29 April 2013

That Sinking Feeling On Lake Ontario


The new-look Toronto Blue Jays are off to a 9-17 start after a demoralizing sweep at the hands of the Yankees' B squad. They're 9.5 games out of first and have the worst record among Major League teams in the American League. (That excludes the Astros.) They've been outscored 130-95. 

It must feel like deja vu for the former Miami Marlins now populating the Blue Jay lineup. After big splash signings before last season, the Marlins turned their gaudy new stadium into a funeral home by crashing into last place and staying there.

It's worth examining whether the imports are the problem or whether the stalwarts from last season's 73-89 team are failing. The answer won't surprise you: it's been a team effort.

Anchoring Toronto last season were slugging right fielder Jose Bautista, breakout first baseman Edwin Encarnacion and pitcher Brandon Morrow. 

Encarnacion posted an anomalous .280/.384/.557 with 42 home runs last season, 52% better than average. Bautista smashed 27 homers in half a season while battling a broken wrist. Morrow paced the staff with a 10-7, 2.96 mark in 21 starts.

To that the Jays added R.A. Dickey, the NL Cy Young; two Marlin signees, shortstop Jose Reyes and innings eater Mark Buehrle; and rehabbing Marlin star hurler Josh Johnson; plus drug-fueled Melky Cabrera and infielders Macier Izturis and Emilio Bonifacio.

None of those above-named has delivered in Ontario. Reyes exploded out of the gate with a .476 on base percentage before spraining his way to a familiar spot on the 60-day disabled list. The rest of the everyday players have failed to reach base safely even 32% of the time, though Bautista and Encarnacion are slugging. Typical is Cabrera, whose sudden leap to competence in 2011 and 2012 now seem to owe a debt of gratitude to chemistry. At .250/.303/.300, the Melk Man has achieved an OPS 303 points lower than last year's.

On the hill, Dickey's inconsistent knuckler isn't fooling American League batters, yet at 2-3, 4.66, a far cry from his 2012 domination, he's the ace of those expected to contribute by a country kilometre. Morrow, Johnson and Buehrle are 1-4, 6.12 in the early going.

The Jays start the week with a three-game home set against the first-place Red Sox that offers an opportunity to slice that deficit. Losing two or more in the Rogers Centre will drop them 10+ games behind and set tongues wagging. It's ridiculously early yet, of course, but this is not a division in which 10-game holes are easily scaled.

This Bryce Harper Guy Is Pretty Good

In his first 162 games, Bryce Harper, now a grizzled veteran of 20, has been one of the 10 best everyday players in the majors.   

He's soon to eclipse the record for home runs before age 21, currently held by Mel Ott. See the whole Fangraphs article.

28 April 2013

This, That and the Other

Ken "Hawk" Harrelson's nine-year vagabond MLB career included a third-place MVP finish in 1968 and a fair amount of part-time, above-average offense. Hawk was an amusing blowhard when he played and he's maintained that record as the Chicago White Sox color analyst.

Harrelson is a card-carrying member of the Tantrum Club whose members stick their fingers in their ears and moan through rolled tongues whenever new analysis explodes their deeply-held mythology. In fact, Harrelson might even be president of this club.

Brian Kenny is a saber-wise host on the MLB network who has educated nearly as many people about baseball as Harrelson has stupefied. Kenny brought Harrelson on his show last week and allowed him an opportunity to explain his ideas, which is another way of saying he provided Hawk enough rope to hang himself. 

Harrelson eschews illuminating statistics based on actual research in favor of his own unquantifiable measure -- the will to win. During his rant, he made a long series of provably false claims and if you need to have the evidence provided, you've probably stumbled on the wrong site. Thanks anyway for visiting.

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The truncated NHL season has come to a merciful end and now half the teams start all over with three more months of playoffs. Last season, the L.A. Kings, the last team into the playoffs with more losses than wins, swept through their higher-seeded opponents en route to the Stanley Cup.

When it comes to winning the championship, the regular season is so utterly irrelevant that every contender ought to be installed in Las Vegas as a 15-1 shot. 

There are three teams in this year's tournament that have lost as many games as they've won -- Detroit, Ottawa and the Islanders, but you'd never know it from the standings. In an effort to obfuscate how weak the lower-tier playoff contenders are, the NHL calls overtime losses "ties" but overtime victories "wins." As a result, the standings suggest that the Red Wings are 24-16-8 when in fact they won 24 (probably some of them in overtime) and lost 24.

When you have to resort to trickery to validate your product, perhaps you need a new product. Hockey is a spectacular product; the NHL is a disaster.

