Has there ever been a team assembled quite like the 2013 Toronto Blue Jays? At 73-89 last season, the Jays continued a 20-year trend in which they finished third or lower in the AL East 19 times. The team was hampered mostly by a dearth of starting arms and a ghastly array of division rivals.
Following the 2012 season, GM Alex Anthopoulos made the bold gamble to strike while the Yankees and Red Sox were cold. New York remains a threat, but the team is trimming budget as it ages. Boston is in retreat, Baltimore in regression and Tampa in St. Pete. The sun is shining for a year or two as the Ontarions to make hay.
To a roster leaning heavily on boppers Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion, and closer Casey Janssen, Anthopoulos overlayed the core of the Miami Marlins. After busting in Florida, Jose Reyes, Josh Johnson and Mark Buehrle were shipped north to join R.A. Dickey from the Mets and Melky Cabrera from exile, along with backups Emilio Bonifacio and Macier Izturis.
Will it work? Is that enough? They play 162 games to answer such questions. Certainly there is sufficient muscle on this squad to win the division. The three newcomers on the mound are a nice mix of veteran inning munchers and one-time phenom, joining Brandon Morrow fresh off his 2012 coming-out ceremony (a 2.96 ERA in 21 starts.) Most GMs would trade their luxury suite dinner spread for a rotation of Dickey, Buehrle, Johnson, Morrow and whoever.
On paper, the lineup is stacked. Aside from first base, Jays manager John Gibbons will write the name of an above-average player at every starting position, particularly if centerfielder Colby Rasmus and catcher JP Arencibia nibble at their potential.
The bench has some working parts, with Bonifacio a nice back-up plan at almost any spot on the field. Bullpens are notoriously fickle and hard to predict, but the presence of several former starters -- Brett Cecil, JA Happ and Carlos Villenueva -- adds some stability.
Yet there's trepidation. The Reyes-Johnson-Buehrle play was a flop in the NL, and now it's on the road in the brutal AL Beast. Miami's signings were generally considered folly; why does Toronto get a pass for paying the back ended portion of them?
And there are questions. Dickey's knuckler has flummoxed, but will it knuckle in a dome? Is Johnson fully repaired? Can Bautista stay on the field? Were Melky's 2012 exploits simply a PED-fueled quirk? Is Encarnacion a slugger (42 homers last season) or has the clock struck midnight (38 homers combined in the two previous seasons)?
More to the point, can a 73-win team suddenly become a 93-win team? The Brewers exercised a similar strategy two years ago, knowing that Prince Fielder would take his salads elsewhere the following season. They bet the house -- or more accurately, the farm system -- on Zack Greinke and Shaun Marcum, who helped deliver 96 wins and the division before Fielder bolted and Milwaukee tripped back into the pack in 2012.
Alex Anthopoulos is betting millions of Canadian dollars that the formula, expertly applied, can work again, even against the toughest competition. And he's betting that there's no time like the present. If you love baseball more than the Rays and Yankees, you're rooting for him to be right.
23 February 2013
17 February 2013
Who Is Baseball's L.A. Lakers?
It's said that everyone has a twin somewhere in the world. Does every baseball player and team have a twin in another sport? As the NBA interrupts its interminably unproductive regular season for an All-Star exhibition, it's a good time to determine where there are analogs across leagues.
For example, which MLB team is most likely to repeat the work of the 2012-13 L.A. Lakers, a Ferrari of assembled talent playing like a jalopy? It seems as if the Toronto Blue Jays are setting themselves up for that, having imported the failed Miami Marlins' roster for a run at an AL East title. But it feels different with the Blue Jays, perhaps because they're no longer commanded by General Footshooter and perhaps because they are a year removed from novelty.
MLB's Angelinos are both candidates for this comparison because both have spent lavishly on talent and are expecting upper echelon results. Of the two, the Dodgers seem more vulnerable to under-performance because their imports seem less strategic and they're starting with a weaker base.
This year's Miami Heat is the MLB squad with a world class roster and championship-or-bust designs. Perennially that would be the Yankees, but management's efforts to put the payroll on a diet have trimmed some of the excess talent from the Bombers this season. The L.A. Angels feel like the team built for both the short and long haul and most likely to elicit yawns for winning the World Series.
The baseball version of the San Antonio Spurs is the St. Louis Cardinals. Both franchises have been successful for two decades despite small-market profiles and middling payrolls. They both have management with aptitude and vision, strong on-field (court) leadership, a culture of modesty and excellence, and star players who act like professionals. The Spurs no longer have the most talent, but they have the best record in the NBA so far. The Cards never had the most talent, but won two titles in six years and got to Game 7 of the pennant last year after losing the best player on the planet to free agency.
