30 September 2013

And Now, The Tournament Begins


In case you thought the 2013 baseball season is over, the Rangers and Rays beg to differ. They will battle tonight in Arlington for the right to fly to Cleveland and challenge the Indians Wednesday for the opportunity to fly to Boston and face a rested Red Sox team Friday with their best pitcher (and possibly second best) unavailable.

On Tuesday, the Pirates and Reds will join the fray. Earning one of the Wild Card berths is certainly a substantial achievement, but the euphoria gives way to disappointment with jarring speed for the loser of the play-in game.

Only then does the tournament begin. Like hockey, baseball does not have a championship; it has a tournament in which a team's regular-season exploits are largely meaningless and the results essentially random. Hockey's playoffs are doubly disconnected because they are open to half the league, including the disappointments, the rebuilders and the inconsistent. In baseball, at least, only the best teams are afforded opportunities to compete for the title.

Still, only three of the last 17 World Champions have had baseball's best record over the 162-game season, while five Wild Cards have won the title.  

You will hear ad naseum (actually, hearing this once is ad naseum, because it's patently false) that teams need to have "momentum" or a "hot hand" or simply be playing well entering the playoffs in order to emerge victorious. This shibboleth is repeated despite the 2006 World Series in which both teams (St. Louis and Detroit) entered with sub-.500 second-half records. The Tigers were swept in the season's final series by last-place KC to drop into the Wild Card. The Cardinals lost seven in a row the week before the playoffs commenced.

Last season, the eventual champs fell behind in the best-of-five division series two games to none before storming back, then dropped four of five in the NLCS before sweeping the remaining three games. That's not so much "hot" or "cold" as random.

In fact, research shows that there is almost no correlation at all between playing well at season's end and winning it all. Indeed, there's little correlation between anything and playoff magic, which is why the playoffs are both a lottery and impossible to predict except by dumb luck.

When the Rays and Rangers tussle tonight in their loser-go-home affair, both teams will enter the series "hot" and "cold." Texas lost its grip on the division and then the Wild Card by dropping 12 of 13 in the waning weeks of the season. In the final week, they rebounded for six wins in a row. Tampa Bay charged to the top of the Wild Card standings with a seven-game win streak before losing a pair that dropped them into a tie with Texas. One of these teams will survive and will thus be dubbed, ex post facto, on a roll. If you're a betting person, caveat emptor.

Except for the Cardinals, every team is at least six years from a championship and has suffered at least one indignity since. After St. Louis (2011) and Boston (2007), the most recent champion city is Atlanta (1995), followed by Cincinnati (1990), Oakland (1989), L.A. (1988), Detroit (1984), Pittsburgh (1979) and Cleveland (1948). Texas and Tampa Bay have never tasted the sweet fruit of victory. So for all but Cards and Red Sox fans, a World Championship would be a refreshing novelty. 

Let's go all of them!

29 September 2013

The NL MVP: Stolen By A Pirate

Yadier Molina is the Adonis of backstops. He commands the defense, terrorizes baserunners, and frames pitches. He rakes like an outfielder -- .316 BA with 55 extra base hits.  And as a catcher, he's well-nigh irreplaceable. (His understudy hit .205 with an OPS 300 points lower.)

The green eye shades, however, don't consistently hold Molina's skill set in high regard. Some fielding metrics even ding him for his glove work. None of the valuation systems seem to credit him appropriately for his prowess at the bat despite squatting for 1300 innings a year. Consequently, you would not find Molina's name on the short list of MVP candidates in Seamhead Land. Baseball Prospectus credits Molina with 4.0 wins against replacement. Fangraphs and Baseball-Reference have him at 5.4 and 5.7 respectively.

This seems preposterous for a player who plays a role in literally every single pitch, and it leaves us all wondering how else to value him. Compare him, for example, to teammate Matt Carpenter, who covered second and third base while playing almost every Cardinal game and compiling a .325/.391/.486 line, with a league-leading 55 doubles. Carpenter's 41 point-advantage in OPS over 25 more games are certainly a yawning gap, particularly from a player staffing a low-offense position. Carpenter is credited with about one extra win compared to Molina.

