30 June 2009

A World Series Good Luck Charm?

If Eric Hinske isn't the luckiest man in the world, it's because Ringo is still alive.

Two years ago, Hinske picked up a championship ring while collecting splinters for the Red Sox. The corner infielder/outfielder contributed two home runs and a .317 OBP pinch hitting and spot starting for the rouge hose.

Last year, Hinske chipped in 20 dingers but a mediocre .798 OPS for the AL champion Rays, while anchoring right field.

This year, the 31-year-old former Rookie of the Year was relegated to purgatory, signing a contract with the Pittsburgh Pirates, where he's blended seamlessly into the general level of futility. His World Series streak was certain to end at two.

Until today, when the Bucs sent Hinske to the Yankees for a pair of minor league non-prospects. Hinske will provide a lefty bat and badly-needed defensive versatility to the Yankees, and ironically replace injured Xavier Nady, whom the Pirates dumped for prospects last year.

The Pirates have nothing to lose in jettisoning Hinske, who has never replicated his impressive debut. However, it's doubtful that they got much in return in a pair of 23-year-old Single-A players. Casey Ericson has looked sharp here in Charleston out of the pen, but he's facing adolescents at this level. The same can be said for Florida State League outfielder Eric Fryer, batting .250 so far this year. Each has a long way to go in a short time for this to pay off for the Steel City.
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29 June 2009

Marinating in Seattle

Q. When should you alter your three-year rebuilding plan?
A. Definitely not midway through year one.

With their beloved but woeful Mariners above .500 and in the thick of the AL West and wild card races, Seattle fans are asking whether they should be buyers or sellers before the trading deadline. If GM Jack Zduriencik is asking himself that question, he was the wrong replacement for the train wreck that preceded him.

I'm betting that Zduriencik recognizes instead that the Mariners are a long way from contention and should not be mortgaging their future for high-priced rentals. This is a team that has just three good hitters, one of whom is hurt and another of whom is enjoying his career year. (The third, Ichiro, is back to his old magic and stirring in a soupcon of power too.) The team has been swept along on a wave of solid pitching, but finishing '09 with 81 wins would be an achievement.

The best evidence that Zduriencik understands this was his signing of the ghost of Ken Griffey Jr. Playing an injury-addled former great in order to woo fans is a luxury that only a team with no hope can afford. Predictably, Junior is batting .218 and limping around left field. Imagine a team in a pennant race trotting out a baseball card every night and enduring his replacement-level play.

The Mariners have a wonderful opportunity to trade good veterans in their walk years and reap some future gold. Take Russ Branyan, please, and send back a couple of potential sticks. Until the past 300 at-bats, Branyan was a strikeout machine with no position. This year he's hitting .303 with an OPS of 1.009 in a tough-hitting park while playing first base full time. At 33, he won't be around when the Mariners start contending, so they ought to shop him before he hits the discount rack.

Ditto Jarrod Washburn, who can give someone 100 more innings of 4.00 ERA. But at 35, his future is now, and with his contract expiring, Seattle should get some hitting in return. They'd like to do the same for Eric Bedard. Hey, maybe they could convince Baltimore to relinquish Adam Jones, George Sherrill and three minor leaguers for...oh, nevermind. That would reverse the transparently moronic swap engineered by then-GM Bill Bavasi last year. Having milked Bedard for a season-and-a-half of All-Star caliber visits to the Disabled List, the Mariners can only hope now to reel in a fraction of that value for him now. And by "now," I mean "if and when he comes off the DL and pitches well enough to sucker some contender into thinking he can make seven starts in a row."

That win-now-without-talent approach got Bavasi fired and sunk the Mariners to 101 losses in '08. Zduriencik won't make the same mistake. This year, the Mariners are sellers. But if they follow the plan, the future will be brighter.
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17 June 2009

Late June Quick Hits

Is this how we're going to do it... revealing each of the 104 steroid test failures one-at-a-time every couple of months? It's a great strategy because it keeps the story, which of course is already four years old, alive and well for another two-three decades. Looks like we're starting with the superstars and working our way down. I can't wait to find out in 2028 whether John Mabry and Neifi Perez were loading up.

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Kudos to the Yankee faithful for booing Alex Rodriguez during his current slump. Apparently they can remember his positive steroid test from four years ago, but not his hip surgery from three months ago. Or the way he carried the team for most of the season way back in 2007.

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Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports reports that Nationals manager Manny Acta will be canned as soon as the Lerner family can find a big name with whom to make a splash upon hiring. I know that Acta is a moron because his team is 14-97, but if he actually had some major leaguers on his team, he'd get smart real fast. From what I read, Acta is highly respected and has kept his cool in a terrible situation.