The Phoenix Suns are a once-proud franchise now in some semblance of disarray. Their 17-36 record so far this year looks a lot like the Boston Red Sox' final month of 2011. Also like the Sox, they have no pitching.
It's too early to tell who will be baseball's version of the Chicago Bulls, treading water until their ascendant superstar's triumphant return. But their opposite is in New York. The Yankees are hoping to make waves while avoiding the return of their dimmed star.
We won't even mention the Charlotte Bobcats and Pittsburgh Pirates. Their fans have suffered enough.
LeBron and Kobe have no equal in horsehide. Prince Albert still generally needs a last name, has never been a brand and is no longer the unquestioned king of the game. But Mike Trout, Bryce Harper and Stephen Strasburg appear to be the Kevin Durant and Derrick Rose of baseball. Like Rose and Durant, the baseball trio has made the All-Star team every year they've spent in the league. Maybe the Bulls should have shut down Rose in last spring's playoffs to avoid catastrophic injury.
Tim Duncan and Derek Jeter are sports doppelgangers. Bright, beloved, biracial, respectful Hall of Famers with lots of team-based jewelry. Neither ever says anything controversial. Neither has been able to reach a grounder hit six feet to his left for eight years.
Jarvas Varnardo averages less than a point per game for the Heat and less than a third of a rebound as the last guy off the bench for Miami. But he and Dwayne Wade will sport the same ring if Miami repeats as NBA champs. That would make him the Eli Whiteside of basketball. The 32-year-old catcher backed up Buster Posey last season for the World Champion Giants -- which is like being Robert Deniro's understudy. Whiteside got into 12 games with a double, a walk, a .396 OPS and a ring. And then he got waived.
Finally, Charles Barkley has Curt Schilling, the retired great who can't seem to shut up. Actually, Barkley has Barkley and Schilling has Schilling, which might be the crux of the issue.
For example, which MLB team is most likely to repeat the work of the 2012-13 L.A. Lakers, a Ferrari of assembled talent playing like a jalopy? It seems as if the Toronto Blue Jays are setting themselves up for that, having imported the failed Miami Marlins' roster for a run at an AL East title. But it feels different with the Blue Jays, perhaps because they're no longer commanded by General Footshooter and perhaps because they are a year removed from novelty.
MLB's Angelinos are both candidates for this comparison because both have spent lavishly on talent and are expecting upper echelon results. Of the two, the Dodgers seem more vulnerable to under-performance because their imports seem less strategic and they're starting with a weaker base.
This year's Miami Heat is the MLB squad with a world class roster and championship-or-bust designs. Perennially that would be the Yankees, but management's efforts to put the payroll on a diet have trimmed some of the excess talent from the Bombers this season. The L.A. Angels feel like the team built for both the short and long haul and most likely to elicit yawns for winning the World Series.
The baseball version of the San Antonio Spurs is the St. Louis Cardinals. Both franchises have been successful for two decades despite small-market profiles and middling payrolls. They both have management with aptitude and vision, strong on-field (court) leadership, a culture of modesty and excellence, and star players who act like professionals. The Spurs no longer have the most talent, but they have the best record in the NBA so far. The Cards never had the most talent, but won two titles in six years and got to Game 7 of the pennant last year after losing the best player on the planet to free agency.
The Phoenix Suns are a once-proud franchise now in some semblance of disarray. Their 17-36 record so far this year looks a lot like the Boston Red Sox' final month of 2011. Also like the Sox, they have no pitching.
It's too early to tell who will be baseball's version of the Chicago Bulls, treading water until their ascendant superstar's triumphant return. But their opposite is in New York. The Yankees are hoping to make waves while avoiding the return of their dimmed star.
We won't even mention the Charlotte Bobcats and Pittsburgh Pirates. Their fans have suffered enough.
LeBron and Kobe have no equal in horsehide. Prince Albert still generally needs a last name, has never been a brand and is no longer the unquestioned king of the game. But Mike Trout, Bryce Harper and Stephen Strasburg appear to be the Kevin Durant and Derrick Rose of baseball. Like Rose and Durant, the baseball trio has made the All-Star team every year they've spent in the league. Maybe the Bulls should have shut down Rose in last spring's playoffs to avoid catastrophic injury.
Tim Duncan and Derek Jeter are sports doppelgangers. Bright, beloved, biracial, respectful Hall of Famers with lots of team-based jewelry. Neither ever says anything controversial. Neither has been able to reach a grounder hit six feet to his left for eight years.