When considering the MVP the one and only consideration should be how much value the player brought to his team. There is one statistic, variously called Wins Against Replacement (WAR) or Wins Against Replacement Player (WARP), that is designed to compile all the elements -- on-base ability, power-hitting, baserunning, defense -- multiplied by the level of competition and the offensive proclivities of the relevant ballparks, all while accounting for replacement level at the player's position. On that last item, a first baseman or right fielder is held to a higher hitting standard than a shortstop or catcher.

We could all take the day off if that one statistic picked the crop, bundled it and carried it off to market. But defensive statistics are still crawling and learning their ABCs; we have limited faith in them. So let's view the candidates through the statistical lens of offense, and season the results with defense.

Matt Carpenter, 2B/3B      .325/.391/.486,   .877 OPS   66.4 VORP   good defensive flexibility
Andrew McCutchen, CF   
.317/.404/.508,  .912 OPS   65.0 VORP   highlight-reel defense
Shin-soo Choo, CF            .286/.424/.464   .888 OPS   63.1 VORP    a RF masquerading as a CF
Joey Votto, 1B                 .306/.436/.492,  .928 OPS   55.8 VORP    Gold Glove defense
Paul Goldschmidt, 1B       .302/.401/.553,  .954 OPS   53.0 VORP    superb defense
Jayson Werth
, RF           
.318/.398/.535   .933 OPS    44.8 VORP   average outfielder
Buster Posey, C                .294/.369/.451   .820 OPS   44.1 VORP    good D at key position
Yadier Molina, C               .319/.359/.477,  .836 OPS   40.6 VORP   elite D at key position
Freddie Freeman, 1B      .319/.396/.502   .898 OPS   39.3 VORP    good defense
Carlos Gomez, CF            .325/.391/.486   .877 OPS   38.7 VORP   superb D at key position


(There is WAR/WARP for pitchers, which filters out defense and examines the underlying performance of the thrower. It's a slow-moving revolution in which you should not invest short-term money.)

There are a lot of legitimate contenders here and reasonable people may pick different names for the top of their ballot. Goldschmidt owns the slugging, OPS, HR and RBI titles for 2013. Votto and Choo are 1-2 in OBP and should be expecting Valentine's chocolates from Brandon Phillips. Carpenter's ability to cover the corner gives manager Mike Matheny options. Posey and Molina have value that seems to elude the system.

But the best MVP catch is The Cutch, Pirates center fielder Andrew McCutchen. He hits, runs (27 of 37 steals) and flashes leather. He's the key cog in the Bucs' playoff push, turning it on (1.015 OPS) in the last two months. For his mix of skills McCutchen is also the NL leader in WAR, worth 8.2 wins against replacement, a full win better than anyone else.

Before departing, a shout out to three star performers who weren't on the field enough. Hanley Ramirez and David Wright have their bodies to blame; Yasiel Puig languished in Chattanooga for 40 games. Extrapolated to a full season, that trio would rank 1-2-3 respectively in the MVP race.
Ramirez, the Dodger shortstop, posted an OPS over 1000 and was worth five wins in just 86 games. And remember how the league would catch up to Puig? Well, it's catching its breath instead. He ended the season at .321/.392/.537 and 42 extra base hits in less than 2/3rds of a season. Wait until he learns the game...

28 September 2013

The AL MVP: 2012 Redux


Should we hold it against an MVP candidate that he hit just .265 with two extra base hits in September crunch time? How about that he did most of his damage before the All-Star break? Or do we acknowledge that a great May (when he hit .379 with 21 extra base hits) helps his team win just as much as a big finish? Isn't the MVP award a referendum on an entire season, irrespective of the chronology of the performance?

Miguel Cabrera led the league in batting average, on-base average, slugging percentage and OPS. He hit 44 home runs, second most in the American League. He batted .635/.850/.1.375 on 3-1 counts (40 of 'em) and .397/.529/.782 with runners in scoring position. His 2013 performance has been historic, especially in light of his 2012 domination.

So forget about his anti-climatic last month. The reason that Miguel Cabrera isn't the American League MVP is that over the course of the season, he wasn't the best player.

Yes, here we go again.

Whether Cabrera is the best hitter in the world is about as debatable as whether the U.S. has too much debt. He's hit .338 with 88 homers and 276 RBI with an OPS over 1000 over the past two seasons. (The debt, on the other hand, is hitting 20 trillion.) Baseball is more than hitting, though. It's baserunning and defense too, and Cabrera is below average in both areas. He's among the league leaders in grounding into double plays and waddles the extra base less often than most men on base. On defense, well, he's a world-class hitter. If we put his defense and baserunning in batting average terms, Cabrera would be a .240 baserunner and a .220 fielder at third.