More importantly, has no one in the Lerner family -- a distant cousin, ne'er-do-well brother-in-law, next door neighbor, Lexus mechanic's daughter -- read Moneyball? Or studied successful franchises? Or paid attention to recent trends in managing? Or watched a baseball game this century? Had they done any of these things, they'd have discovered that the guy in the dugout is a middle-manager who has little influence on his team's record. The strategies are mostly rote decisions mapped out over 100 years of common experience. While a manager can really affect his team's emotional state, that's not useful unless they have Major League skills in the first place.

Moreoever, Lou Pinella has already vividly demonstrated in St. Petersburg how little impact a concensus genius can have on a roster of truck drivers and pedicurists. The Lerners should save the managerial splash and instead dip their toes into farm development. There's nothing wrong with their club that three good infielders, two top starters and a bullpen couldn't solve.

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Sometime soon, I'm going to write a piece on the Texas Rangers. They've chosen defense over offense and it's helped bulk up the chronically weak pitching and catapult the team into first place. It's the same formula that Tampa Bay used last year, which was the strategy embarked on by Billy Beane in Oakland after the world caught on to his preference for under-valued, inert, walk-happy sluggers . These kinds of strategies are pretty transparent and will require the aforementioned teams to alter the plan as soon as the whole baseball market catches on and begins driving up the price of defense.
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12 June 2009

Worst Strategy Ever

Taking a quick diversion from baseball...I just watched the Pittsburgh Penguins win game seven of the Stanley Cup finals with the worst game plan I've ever seen. Based on the one hockey game I saw this year, the coach of the Penguins, the coach of the Stanley Cup champs, ought to be fired.

The Pens battled with Detroit for a period and a half, created two critical turnovers and converted them both for a 2-0 lead. The Penguin coach then decided that his team should try to run out the clock. For the next 30 minutes of hockey, the Penguins simply played defense. Anytime they got the puck, they whacked it the other way.

In the third period, Pittsburgh went seven-and-a-half minutes before they had possession of the puck in Detroit's zone. It involved one skater and lasted four seconds. It was nine-and-a-half minutes -- half the period -- before a Pittsburgh defenseman set foot on Red Wing ice. Otherwise, the Wings deluged Marc-Andre Fleury.

The Detroit goal, which came with six minutes left, was inevitable. Did the Pittsburgh coach not understand that the best defense is running a play inside the other team's blue line? That the clock ran out on the defending champs does nothing to diminish the culpability of the Penguin coach.

We can't test this proposition, but I make it anyway: Had the game lasted another period, the Red Wings would have won by at least two goals. A team can sit on a lead just so long.

In a way, this game was a microcosm of an NHL season. The game announcers mentioned that the two teams had begun this season eight months ago. Apparently they believe that is a testament to the teams' perseverance. It is instead an indictment of a league that has ruined its sport. A meaningless regular season that filters out only the most horrible teams and utterly fails to establish any hierarchy going into the playoffs is followed by an interminable playoff season that ends a week before the summer solstice.

Ridiculous. In every way.
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07 June 2009

Jumping Off The Lidge

Cory Wade, a second-year reliever for the Dodgers, is 0-3 with a 5.12 RA so far this year. In 19 innings he's issued 10 free passes and surrendered 21 hits. Knowing that, you wouldn't want him coming into a close game in the eighth inning if you were a Dodger fan.

Until you discover that Wade had one bad outing in which he got shelled for seven runs. Other than that, Wade's held the opposition to four runs in 18 innings, for an RA of 2.00. Maybe you do want him pitching in the eighth inning of a close game.

Thus have I illustrated the problem with small sample size, which plagues analysis of relief pitchers even from one year to the next, and which brings us to the sad, sad tale of Phillies closer Brad Lidge.

Lidge was lights out for the World Champs last year, recording 41 saves in 41 chances and limiting opponents to a 2.21 RA. (Sometimes we hear his record described as "perfect," which we all understand to be hyperbole. On several occasions, Lidge entered games with three-run cushions and made it interesting, but nonetheless got the save.) This year he's turned into Brad "Jump Off The" Lidge, blowing six of 19 save opportunities and posting a 7.20 ERA. (His RA is a bit higher, but I imposed the mercy rule and declined to calculate it.)

It seems that something dramatic has happened, either to Lidge or to batters facing him, but one thing we know it's not is fatigue. He threw all of 69 innings last year and has racked up just 25 in '09. Something not particularly dramatic has occurred too. Think of Lidge as a starter and ignore the calendar for a moment. Then you have a guy who shut down the opposition for his first 10 or so starts before getting hammered in his next four or five. Suddenly the progression of these two seasons doesn't appear so odd. Pitchers go through hot streaks and slumps just as hitters do, make adjustments, gain or lose confidence, etc. The small number of batters faced by a closer in one baseball season just isn't enough to evaluate with much degree of confidence.

