MVN.com RoundTable #4

Question #1:
In today's game, would more fans rather see an 11-10 slugfest or a 1-0 pitcher's duel? Does that represent a shift in culture from the past, and if so, where do you place the blame? Does your personal preference differ from that of the masses? (Are high-powered offenses more exciting than dominant pitching?)

As a general rule, it seems that most fans would prefer to see a slugfest. Homers and doubles and stolen bases and run scoring are all a lot of fun to watch, and you can't blame fans for enjoying the action in a game that consists largely of waiting for something to happen. There are a lot of people who get paid a lot of money to know what the public wants, marketing experts and the like, who all seem pretty convinced that offense, and home runs in particular, are what the public wants to see. They don't have a Strike-Out Derby at the All-Star Game, do they? I don't think that's a shift from the past so much as it's a recognition and exploitation of of a trend in major league baseball.

With that said, I think almost anyone who's seen a pitching duel, particularly when one of the pitchers flirts with a no-hitter or some similar feat, would say that such a game can be extremely exciting, and not just for experienced fans of the game. Even a novice can appreciate a tense game for what it is, and enjoy the moment despite the low score. When it comes right down to it, really the tension is what makes the game exciting, not the scoring or lack thereof.

Two of the most exciting games I've ever attended in person were at the opposite ends of the offensive spectrum. The first was back in September of 1996, a Yankees-Red Sox game in the Bronx, during the stretch drive. Neither starting pitcher survived the fifth inning, and the two teams used 15 total pitchers. There were four steals, and 34 hits, including five homers (four by the Yankees) and 18 total walks, plus three hit batters. The lead changed hands only twice. The Yanks went up 1-0 in the third, but were down 6-1 going into the bottom of the fifth. They never gave up, though, and kept chipping away, even as the Red Sox attempted to pull away. Though they left 20 men on base over the course of the game, the Yankees eventually won it, 12-11, on a bases loaded-single by eventual AL Rookie of the Year Derek Jeter in the 10th inning.

The other game, a pitchers' duel between Roger Clemens and Eric Milton (remember when he used to be able to take part in pitchers' duels?), was just as exciting, though for different reasons, of course. It was August 16th, 1999, the first baseball game I ever took my future wife to (though we weren't even dating yet at the time). There were no homers. For that matter, there were only seven total hits, and two walks, by both teams combined. Clemens and Milton matched zeroes for eight innings, until an error, a hit and a sacrifice would plate two runs for the Yankees in the ninth inning, and the game would end that way, 2-0. Another great game, exciting because it could have gone either way, just like that 12-11 slugfest I saw in 1996. Personally, whether it's the hitters or the pitchers doing the best work, I just like to see a well-played game. Scoring or not, just give me a pitcher who works quickly, spare me the walks and errors, and let the game unfold.

Question #2:
When he finally hangs up his spikes, what will Alex Rodriguez' legacy be? Does he deserve to discussed in the same breath with the all-time greats? Would a few strong (or weak) seasons change your mind, or has he already cemented his place in baseball history?
Alex Rodriguez is already one of the dozen greatest players in history. He's already got two MVP awards, and he should have at least two others. In 1996, his first full season, he hit .358 with 36 homers, 123 RBIs, 15 steals, and a MLB-best 141 runs scored, but he was edged oout for the Award by Juan Gonzalez because even the two beat writers in Seattle did not recognize his greatness for what it was at the time. He should have won it in 1998, when he became the first (and so far, only) infielder to his 40 homes and steal 40 bases in a season. In addition to the 42 homers and 46 steals, he had 124 RBIs, 123 runs, and a league-leading 213 hits (.310 average). But it was deja vu all over again, as Juan Gone walked away with his second MVP award.

In the year 2000, his last in Seattle, he finally started walking more, taking 100 free passes that year, to go with his 41 hoomers, 15 steals, 132 RBIs and 134 runs. He finished third that year, behind Jason Giambi and Frank Thomas, though at least this wasn't robbery like to two that went to Gonzalez. During his three seasons in Texas, he averaged better than .300/.390/.600, with over 50 homers, 125 runs, 130 RBIs, 14 steals, plus he won two Gold Gloves as a shortstop in that span. However, the rest of the Rangers kinda sucked at the time, and he left Texas with only one MVP Award. He won another one in his second season as a Yankee, and may be on track for a third this year. There's an exellent chance that he will finish this season with 500+ homers, and if so, it will make him the youngest player ever to accomplish that feat. At age 32, he could easily play another ten seasons and finish his career with more records than Wolfman Jack, but even if he retired tomorrow, he deserves to be a first-ballot Hall of Famer.

Read others' responses to these questions on MVN.com's RoundTable Page...

Jeter Closest Thing to Jackie Robinson in Today’s Game

Baseball celebrated the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's first game in the major leagues on Sunday with a bizarre numbers game, in which 2,347,629 different players were all allowed to wear Robinson's retired #42 that day. Interestingly enough, all box scores also were altered, so that every position on the field was considered "second base". Not surprisingly, official scorers recorded a record number of "4-unassisted" double plays.

OK, not really.

Another way to celebrate the greatness and unique nature of someone like Jackie Robinson is to try to compare him to some of the modern game's great players. More accurately, you can discuss how difficult it is to find a comparable player in today's game, and instead describe an amalgam of some of the best skills from several of today's players, as Rob Neyer has. He suggests that Robinson would hit with Miguel Cabrera's batting avearge and patience, if not quite so much power, but would play defense at the Keystone with the acumen of Orlando Hudson or Pokey Reese, and would steal bases as well as Chone Figgins. Diamond Mind Baseball simulated his 1951 season in today's game, and in 2006, they suggested Jackie would have hit roughly .354/.439/.565, with 53 doubles, 23 homers, 138 runs and 120 RBI's, and would steal 46 bases as well.

Player         G    AB   R   2B  HR  RBI  BB  SO  SB  CS  HBP  AVG   OBP   SLG   OPS 
Real Jackie   153  548  113  33  19   88  79  27  25   8   9  .338  .425  .527   .953 
DM Jackie     159  607  138  53  23  120  82  86  46  16  17  .354  .439  .565  1.004

Holy crap. Jackie wouldn't just be great, he'd be the best player in the league. Of course, how he manages to get 70 more plate appearances while playing only six more games, I haven't figured out yet, but those numbers sure look cool, don't they?

Anyway, for the sake of context, last year, Ryan Howard won the NL MVP award, and with his stellar campaign, Baseball Prospectus says he garnered 9.5 Wins Above Replacement Position (WARP), a very good number. Albert Pujols was almost half again as good, with 13.1, mostly because he made fewer outs than Howard and played much better defense. And Jackie? Well, numbers like the ones Diamond Mind generated would give him about 15 WARP3 (adjusted for all time). Nobody else in baseball was particularly close to that number in 2006. In fact, only some of the most stellar seasons of all-time have ever approached that number. Some of the best seasons of Barry Bonds, Rogers Hornsby and Ted Williams have surpassed that, but the best efforts of Ty Cobb, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron and Mickey Mantle never did. Was Jackie Robinson really better than those guys?

Obviously, we're arguing something we can never really know, not without a Way-Back Machine or a Delorean with a flux-capacitor in it, but is it reasonable to expect that Jackie Robinson would be able to not just compete with today's players, but to dominate them? At the risk of being branded a racist or something worse, I'm going to suggest that Jackie Robinson would not be so great today.

For me, at times like this, I always go back to the well: Baseball Prospectus. Their Davenport Translations for Robinson's 1951 season aren't quite as generous (14.1 WARP). It should be noted that BP's adjustments are for all-time, though, not just to the 2006 NL, so that should have some effect as well, though I can't say what.

Player          AB   R   2B  HR  RBI  BB  SO  SB  CS   AVG   OBP   SLG   OPS 
Real Jackie    548  113  33  19   88  79  27  25   8  .338  .425  .527   .953 
BP.com Jackie  543  104  41  27   89  74  41  40  10  .335  .426  .575  1.001

He gets a few more homers, but not as many walks, steals or doubles as Diamond Mind was ready to give him. One of the major differences between Diamond Mind and BP is the strikeout totals, 41 for BP, compared to 86 for Diamond Mind. Given that Jackie's actual K total in 1951 was 27, and that strikeouts are issued about twice as frequently now (6.7/game in 2006) as they were in 1951 (3.8/game), I see no reason to believe that Jackie would have only whiffed 41 times. Eighty-six may be a little high, but not much. In fact, adjusting for the differences in the league rates for other stats, as well as the fact that there were eight more games played per team in 2006, we can get a rough idea of how Jackie's stats from the summer of '51 would translate to the 2006 NL:

Player         AB   R   2B  HR  RBI  BB  SO  SB  CS   AVG   OBP   SLG   OPS 
Real Jackie   548  113  33  19   88  79  27  25   8  .338  .425  .527   .953 
TMN-adjusted  580  120  46  27  101  79  50  43   9  .344  .434  .578  1.012

On a cursory basis, it seems to me that the homer total is probably a little high, and the strikeouts are probably a bit low. very few players in today's game can slug .575 or better without more than 50 strikeouts. Pitchers just throw too damn hard these days. Not like back in the old days, when everybody sucked.