There's an MVP candidate -- Mike Trout, of course -- who, like MIguel Cabrera, is a terror at the plate. He's hit .323/.431/.554 this year. Where Cabrera has performed 98% above average at the plate, Trout has performed 78% better.  That's a big difference. But there's a gaping chasm between Trout and Cabrera in the other aspects of the game. Trout has stolen 33 bases in 40 tries, among baseball's best. The nascent base running metrics suggest he's elite at taking the extra base as well. 

In the field, Trout is enough of a hit-killer to patrol the critical central pasture. The defensive difference between a mediocre center fielder and a mediocre third baseman is as wide as Cabrera himself. Trout is rated anywhere between just another guy and God's gift to turf by the computers, the scouts and the highlight reels. Even by the least generous accounting, Miguel Cabrera can't pack Trout's lunch with the glove.

Add it all up, divide by the level of competition they face, multiply by generosity of their home park and you get this: Mike Trout has been the most valuable to his team this year. Consider three different measuring systems using wins against replacement:

Baseball-Reference
Trout     9.1
Cabrera  7.1. 

Baseball Prospectus
Trout     10.3
Cabrera  7.4

Fangraphs 
Trout     10.2 
Cabrera  7.7

By some accounting, Cabrera isn't even the second-best player in the league this year. Josh Donaldson, Oakland's slick-fielding third baseman, has hit .302/.383/.502 with 24 homers in that trench in Oakland. Baseball-Reference has him nearly a run more valuable than Cabrera. They also rate the Atlas of New York, Robinson Cano, at 7.6 WAR for his .313/.383/.514 performance from the keystone. 

Other legitimate candidates include Baltimore first baseman Chris Davis (.287/.370/.634 with 53 homers), Texas cornerman Adrian Beltre (.315/.372/.506 with 29 HR) Boston DH David Ortiz (.308/.395/.565 and 30 HR), Cleveland second baseman Jason Kipnis (.281/.363/.487 with 29 of 36 steals) and Blue Jay diamond-crosser Edwin Encarnacion (.272/.370/.534 with 36 HR). Season with pitchers if you like, but they have their own award.

Mike Trout is the most valuable player in the American League again this year and it isn't particularly close. In the voting that actually bestows the award, if the race is between the tortoise, Cabrera, and the hare, Trout, we know how it will end. Because there is still a majority of sportswriters whose version of baseball is a fairy tale.

Next time, the NL MVP.

24 September 2013

Of Ryne and Reason

Probably the most misunderstood concept among homo sapiens is the difference between correlation and causation. Correlation is when you sit at home and yell "swing!" just before Chris Davis cranks up and smashes a home run. Causation is when Davis extends his arms and blasts one out.

The Phillies yesterday signed interim-manager Ryne Sandberg to a three-year contract. GM Ruben Amaro had been auditioning the Hall of Fame keystoner over the last 34 games and liked what he saw.

The speculation immediately fell upon the Phillies' record, which had rebounded to 18-16 under Sandberg after dropping a string of games and any pretense of a playoff challenge in Charlie Manuel's final days as manager.

No doubt Amaro cared about how the team responded to Sandberg, both in the clubhouse and on the field. If they folded up the tent upon his arrival, Amaro might have balked at a new contract. But, contrary to accepted wisdom that they're generally ungrateful prima donnas, most Major League baseball players have sufficient pride and professionalism to work hard through Game 162.

There are myriad reasons why teams slump and rebound; certainly an injection of new blood at the top might have had something to do with that. A manager creates a culture in the clubhouse and that can infect everything the team does. It's unlikely he can have that kind of impact, though, in the first, say, 20 games, which means most of the Phils' record under Sandberg's skippering is just happenstance. (They won nine of the new commander's 14 games but have gone 9-11 since.) Besides, if novelty helped boost the club, they won't ever derive that benefit again as long as Sandberg is manager.

