Clemens, Ivan Rodriguez and now Manny Ramirez. Are we really going to keep them all out? This list includes three of the greatest players of all time.

Contrary to what we've been hearing, Ramirez's suspension is not a black eye for baseball; just the opposite. It shows that baseball drug testing works. In fact, Ramirez didn't test positive for steroids; he got caught trying to hide steroid use. That demonstrates a certain amount of nuance and sophistication in the baseball drug testing.

What bothers me is the disingenuousness and the incredibility of his response. Of course, Manny himself did not respond or in any way face the public for his suspension. His statement was written by his handlers and dispersed to the media without his involvement. Ramirez himself is off to his mansion -- or one of them -- without ever having to answer questions about steroid use. Say what you like about Alex Rodriguez; he at least stood up to the grilling that followed revelations of his steroid use. (The disingenuousness of his answers is also a matter for discussion, but for another time.)

Then there is the utter fatuousness of Manny's claims. It's hard to imagine that Scott Boras and his braintrust of publicists, lawyers and other truth-twisters believed that the statement they released would slow the rush of recrimination. The statement claims that Ramirez was prescribed HCG for an unnamed medical problem. Please.

I'm no chemist, but from what I gather, there is no medical condition for which a world class male athlete would be prescribed HCG. And I'm no psychologist, but I play a human on TV, and were I facing the opprobrium due Manny Ramirez for allegedly committing the cardinal sin of my profession, I would be as specific -- not as vague -- as possible if I had a legitimate defense.

There is something else about his explanation that rankles. It's the newest fauz apology strategy: not taking responsibility by claiming to accept it. The statement asserts that Ramirez must ultimately accept responsibility for his "mistaken" use of this masking agent following a a description of how it was his physician's fault. This is the latest twist on the non-apology apology, in which someone not the least bit contrite regrets that people were hurt. Says mistakes were made. Apologizes to family and friends, but not to the victim. Etc.

I don't really care if Manny Ramirez is using a drug that makes him a better baseball player. I don't really care that Manny Ramirez is full of shit. I am insulted that Manny Ramirez and his entourage cynically expect that I'm stupid enough to believe the steaming pile they have served up for my consumption.

b

06 May 2009

Now Pitching, Nohit Estrada

I noticed that the Tigers got a couple of big hits from Clete Thomas last night. I highly approve of baseball players named Clete. I think there should be more of them.

I remember the career of the only other Major League Clete -- Clete Boyer, the slick-fielding, weak-hitting third sacker whose brother Ken played for the Cards. How weak hitting? In 1964, while playing all season for the World Champion Yankees, he batted .218 with eight homers and 10 doubles and struck out 98 times. Man, he should have changed his name to Glove.

Which makes me wonder where all the Spikes are. There was Mariners/Expos shortstop Spike Owen, who slammed 46 home runs in a 13-year career, and a handful of yesteryear Spikes, but no stars. Shouldn't there be some scrappy, hard-nosed second baseman named Spike? That really should have been Ty Cobb's name.

In the 60s and 70s, all the professional athletes named Homer were football players. That doesn't make any sense. Homer should be a Rob Deer type, a guy who either strikes out, walks or hits the ball a country mile. Homer is a guy whose fielding ability is tailor-made for DH because when in he's stuck out in left field, at least one of his feet is trying to play right field. In addition, Homer runs the bases like a 1984 Vega with two misfiring spark plugs.

Alas, the only Homers in my lifetime have been second baseman Homer Bush, who didn't, and Homer Bailey, a pitcher, of all things. True to form, Bailey surrendered nearly two bombs per nine innings last season, which contributed to his 0-6, 7.93 performance for the Reds. Really, who's advising this guy? Play the field, HOMER!

Now Biff Pocoroba, his mother knew what she was doing. A guy named Biff ought to be blocking home plate without the ball while the tying run bears down from second on a single. I don't know how many home plate collisions Biff participated in during his 10-year Braves career, but I'll bet every one of them turned him into a walking onomatopoeia.

I'd like to see a team of Rosin Johnson on the mound with Squat McGillicudy behind the plate. Stretch Larson would play first with Flip Foiders, Relay Benson and Cap Landsteen around the horn. We'd have an outfield of Lefty Newhouse, Shallow Jones and Canon Templeton around in right. Woody Ashton would be our DH and Penn Teller would be our closer. The manager would be Trixie Hobberhide. Now that's a team that could win...something.

All of which makes me wonder why Mitt Romney didn't catch on. Heh heh.

b

05 May 2009

April Showers Bring May Ignorance

Steroids must be back. That must be it, right? Except, Alex Rodriguez and Sammy Sosa and Rafael Palmeiro and Barry Bonds are all out of the game at the moment. Maybe pitchers have stopped taking steroids. Maybe that's it.

Or the ball is even more corked than before. No, no, it's the new Yankee Stadium, which forgot the humidor. Or good weather in the East. or was it the West? Or a lack of good pitching. That's always a handy reason.

Yes, the baseball establishment, prompted by baseball "journalism," has been doing its Tasmanian Devil routine to explain the increase in offense this April in comparison to last year. The ex post facto theorizing is an amusing spectacle when you know that people are trying to explain something that doesn't actually exist.