Of course, this is just my rough means of adjusting from the 1951 NL to the 2006 NL, and does not take into account the effect of the home park or a myriad of other factors. Baseball-reference.com, however, can do this. In fact, if you're a subscriber, they can take anybody's stats for thier career and adjust them for any year, any league and any park in that league. When I did this for Robinson, I found that his stats for 1951 translate very well to the 2006 NL, but not as well as Diamond Mind or Rob Neyer would have suggested. Here's what they came up with:

Player          AB   R   2B  HR  RBI  BB  SO  SB  CS   AVG   OBP   SLG   OPS 
Real Jackie    548  113  33  19   88  79  27  25   8  .338  .425  .527  .953 
Bball-ref.com  570  116  35  20   96  85  28  27   8  .347  .441  .539  .980

Baseball-Reference explains the algorithm they use here, but if you don't want to read it all, I can summarize by saying that they take the change in league run scoring and use that to back-calculate everything else. I used the changes in rates of the individual stats (2B, 3B, HR, SB, RBI, etc) and then got my percentage numbers form those changes, which explains why Jackie gets more homers, doubles, strikeouts and steals in my adjustment (because the league HR, 2B, and K rates have grown more than the overall run-scoring rate) than in that of www.Baseball-reference.com. Today's all-or nothing, swing-for the fences kind of game lends itself to those things, and to ignore that seems silly to me.

In addition, players and teams steal bases a heck of a lot more nowadays than they did in Jackie's day. His 25 steals in 1951 ranked 3rd in the NL, 4th in MLB, and there were guys in the top ten in each league that stole only 10 or 11 bags. Between 1929 and 1960, nobody in the National League stole more than 40 bases in a season, with the league leader usually in the 25-35 range. Last year alone, half a dozen players in the NL stole 41 or more, and five more players in the Junior Circuit stole at least 40. There's simply no way that Jackie Robinson, in today's game, would steal only 27 bases.

The one place where BR does have me is on park adjustment, because I did not make one, but since Dodger Stadium was essentially neutral last year (park factor of .997 according to Baseball Prospectus, 102 according to Baseball Reference), that wouldn't have much effect anyway. In any case, as you might expect, I feel most comfortable with the numbers I generated myself, however flawed they may be, but that's only half of the story. The other half is to ask who compares well with Jackie in today's game. While there is admittedly nobody with Robinson's combination of bat control, speed, defensive prowess and moderate power, we have a fairly close comparison playing in the major leagues today, and as it happens, he too is an ethnic, middle infielder playing for a team in New York. You guessed it:

Miguel Cairo.

No, not really.

Actually, I'm talking about Derek Jeter. Let me show you:

               G    AB   R    H   2B  3B  HR  RBI  BB   SO  SB  CS   AVG   OBP   SLG   OPS 
TMN's Jackie  162  580  120  199  46   5  27  101  79   50  40   8  .344  .434  .578  1.012 
Real Jeter    154  623  118  214  39   3  14   97  69  102  34   5  .343  .417  .483   .900

No question, it would seem that Jackie has a considerable edge in power, with seven more doubles and 13 more homers despite getting 43 fewer at-bats. Jackie's strikeouts are also dwarfed by Jeter's, with more than double the translated amount, but studies have been shown to essentially indicate that an out is an out, so that matters a lot less than you would think. Besides, as I mentioned earlier, I think my translated numbers wind up with the homers too high and the strikeouts too low, but that's more of a "hunch" than anything else. Jackie also steals a handful more bases, but gets caught a few more times, so that's a net wash. Their percentage numbers, other than slugging average, are eerily similar, as both players hit for very high batting averages and walk a decent amount, but not excessively. Runs scored and driven in are within a few ticks either way as well, despite the difference in plate appearances. Miguel Cabrera's batting numbers would have been even closer in some cases, especially in the power numbers, (50 doubles and 26 homers), but he struck out even more than Jeter, and hardly steals any bases at all. Besides, who watches the Marlins? Are we even certain that this so called "Miguel Cabrera" exists? I didn't think so.

Which leaves us with Jeter. He's an excellent hitter for average, with decent patience, great baserunning ability, and moderate power, very much like Jackie. Jeter's also won three Gold Gloves as a Shortstop, though his having earned them is a very debatable premise. Baseball Prospectus inidcates that Jeter's defense at short last year was +7 FRAA (Fielding Runs Above Average), while Jackie was +26 as a secondbaseman in 1951. That's a big disparity too, even bigger if you, like me, don't happen to be a believe in Jeter as a good shortstop, but however it is that BP measures this stuff, they at least got a number comfortably above average for Jeter last year. He may not be excellent, like Robinson was, but "good" may not be too much of a stretch. Jackie even appears on Jeter's list of comporable players (7th) according to Baseball Prospectus, though even that is a modest comparison at best (only a 23% similarity score).

Baseball-reference.com uses Bill James' formula for similarity scores, a very different one, but they have some odd comparables for Jackie:

1. George Grantham

2. Denny Lyons

3. Edgardo Alfonzo

4. Freddie Lindstrom

5. Jeff Cirillo

6. Mike Greenwell

7. Irish Meusel

8. Joe Randa

9. Gregg Jefferies

10. Bruce Campbell

George Grantham? The 'Fonz? Jeff Cirillo? If this guy was one of the all-time greats, why is his list of supposedly "comparable" players riddled with flame-outs like Gregg Jeffries and mediocrities like Joe Randa? Bizarre, isn't it? The toruble here is that Bill James' formula uses career stats, and because Jackie's official major league career didn't get started until he was 28, and because he preferred to hang up his spikes at 38 than to play for the cross-town rival Giants, Robinson's only got about half a career worth of stats. If not for segregation, Jackie could have been in the majors at least two years earlier, though probably not much more than that, because of World War II. And if not for his pride, he might have played another two or three years, into his early 40's. Even as a spot-starter and bench player, Jackie could have padded his stats a bit, at least enough to knock Joe Randa off the list, don't you think?

But we can't do much about that right now. Robinson's legacy, such as it is, will have to be enough. But we can thank him for the privilege of watching Derek Jeter (and other non-whites) play today. He's a worthy successor.

MVN Round Table: Jackie Robinson's #42 and Hank Aaron's 755

Question #1:What’s your take on Major League Baseball’s ceremonies surrounding the anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s breaking of the color barrier? Did baseball get it right?

MLB does all sorts of wacky things with uniform promotions. They have All-Star jerseys that the players don’t even wear except for one day during the home run contest, for no better reason than that it gives them something else to sell to their loyal fans. They have “Turn Back the Clock” nights at various stadiums around the country and even (God help us) “Turn Ahead the Clock Night” every once in a while. (Those nights take us to a future in which everyone has really poor eyesight and/or no sense of taste, in case you were wondering.) Anything for a buck, right?

Un-retiring the only universally retired number in sports for one night is kinda cool, but I like Rob Neyer’s idea of rewarding players of certain caliber and talent with an annotated #42 instead. It keeps the memory and the meaning of who Jackie Robinson was and what he embodied alive much better than a plaque on the wall of a stadium, which can be too easily ignored, just like the Japanese advertisements in left field at Yankee Stadium, or the 302 foot marker near the Pesky Pole in Fenway, which probably isn’t more than 295 feet from home plate.

But letting anyone and everyone wear the number (including whole teams) to mark the 60th anniversary of Robinson’s first major-league game just seemed patently silly. If you want to remember Jackie, then remember him. Have a touching video tribute on the JumboTron, or give out some kind of #42 trinket to the fans, or get someone who’s not on the team, someone working for real, racial reconciliation in that city, to come out wearing #42 and throw out the ceremonial first pitch.

Better yet, you could have (dare I say it?) an actual moment of actual silence during the actual game, which would be otherwise filled with all kinds of senseless and obnoxious noise between innings. That would have been a better way to remember Jackie, and more important, all those great black players who preceded him, but never got a chance to play on baseball’s biggest stage.


Question #2:Hank Aaron announced publicly that he wouldn’t be celebrating if (and when) Barry Bonds breaks his all-time home run record. Should Aaron and MLB make an effort to honor Bonds’ accomplishments, however tarnished they may be?

Despite his obvious connection with Major League Baseball, Aaron is not employed by or otherwise affiliated with the league, and so lumping the two of them together seems inappropriate. Aaron worked hard to get his record, no doubt, and he has every right to refuse to celebrate if that record’s broken. He doesn’t need the steroid controversy as an excuse. Just general disappointment about getting knocked off the top of the list would suffice.

The Boston.com story doesn’t contain any indication that Aaron is bitter, or jaded, or upset about the allegedly tarnished nature of Bond’s pursuit of his record. Just that he’s old and has better things to do than be there for someone else’s photo-op. Hank, go play golf that weekend, if you want. You earned it.

MLB, however, is a different story entirely. Bud Selig is as connected to MLB as anyone can possibly be, and he was visibly present when Mark McGwire broke Roger Maris’ record in 1998, and then when Bonds broke that in 2001. It seems very likely, in retrospect, that the owners (and Selig himself) knew as much about the prevalence of performance enhancing drugs in MLB locker rooms then as they do now.

The only difference is that now the public knows about it, too, so being there makes Selig look like he’s condoning the use of those substances. But not being there makes him look like a hypocrite, because nobody with half a brain believes that he first learned about the use of steroids in baseball when he bought a copy of Juiced at the Milwaukee Airport for something to read on the plane. Until there’s some kind of real, concrete evidence to suggest that Bonds was or is cheating, Selig ought to be there when it happens.