Sandberg will be tested for real next when this reality strikes: the chickens of two World Series appearances are coming home to roost. Philadelphia has an expensive, aging and largely ineffective roster and it's only going to get worse. Besides Dominic Brown and Cole Hamels, not a single key Phillie player is on the bright side of 33. Not Ryan Howard or Chase Utley or Jimmy Rollins or Carlos Ruiz or Roy Halladay or Cliff Lee. That number will be 34 next year and all but Halladay and Ruiz are locked in for 2014. (The remains of Roy Halladay will be spit-roasted somewhere else, probably on the retirement list. The still-potent Ruiz will be in demand as a free agent.)

There are certainly some assets besides that crew: Darren "Babe" Ruf has mighty power. The team likes Kevin Franzen, who could supplant Howard at first if he shows he can hit. Ben Revere batted.305 and owned centerfield, but absent any walks (OBP merely .338), his value is largely dependent on keeping the batting average up. A third starter behind Lee and Hamels would give them a strong rotation in front of Jonathan Pappelbon, who is nearly the stud as he thinks he is.

Are you impressed? Neither is Washington or Atlanta, or for that matter the Mets. And even a Hall of Famer in the dugout isn't going to change that.

23 September 2013

A-Plus in Oakland


"Is it difficult being a ballplayer?"
"No ma'am it's not difficult...if you're a ballplayer."
Napoleon Lajoie 

Billy Beane has finally found a formula to put his Oakland A's reliably back in the playoffs: hit like the Dickens, get lights-out pitching, win bunches of games. 

Why didn't he think of it earlier?

Still on a budget, Beane has assembled a lineup that walks and hits for power and a rotation and bullpen that suppress walks. Beane spent his limited funds on a shutdown bullpen whose six most used pitchers have served up 330 innings at half a run better than league ERA.

On offense, the A's are led by stealth MVP candidate, third baseman Josh Donaldson, whose 27 games consecutive on-base streak has catapulted his OPS 53% above league average. Every starter in the Oakland lineup sports an OPS league average or better, including veteran Coco Crisp, who's achieved his first 20/20 season in one of toughest hitting parks in majors. 

Overall, the A's are fourth in the AL in OPS while playing half their games in O.com Coliseum, accruing most of their damage in the second half of the season. They've led the league in bombs and averaged six runs-a-game since the All-Star break, sparking a spurt that's made up 11.5 games on Texas in September.

Forty-year-old Bartolo Colon (17-6, 2.64) has anchored a strong rotation otherwise composed of hurlers 26 or younger. Thirty-five year-old Grant Balfour leads the league's best pen, with eight of nine regular relievers limiting offenses to fewer runs than league average.

You can't talk about the A+ performance of the A's without mentioning their $62 million payroll. Their three highest paid players combined earn less than Alex Rodriguez, and their star, Donaldson, in only his second season, brings home less than $500 grand.

Beane's A's have been here before, and as he's famously noted, his "@#$%* doesn't work in the playoffs." Last year they extended the narrative another year by losing the Division series in five to Detroit. They may draw the Tigers in the ALDS again this year. We'll see if Beane's @#$%* still stinks.

A Mindless Summary Vs. The Facts Vs. The Truth

Rookie Enny Romero combined with five relievers on a three-hitter as Tampa Bay beat Baltimore 3-1. Fernando Rodney picked up his 36th save.
Associated Press

You can't spell stupid with AP! Wait...um..

Here is what actually happened:

Rookie Enny Romero combined with four relievers on a one-hit shutout until Fernando Rodney nearly lost the game, which Tampa Bay hung on to win 3-1. Rodney surrendered Baltimore's only run and two of its three hits before getting credit for his 36th save.

Here is really what happened:

Following an 18-inning affair that sapped Tampa Bay of available starters, career Minor Leaguer Enny Romero flew from the Dominican Republic to combine with four relievers on what might have been a shutout. With closer Fernando Rodney on in the ninth, Matt Wieters doubled on a two-out pop-up to third that hit the catwalk in the stadium's roof and knocked in Baltimore's only run. Rodney retired the next batter to earn his 36th save.

That's the difference between a mindless summary, the facts and the truth.

22 September 2013

The Most Interesting Team in the World

Like the Dos Equis Man, they're the most interesting team on earth. And the unlikeliest to be so. The New York Yankees could have been just another deep-pocketed behemoth; instead, their long-toothed roster is crumbling like an untended building. Their Hall of Fame infield never played together in 2013 and the clock struck midnight on their high-priced substitutes. Their bargain-basement fill-ins too.