"There have been a lot of pitchers on the disabled list," noted Joe Torre. Curtis Granderson said the balls are juiced. Mike Sciosia postulates that pitchers aren't yet sharp.

They are trying to make sense of a 6.8% increase in runs scored this April and a 17% hike in home runs compared to last year. Batting average is up, ERAs are up, walks are up. They've all skyrocketed to their highest rate in...three years.

That's right, offense is actually down compared to 2006, which was up from '05 which was down from '04 which was up from '03 which was down from '01 and '00. Since the turn of the century, long balls are off 20%, batting average is down seven points and ERAs are more than 30 points better. Since 2001, April's offensive performance have been all over the lot.

What does all this tell us? It tells us a grand total of nada, nil, zilch, zero, bupkus, goose egg and jack. Players, teams and even whole leagues vary in their performance from year to year a few percentage points one way or the other for no particular reason -- or at least for no reason that we can discern. An uptick one year in offense doesn't even guarantee that offense will be up that year, much less suggest a trend.

Let's just say there have been a slew of grand slams this year and note that the Yankees' red zone defense was lacking against Cleveland and Boston. And leave it at that.

b

He's A Switch Hitter Too

You may have heard about Pat Venditte, the switch-pitching reliever for the Class A Charleston RiverDogs. You may have heard about him because CBS News has done a shout out on him and YouTubers worldwide are all a-twitter about how he goes both ways, not that there's anything wrong with that.

Venditte is a Creighton product now in his second year of minor league ball. He wears a unique six-fingered glove that allows him to change hands from batter to batter. As you might expect, he throws southpaw to lefties and right-handed to righties. The South Atlantic League had to create special rules for his match-ups against swith-hitters. (The batter gets the advantage.)

Venditte is a phenomenon, but he's also a phenom. Unaffected by all the buzz, Venditte is buzzing through the minors after chopping down college opponents. In his first year of pro ball for the Yankees' Low-A team on Staten Island, he surrendered just 13 hits in 33 innings, walking 10 and mowing down 42 en route to 23 saves. His 0.83 ERA earned him selection as Short Season Pitcher of the Year.

The 2009 season is young, but it's already clear that Venditte belongs at Double-A. In 12 innings he's whiffed 21 batters and has yet to give up an earned run.

Now, objects in your mirror may be closer than they appear. Venditte, who turns 24 in June, is a man pitching to 19-year-old boys at this level. Ther are no 24-year-old prospects in Single-A. He needs to maintain his dominance through Triple-A -- and do it soon -- if he has any hope of making the majors. Batters who can't hit like-handed pitchers have been filtered out by the upper levels, which will force Venditte to succeed on the basis of his pitches, not his novelty.

Will Venditte make The Show? We can only hope. Because oh, what a show it would be.

b

03 May 2009

It's Great To Be With A Wiener

It is not news that winning skews everything. The way we consider player performance -- both on a career and a game level -- is largely dependent on the final outcome, which is, of course, the result of at least 18 and usually closer to 25 different player contributions.

There are still Hall of Fame voters who detract from baseball players' career accomplishments for being unfortunate enough not to play for a World Champion. So for example, it is somehow Mike Mussina's fault that the entire Oriole lineup retired around him in the first part of his career and that the Yankees got old, slow and saddled with bad contracts in the second part.

I have heard basketball experts say that Lebron James needs to win a championship to earn the global icon status he covets. That makes sense to me because one superstar hoopster can completely change the fate of his team. But as I have noted at length, this is obviously not true in baseball: even Babe Ruth (the outfielder) only batted 1/9th of the time, never recorded a single strikeout, turned an infield double play or threw out a runner stealing second. Current statistical analysis shows that even a league MVP adds only eight wins or so to his team, relative to a replacement level player. That means that an otherwise average squad saddled by a weak link at first base, for example, could sign Albert Pujols to play that position and expect to win 89 games. Not exactly paradigm shifting.

The writeup of the Mets' May 1 win over the Phillies was headlined "Murphy, Pelfrey Lead Mets..." and described Mike Pelfrey's pitching performance as "effective." Pelfrey got through just five innings and recorded one out in the sixth before being yanked. He surrendered seven hits and three earned runs, walked four and struck out no one. Most importantly, apparently, he was credited with the win.

Let's put Pelfrey's performance in perspective. He did not achieve a "quality start." He placed a four-innning burden on his relief corps. His game ERA is 5.06. He did not have great control. He was not fooling hitters and as a result was relying entirely on his defense to record outs. Had the Mets lost, would Pelfrey's performance have been described as "effective"?

It's worth noting that the same coverage never mentioned JA Happ and Chris Condrey, who threw three shutout innings for the Phils. Their team, after all, lost. It attributed some of the Met victory to Daniel Murphy's two run jack, his only hit in five at-bats, but gave no credit to Chase Utley's seventh inning blast, which accompanied two walks in four plate appearances.

The moral of the story is this: if you want an accurate accounting of a player's performance, ignore the final score. That goes for one game, one season, one career and most of all, a pitcher's won-lost record.

b