Read other responses to these questions at the MVN Round Table Discussion blog...

Yankees First Week Full of Ups and Downs

It's been a rough week for the New York Yankees.

Only 3-3 after a win last night against Minnesota, the Bronx Bombers have bombed in a number of ways through their first six games.

Last Monday, while playing a rare Opening Day in New York, the Yankees were forced to start the disappointing Carl Pavano, who had not pitched in the majors in nearly two years. Pavano looked decent through the first four innings, but then things unravelled in the fifth. He surrendered four runs in that inning, including the first career homer of Tampa Bay super-phenom Elijah Dukes, in his first major league at-bat, no less, and could not get out of the inning. Fortunately for Pavano, he was let off the hook by the Yankees bullpen and offense, which provided 4.2 innings of scoreless relief and six more runs (including an 8th inning jack by Alex Rodriguez), and they won the game, 9-5.

After one of MLB's many inexplicable April off-days on Tuesday, and a rain-out on Wednesday, the Yankees and Devil Rays met again on Thursday. This time it was Andy Pettitte who could not get out of the 5th inning. First Carl Crawford reached base on an infield single to first base, which is only possible if the batter's really fast (Crawford is) and/or if the firstbaseman screws something up (he did). A bunt back to Pettitte by Ben Zobrist should have been an out, but he was credited with a single, and then Crawford went to third when Doug Mientkiewicz made an error. Replaced by Scott Proctor, Pettitte was on the hook for both runs, and Proctor, the Yanks' best reliever last year, seemed like the best choice to keep the game in hand. He struck out Johnny Gomes, and allowed a sacrifice fly to Ty Wigginton, which made it 4-3, with two outs, and things might not be so bad, right? Wrong. A wild pitch allowed Zobrist to score, tying the game, and then an error by supposedly Gold Glove shortstop Derek Jeter allowed Delmon Young to reach base. Only a great play by Posada managed to get the Yankees out of the inning when the overanxious Young tried to steal and was thrown out at second.

The rest of the game was not much better for the bullpen. Proctor allowed Dukes his second homer in as many games, then singles to 3B Akinori Iwamura and catcher Josh Paul, and LOOGy Mike Myers could not get his one out without allowing and RBI single to Crawford, who ended the inning getting thrown out trying to steal second base, after Zobrist grounded out to third. if not for the youthful recklessness of the Devil rays on the basepaths, the Yanks' day could have been much worse. As it was, they only lost 7-6, but a loss is a loss.

Friday night's game against Baltimore was no better, as this time Mike Mussina allowed six runs in four plus innings and took the loss, which dropped his record against his former team to 9-6 with a 4.51 ERA. Moose, who's become notorious for blaming everything and everyone but himself when he loses, owned up to his failure for once:

"It was just bad. I could say it was the cold, I could say it was the time off -- it was bad. It was a struggle from the very first pitch. I really didn't give us a chance. We count on our rotation a lot, and it's going to make or break our season. For most of the 80-some pitches I threw, I didn't know where the ball was going."

This much was apparent to Yankees manager Joe Torree, too, as Moose was relieved by Sean henn to start the 5th, though he had thrown only 84 pitches. Henn, for his part, was excellent, throwing three scoreless innings to keep the Yankees in the game, but the offense couldn't put anything together against the parade of mostly faceless Oriole pitchers. Mike Myers (two outs) and Scott Proctor (four) bounced back nicely from the rough game on Thursday, providing two more innings of nearly perfect relief, but the offense couldn't string enough hits and walks together to get closer than 6-4, where the game ended.

But then came Saturday...

With the Yankees' brandy-spanking new Japanese pitcher, Kei Igawa, taking the mount for his first major league start, and the perennial also-ran Orioles as the opponent, 50,000+ Yankee fans certainly hoped for big things as they made their way to the Stadium on an unseasonably cold April morning. Boston's far-eastern import, Daisuke Matsuzaka, had made his debut just two days before, and he fanned ten Kansas City Royals in seven innings, so naturally much (too much) was expected of Igawa on Saturday afternoon. Unfortunately, he delivered little other than walks and gopherballs, frequently looking like he was afraid to even throw the ball as he paced about the mound and took his (and everyone else's) time delivering pitch after mediocre pitch. With him pitching the top halves of the innings and Steve "Cryogenically Frozen Molasses" Trachsel pitching the bottoms, it's a wonder they ever got to the fifth inning. When flame-throwing Brian Bruney relieved Igawa in the 6th, I figured at least his 98-mph chees would help speed things up, even if his routing on the mound was no quicker.

Trent Nelson, Director of the Advanced Scouting/Nepotism Department at Boy of Summer Industries, indicated that most of Igawa's fastballs topped out at a Jamie-Moyer-esque 87 mph, which is OK if you have a killer changeup and can locate your slider, but Igawa didn't and couldn't, so he got hammered. He ended his day by surrendering seven runs in five innings, including a homer by Nick Markakis in the first, a bases-loaded walk to tie the game in the second, a plunking of Corey Patterson in the third (not easy to do considering how small Patterson is) and a homer to Melvin Mora in the 4th. Igawa managed to get through the 5th without much trouble, but by then the damage was done, with the Orioles up, 7-3. A-Rod's 2-run jack in the first and Jorge Posada's RBI single in the third offerred little consolation on a day when yet another Yankee Starter could not get past the 5th inning.

After the game, Igawa would deny that he was nervous, or that the cold (39 deg F at gametime with a constant 10-15 mph wind) affected him, or that he was in any way less than healthy. Those of you who are paying attention realize that this almost leaves only one possibility for his ineffectiveness: He's no good. Of course, it's a little early for that, but somebody had to say it. For the record, Igawa also indicated that he had been notorious for starting slowly while in Japan, and that by the way, he's not Daisuke Matsuzaka.

Fortunately for Igawa and the rest of the Yankees, the bullpen appears to be very good this year, and they contributed four scoreless innings of relief to allow the vaunted Yankee offense to do its job. And that they did. Melky Cabrera's single ended Trachsel's day in the seventh, and after he walked (slowly) back to the dugout, LOOGy John Parrish got Robinson Cano to end the inning and strand Melky at first. With two All-Star right-handed batters coming up in Jeter and A-Rod, former Tampa closer Danys Baez was brought in to start the eighth. He got Jeter to fly out, and then appeared to hit Bobby Abreu oin the foot, but an appeal by Orioles manager Sam Perlozzo sent him back to the batter's box when it was ruled that he swung at the pitch. Nevertheless, Abreu worked a walk, and then so did A-Rod. With Jason Giambi coming up, a conference at the mound seemed a harbinger of a pitching change, but Perlozzo inexplicably left Baez in to face Giambi, and Giambi made them pay, homering on the second pitch he saw, and putting the game within one run for the hometown team. The Injured Johnny Damon pinch-hit for Miguel Cairo, who had been playing left field for The Injured Hideki Matsui, and got an emotional, standing ovation, but not much else. He struck out and Posada grounded out to end the threat.

With the game only one run down, Mariano Rivera came in to work the ninth inning, which I thought at the time was perhaps a sign that Torre was learning to use his best reliever in any close spot, not just with a lead. Alas, it turns out that they had warmed up Mo because he needed the work, and he was going to pitch the ninth regardless of the score. But a guy can dream, can't he? In any case, Mo mowed them down in the 9th, allowing only a bloop single by Markakis, but retiring the side. That set the stage for the ninth, which was looking bleak at first.

Speaking of bleak at first, Doug Mientkiewicz led off the ninth and lined out, followed by a strikeout by Cabrera. The Melk Man apparently does not deliver on Saturdays. Two outs already against Chris Ray, the Orioles best reliever, who had blown only five saves all of last year? No ray of hope was apparent, but then, Robinson Cano singled, and Jeter walked, and the Stadium was alive again. Bobby Abreu got hit by a pitch (for real, this time), which loaded the bases for Alex Rodriguez, the Goat of the Yankees failed 2006 season, so frequently criticized for failing in circumstances exactly like these. But A-Rod had hit 4/10 off Ray in his career, including a homer and two doubles, so he was not about to let this chance pass him by. Down to his last strike, Rodriguez crushed a 1-2 pitch to center field, clearing the bases, and giving the Yankees their most dramatic win in a long while, 10-7. A-Rod's two homers and six RBI got him the ovations that had mostly eluded him since his 2005 MVP season, and it was, appropriately enough, Derek Jeter who shoved him out of the dugout to take another tip his cap to the appreciative (if not warm) crowd.

Though A-Rod hit his 4th homer of the season Sunday, the Yankees lost the game 6-4 (and the three-game series), when Darrel Rasner did his best Carl Pavano impression, allowing 5 runs in 4.1 innings. But redemption was not far off. Pavano actually did an impressive imitation of a major league pitcher on Monday against the Twins, allowing only two runs in seven innings en route to his first major league win since May of 2005, and A-Rod's homer, his 5th this season, did not go to waste this time. Then Andy Pettitte came back on Tuesday, two days after a relief appearance for Rasner, to shut out the Twinkies for six innings. (I'm telling you, he needs to be a little tired for that sinker to work properly. He would be a perfect candidate for a four man rotation, if anybody ever tries it again.) Rodriguez homered again in the first inning, the fourth consecutive game in which he's gone yard, and the fifth homer in that span.