Barring late-season heroics, injuries and other catastrophes will keep the Yankees from the playoffs for only the second time in 19 years. Nonetheless, their winning season has been an amazing accomplishment for which the manager and GM will elude due credit. Consider:
  • Players earning $56 million are injured and done for the season. That doesn't include long absences by Alex Rodriguez and Curtis Granderson ($44 million).
  • They've gone dumpster diving for replacements and shuffled18 everyday players through the lineup for fewer than 100 at-bats each.
  • They've employed 38 everyday players who have contributed less than half-a-win over replacement.
  • Two dozen pitchers have taken the ball for them. A third of them have pitched three innings or fewer before being dismissed.
  • Their replacement shortstops have accounted for a putrid .229/.289/.316 line all year. Double-back-up third basemen have delivered .226/.291/.324. Catchers, .217/.292/.304. Fill-in first basemen, .229/.295/.395. Left fielders, .240/.292/.404.
  • None of those is their weakest hitting position. Their designated hitters have been designated out-makers: .190/.276/.315.  
Despite the mayhem, not a peep of dissatisfaction has emerged from anyone associated with the team, which has vastly out-performed its run production and prevention. Competing in baseball's toughest division and with unprecedented spending constraints, GM Brian Cashman has managed to pare the payroll while adding slugger Alfonso Soriano.

Which brings us to 2014: If team brass are serious about doing the limbo under the salary cap, next season is going to be even more intriguing as they attempt to reduce a $228 million roster to $189 million while replacing two of their best values -- Mariano Rivera and Andy Pettitte. Seven aging players already soak up $94 million (assuming Jeter returns as promised but not withstanding the amount of Alex Rodriguez's $26 million offset by suspension. A good guess would be that the Yankees will be on the hook for about $16 million while ARod serves a 50-game penalty.)

The elephant in the room is the impending free agency of keystoner Robinson Cano, who has carried the Bombers in 2013. Cano has allowed whispers that he's warming the engine of a Brinks truck. The Dodgers have allowed whispers that their money-printing machine is at his disposal. If so, New York will lose their top performer unless they can fashion a back-ended deal that rewards Cano for delaying his riches one year.

GM Brian Cashman has some chips to play though, in large part because he signed half the 2013 team to one-year contracts. Brett Gardner and David Robertson will get nice raises in arbitration but will continue to deliver value. Ivan Nova will remain a bargain in arbitration and spare change can bring back a marginal catching unit. If Cano accepts a back-ended deal and costs just $15 million next year, here's a $120 million team:

C- Stewart/Cervelli 
1B - Teixeira
2B - Cano
SS - Jeter
3B - Rodriguez
OF - Granderson
OF - Gardner/Wells
OF - Suzuki/Soriano
DH - many choices from the roster

SP - Sabathia
SP - Nova
SP - 
SP - 
SP - 
CL - Robertson

RP - 
RP -
RP - 
RP -RP - 
UT -  
UT -
UT -

That leaves $70 million to find and sign an experienced infielder to spell Jeter and ARod, two above-average starters, a deep bench, an entire relief corps and some left-handed bats. If Cashman can convince a couple of free agents to accept back-ended deals, and bring back Mark Reynolds-type veterans on cushion-change contracts, he could produce a pennant-contending team. The big question will be how badly the declining assets decline. 

Don't count them out.

21 September 2013

Swinging Bunts and Bloop Hits

Miracle on 161st Street
More on this in a full post, but if Joe Girardi isn't AL manager of the year then I'm Barry Manilow. He's taken an ever-changing replacement-player roster to contention and done it without a hint of rancor or complaint. He's incorporated the Alex Rodriguez Traveling Circus into the family with beneficial results. And he's had to have The Talk with a parade of .196 hitters whose 15 minutes in pinstripes has ended. 

All that and his ace has gone half-joker. If this team were challenging Toronto for the cellar, no one would blame them.

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Dodgers Make A Splash
Did I miss the memo on pool parties? Is that another unwritten rule that you're just supposed to intuit? Man, I can't keep track. I always thought that celebrating in a pool was a great idea.