Jarvas Varnardo averages less than a point per game for the Heat and less than a third of a rebound as the last guy off the bench for Miami. But he and Dwayne Wade will sport the same ring if Miami repeats as NBA champs. That would make him the Eli Whiteside of basketball. The 32-year-old catcher backed up Buster Posey last season for the World Champion Giants -- which is like being Robert Deniro's understudy. Whiteside got into 12 games with a double, a walk, a .396 OPS and a ring. And then he got waived.
Finally, Charles Barkley has Curt Schilling, the retired great who can't seem to shut up. Actually, Barkley has Barkley and Schilling has Schilling, which might be the crux of the issue.
11 February 2013
A Smoaking Gun and Other Stories
At the risk of putting too fine a point on a previous post -- aw hell, there's no risk: we're going to shave the nub to within a millimeter of its life -- Baseball Prospectus released their projections for MLB players today and here's what the Tarot cards suggest for Justin Smoak:
.224/.313/.371 with 14 HR in 470 plate appearances for the Mariners this season. With weak baserunning and slightly below average defense, Smoak grades out essentially to replacement-level at first base, even after factoring in the park he plays in.
In other words, you can pick up any old Tom, Dick or Justin Smoak off the waiver wire and expect about the same production.
Add in the missing 150 plate appearances, which suggest either an injury or a demotion; in either case his contribution during those 30 games is zero.
By comparison, to which the previous post alludes, Matt Wieters's forecast comes in at .259/.330/.422 with 19 HR in 588 plate appearances while dinging him slightly on defense behind the plate. Wieters is worth a pair of wins against replacement in this forecast, which makes him a solid regular but not a star.
These are projections, not predictions, so even if Smoak breaks out and Wieters breaks down, the system can't be said to be "wrong." (In fact, the system includes the odds of breakout and collapse as well, but the math is obtuse.) It just means that players who have performed the way these two have at their ages in the past have tended to perform like the projection going forward.
According to BP's projection system, the top 10 players offensively in 2013 will be:
It's also interesting to see the system projecting a return to stardom for Hanley Ramirez, whom it ranks as the 21st best offensive player. That is based on the Dodgers leaving him at short and giving Dee Gordon the seasoning he needs in Albuquerque.
The system also sees a return to relevance for newly shorn Tim Lincecum with a 3.10 ERA in 174 innings and a return to normalcy for Gio Gonzalez with a 3.67 ERA and the same value to his team as Milwaukee's Mike Fiers.
As for the unprojectable R.A. Dickey? Canada won't want to hear this. The system sees a 38-year-old moving to a tough division in the tougher league and projects 224 innings of a 4.41 ERA with a below .500 record. But then, R.A.'s beaten the odds before.
This is the kind of conjecture we have at our disposal as pitchers and catchers loosen up in Florida and Arizona.
.224/.313/.371 with 14 HR in 470 plate appearances for the Mariners this season. With weak baserunning and slightly below average defense, Smoak grades out essentially to replacement-level at first base, even after factoring in the park he plays in.
In other words, you can pick up any old Tom, Dick or Justin Smoak off the waiver wire and expect about the same production.
Add in the missing 150 plate appearances, which suggest either an injury or a demotion; in either case his contribution during those 30 games is zero.
By comparison, to which the previous post alludes, Matt Wieters's forecast comes in at .259/.330/.422 with 19 HR in 588 plate appearances while dinging him slightly on defense behind the plate. Wieters is worth a pair of wins against replacement in this forecast, which makes him a solid regular but not a star.
These are projections, not predictions, so even if Smoak breaks out and Wieters breaks down, the system can't be said to be "wrong." (In fact, the system includes the odds of breakout and collapse as well, but the math is obtuse.) It just means that players who have performed the way these two have at their ages in the past have tended to perform like the projection going forward.
According to BP's projection system, the top 10 players offensively in 2013 will be:
- Albert Pujols
- Joey Votto
- Ryan Braun
- Miguel Cabrera
- Mike Trout
- Troy Tulowitzki
- Adrian Gonzalez
- Andrew McCutcheon
- Robinson Cano
It's also interesting to see the system projecting a return to stardom for Hanley Ramirez, whom it ranks as the 21st best offensive player. That is based on the Dodgers leaving him at short and giving Dee Gordon the seasoning he needs in Albuquerque.
The system also sees a return to relevance for newly shorn Tim Lincecum with a 3.10 ERA in 174 innings and a return to normalcy for Gio Gonzalez with a 3.67 ERA and the same value to his team as Milwaukee's Mike Fiers.