Look for the streak to contiinue tonight, as Ramon Ortiz starts for the Twins. A-Rod has hit 8 homers off Ortiz, the most off any active pitcher (tied with David Wells and Bartolo Colon...must be a fat guy thing). Similarly, those eight homers are the most Ortiz has allowed to anyone, two more than Carlos Delgado, though it took Delgado only 36 at-bats for those, and A-Rod needed 48. Mike Mussina will try to redeem himself from his lousy first outing, as Pettitte and Pavano did. He's been Cy Young against Minnesota over the course of his career, 20-5 with a 3.17 ERA in 201 innings. Having already outscored the Twins 18-3 in their first two games, the Yankees can look to sweep tonight, and thank the stars that they managed to miss Johan Santana this time through the Twin Cities.

In any case, it's been a week of sad depressions and ecstatic highs for the Yankees, but as Nuke LaLoosh would say,

"Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes...it rains. Think about that for a while"

2007 Philadelphia Phillies Preview

Jimmy Rollins says that the Philadelphia Phillies are the team to beat in the National League’s Eastern division. Is he right? Well, sure. But then, the Mets, Marlins, Nationals and the Braves are also the teams to beat, since they all have the same record before official play begins on Sunday night. That, of course, is not what Rollins meant. He meant that the Phillies would in fact be the front-runners in 2007, that at least on paper (or, in electrons, since you’re reading this on the Internet), they Phightin’ Phils had the best shot of the bunch. I would argue that the Mets, coming off a 97-win season, probably deserve that title more that anyone else, and that with a dozen straight division titles before the 2006 season, the Braves and their history probably give them a more appropriate claim to being the “team to beat” if the Mets should falter.

History is not on the Phillies’ side, or at least it wasn’t in the 1900’s. It was once famously said about the Chicago Cubs, “Any team can have a bad century”, but when you look at the numbers, this is much more true of the Philadelphias than it is of Chicago. Baseball-reference.com’s schedule breaker-outer shows that, of the teams that played the whole century (i.e. not the expansion franchises of the ’70s or the ’90s, the Phillies had the worst record by far. Their 8379 losses in the 1900’s were about 300 more than the next closest team, the Washington Senators/Minnesota Twins, and the Cubs were actually (slightly) above average, winning 50.5% of their games. Percentage-wise, they were just ahead of Seattle and Florida, and slightly behind the Padres, who all played considerably fewer games with comparable levels of ineptitude. But this century, the Phillies are actually doing OK, and I mean that in the strictest sense of the word: Their .526 winning percentage from 2001-2006 was 13th among the 30 MLB teams, coincidentally, just between Seattle and Florida. They’ve won at least 80 but no more than 88 games every season this century, continually frustrating their fans as they seem perennially poised to take ove the NL East and yet, frequently at the last minute, somehow managing to wrest defeat from the jaws of otherwise certain victory.

But that’s all in the past now, and as I write this, the Phillies are tied for first place, just like every other team in MLB. So what happens from here?

Read more about the Phighitn' Phils' chances in '07 on my MVN.com blog...

Don’t Saint Santo: No Hall Call for Cubs’ 3B

A few weeks ago, the Veterans Committee for the National Baseball Hall of Fame (and Museum) announced the results of their voting for 2007.

*Sound of crickets.*

That’s right, 83 men got together, considered basically everybody who has ever been significantly connected with major league baseball but is not either in the Hall already or on the current BBWAA ballot, and elected exactly nobody. Nothing wrong with that, in and of itself. The Hall of Fame should be an exclusive club, and if we have to keep out the marginally great guys to make sure that someday mediocre ones don’t get in, then so be it. Personally, I have no vested interest in who gets to call himself a “Hall of Famer” and who doesn’t, as I’ll never be one myself. That is, unless they create a special wing for Baseball Bloggers, and an award for Most Blog Posts Composed That Were Never Actually Read by Anyone but Me, in which case, I’m a shoe-in.

But Ron Santo is not, for a number of reasons.

Find out what those reasons are, on my MVN.com blog...

Random Observations from MLB Spring Training 2007...

Non-Baseball thought: Is it just me, or shouldn't the American Civil Liberties Union be working to defend the liberties of, you know, Americans? That's what I thought.

No Angel in the Outfield

Apparently the LAnahfornia Angels are kind of upset that their new, $50-million center fielder refuses to incriminate himself by answering questions about his alleged receipt of Human Growth Hormone (HGH) in 2004. Hard to blame him for clamming up, of course, as there's absolutely no incentive for him to admit to something when the authorities have yet to garner any proof of it, and there are about 50 million reasons to keep his trap shut. He's never played with Barry Bonds, the real target of the performance-enhancing drug investigation, so there's no reason for them to offer him a chance to turn stool-pidgeon. Unlike Jason Grimsley, who was 39 years old when The Man caught up with him and had been with seven different franchises (three of them in two seasons), Matthews is not ready to retire. He had planned on playing for at least the next five seasons, the ones that would make him a millionaire, and isn't about to give that up just so his boss could save face.

More on Matthews, plus Josh Hamilton and Daisuke Matsuzaka on my Most Valuable Network blog...

What, Me, Worry? The 2007 New York Yankees Season Preview

I'm worried about the Yankees.

True, they ran away with their 9th straight divisional title last year, 10 games ahead of second-place Toronto.

True, despite not winning a World Series since 2000, they have won two AL pennants and averaged nearly 99 wins per year in this millenium. They led the major leagues in wins, hits, OBP and runs scored, and were 2nd or 3rd in a bunch of other offensive stats.

But there were some serious chinks revealed in the armor of the Yankee Dragon, not the least of which was the starting pitching. The 2006 Yankees ranked 10th in the majors (6th in the AL) with a 4.54 starters' ERA, an emminently pedestrian number for a team trying to win a championship. Sure, the Bronx Bludgeoners managed to beat their opponents into submission pretty regularly diring the season, but when faced with a Tigers team that could actually pitch (as evidenced by their best-in-the-majors 4.00 team ERA), the Bronx Bats wilted like so much stewed cabbage.

The most glaring need, however, is youth. Sure, the Yankees have some youngsters who are contributing, for the first time in several years, but overall, they're the oldest team in the AL, and if not for San Francisco GM Brian Sabean's inexplicable fear of anyone under the age of 35, they'd be the oldest team in the majors. According to www.baseballreference.com, the average age of the 2006 Yankee hitters was 30.9, almost half a year more than their closest AL opponent, the Boston Red Sox. In the NL, the Giants are in a league of their own, with hitters averaging 33.5 years, putting a whole new spin on the term "Senior Circuit". Nobody else in the NL is over 30.7 (Houston). Yankee pitchers averaged 32.5 winters last year, almost a year and a half older than the Red Sox hurlers, their nearest AL competition for that honor. This number led the major leagues last year, as the Mets, at 32.2, led the NL pack in pitchers' average age.

Randy Johnson (42), of course, was the most glaring reason for that, but even with his departure, the Yankees have age issues on the pitching staff, especially if they manage to convince 44-year old Roger Clemens to join them. Whether the Rocket returns to the Big Apple or not, the Yankees still have Mike Mussina (38), Mike Myers (37), Bergenfield's Ron Villone (37), Mariano Rivera (37), and Andy Pettitte (34). The hitters aren't a whole lot younger, either, with Jason Giambi (36), Jorge Posada (35, very old for a catcher), and a bunch of guys who are 32 or older, like Johnny Damon, Hideki Matsui, Bobby Abreu, and even His Clutchness, Derek Jeter. A-Rod will be 32 by mid season, though he's still very, very good. Recently signed backup infielders Miguel Cairo and Doug Mientkiewicz, who will both be 33 by the end of June, are part of the problem, not the solution.

I see a lot of similarities between the 2006-07 Yankees and the 1997-98 Baltimore Orioles. You remember them, right? I know it gets tough to remember the proverbial "good times" when a team goes ten years (and counting...) between winning seasons, but back in the mid-1990's, the Orioles were pretty competitive, winning the AL Wild Card in 1996, the A.L. East division in 1997, and...

...crashing like a de Havilland Comet in 1998.

Those Orioles got a mean case of "The Olds", and the team has finished better than 4th place in the A.L. East one time in the nine seasons that have since passed. Consider...

Find out why Yankee fans should panic at Most Valuable network...

Death of Anna Nicole Smith Will Spotlight Ephedra Problem that Bechler's Passing Didn't

Well, nobody really paid all that much attention when a no-name baseball player died from apparent complications related to mis/overuse of Ephedra-based weight loss products, but the death of former Playmate/quasi-actress/model/gold-digger/weight loss poster-child Anna Nicole Smith today, at age 39, will be sure to turn some heads.

For good or bad, Smith had become the person most closely associated with Ephedra-based Trim-Spa. (As of today, 4:30PM on the day she died, Smith was still the front-page pin-up girl on Trim Spa's website.) But if the coroner's report shows that the over-use (or, God help them, the "appropriate" use) of Trim Spa played a part in Smith's passing, the company will surely go bankrupt. Sadly, it seems that Smith traded her life for her fame, using the weight-loss product to get back into the limelight after years of being in the news only for her legal battles with the family of her deceased husband, oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II.