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Now that the Lakers have proved to be pretenders not just in the regular season but in the playoffs as well, sports talk radio has swiveled its collective head to the other coast. "Next," (after more ads than the Super Bowl) "can the Knicks beat the Heat?"

No.

Now what do we talk about?

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The extraordinarily entertaining and intriguing NFL draft features a handful of encyclopedic minds offering instant critiques like old testament pronouncements about each pick. They never mention the one item that would be particularly illuminating: their own track record.

You heard a lot of analysis of Geno Smith, E.J. Manuel and the other QBs, including definitive statements about how they were taken too high or low. Some of the comparisons invoked the names Russell Wilson and Colin Kaepernick. 

How many of these football sachems were calling for teams to draft Wilson and Kaepernick? How many of them even thought Wilson and Kaepernick would start a game in their first two years, much less lead their teams into the playoffs?

Yeah, I thought so.

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Here's another NFL draft head scratcher: teams have been criticized for choosing a player in the right round, but not with the right pick. For example, the team with the ninth pick selects the best player at a position they need who is rated the 20th best player. "He's not a #9 pick," they say.

But the team isn't picking 20th; they're picking ninth. And presumably no one with the next 10 selections will trade with them. So they take the guy they want with the pick they have. If selecting that player will make the team better, isn't that the right choice? It seems like a silly criticism to me.

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The first 25 games of a season are too small a sample to draw conclusions from scratch. For example, the Rockies are 15-9, but we don't know whether they're that good, they're just on a hot streak or some gust of luck has blown their way. (Actually we do know that good scheduling has been at least partly responsible for Colorado's success. They're 1-5 against the Braves and Giants and 6-0 against the sad-sack Padres. Plus, they swept a three-game set against the Mets -- at home in the snow.)

On the other hand, we can learn a lot about things we already thought we knew. Here are four last place teams, with a combined record of 29-65: Houston, Miami, the Cubs and San Diego. It's not too early to draw conclusions about these collections. We thought they would stink and they have delivered in spades.

26 April 2013

Ladies and Gentlemen: Your Houami Marstros

If all the girls who attended the Yale prom were laid end to end, I wouldn't be a bit surprised. 
-- Dorothy Parker


And suppose you laid the rosters of the Houston Astros and Miami Marlins end-to-end. What would Dorothy Parker make of their WAR?

The answer resides in the "two wrongs don't make a right" range. In this case, two minor league teams don't make a major league squad, even with 6'5" Giancarlo Stanton swatting big flies and 5'6" Jose Altuve scampering around the basepaths. Where some clubs are rebuilding, these two have been condemned, faced demolition and are now empty lots.

I decided to conduct a little thought experiment -- the kind that got Albert Einstein a Nobel Prize -- by combining the two hapless franchises and examining the results.

There is no spoiler alert here: you already know that nothing plus nothing is still nothing. Besides the exciting Altuve, Houston's best players are a 34-year-old outfielder (Rick Ankiel) who got cut last year after 171 plate appearances in Washington, a 35-year-old first baseman (Carlos Pena) who hasn't hit above .227 in five years, and a fourth starter (Bud Norris) with a 4.41 lifetime ERA. Center fielder Justin Maxwell, who swatted 18 homers in half a season last year, might be considered a prospect, though his 114 strikeouts give pause.

And the Astros could win a best-of-seven series against Miami in three games. 

The entire Marlin roster has managed six home runs in 20 games, the same number as Atlanta's rookie fill-in backstop, Evan Gattis. Miami's clean-up hitter is Placido Polanco, a 37-year-old third baseman who slugged .327 last year. Miami's top performer after Stanton is fourth starter Ricky Nolasco, a Florida lifer with a 22-25, 4.58 record the last two years. For lack of any other on-field asset, the Marlins employ starter Kevin Slowey, whose two previous seasons feature an 0-8, 6.67 line in 2011 and a year of minor league banishment in 2012.

Not only don't the Houami Marstros (or the Miahou Aslins) avoid 100 losses, but if you contracted both franchises, the rest of the baseball would be hard-pressed to find roster spots for more than a handful of players. (This may be a disservice to Justin Ruggiano, Miami's center fielder who batted .312/.374/.535 with 13 dingers in half a season last year. But that's also the sum total of the damage his bat has done in 10 years of professional baseball. He's 31 and has never otherwise posted an OBP above .273.)

I considered salting the formula with the Seattle Mariners team photo, which, absent King Felix, is such an insult to the state of Washington that even Oregon is indignant. But it's not the lack of actual major league baseball talent on the Marinaters' roster that is so pungent, it's the putrefying remains of Jason Bay, Raul Ibanez and Justin Smoak. And Endy Chavez, who once upon a time played in Montreal and has served 36 major league, minor league and winter ball teams in his long horsehide journey.