As for the unprojectable R.A. Dickey? Canada won't want to hear this. The system sees a 38-year-old moving to a tough division in the tougher league and projects 224 innings of a 4.41 ERA with a below .500 record. But then, R.A.'s beaten the odds before.
This is the kind of conjecture we have at our disposal as pitchers and catchers loosen up in Florida and Arizona.
08 February 2013
Now You See Him; Now You Don't
"Past results are not indicative of future returns."
It's the standard caveat rolled out by every mutual fund, after touting its polymath insights and market-beating deliverables. And it's part of the fine print we ignore while pouring our life savings into Bernie Madoff's trough, or the Parkcentral Hedge Fund.
The retirement this week of Brandon Webb reminds us that everyone who makes a living firing a baseball overhand should wear a tag with the same warning.
Webb is a strong-armed, 230-pound right-hander who commanded the mound from 2003-2008. He hurled more than 1300 innings over six years for the Diamondbacks to the tune of a 3.26 ERA, a Cy Young and two runner-ups. In short, he was a stud on a Hall of Fame path.
Then, in his first start of 2009, a funny thing happened to his shoulder. Well, not funny if you're Brandon Webb, or the guy cutting the checks owed to him for 2009 and 2010, which totaled $15 million. Four innings into the '09 season the Arizona workhorse was done for the year.
And for 2010.
And for 2011.
And for 2012.
And now, for evermore.
After five 200-frame seasons, the fraying of Brandon Webb's labrum and rotator cuff prevented him from tossing another MLB pitch. He tried a comeback in '11, but 12 unproductive Double-A innings put him back under the knife and on the DL.
Think back to Opening Day 2009. Brandon Webb's on the hill, arguably the best pitcher in the game entering his age-30 season. He wears consistency, sturdiness and reliability like a second glove. Any reasonable extrapolation of his career, even if you build in decline, suggests a solid return on investment.
And then, poof!
It's should serve as a a red flag to teams thinking of handing the car keys to their seemingly-indestructible ace pitchers. The Mariners are poised to guarantee Felix Hernandez a week of federal budget deficits for his next, undoubtedly awesome, seven years of service. If you were going to bet on anyone to deliver for that long, King Felix would be the guy.
But so was Bernie Madoff.
It's the standard caveat rolled out by every mutual fund, after touting its polymath insights and market-beating deliverables. And it's part of the fine print we ignore while pouring our life savings into Bernie Madoff's trough, or the Parkcentral Hedge Fund.
The retirement this week of Brandon Webb reminds us that everyone who makes a living firing a baseball overhand should wear a tag with the same warning.
Webb is a strong-armed, 230-pound right-hander who commanded the mound from 2003-2008. He hurled more than 1300 innings over six years for the Diamondbacks to the tune of a 3.26 ERA, a Cy Young and two runner-ups. In short, he was a stud on a Hall of Fame path.
Then, in his first start of 2009, a funny thing happened to his shoulder. Well, not funny if you're Brandon Webb, or the guy cutting the checks owed to him for 2009 and 2010, which totaled $15 million. Four innings into the '09 season the Arizona workhorse was done for the year.
And for 2010.
And for 2011.
And for 2012.
And now, for evermore.
After five 200-frame seasons, the fraying of Brandon Webb's labrum and rotator cuff prevented him from tossing another MLB pitch. He tried a comeback in '11, but 12 unproductive Double-A innings put him back under the knife and on the DL.
Think back to Opening Day 2009. Brandon Webb's on the hill, arguably the best pitcher in the game entering his age-30 season. He wears consistency, sturdiness and reliability like a second glove. Any reasonable extrapolation of his career, even if you build in decline, suggests a solid return on investment.
And then, poof!
It's should serve as a a red flag to teams thinking of handing the car keys to their seemingly-indestructible ace pitchers. The Mariners are poised to guarantee Felix Hernandez a week of federal budget deficits for his next, undoubtedly awesome, seven years of service. If you were going to bet on anyone to deliver for that long, King Felix would be the guy.
But so was Bernie Madoff.
06 February 2013
Blowing Smoak at Reporters
Let's engage in a little hypothetical hijinks.
Let's suppose your friend complained to you that he didn't understand why Oriole backstop Matt Wieters is selected to the All-Star squad while Mariner first-sacker Justin Smoak is considered a flop. The two are contemporaries from the Charleston, SC area and former first round picks in the MLB draft. Consequently they get compared 'round these parts.
After all. your companion notes, Smoak's 162-game average for the first four years of his career is a .223 BA with 21 HR and 71 RBI. Wieters' performance during the same period is .260, 21 & 79. It's a red pubic hair's difference, right?