Baltimore Orioles pitching prospect Steve Bechler, who died four years ago this month during pitchers and catchers' workouts. Had Bechler's death occurred during a game in Spring Training or the regular season, or if Bechler had been a more famous name, his passing might have done more to curb the sales of the so-called "all natural supplement" and force a little responsibility upon the company and others like it. Because such supplements are produced from herbs andor other natural sources, the Food and Drug Administration does not regulate their distribution, advertising or the claims made on the product itself, requiring only a "statement not reviewed by the FDA" disclaimer. These kinds of things mislead consumers who don't know any better, who don't realize that things that grow in the ground can kill you just as easily as something synthesized in a laboratory, especially if abused.

Whatever you thought of her as a person, it is a tragedy that Anna Nicole Smith died today, especially if it turns out that it was somehow related to the Ephedra stuff. But it is even more of a tragedy that Steve Bechler and other valuable human beings had already suffered the same fate, and no real action was ever taken, because they didn't have huge boobs.

Trim-Spa Baby? I Don't Think So.

MVN.com: Travis Nelson's Yankees Tickets Oddysey: 2007

"Hey, what are you doing Saturday?"

"Nothing. Why, what did you have in mind?"

"How about a Yankee game?"

"Sounds great, you got tickets?"

"Nah, let's just buy them when we get there."

"OK, man. See you then!"

Have you ever had a conversation like this? Have you had one in the last five years or so? And, if so, could you actually buy tickets when you got there, without having to risk buying from a scalper? Me neither. For the last decade, as the New York Yankees have experienced unprecedented success, and have gained unprecedented popularity, it has become increasingly difficult for Joe DaFan to purchase tickets to a single game.

Yankees tickets went on sale to the General Public at 10:00 AM on Wednesday, 31 January 2007, and within an hour, virtually any decent seat to a weekend game was already off the market. One hour. So, with 26 home games on either a Saturday or Sunday, and, let's say, roughly 20,000 "decent" seats to those games in the stadium, that is, not part of season ticket plans, the Yankees are averaging almost 150 tickets sold per second, for that hour, anyway. And that's just for the weekend home games.

Right now, as I write this, it's just three, short hours since the flood ticket gates opened, and if you want three tickets to a Saturday game, you can still get them. I mean, not for games against Boston or the Mets. Or Detroit, or LAnahfornia. But, you know, against lousy teams, like the Royals, Pirates and Devil Rays, sure, you can get tickets. Those tickets are all either in the Tier or the bleachers. In some cases, you can get Tier Box seats to certain games. These tickets are about $45/each with applicable fees, and are only slightly closer to the playing field than, say, Alpha Centauri. They're called "Box" as opposed to "Reserved" seats because they're in the front of the Tier, which really just means that there are more people behind you who might spill their beer on your head. There are also, in some cases, Tier Box MVP tickets, where the "MVP" designation means that they're near the infield, but they're still in the 600-level of the Stadium, as you can see from the stadium map (complements of Ticketmaster and Yankees.com):


Read about the rest of my ordeal at MVN.com's Boy of Summer site...

Yankees Diving into China Baseball Talent Pool, Head-First

In a never ending effort to better the world in which they exist, the New York Yankees have found yet another way to provide social services for those in need. No longer satisfied with the retail efforts that principal owner George Steinbrenner had once spent on rehabilitating the likes of Steve Howe, Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry, the Yankees have now found a way to help ease the ills of an entire nation: The People’s Republic of China.

Sure, they’ve got more people than any other country on earth, over 1.3 billion of them according to a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency estimate last summer. Sure, they’re finally rebounding from decades of industrial atrophy, buying up available resources at a torrid pace, and rapidly becoming a real competitor in the world economy.

But they suck at baseball.


Find out how the Yankees will help the Chinese, er..., not suck at baseball, at my new MVN.com blog...

Feeding the Monster: How Money, Smarts and Nerve Took a Team to the Top

Feeding the Monster: How Money, Smarts and Nerve Took a Team to the Top
by Seth Mnookin

Hardcover, $26.00 US ($36.00 Can.)
c. 2006, Simon & Schuster

"...by the middle of November, they had a $20 million per year left fielder who wanted out, an $11 million shortstop so offended by the team's offer for an extension that his agent had told the Red Sox to trade him, and in Pedro Martinez, a $17.5 million per year starting pitcher who was already warning the team that if they didn't sign him to an extension before the season began, he wouldn't even speak with them once it was over. In the midst of all this, the Red Sox decided to pursue one of the most outspoken pitchers in all of baseball."

Any baseball fan with a modicum of intelligence (and who hasn't been under a rock for the last three years) should be able to deduce that this quote refers to the Boston Red Sox, in the autumn of 2003. In the wake of yet another heartbreaking defeat at the hands of the Hated Yankees(TM), the Sawx threw caution to the wind, stockpiled the best talent available, and set out to win themselves the championship that had eluded the franchise for 86 long years.

It worked, of course.

Author Seth Mnookin, in his mnew (sorry, I couldn't help mnyself) book Feeding the Monster, chronicles not just how "Money, Smarts and Nerve Took a Team to the Top", as the subtitle indicates, but how ignorance, cowardice, mistrust, mismanagement and bad luck had kept that team down for decades at a time.

Read more about how the Hated Red Sox grew up, buckled down, and won themselves a trophy at Double Play Depth...

DPD: Big Mac's Attack by BBWAA Just a Slap on Wrist

The long-awaited 2007 National Baseball Hall of Fame voting results were announced last week, and as you know, there were two new entries. By nearly unanimous votes, San Diego padres outfielder Tony Gwynn and Baltimore Orioles SS/3B Cal Ripken, Jr. were both elected and will enter Cooperstown as the Class of 2007. Both were class-acts as people and as players, and both are richly deserving of this honor.

Speaking of honor, the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) largely chose not to honor former Oakland and St. Louis slugger Mark McGwire with their votes, as more than three-quarters of them left him off their ballots in his first year of eligibility. The big questions stemming from that event are "Why?" and "Will he ever be elected?" Let's look at why the voters did or did not vote for him first.

The first thing to consider, as should always be the case for the Hall of fame, is why anyone should vote for a given player, so let's look at Big Mac's credentials. McGwire retired after the 2001 season with 583 career homers, which was 5th on the all-time leader list at the time, though he's since been passed by both Barry Bonds (734 and counting) and Sammy Sosa (588, and not). McGwire's relatively lackluster batting average (.263) and hit total (1626) are arguments against him as a Cooperstown Cronie, as was his generally paltry contribution to team defense, but five years ago, it was thought that his prodigious power and patience would more than compensate.

20 December 2007 Update:
The rest of this post was hosted on All-baseball.com last year, but then their server crashed and they had no backup, so my hard work is lost to posterity. Suffice it to say that, in my investigations, it seemed to me that most players who started out with around 25% of the vote eventually picked up enough steam to get in. Of course, there's never been an issue quite like this before, and it remains to be seen whether the BBWAA writers will be content to let their punishment be not voting for McGwire for one or two or three years, i.e. if they intend to vote for him eventually, just not now, or if they plan to leave him off the ballot forever.

I would think that McGwire would welcome the Mitchell Report and other such research, as the more names get linked to steroids, HGH and other performance enhancing drugs, the better he looks, right? According to at least one witness, in 2002, even the Marlins and Expos were using PEDs, and they weren't even any good! I mean, seriously, his cheating is really only a big deal if nobody else was doing it, right? But the more we learn, the more rampant the problem appears to have been, or perhaps, to still be. In short, if everyone (or almost everyone) was using PEDs when McGwire played, then the playing field was basically level again, albeit on a much higher plateau, and McGwire's dominance of that level is still very impressive.

If you want to keep Big Mac out of the Hall of Fame because you think he did something ethically wrong, essentially to take the "character" part of the Hall of Fame considerations out to their logical end, then sure, you can leave McGwire off your ballot as long as you want. But if the usage of PEDs was as rampant as Jose Canseco would have you believe in Juiced, or even as the Mitchell Report would suggest, then perhaps McGwire didn't have the advantage we think, and he really was that good.

DPD: Sad Epilogue to Big Unit's Career in Pinstripes

Randy Johnson's brief, underwhelming tenure with the New York Yankees is officially over.

A trade was completed last week, sending Johnson back from whence he came, to the Arizona Diamondbacks, for journeyman reliever Luis Vizcaino and three minor leaguers, but its completion was contingent upon a contract extension for the Big Unit, which was not finalized until Sunday, and a physical, which wa snot done until Monday. Having successfully completed both of those, Johnson has naught left to do but pack his extra-long suitcases and buy a plane ticket back to Phoenix. The five-time Cy Young Award winner undoubtedly leaves the Big Apple with some regrets, having failed to repeat the success he'd experienced in Arizona, and having failed to bring New York its first championship of the 21st Century. With such high expectations on the lanky lefty, the saga could hardly have ended in anything but disappointment, but most Yankee fans could not be happier.

Join the Randy Johnson pity-party at Double Play Depth...