What's the unwritten rule on calling opponents classless? Someone ask Willie Bloomquist. What's the unwritten rule on politicians who can't get anything done in Washington commenting on the baseball team celebrations? I think "shut up" is the rule, John McCain, but I don't know because it's unwritten.

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Star Bucs
A yearlong fear: The Pirates have a spectacular season but run out of steam -- as young, inexperienced teams often do -- in the last 10 or 20 games. They fall into the Wild Card and lose the one-game play-in. Six months of developing goodwill disappears in nine innings. It feels like another "Wait 'til Next Year" scenario in Pittsburgh.

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Yasiel Who?
More on the MVP races in a full post, but consider this couldabeen: In exactly half a season of work, Hanley Ramirez is hitting .351/.403/.656 with 20 homers and 10 steals from the shortstop position. He's playing some of the best defense of his career and has been worth 5.6 wins for the Dodgers. In half a season. 

The last player to post 11.2+ wins against replacement without taking drugs*? Pedro Martinez 13 years ago. The last everyday player? Yaz in '67.

*As far as we know.

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New Joba Rules
At $2 or $3 million in his last year of arbitration, it's hard to see Joba Chamberlain sticking with the Yankees in 2014. He's regressed as a pitcher, walking 5.4 per nine innings and contributing replacement value the last two years. His home run rate has risen each year but one to an unsustainable 1.7 per nine innings. At this point he's little more than a middle-inning mop-up guy. For the suddenly cost-conscious Yankees, that may not play.

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#Quitchacussing
Issues Brandon Phillips shouldn't comment on publicly: chemical weapons in Syria, Russia's crackdown on gays, possible implications of the Affordable Care Act, his .310 on-base percentage. You want to shut up the Enquirer writer, Brandon? Get on base more.

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Cashnering In
After closing at TCU and 93 MLB games as a reliever, Andrew Cashner may be emerging as a rotation ace this season. At 10-8, 3.21 for the Padres, the bearded one has hurled five straight games of at least seven frames relinquishing two earned runs or fewer. Scouts believed Cashner had the best stuff of college pitchers in the 2008 draft.

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Flipping the Script
The Red Sox are just the fourth team all-time to win 93+ games the year after losing 93+ games. With two more victories, the Indians will become the fifth.

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Playoff Odd In yesterday's post, these were the quoted AL playoff odds from Baseball Prospectus:

Tampa Bay 70%
Texas 67%
Cleveland 49%
Baltimore 9%
KC  4%
New York 1%

Just to give you an idea how fluid these ratings are, consider them one game later:


Tampa Bay 78%
Cleveland 60%Texas 50%
KC  6%
Baltimore 4%
New York 2%

It does call into question how a team can plummet from highly likely to a toss-up after one loss, as the Rangers supposedly did. These playoff odds remind me a bit of five-day weather forecasts. Follow the fifth day forecast over the week and you'll see it change daily before ultimately missing the mark.

20 September 2013

The AL East: Your Nose Runs and Your Feet Smell

If you had the AL East this way on your tout sheet to start the season, no one would have even sniffled:

Toronto
Yankees
Baltimore
Tampa Bay
Boston

With 10 games yet to play, your basement dweller has, in real life, clinched a Wild Card berth and is the leading candidate for the best overall record. Your pick for division king has clinched a losing season and lags 12 games behind .500. Indeed, like the man whose nose runs and feet smell , you've got it upside-down.

We all wondered (or fantasized) about the Blue Jays, who cobbled together high-profile parts from failed organizations to create an intriguing roster. Instead, the imports have scuffled either with injury or ineffectiveness or both, leaving Ontarians with a lineup that doesn't get on base and a pitching staff with a 4.65 ERA.

Other than the Jays, the rest of the division is at scraapping furiously for a Wild Card. Tampa Bay, despite its 18-25 August and September, leads the pack. They host Baltimore and visit New York and Toronto in their final 10 games, almost certainly securing a spot with six wins.

For the Orioles, three games short of the Rays, the four meetings in Tampa are critical. Failing to win at least three leaves them dependent on others to take down Tampa and Texas while they exploit last-place Toronto and coasting Boston.