If you live in a minor league town you'll want to familiarize yourself with the players on these teams. They'll be toiling for your team soon enough.

23 April 2013

We Knew That Bryce Harper Couldn't Keep It Up

Could Bryce Harper really be as good at age 20 as he was at 19? No way. He's better. After picking it up in the power department during last year's second half, he's now pounding NL pitching with seven home runs and .353/.421/.706.

Mike Trout was poised to swallow a big old helping of regression pie after his age-20 season. After bullying his elders in 2012, he's off to a .291/.337/.481 start with just two jacks. On the other hand, he's swiped three bases without a misstep, bringing his career record to 56 steals, five outs.

Both will be challenged to accumulate the value they did last year, as each has moved over from stints in center field to a more or less full-time gig in left.

It's too early to tell exactly what the contours of their season will be. But if you thought 2012 was just a voting-age fluke for these two, well, OPS of 1127 and 818 say otherwise.



21 April 2013

A Tale of Two Sluggers

It was the best of starts. It was the worst of starts. Two all-or-nothing sluggers are providing their teams with a bit of all and a bit of nothing, and the contrast is instructive.

Mark Reynolds is now donning Indian garb, swinging his Three True Outcomes stick in Cleveland.  Reynolds is the owner of three 204+ strikeout seasons, four 74+ walk seasons and three 32+ home run seasons. 

He's following in the gigantic footsteps of 285-pound Adam Dunn, he of 409 lifetime home runs, 2055 whiffs and 1173 free passes. The Big Donkey is coming off a season in which he batted just .204 but gave the White Sox 105 walks and 41 home runs.

For both these players, it's really all about batting average. Even amassing big piles of walks and long balls, they're not real valuable without a few other hits sprinkled in. Dunn's hitting was 12% above average last year; add in his utter lack of baserunning or defensive value and he was pretty close to replacement level despite leaving the yard 41 times. With Reynolds, it's the same equation with a little more defensive and baserunning prowess, but fewer jogs to first.

With one-tenth of the season in the books, Reynolds is getting it done for the Tribe, collecting seven homers and an 1.128 OPS. Dunn is coming undone: three homers and a .454 OPS. One other detail is worth noting:

Mark Reynolds .298/391/.737, 8BB/15K, 7HR
Adam Dunn .108/.159/.295  3BB/26K, 3HR

Dunn is fanning in nearly half his plate appearances, which leaves little opportunity to be productive. Reynolds is making more contact, which leads to more of everything good.

This bodes very poorly for the White Sox, who are paying Dunn for his prodigious Big Fly tendencies accompanied by tolerable batting averages in the .230s. Since he arrived on the South Side in 2011, he's averaged .179/.307/.374, 28 homers, 95 BB and 219 K per 150 games. Not only is Chicago not getting its $15 million worth, it's not getting roster spot value. And the small sample size excuse doesn't work here because it's 289 games of data.

It's very early in 2013 and sluggers are notoriously streaky, so there's hope for Adam Dunn. The tables have turned and now Mark Reynolds is Dunn's guide. But he'll have to dig back to 2010 to turn things around.

20 April 2013

Small Sample Size Fun

If the first three weeks of the season are any indication, the Mets' Matt Harvey is the greatest pitcher of all time. Harvey has dominated opposing batters to the tune of 4-0, 0.93 with 10 hits allowed in 29 innings. He'd won just three games in his entire career before this (10 starts last season.)

And Cardinal first baseman Matt Adams is the greatest masher in history. His .524/.565/1.048 slash stats represent seven games of near invincibility. His 23 plate appearances have produced two walks and 11 hits -- three homers, two doubles and six singles. His 1.613 OPS is more than triple the league average.

Justin Upton leads the majors with nine bombs. Upton didn't smack his ninth last season until August, more than 100 games into the season. His .820 slugging percentage with Atlanta nearly doubles last year's work with Arizona. If you average out the Uptons, by adding in the struggles of Justin's older brother and outfield-mate BJ, you get a less Ruthian .235/.314/.568. I suspect the Uptons would cotton to an .882 OPS in 2013; they'd just like it distributed more evenly.

How about Mr. Vottomatic, Cincinatti's Joey Votto? There's nothing flukey about Votto pacing the majors in walks, but 24 free passes in 80 plate appearances is a bit rich for a guy with just one home run. Votto's on base average of .500 dwarfs his pedestrian .377 slugging average. Most players with upside-down OBP-SLG numbers are Slappy McSpeedster types, not MVP candidates.