DPD: Japanese Pitchers and American Dollars: A Match Made in Mystery

This is one of my favorite games. It's called "Guess the Pitchers". I give you their statistics and you tell me (telepathically, of course) who they are. Here you go:

      Yrs   G     IP      H    R    ER   HR   BB    K     W   L   ERA
Mr. I  8   190  1244.0  1149  504  435  116  395  1174   86  60  3.15
Mr. M  8   204  1402.7  1102  508  459  112  502  1355  108  60  2.95

Mr. M has a slight edge in most of the statistics, with a few more games pitched, innings, and strikeouts, and fewer homers, though notably more walks. His ERA is slightly better as well, and his win-loss record is much better, though we know that this is often due to the pitcher's teammates and their ability to hit more than his ability to pitch. The most astute of you have already guessed at who "Mr. M" is, and some of you may know who "Mr. I" is as well, especially if you've already figured out his competitor. Let me give you some more info:

                   Age   G   IP   H    R  ER  HR  BB   K    W  L   ERA
Mr. I  6-yr Avg.  27.5  29  198  182  79  68  18  61  187  14  9  3.09
Mr. M  8-yr Avg.  26.0  26  175  138  64  57  14  63  169  14  8  2.93

Those are the average seasons for the two pitchers since they've been starters. Mr. M is slightly younger, but has been a full-time starter for two years longer, whereas Mr. I pitched only a handful of innings for his first two seasons in this league, so I omitted them in looking at their averages. Mr. M certainly gets credit for having been so good at a younger age, but he also has suffered through a few truncated seasons in his career, which have helped to dampen the sheen on his otherwise sparkling statistics, for his "average" season, anyway. Mr. I now has a slight edge in innings, about 23 more per season than Mr. M, and as a starter, his HR/9 and K/9 rates are very similar, and his BB/9 rate is a bit better, though his hits/inning numbers are not nearly as dominant as those of Mr. M.

When you look at the pitchers strictly on their rate stats, the picture becomes a little clearer:

Name    IP  IP/G   H/9  HR/9  BB/9  K/9   ERA
Mr. I  198  6.80  8.27  0.82  2.77  8.50  3.09
Mr. M  175  6.70  7.10  0.72  3.24  8.69  2.93

Both pitchers provide almost seven innings per start, strikeout almost a batter per inning, and allow around three earned runs per nine innings, on average. Mr. I is slightly stingier with walks, to the tune of about half a walk per nine innings, but Mr. M is much more reluctant to give up hits, over a hit/game better, and is also slightly better at preventing homers.

The pitchers seem fairly even in many respects, with Mr. I's edge in durability largely offsetting Mr. M's edge in dominance with hits. Mr. M's year an a half of youth is an edge too, but not an enormous one.

Now, just one more stat for you to ponder:

Mr. I: $26 Million
Mr. M $51.1 Million

Who the heck are these guys? Find out at Double Play Depth...

DPD: 136 Million Reasons the Cubs Will Regret Soriano's Contract

OK, so its not quite that many...

Free agent OF Alfonso Soriano has reportedly signed an eight-year, $136 Million deal with the Chicago Cubs, with whom he is expected to hit lead-off, play left or center-field, and make lots of money while anchoring the better part of a decade's worth of disappointing Cubs teams.

Of course, that's not how the Cubs are billing it, but that's how it will be.

In many ways, Soriano was the biggest available hitter in this year's free agent market. Back in March, when Soriano made a big stink about being asked to play right field for the Washington Nationals, I argued that he was missing the point, and that working his butt off would do a lot more for his market value than just being a secondbaseman would. Turns out that he took my advice, had arguable his best season in 2006, and got himself a pretty nice payday for it. RFK Stadium wasn't quite the Death Valley for hitters in 2006 that it had been in 2005, but with a park factor of 97, it was still a bit more favorable to pitchers than hitters, and yet Soriano set career highs in homers (46) and slugging percentage (.560). More important, perhaps, is that he set a career high in on-base percentage as well (.351), Equivalent average (.300), and Wins Above Replacement Position (8.6), largely due to a career high in walks (67), more than doubling his walk total from 2005. (Granted, 16 of those were intentional, but that still makes 51 unintentional bases on balls, which are 20 more than he had ever had in a single season before.)

Soriano was expected to become a star. A shortstop in the Yankees minor leagues, his combination of speed and power made him a rare commodity as a player, so much more as an infielder, so it was reasonable to overlook his lack of plate discipline and his defensive shortcomings at second base, at least for a while. Though he was showing improvement in that regard while with the Yankees, he regressed considerably as a Texas Ranger, making it reasonable to consider switching him to the outfield, which seems to have worked. He also set a career high in Fielding Runs Above Average (+9) in 2006, which probably accounts for about two wins difference in his actual and expected WARP numbers all by itself.

Those improvements allowed Soriano to sign one of the half-dozen or so richest multi-year contracts in baseball history, with his annual salary trailing only those of A-Rod ($25 million), Manny Ramirez ($20M), His Clutchness ($19M), and Todd Helton ($18M). The real question for the Cubs and their fans: Is he worth it?

Find out if Alfonso Soriano will live up to his contract at Double Play Depth...

Pending Pinstripes Prospect Profile: Kevin Whelan

Kevin Whelan, RHP
Full Name: Kevin J. Whelan
DOB: 8 January 1984, Kerrville,TX
Ht: 6' 0" Wt: 200 Bats/Throws: R
College: Texas A&M University
Drafted: Tigers's 4th-round (120th overall) pick in 2005.


Background:
Part of the swag from the Gary Sheffield trade, Whelan was initially a catcher in college, but didn't hit much, and was converted from catching to pitching in 2004, his junior year. After spending his entire senior year as the ace reliever for an Aggies team that finished 9th, with a 9-18 record in the Big 12 Conference, (30-25-1 overall), Whelan was drafted by the Tigers last year. He anchored the bullpen for that lackluster team, going 4-1 with a 2.90 ERA, a team-best four saves and 40 strikeouts in 31 innings, though he also walked 20 batters.


Pro Career:
After the draft, the Tigers took the cautious approach with him, placing him in the NY-Penn League (Short-Season), where he struck out 19 and allowed only two hits (but six walks) in his first 12 innings of work. That got him a promotion to West Michigan in the Midwest League (A-ball), where he was even better. He allowed only 4 hits and two walks in 12 and one-third innings while striking out 22 and allowing only one run in 14 appearances. Granted, this was a polished, 21-year old collegiate relief ace playing against a lot of 19- and 20-year olds with less experience, but to some degree, success is still success.

Obviously ready for a tougher challenge, but still without even 25 innings of minor league experience, the Tigers kept Whelan on the slow-and-steady road, pushing him to the High-A Florida State League in 2006, where he stayed the year and did pretty well. With a little more exposure, his control was again shown to be his biggest weakness (29 walks in 54 innings), but he continued to otherwise embarass the opposition, striking out 69 batters and allowing only 33 hits all season, while going 4-1 with 27 saves and a 2.67 ERA that was considerably better than the league's collective 3.79 ERA.

Read the rest at Pending Pinstripes...

DPD: American League 2006 Season Awards

2006 AL MVP Contenders

This year's AL MVP Award looks to be about as wide open a race as we have ever seen for such an award. The "experts" are predicting that Derek Jeter will win it, and so am I, but then both the experts and I thought that the Cardinals would get beaten in the first round of the playoffs, and look how that turned out. There's a distinct possibility that something wacky could happen with the voting, like we saw in 1999 when Pedro Martinez's AL MVP Award went to Ivan Rodriguez, and nobody saw it coming. I hope not, but then stranger things have happened.

There are essentially four guys who can lay some kind of claim to being the American League's Most Valuable Player in 2006, maybe five.

One of the early favorites for the award was White Sox OF Jermaine Dye, who had his best year ever, with a .308 average, 44 homers, 120 RBIs, and 103 runs scored. But that was before the defending champs faded in September and finished in third place in the AL Central, six games behind the Twins. ChiSox DH Jim Thome deserves a mention as well, with 42 homers, 108 rins, 109 RBIs and 107 walks (the 8th time in his career he's cracked the century mark in all three of those in a single season), and a .288 batting average that is the best he's had since he hit .304 in 2002, his last year in Cleveland. But third place and no defense makes Thome a fifth-place candidate for AL MVP, at best, though he'll likely win the AL Comeback Player of the Year Award.

If you like the new-fangled statistical measures of Baseball Prospectus and their ilk, then you have to at least allow Indians' DH Travis Hafner into the discussion. (Heck, even if you don't like those stats, you should consider him simply because he has the best first name in the history of mankind!) Travis had a .355 EqA, best in the major leagues, almost ten points better than Albert Pujols, who's generally considered the best player in the major leagues right now. Unfortunately for Hafner, he got hurt and missed the last month of the season, and his team finished 78-84, well out of contention in the AL Central Division. It's tough to get serious MVP consideration when you only play 129 games, no matter how good you are in them, so Pronk, you're out of the running too.

Speaking of Designated Hitters with cool nicknames, there's Big Papi. Red Sox slugger David Ortiz, last year's AL MVP runner-up to Alex Rodriguez, looks like he'll probably place second once again to a Yankee infielder. Ortiz was phenomenal in 2005, and was even better this year, setting a Red Sox record for home runs in a season, and with a team that has boasted the likes of Ted Williams, Jimmie Foxx, Jim Rice, Carl Yastrzemski and Manny Ramirez, that's really an impressive feat. Unfortunately for Big Papi, his teammates came up pretty small in 2006, finishing with a respectable 86-76 record, but 11 games behind the Yankees and, for the first time in a decade, in third place, behind the Toronto Blue Jays. Ortiz finished first in Equivalent Runs, second in Eq. Runs Above Replacement Position (RARP), and third in EqA, but it's tough to vote for a guy who doesn't play defense and whose team finished 11 games behind their division winner.