Oh so improbably, the Yankees cling to contention's edge, even as Mariano Rivera and Andy Pettitte prepare for life after baseball, and the Disabled List hogs the services of Mark Teixeira and Derek Jeter. Losers of nine of their last 14, the Bombers have been outscored this year and have auditioned 18 shortstops and 19 third basemen. While the rest of the division engages in internecine warfare, New York can feast on San Francisco and Houston sandwiched around a set with the Rays. Four out in the loss column and trailing four teams for a play-in berth, they probably need to steal seven wins in the last nine to have any hope. 

Texas, Cleveland and Kansas City figure into this morass as well. The Rangers, reprising their 2012 role as late season face-planters (they're 4-13 in September), run into hard-charging KC on the road, then host the minor-league Astros and the enigmatic Angels to end the season. The Royals head home for the punchless Mariners and the feckless White Sox. They need at least seven of ten but might have the least resistance of all the contenders to deal with.

Then there is the Tribe, a mere half a game out of the Wild Card after an 11-6 September, but let's face it, they're Cleveland. They're 83-70, they're pounding the ball, their final three opponents (Astros, White Sox and Twins) are a combined 105 games under .500, but . . . they're Cleveland. By all rights they should be favored to nab one of the Wild Card slots. But, as may have been previously noted, Cleveland.

For the record, going into games of Sept. 20, Baseball Prospectus rates Tampa a seven-in-ten favorite to reach the play-in, while Texas is a two-to-one favorite. That means there is a 54% chance that one of them will relinquish their lead, and The Indians are best positioned to accept it. Cleveland is a 50-50 proposition while the Orioles, Royals and Yankees are all rated less than one-in-ten longshots, with New York a one-in-a-100 fantasy. These projections are based on the current roster of each team, their opponents and their current position in the Wild Card puzzle.

Besides determining the winner of the NL Central, it's the only intrigue left in the last two weeks. But from Dallas to the Bronx and from St. Pete to Cleveland, every pitch, every out, every run is magnified, and that's intrigue at the James Bond level.

16 September 2013

The Uncomfortable Case of Jose Fernandez

After stifling the Braves for seven innings and inciting a near-riot for showboating during his home run trot, Miami's phenom pitcher Jose Fernandez shut it down for the season. Or rather, the Marlins ended his 2013 rookie campaign at the 173-inning mark.

Team brass has taken a familiar approach with the 21-year-old following his call-up from Single-A in the final nub of last season. They limited his pitch count by game (he never topped 110 pitches) and his total innings by season.

And nary a peep was heard.

The reaction could hardly have been more dissonant when the Washington Nationals last year wove the same clothes out of the fabric of their young phenom, Stephen Strasburg. Strasburg, at 22, was coming off TJ surgery that had limited him to 44 innings at all levels of baseball in 2011 after 123 frames the previous year split between the Minors and the Majors.

Fernandez accumulated 134 innings on the farm last season. Like Strasburg, he threw roughly an extra 40 innings this year, but without the added stressor of a rebuilt elbow tendon.

The outcry last September seemed to rest on the Nationals' title hopes after securing the best record in baseball. It reached fever pitch when Washington gakked up Game 5 to the Cardinals in the Division Series. Attributing that to the absence of Strasburg is pretty thin gruel, but then baseball fans and logic rarely cohabitate.

Because the team has played a disappointing game of ping-pong with .500 in 2013, few have noticed that the Nationals' can feel vindicated about their decision. Despite a meaningless 7-9 record, he's replicated his spectacular 2012 season, except over more innings. (Again, cause and effect are difficult to pin down; it's possible Stras would have continued his mastery without the benching.) 


Perhaps that's what the Marlins had in mind when they emulated Washington and closed the book on Fernandez's season. His absence won't be conspicuous during the playoffs or even during any meaningful games, so no one is in a tizzy. Besides, if all of Miami's baseball fans raised their voices simultaneously in ire they wouldn't make a whole lot of noise.

13 September 2013

Rays Are Wobbling: Will They Fall Down?

After 130 games of baseball, wouldn't it be safe to say that a team with a .600 winning percentage is roughly a .600 team. Maybe they're a little better or a little worse, but it would be surprising to see a .600 team over 130 games suddenly melt into a .333 team over the last 30.

Right?

And yet, here we go again.

Last year, we saw the 62-46 Pirates morph into a 17-37 team down the stretch.  Admittedly that's a .574 team after "only" 108 games but it seems like quite the stumble. We take for granted that the Bucs weren't .500 quality because they hadn't reached that milestone in Miley Cyrus's lifetime, but those first 108 games had to mean something.