Baltimore first baseman Chris Davis is a hero or zero kind of guy. Last season he helped the surprising Orioles by blasting 33 jacks, but otherwise fanned 169 times with just 37 walks, a nearly 5-1 ratio. He's improved on both in 15 games so far this year -- 13 Ks and nine BBs -- en route to the AL lead in homers, RBIs and OPS.

With 21 RBI in 16 games, journeyman backstop John Buck leads the majors, despite playing his home games in the offense-suppressant Citi Field surrounded by a lineup of Justin Turner, David Murphy and Ike Davis (and, to be fair, David Wright). Buck brought home 41 runs in seven times as many 2012 plate appearances.

But if power is your thing, Oakland's Coco Crisp is your guy. With five home runs, seven doubles and a triple in just 58 at bats, Crisp leads MLB in extra base hits. That's an extra base hit every 4.5 at bats. In his previous 4400 major league at bats, Crisp crushed 378 extra base hits, about once every 11.5 at bats. Can you say "regression?"

Kurt Suzuki can. The Nationals' catcher entered today's tilt against the Mets at a handsome .321/.444/.714. An oh-fer day left him at .281/.366/.625. Still attractive, but hardly photo-worthy. Two more days like that and he'll be right around his career numbers of .256/.313/.383.

That Ranger fireballer Yu Darvish is mowing down opponents like a landscaping business requires no regression. The Japanese import whiffed 221 in 192 innings last year. He's blowing them away at an even higher rate this year, but it's his consistency that's so noteworthy. In 33 lifetime starts, Darvish has fanned 10 or more one-third of the time.

It's been a painful start for another Far Eastern product, Reds outfielder Shin-soo Choo, but it could get him into the record books. Choo has thrust out an elbow, pointed a thigh, leaned in a sleeve and turned a back to seven hit-by-pitches in just 77 plate appearances. At this rate, a full season of visits to the batters box will obliterate the single season record of 51 HBPs, which has stood for 115 years

Of course, "at this rate" may be the three dumbest words in the baseball lexicon, just ahead of "good RBI guy." It's still so early that Matt Cain doesn't yet have a win. Let's wait until Craig Kimbrell allows a run -- say June -- before we put any stock in the numbers.

13 April 2013

How Great Is Mariano Rivera?

New analytic tools have led us to understand baseball better and in new ways. They have magnified the under-appreciated and shined light on the game's nuances. They have helped clubs work more efficiently and provided their early adapters with an edge on the competition. 

But they have largely failed one area of the game. And that area's name is Mariano Rivera.

There doesn't seem to be any debate today that Rivera is the greatest reliever of all time. He's the all-time saves leader and possesses the lowest ERA relative to the league ever. He's allowed the fewest baserunners per inning in history. He's been well-nigh unhittable in 96 post-season games. He's spun one pitch into 19 dominant seasons. His worst season, at age 37, was merely excellent.

And yet, the analytic tools don't believe he's a Hall of Famer. 

When applied to closers, new analysis asks the following question: where ya been? Appearing for just three outs every other day limits the value of a closer, according to Wins Against Replacement and its ilk, even when his work comes in high-leverage situations. Despite pitching into his 40s, Rivera has just 1200 frames under his belt -- about seven good seasons for a starter. The result is that he has accumulated just 54 wins against replacement, well below the standard for a Hall of Fame pitcher. WAR (or WARP) matters because it's the statistic that comes closest to describing a player's overall value in a single number. 

That 54 is from Baseball-Reference, which is the most credible of the three main Sabermetric sites with regard to relievers. Baseball Prospectus pegs it at 31.4 while Fangraphs is at the median of 38.7. The discrepancy has much to do with whether the measurements use underlying data as the true level of performance; i.e., whether Rivera is given the credit (as he should be) for a career-long outlier BABIP or whether that's dismissed as luck.

By comparison, Fangraphs credits Mark Buehrle with 45.7 wins against replacement. 
 
The problem, of course, is that comparing a closer to a starter because they're both pitchers is like comparing the ACLU to the Teamsters because they're both unions.
Misused and under-utilized though they are, closers can still be fairly analyzed by comparing them to each other. That limits the sample more or less to Rivera's contemporaries, but that should be enough, given his dominance.

Rivera's lifetime ERA+ of 205 is about half-again beyond the next best closer in history, Trevor Hoffman. He has the lowest walk rate, by far the highest strikeout rate, by far the fewest blown saves and nearly double the Win Probability Added of any short reliever in history.