Knowing the progressive sort that you are, no doubt you would patiently explain to your unenlightened friend that Smoak has managed to stay on the field more than 130 games in a season just once while Wieters has done so three times. You would point out that Triple Crown stats were demonstrated 33 years ago to be woefully inadequate to the storytelling task and that the difference in OPS, .749-.683 in favor of Wieters, is not insubstantial.
You would further mention that Smoak is a lumbering first baseman, the lowest form of defensive player this side of the DH, and Wieters is a Gold Glove catcher, the most grueling position on the field. More to the point, the two should be compared to hitters at opposite ends of the offensive spectrum -- Wieters to catchers and Smoak to first basemen. Viewed against their position-mates, Wieters has been worth eight-and-a-half wins compared to a replacement level catcher while Smoak IS a replacement level first baseman.
And that's just the offensive side of the equation. Accounting for their glovework takes the former to 14.7 wins against replacement in four years and the latter down to 2.7 wins BELOW replacement. In other words, an All-Star and a bust.
Sadly, you were not around to apprise the author of this story in my local paper of such considerations. And so, a professional journalist, whose area of expertise is supposedly sports, managed to pen this stunning piece of ignorance. He will not be fired or reprimanded or even educated because no one at his paper has the slightest awareness that they are living in the Dark Ages.
And none of his knowledge-challenged colleagues or editors will be fired, reprimanded or educated themselves because neither their colleagues at other newspapers in South Carolina, or in the Southeast, or nearly anywhere, nor their TV or radio counterparts, nor virtually anyone else who is considered a sports reporter or commentator or analyst has the slightest idea about the advances in their field since they stopped learning anything new back in 1974.
And so they continue to peck out tripe like this on their IBM Selectrics, completely oblivious to the development in the interim of the IBM Wheelwriter, word processor, personal computer, smartphone and tablet. They are the Amish of journalism, refusing to adopt advancements of science and technology, continuing to view the game as their great-grandfathers did with horses and buggy metrics.
Thirty-three years since Bill James's first Baseball Abstract. It'll be 34 years in March.
Let's suppose your friend complained to you that he didn't understand why Oriole backstop Matt Wieters is selected to the All-Star squad while Mariner first-sacker Justin Smoak is considered a flop. The two are contemporaries from the Charleston, SC area and former first round picks in the MLB draft. Consequently they get compared 'round these parts.
After all. your companion notes, Smoak's 162-game average for the first four years of his career is a .223 BA with 21 HR and 71 RBI. Wieters' performance during the same period is .260, 21 & 79. It's a red pubic hair's difference, right?
Knowing the progressive sort that you are, no doubt you would patiently explain to your unenlightened friend that Smoak has managed to stay on the field more than 130 games in a season just once while Wieters has done so three times. You would point out that Triple Crown stats were demonstrated 33 years ago to be woefully inadequate to the storytelling task and that the difference in OPS, .749-.683 in favor of Wieters, is not insubstantial.
You would further mention that Smoak is a lumbering first baseman, the lowest form of defensive player this side of the DH, and Wieters is a Gold Glove catcher, the most grueling position on the field. More to the point, the two should be compared to hitters at opposite ends of the offensive spectrum -- Wieters to catchers and Smoak to first basemen. Viewed against their position-mates, Wieters has been worth eight-and-a-half wins compared to a replacement level catcher while Smoak IS a replacement level first baseman.
And that's just the offensive side of the equation. Accounting for their glovework takes the former to 14.7 wins against replacement in four years and the latter down to 2.7 wins BELOW replacement. In other words, an All-Star and a bust.
Sadly, you were not around to apprise the author of this story in my local paper of such considerations. And so, a professional journalist, whose area of expertise is supposedly sports, managed to pen this stunning piece of ignorance. He will not be fired or reprimanded or even educated because no one at his paper has the slightest awareness that they are living in the Dark Ages.
And none of his knowledge-challenged colleagues or editors will be fired, reprimanded or educated themselves because neither their colleagues at other newspapers in South Carolina, or in the Southeast, or nearly anywhere, nor their TV or radio counterparts, nor virtually anyone else who is considered a sports reporter or commentator or analyst has the slightest idea about the advances in their field since they stopped learning anything new back in 1974.
And so they continue to peck out tripe like this on their IBM Selectrics, completely oblivious to the development in the interim of the IBM Wheelwriter, word processor, personal computer, smartphone and tablet. They are the Amish of journalism, refusing to adopt advancements of science and technology, continuing to view the game as their great-grandfathers did with horses and buggy metrics.
Thirty-three years since Bill James's first Baseball Abstract. It'll be 34 years in March.
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