This is the reason that relievers are notoriously unpredictable from one year to the next, and why guys who are consistently spectacular, like Mariano Rivera and Trevor Hoffman, are so amazing. It should also serve as a cautionary tale before we anoint some new closer with superlatives. Are you listening Heath Bell?

The former Met has been a wonderful surprise for San Diego so far this year. Striking out more than a batter an inning with a WHIP under 1.00 has led to 16 saves and a 1.61 RA, great even in Petco. But it's all been in 21 innings -- three quality starts. It's possible that no batter has yet seen Bell more than once this season. We don't draw conclusions about starters after facing 86 batters and we should be careful about it with relievers.

The larger point, of course, is that extrapolating from a fraction of a season is a fool's errand. That's true to start a season, during the stretch run, in the playoffs, after an injury, or around the discovery of steroid use. The vagaries of luck and human psychology can transform a player's performance during any short stretch into something historic. But it doesn't necessarily mean anything. Just ask Cory Wade.
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06 June 2009

The Next 300-Game Winner Will Be...

"People tell me tomorrow's another day. No, today is another day. We don't know what tomorrow is going to be, and by the time we find out, it will be today." -- George Carlin

After Early Winn limped to his 300th career pitching namesake at the end of 1963, sportswriters began touting him as the "Last of the 300-Game Winners." Indeed, it took 19 years for Gaylord Perry to next cross that barrier. No one in 1963 would have identified Perry as the next candidate: at that point he had amassed a 4-7 lifetime record and a 4.66 ERA.

The 300-win refrain has been sung repeatedly since, most recently now. In the wake of Randy Johnson's 300th big unit last week, sports websites were buzzing with the chorus "no one will do it again." But someone pitching today will, I promise.

Certainly no one is in the pipeline. Only eight Major League hurlers are even halfway to the mark, and not one of them is a reasonable candidate. They include the likes of Jamie Moyer, Pedro Martinez and Tim Wakefield.

But Randy Johnson wasn't much of a candidate himself until pretty recently. The giant lefty didn't record his first win until he was 25 and was still 196 Ws short of 300 at age 32, with a creaky back on the resume to boot. What we've learned about great players is that, Ken Griffey Jr. and Frank Thomas not withstanding, it's how you finish much more than how you start. And we don't know how guys will finish until we get there, hence the Carlin quote at the top.

Someone pitching today is going to have a revival in his career's second act. Johan Santana, Jake Peavey and Roy Halladay are all longer on talent than on wins, but that could change. Any of them could remain productive through their 25th high school reunion and march slowly to that milestone. Or some youngin' who has yet to distinguish himself, say a Rick Porcello, Max Scherzer or Felix Hernandez, could find a groove in the 2010's.

Conditions are certainly more difficult than they were when Johnson first flung the horsehide 100 mph past some startled batter. Starters now record decisions in just 69% of their starts, down 12% (not 12 percentage points) since 1972, a loss of 47 decisions in 500 career starts. But the last four entries into the august 300-club -- Johnson, Glavine, Maddux and Clemens -- have all pitched the majority of their careers under similar conditions. So it's possible, even if present usage patterns persist.

By the time that day inevitably arrives, advanced baseball analysis could be the accepted norm. We'll understand the relative irrelevance of pitching wins -- not to mention saves, RBIs and batting average -- and focus on more revealing stats that better correlate with success. At that time, the big question about the next 300-game winner may not be "who?" but "who cares?"
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05 June 2009

An Ode to Raul

In the '09 off-season, the Phillies let Pat Burrell walk and signed Raul Ibanez to replace him for more money than Burrell got in Tampa. In this space and elsewhere, Phily management was excoriated for its less-for-more strategy. Ibanez is four years older, gets on base less and hits for less power. Dumb.

Until this year. Raul the Jewel is playing like his hair's on fire, which, given his coif, would mean his head was ablaze. He's batting .335 and smacking the ball around and out of Citizens Bank Park. He's "on pace" to hit 60 home runs and top his best previous slugging percentage by 150 points. The rejuvenation even extends to the field, where he seems to be handling left field with grace.

Burrell on the other hand, has battled injuries and compiled all of five extra base hits in more than 100 at bats. He's stunk worse than my analysis.