ERA+ measures a pitcher's ERA relative to the league at the time. Rivera has limited opponents to 2.22 earned runs per nine innings at a time when the American League is scoring 4.55 against non-Rivera pitchers.

The bottom line is that this is a SABR problem, not a Sandman problem. Clearly, WAR (or WARP) is not designed to handle closers, or at least to compare them to starters. Whatever number of wins Rivera allegedly added to the Yankees with his bat-breaking contributions, they are not being reflected in the sabermetric record.

07 April 2013

WAR on Fox! WAR on Fox!

Mark down this date: April 6, 2013.

That's the date that Fox's baseball coverage included discussions of OPS and WAR. Hallelujah!

Joe Buck introduced both notions without snark or derision. He explained the acronyms (On-base Plus Slugging and Wins Against Replacement) and discussed how they are calculated.

In the first discussion, Buck demurred a bit, noting that OPS is hard to calculate. But Fox inserted Ken Rosenthal into the discussion to explain that sabermetricans and front offices prefer OPS to batting average and home runs. Fox may have been setting the stage for using OBP stats in the future by having Rosenthal aver that on base percentage is more meaningful than batting average.

This is a true advance. But Fox wasn't done.

With Miguel Cabrera at the plate, Buck introduced the viewer to WAR. He explained how -- and why! -- Triple Crown winner Miguel Cabrera earned just the fourth highest WAR in MLB last year. 

Supported by a Fox graphic listing the top four WARriors in 2012, Buck explained how Cabrera would fare less well because he's only an offensive force. He noted that Mike Trout, first by far on that list with nearly 11 wins against replacement, runs the bases and plays defense.

It's truly a watershed when a major TV network intransigent in its opposition to advanced metrics finally acknowledges that there is a better alternative to batting average and home runs. Kudos to Fox for accepting what has been proven and helping educate average fans.

The next giant leap will occur when Rosenthal explains on air to Buck the other key element of WAR. The three players ahead of Cabrera on the WAR list are center fielder Trout, second baseman Robinson Cano and catcher Buster Posey. Each plays a more difficult position and is being compared to weaker hitters than a third baseman, if that's what you want to call Cabrera.

And the battle will finally be won when they both explain it to the satisfaction of Tim McCarver.

05 April 2013

A Successful Debut

Associated Press: Mariano Rivera made a successful debut as the Yankees defeated Boston 4-2.

Real Life: Rivera entered the game with a three-run lead. He relinquished a run on a walk and a double before retiring the side. For those of you scoring at home, Red Sox batters hit .250/.400/.500 against him and saddled him with an ERA of 9.00. 

But he "earned" a save, so it must have been successful. At least according to dinosaurs like the Association Press. 

Thirty-four years and counting.

04 April 2013

Adventures in Scheduling

Twenty-four thousand souls filled half of Target Field today to witness the Twins' 8-2 whipping of Detroit. The five-run eighth that blew open the game, indeed the final score, will be lost to history as Minnesota drifts into the cellar and Detroit to the top of the AL Central standings.

Witnesses to this event are likely to remember little of the contest but this -- the weather. It was another raw, windy, miserable early-April day in Minneapolis more conducive to sleigh riding than to the Boys of Summer. And yet it counted in the standings.

This scene is being played out across the Northeast and Midwest in places like Chicago and New York and Pittsburgh and Cincinnati. And while Mark Twain's lament about weather discussions being all talk and no action was facetious, a real American today has the right to a serious complaint about MLB's weather-related actions.

Consider this: Road teams this week included Miami, San Diego, Houston and Los Angeles, where Spring is fully sprung and ready for action. How hard would it be to rejigger the schedule so most early- and mid-April (and late September) games occur in warm weather? It would mean the Indians and Rockies and their ilk would wait until late April for their home opener, but they would avoid snow-outs and home field shivering. It would also mean fewer summertime games in the Dallas sauna, the Phoenix microwave and the San Francisco refrigerator.

Assembling a schedule among 30 businesses is a massive juggling act, particularly with all the other considerations, like avoiding dueling home games by teams that share markets. But wouldn't MLB like to have comfortable customers filling the other half of their stadiums?

01 April 2013

Just As We Drew It Up

First, the 108-loss Astros beat Nolan Ryan in his home park. How perfect is that?

Then, the Red Sox thrash the Yankee understudies and their ace in The Bronx, with contributions from Gamecock Jackie Bradley, Jr. A victory for the Lesser of Two Evils.

Finally, my Nats ride a pair of blasts from The Future and seven shutout innings from Stephen Strasburg for an Opening Day win closed by Rafael Soriano. 

Oh how I have suffered lo these many years. Dear God of Baseball, may this be my deliverance.