As I mentioned, of course, the Yankee infielder who will probably win the AL MVP is Shortstop Derek Jeter. He was only 7th in the AL in EqA, with a .316 mark, behind Hafner, Ortiz, Manny Ramirez, Jermaine Dye, Jim Thome, Jason Giambi and Joe Mauer. However, because he got more playing time than almost everybody in line in front of him, he's third in Equivalent Runs, with 119.5 (behind Ortiz with 130 and Grady Sizemore with 125.5), and third in RARP, with 68.7, behind Hafner (70.7) and Ortiz (69.1). RARP is the most telling of the numbers because it adjusts for the relative strength of the position they play and shows how much the player was really worth to his team, above a replacement-level guy (say, Nick Green, for example), and two runs are essentially statistically insignificant. So if you've got three guys who are basically a statistical wash, but one of them plays for the best team in the AL and the other two play for teams that finished WAY out of contention, I think you have to give the vote to the guy who plays for the winner.

But that's not the only thing to consider. Since Hafner and Ortiz don't play defense, they neither contribute to nor detract from their team's success with their gloves, so that's the end of their contribution. Jeter, however, is an everyday shortstop, and depending on your perspective, is either one of the best or one of the worst defensive shortstops in the league.

Yankees Chick argued, about a month ago, for Jeter to win it, in part based on his defense, but I'm very reluctant to give him much credit in that department. If you look at traditional fielding stats, he's 4th in the AL in fielding percentage among nine qualified shortstops, he's 9th in double plays turned, 7th in Zone Rating (among 9 qualified SS candidates) and is dead last in range factor. I was at a game this year in which Jeter missed two easy grounders to his right, somehow managing to STEP ON HIS OWN GLOVE while trying to field the latter of the two. This is not a good fielding shortstop. The only reason he didn't make more than 15 errors is that he never gets to anything, so there's rarely a ball to bobble or throw away. Baseball Prospectus measures defense in Fielding Runs Above Replacement, and Jeter's a +7 in that area, a little better than average, which seems generous to me. He won another Gold Glove, but that's essentially a popularity contest, as Michael Young (+20 Fielding Runs Above Replacement) and Jhonny Peralta (+24 FRAA) both had much better cases for that. Nevertheless, the fact that he plays defense, and the fact that he's not a total disaster at it, only helps his case.

In addition, stealing a career-high 34 bases in 39 attempts sure adds to his offensive value. Not like, say, hitting 35 more home runs would, but a lot.

So overall, I'm inclined to give the AL MVP to Derek Jeter, by the slimmest of margins, over Big Papi and Pronk. My ballot would look like this:

1.  Derek Jeter
2.  David Ortiz
3.  Travis Hafner
4.  Jermaine Dye
5.  Johan Santana
6.  Justin Morneau
7.  Frank Thomas
8.  Grady Sizemore
9.  Joe Mauer
10. Jim Thome

Check out my take on the other 2006 American league Awards at Double Play Depth...

DPD: Worst. Champion. Ever.

Well, the regular season is over. The postseason is over, and we now officially have the Worst World Champion Ever, the 2006 St. Louis Cardinals, at least on paper. Their 83-78 record in the regular season is 1.5 games worse than the 1987 Minnesota Twins, who went 85-77, but actually got outscored over the course of the season, 786-806 runs. At least the 2006 Cardinals were a winning team by their Pythagenport Projection, if only slightly.



Though that sounds harsh, I really don't mean disrespect to the Cardinals or their fans. They did what they had to do to win, and they deserve credit for that. They beat the team that beat my Yankees, so kudos to them for that as well. But the system is broken when a team that barely wins half of its games over the regular season is even allowed to compete for something called a "World Championship". That's not the Cardinals' fault. It's baseball's.



Read the rest at Double PLay Depth...

DPD: Jeter Wins Hank Aaron MVP Consolation Trophy

At the other end of the baseball players' class scale is Derek Jeter. Yankee Captain, His Clutchness, the anti-Sheff. Call him whatever you want, but now you can call him the Mr. 2006 Hank Aaron Award Winner.

OK, by a show of hands, how many of you even knew that MLB gave out a "Hank Aaron Award"?

Of those, how many knew what it was for?

How many of you knew who's won it in any of the last several years?

How many of you even know how long they've had the damn thing?

Well, since there are only three of you left with your hands up, (and you don't count, Mr. Selig...), I'll tell you. According to MLB.com:

This coveted honor is awarded annually to the best overall offensive performer in both the American League and National League. Originally introduced in 1999 to honor the 25th anniversary of Hank Aaron breaking Babe Ruth's all-time home run record, the Hank Aaron Award was the first major award to be introduced in 30 years.

First of all, I think it's hard to call something "coveted" if nobody knows it exists.

Read the rest at Double Play Depth...

DPD: Sheffield Needs Consolation for Earning “Only” $13M in 2007

With another (unplanned) off-day in the 2006 playoffs, the baseball media outlets are pretty desperate for stories. The rain in St. Louis last night prevented anyone from playing a game, which by extension prevented anyone from writing about the game, so ESPN and others are scraping the bottom of the barrel for baseball sotries. The Yankees are a big market, and therefore a big draw, so among their top nine headlines (alongside the lead story: "It Rained Last Night") are no fewer than four Yankees-related items.

• Sheffield angered over Yanks' plans to pick up option
• Jeter: No tension lingers in maligned Yankee clubhouse
• Phillies' Howard, Yankees' Jeter win Hank Aaron Award
• Rumor Central: Yankees looking to trade Sheffield

Of course, the first and last of those are related to each other, so if you'll indulge me, we'll handle them together, and I'll get to the Derek Jeter stuff in a separate column.

Read the rest at Double Play Depth...

DPD: Kenny Rogers’ Cheating, Scuffs and Spit-balls, and LaRussa’s Mistake

Few things can help a writer get out of a funk like a postseason controversy, especially on an off-day.

After the Yankees were eliminated from postseason contention two weeks ago, I had a hard time gearing up for writing anything else. The Mets beat the Dodgers? They were supposed to do that. The Tigers swept the Athletics? Well, they were the better team all year. The Cardinals ousted the Padres? Well, San Diego wasn't exactly a juggernaut. A thrilling, 7-game NLCS that came down to the last inning of the last game? Hey, Jeff Suppan was the MVP...how thrilling could it be? The Phillies spend over $10 million on a 43-year old pitcher? That probably won't even be among the Top Five Dumbest Things the Phillies Do in the Next Two Years.

But this Kenny Rogers thing has had a life of its own, and it's given me a new lease on my life as a baseball commentator. I got inspired yesterday and cranked out some statistics and a short column in about an hour, and I got the most visitors I've had in weeks, and each of the comments to that post has forced me to think harder, dig deeper, and analyze the issues even more thoroughly.

First of all, it has become apparent to me from some of the comments to yesterday's post, as well as some of the other articles I've seen out there in InterWeb Land, that there are some fundamentals of pitching physics that not everyone understands, so I thought I would expound on those.

Read the rest at Double Play Depth...

DPD: Kenny Rogers’ Thumb Not the Reason for Scoreless Streak

Let me introduce you to two pitchers:

             IP     H   ER   BB   SO   W    L    ERA
Pitcher N  184.0   72    0   56  152   24   0   0.00
Pitcher P  170.2  296  160  128  120    0  24   8.44

There has never been so stark a difference in two pitchers in the history of major league baseball. Pitcher P is unbeatable, a perfect 24-0, never allowing a run. There has never been anyone this good for this long, excepting perhaps in SuperNintendo Baseball. On the other hand, Pitcher P has lost every decision, walked more than he's struck out, and allowed almost 300 hits despite pitching barely enough innings to qualify for the league's annual ERA title. The only real similarity between these two guys is that no one has ever been this bad for this long either, because anyone with an ERA over 8.00 for more than a month or two usually gets sent back to the minors, and anyone this bad for an entire season is probably bagging groceries for a living the next season.

Wait a minute. Here's one more similarity between them:

They're both Kenny Rogers.

Read the rest at Double Play Depth...

World Series Preview 2006: St. Louis Cardinals vs. Detroit Tigers

After getting burned a bit on my previous round of postseason pics, I took a little time off to reflect, and see what I really know about baseball. OK, so "getting burned a bit" is almost as big an understatement as "a little worried about North Korea"...I went 0-for-4 on the Divisional Series, picking teh Mets, Dodgers, Yankees and Twins to go a combined 12-5, when in reality, all four teams lost their respective series, winning a grand total of two games among them. Just call me Travis "Golden Sombrero" Nelson.

I took the NLCS and ALCS off, more due to lack of time to read and write about baseball than some sort of profound re-evaluation of my life's ambitions, but it doesn't matter: Both series ended exactly the opposite of how I would have picked them anyway. In fact, I'll just go ahead her and state my post-dictions (?) for both series:

NLCS: Cardinals @ Mets: Mets in five. The Cardinals don't stand a chance.