In 2011, both Boston and Atlanta succumbed simultaneously to a fatal choking. The Sox won 82 of their first 133 games (.617 winning percentage) only to secure just eight more victories in their last 29 opportunities (.275). The Braves (79-53, .598)crashed to a 10-20 record (.333) over the final month. We saw the same thing in '09 with the Tigers (75-61 followed by 11-16) and in '07 with the Mets(83-62 before a 5-12 skid).

How could that be? Do the first five months tell us nothing about the competence of a ballclub? Were the Red Sox a first place team or a last place team? They had a few injuries on the pitching staff down the stretch, but were otherwise essentially the same club in September as in April-through-August. The beneficiary of Boston's 2011 collapse is this year the collapsers. Tampa Bay was cruising to a Wild Card, if not the AL East crown before late August happened.

On August 24, they stood at 74-53, .583 and still drooling over a division title. A 4-13 slide later, mostly against bottom feeders like the Mariners, and they're clinging to a Wild Card lead thinner than George Zimmerman's excuses. A run by any of Baltimore, New York, Cleveland or Kansas City looks like it will dislodge the nose-diving Rays.


Once again, it's difficult to discern where the wheels have come off. The Rays have navigated around injuries and in fact have returned starter Alex Cobb to their six-deep starting rotation. Both hitting and pitching have ebbed a bit in recent weeks, but neither has fallen off a 4-13 cliff. This is a top-5 hitting team by OPS that features four stellar starters. Perhaps it's their fire-starting relief corps and empty bats with runners in scoring position that are taking their toll.

There remain more questions than answers. If any team can wobble without falling down it's the team with Joe Maddon managing. So, as is often the case in baseball, we'll just have to watch and let the game surprise us.

12 September 2013

So T. Boone Pickens Walks Into A Bar...


Did you hear the one about the Oklahoma State Cowboys football team? They couldn't win consistently in the Big 12, so they spent more money and bought better players.

Ha! Ha! That's so funny! Everyone knows that college football is played by amateur student athletes who compete for school spirit and the love of the game, and are duly compensated with free college educations.

Everyone knows that you can't bribe students with money and sexy coeds and no-show jobs and in-kind gifts. That's illegal. The way you bribe them is with the best stadiums and biggest crowds and most luxurious facilities and sweetest TV packages and strongest pipeline to the NFL.

Even if you did try to bribe student-athletes the illegal way, the omniscient and omnipotent NCAA will conduct an investigation and, three years later, severely penalize the next generation of students and coaches who arrived at the school after the cheaters moved on to more lucrative bribery.

The new arrivals will earn their way into your fine institution of higher learning by scoring high enough on the SAT or ACT to demonstrate that they're above the level of functionally illiterate. Even if it's barely.

With billions of dollars on the line for players, coaches, TV networks, bookies, gamblers, agents and universities, what could possibly go wrong with this formula?

That's why we know that the Sports Illustrated story about scandal at OK St. is just yellow journalists twisting the facts to sensationalize a non-story. Just because T. Boone Pickens poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the university for the sole purpose of improving the football team doesn't mean anything untoward is going on in Stillwater. After all, scholarship, character, critical thinking, practical experience and a BCS Bowl Game are the hallmarks of a great university.

Fortunately, other BCS coaches are coming to Oklahoma State's defense, particularly in the Southeast Conference. They know that no matter how much of Pickens' money gets spread around, there's no way the Cowboys can compete with the big boys in the SEC. They also know that when fans watch games on national TV they want the best football on the field, not the best students in the classroom. So the hell with your stupid SI scandal-mongering. What's the spread on their next game?

02 September 2013

Data Point: Why the Mariners Blow

You don't need a University of Chicago economics degree to understand that when a 41-year-old outfielder logs this line in a lost season's first half:
 

.267/.314/.578 , 24 HR (43% above average)

...you trade him away for young talent so fast tornadoes form.

Instead, the Seattle Mariners held on to Raul Ibanez through their Quixotic quest for that magic 75-win season and he has rewarded their fifth-place selves with this since:

.205/.299/.286, 1 HR (33% below average)

At which point his value is applesauce. This is what GM Jack Zduriencik calls "rebuilding."