What's going on here? A few things seem obvious. Ibanez was hitting in a cavern in Seattle, surrounded by Ichiro and the seven dwarves. Put him in Philadelphia's Little League park, in the middle of Murderer's Row, in the Year of Pitching Dangerously, and you have a big ol' uptick in power.

Ibanez was always a good hitter, but you don't expect his career year to be his 14th Major League campaign. There's plenty of season left for him to slump back to expectations, but if he doesn't, we'll know some of the externalities affecting his performance. In the meantime Philly fans, enjoy what you've got. Sometimes even dumb decisions work out well; it's just not the way to bet.

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Getting A Clue in Pittsburgh

Trades lift the veil from a baseball front office regarding its philosophy and sophistication. The recent trade between Atlanta and Pittsburgh tells us that both franchises are moving in the right direction.

Deals involving players still in the larval stage are always hard to evaluate because what's changing hands is potential. In the Nate McLouth for three minor leaguers swap, we know what McLouth is, but few of us are in any position to make pass intelligent judgment on the others.

This much is clear, however: the days of Pirates brass grasping willy-nilly at bent straws is long gone. Ding dong the witch is dead. Not that happy days are here again -- the Bucs have another couple of losing campaigns in front of them -- but at least they have a clue. Trading players whose best days aren't ahead of them in order to stockpile prospects is a proven strategy. (See Marlins, Florida.) Whether these are the right prospects, we'll have to wait and see.

First, about McLouth and Atlanta. The Braves believe that Jordan Schafer is their future in center, but he's clearly not their present. He did a half-Mendoza with more strikeouts than at-bats (no, not really) in his 50 games with the big club before they did him the favor of returning him to the mother ship. The Mets and Phils have their issues, leading Atlanta GM Frank Wren to believe that his club can win the division this year with some wise personnel management. So he traded for a guy who is pretty clearly what he is: a .270 hitter with 30-home run power who can play a presentable center field. On the Braves, that qualifies as the superstar of the outfield when you consider the other flotsam and jetsam that washes up against Turner Field's walls.

By all accounts of the cogniscenti, McLouth's Gold Glove last year was a figment of the highlight reels and the imagination of baseball writers without imagination. They say he's a corner outfielder pressed into service, which is complimenting with faint criticism. McLouth is 27 and signed for three years at a reasonable price, making him an appealing catch for whom the Pirates hoped they could capture a windfall.

Whether they did is the open question. Gorkys Hernandez is an almost-ready outfielder with Brett Butler power. Charlie Morton is a promising pitcher, but so are lots of guys you never heard of. Jeff Locke, is a heat thrower who has yet to find the plate in Single-A. It could be, in the words of the Roches, a Big Nuthin'. It could pay dividends for years, just when the Pirates are ready to shine. What they gave up is a guy who will probably begin declining just when that time arrives.

So give the Pirates credit for their patience and recognition that you build a team from the bottom up. Give the Braves credit for striking while the iron is hot. Credit them further for demonstrating that sentimentality and winning are mutually exclusive, and dumping Tom Glavine in favor of better pitchers. Glavine is a HOFer and a good guy, but he's Atlanta's sixth, or maybe seventh, best pitcher. And that is not a guy who's going to help them win.

There's a decent chance that both these teams will lose more games than they win this year. But they both seem to have front offices who have the big picture in mind.
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03 June 2009

Rhymes With Power This Year

While you weren't noticing, the best catcher in baseball came off the DL and began playing like the best catcher in history. In his first 100 at bats, Joe Mauer has been Johnny Bench's daddy.

Mauer has missed half of the season so far, yet ranks 10th in the AL in home runs with 12. In 102 at bats. His BarryBondsian .431/.516/.873 is certainly unsustainable, but if it foreshadows improvement beyond his already notable career splits of .323/.405/.477, he'll win the MVP -- or at least deserve it. You already could have made a case for him in '05 and '08.

Mauer may just be on a tear, but if his 12 dingers mean anything, he's certainly going to slug at a much higher rate than ever before in his career. His season high for home runs prior to '09 is 13 -- in 521 at bats. If there's any wrap against Mauer, it's his lack of power. (Hey, I'm a poet and I had no prior knoweledge of the matter.) But he's unwrapping that criticism so far in '09. On top of that, Mauer's athleticism makes him a first-rate defensive backstop

Actually, there's another knock on Mauer: his health. He's missed more than 200 games since '04, and at 6'5" 215, there's probably just too much lower limb to be squatting for 1,000+ innings a season. It's too bad, because were he able to compile a dozen seasons in that vein, he'd be a lock for bronzing near Otsego Lake. The bar is higher at third base, where he'd probably end up, than at catcher, but if this year's surge is a foreshadowing, that won't be a problem.
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