ALCS: Tigers @ Athletics: A's in four. Barry Zito and Frank Thomas will tame the Tigers.

Now that we've got that out of the way, let's get to analyzing the World Series that actually will happen...

St. Louis Cardinals vs. Detroit Tigers

It's easy to look at the way the Cardinals gutted out a dramatic, 9th inning win in Game 7 of the NLCS against the Mets Thursday night and call them the "hot team", but the fact of the matter is that the Cardinals' last three-game winning streak ended on September 1st. That's right: they haven't won more than two games in a row in over a month and a half. This is not a "hot" team. What they are is a team that has been fortunate to keep its foes at bay while they lick their collective wounds.

In the absence of Mark Mulder and Jason Isringhausen, perrenial LAIM Jeff Suppan (a sandwich) stepped up to win the NLCS MVP award, and Adam Wainwright has saved three games in three opportunities. The pitching has been solid in the postseason, but hardly dominant. Suppan allowed only 5 hits in 15 NLCS innings, but he also only struck out 6 and walked six, succeeding with moxy and solid defense rather than "stuff". (By the way, has there ever been a mediocre player on any postseason team that didn't have a lot of "moxy"? To hear Tim McCarver talk about it, "moxy" must be the most abundant substance on the planet.)

Regardless of their intangible qualities, Jeffs Weaver and Suppan will have a hard time repeating their success against the Tigers, not because the Tigers are a better-hitting team than the Mets (they're not) but because the Jeffs' luck is due to run out. Weaver had a 5.76 ERA this season, and had only one month with an ERA under 5.47 (September, when it was 4.15) before October, and hasn't had consecutive Quality Starts (6+ innings, 3 or fewer Earned Runs) since late May. Suppan went 6-2 with a 2.39 ERA after the All-Star Break and has a 1.86 ERA in 19.1 postseason innings, but he's been pretty lucky with hits to do that, and that can't last forever. With that said, Chris Carpenter has pitched exactly like, well, Chris Carpenter, this postseason, with the noted exception of his 5-inning, 5-run performance against the Mets in Game 2 of the NLCS last week. Unfortunately, Carpenter will likely get to pitch only once this series, because the Cardinals probably won't win any of the games in which he doesn't pitch. But I'll get back to that.

The Cardinals' offense hasn't exactly been tearing the cover off the ball either, for that matter. They've scored a total of 42 runs in the 11 postseason games they've played, or 3.8/game, hitting a collective .256/.337/.413, including .248/.341/.434 in the NLCS. They got homers from banjo-hitting (and now injured) 2B David Eckstein, reserve OF So Taguchi, starting Pitcher Jeff Suppan and not one but two bombs from catcher Yadier Molina, who went from hitting .216/.274/.321 to hitting, .348/.423/.652 in the NLCS. Time for him, and more specifically his bat, to turn back into a pumpkin. It's one thing to acknowledge a great performance when it happens. It's quote another to counton that happening every night out to get you the "W", and that's what the Cards have had to do for the last week or two.

The Mets' pitchers did their jobs, overall, but their hitters didn't show up and sophomore manager Willie Randolph simply got out-managed by veteran field skipper Tony LaRussa. Grizzled Tigers' manager Jim Leyland won't let that happen to his team, I assure you. (On the other hand, I just watched Albert Pujols stroke a two-run homer to right with two outs and first base open in the third inning, so I could be wrong about that.)

The Tigers, on the other hand, have won seven straight games in the postseason, and those were no slouches they were playing, the 97-win Yankees and the 93-win Oakland A's. Their team led the majors in ERA (3.84) and adjusted ERA (117), so it wasn't just the cavernous Comerica Park that helped them keep the ball in the yard. The Cards, by contrast, were 9th in the 16-team NL, with a 4.54 ERA despite te fact that Busch Stadium actually suppressed run scoring by about 2% this season.

The Tigers were 5th in the AL in runs scored per game, at 5.07, while the Cardinals placed a respectable sixth in that category in the Senior Circuit, at 4.85. Comerica has more of a reputation as a pitcher's park than does Busch Stadium, but in reality, there's been little difference between the two parks for the last few seasons.

The Cardinals had a lot of luck in the playoffs to get this far, after limping into the postseason on the merits of having the least-bad record in the weakest division in baseball. Their pitching is not as good as it has looked forthe last week and a half, and it's bound to revert to form sooner or later. My guess is that the Tigers find a way to contain Albert Pujols and the Cardinals pitchers' luck runs out.

Prediction: Tigers in six.

DPD: National League Playoff Preview

Cardinals Lose, but Win; Astros' Star Fades

See? I told you the Astros wouldn't make it this year!

But man, were they darn close.

It was a fairly convoluted set of circuimstances that would have gotten the Houstons into the playoffs again, but with the Cardinals having lost eight games of their 8.5 game lead in less than two weeks, it seemed like it just might be plausible. The Astros had to win and the Cards had to lose on Sunday, which would have left the St. Louises with a half-game lead, and they'd have had to play a make-up game with the Giants on Monday. If they lost that game, they would have had a one-game, winner-take-all playoff with Houston on Tuesday for the NL Central title, with the winner of that game starting its series against the NL West winner on Wednesday. Talk about an intense schedule.

Unfortunately Houston lost on Sunday, 3-1 to Atlanta, ending the possibility of what would have been the most dramatic collapse in MLB history. (That title still belongs to the 1964 Phillies. Couldn't have happened to a better city.)

In any case, the Cardinals "won" their division with a pretty unimpressive 83-78 record, and are only 36-39 since the All-Star Break. They've still got the reigning NL Cy Young Award winner in Chris Carpenter, but he's given up 12 runs in 15 innings in his last two starts. Jeff Suppan has been his usual LAIM self, maybe aeven a little better than that, but the rest of the staff is full of question marks. Will young Anthony Reyes be able to buckle down under playoff pressure? Will Jeff Weaver pitch like someone who deserves to make over $8 million? Will Jason Marquis (2-8, 6.96 ERA since the start of August) um...not suck? Will the makeshift bullpen be able to keep their crap together? The bullpen is only 10-of-17 in save opportunities since the All-Star Break, and only 3-of-6 in September.

The Cards still have the best hitter in the National League at first base and some solid guys in Chris Duncan and Scott Rolen, but Jim Edmonds is a shell of his former self, and nobody else in the lineup is particularly scary.

Read the rest at Double Play Depth...

DPD: Wild Finish for MLB Season; American League Playoff Preview

It's been a long time since we had this much excitement on the last day of the regular season. The advent of the Wild Card has often meant that formerly exciting pennant races have lost some of their luster, as frequently the team that loses the division title still wins the Wild Card. Rob Neyer lamented this problem in his Big Book of Baseball Blunders, calling the 1993 NL West race between the Dodgers and Giants the "Last Real Pennant Race", but I imagine that he was pretty pleased to find that he once again had a real pennant race to follow when the last day o fthe 2006 season rolled around. For that matter, in addition to the identity of the NL Central Division winner, the seeding of four other playoff teams was not yet know before the start of game play yesterday either. And even more exciting than that, my fantasy baseball team, the Flying Zucchini Bros, was just one point out of first place with a whole day of games left to play. I could hardly contain myself...

Read the rest at Double Play Depth...

DPD: Blame Rocket for Astros' Crash

Two years ago, the Houston Astros sat at exactly 52-52 by the end of July, the very picture of mediocrity. They then proceeded to rattle off 40 wins in their remaining 58 games, including a 23-7 record in September and October, and won the NL Wild Card by one game over the San Francisco Giants. Though they eventually lost the NLCS to St. Louis, they took that series to seven games and might have won it with a bit more luck. More important, perhaps, they actually beat the Atlanta Braves in the Division Series, three games to two, and finally shook off the stigma that this franchise could not win in the postseason.

One year ago, the Houston Astros were just 44-43 at the All-Star break, but got hot in July and again won the NL Wild Card by one game, this time over the *choke* Philadelphia Phillies. Again they beat the Braves in the Division Series, but this time they took care of the St. Louises in six games, advancing to the World Series for the first time since the founding of the franchise in 1962. Still a great year, by almost any measure.

And this year? Well, this year the good people of Houston will have to content themselves with being disappointed during the regular season, because there ain't no Miracle Comeback in this team's 2006 storybook. As things stand now, the NL Wild Card race looks like this:

TEAM        W   L   Pct    GB
Dodgers    80  73  0.523   -
Phillies   79  73  0.520  0.5
Florida    76  77  0.497  4.0
Giants     75  77  0.493  4.5
Atlanta    75  78  0.490  5.0
Reds       74  78  0.487  5.5
Houston    74  78  0.487  5.5
Arizona    72  80  0.473  7.5

Though they won last night, at the end of the day of September 20th, the Astros were 73-78, five games under .500. For comparison's sake, the Astros were five games under .500 last year as well. On July 1st, 36-41. They had over half their schedule remaining to make up those games, and they still only beat out the Phillies by one game. This year, with less than two weeks left to play, there will not be any such resurgence by this team. They will not find a way to climb over six other teams in two weeks and win a third straight playoff berth. They will not get a chance to defend their National League title.

And why? Well, the reasons, as you might expect, are manifold.

Read the rest at Double Play Depth...