Sure, I’ll admit my biases. Like Michael Moore and Fox News, you know where I stand: Injuries are often the difference maker. Look back to last year, when Oakland would have been a different team with Mark Mulder. Or think of St. Louis a few years ago, when when Scott Rolen’s freak accident killed the Redbirds’ attack. There are a million other examples of games lost because of players lost. After talent, health is the most important asset a team possesses.
Instead of doing full breakdowns on each team–something time and carpal tunnel precludes–I’ll focus on the team’s overall health, as well as key injuries that help determine who holds the health advantage heading down the stretch. I’ll use a grade system, rather than my typical traffic light. The rankings are just my impressions and are purely subjective, based on past and current health, the likelihood of problematic future injuries, and the whimsical nature of my late-night muse. Teams are listed in the order they stood in their divisions at the All-Star Break.
Best Matchup (best combined adjusted third-order won-loss record with both teams being over .500): Boston @ Anaheim
Here’s the deal: before the season begins, you look at your team and realize they are not going to hit as much as they did the year before. What do you do? You get some better pitchers so you can reduce the bottom line on the other side of the ball. This is exactly what Theo Epstein did, and he stated as much. And you know what? It worked. The Red Sox are projecting to give up fifty fewer runs than they did last year while losing about the same amount on the offensive side. (Because of the nature of runs scored and runs allowed, the same differential at lower totals actually results in a better record, all other things being equal. This is why it’s going to be just about impossible for the Rockies to ever win 100 games.)
The Phillies are the best team on paper, but the worst of the contenders based
on their underlying performance so far this year. The Mets and Braves, thought
to be running on the fumes of recent contenders and making the transition to
new eras, have been the best teams in the division per the Adjusted Standings Report, while the Phils
and Marlins have come in behind them.
Separated by two games entering the All-Star break, there’s not much to choose
from among these squads. They could end up giving us the most entertaining
race in baseball this year, not because they’re all good, but because they’re
all flawed. The Phils have rotation issues and a combustible manager who has
already banished his best center fielder to the minors. The Mets have serious
OBP questions outside of their lineup core, along with a rotation that is old, not big on missing bats, and likely to regress down the stretch after pitching out of their minds in the first half. The Marlins are finding out what happens when the top of their order is just a little bit worse. The Braves have just hung around long enough to get Marcus Giles back and
Rafael Furcal back in business.
The team isn’t playing that badly. They’re unlucky, not untalented. They’re hitting the ball hard, but right at people. It’ll turn around. We put together a competitive team, but losing streaks happen to even the best teams. We have all the pieces. See, Monday we had pitching, and Tuesday our bats came up big, and on Wednesday we played solid defense. It’s just that we can’t put it all together. You can see that once we’re firing on all cylinders, we’re going to win a lot of games.
One thing about playing fantasy baseball: it forces you to ask–and answer–some questions you’d otherwise never think twice about. One of the ones a friend and I debated this past off-season was: Is Phillies outfielder Pat Burrell worth keeping for the 2004 season?
For what it’s worth, Baseball Prospectus 2004 had this to say about Burrell: “Burrell’s batting average dropped 73 points from 2002 to 2003, the 42nd-largest drop in history for a player with 500 at-bats in both seasons. That’s bad enough, but there’s only one other player above him who, like him, didn’t hit .300 before plummeting. What happened?”
Thing is, batting average is one of the most volatile stats in baseball; when it spikes, we call it a “career year,” and when it falls off a cliff we call it…well, a lot of things, not many of them printable. But take another look: While Burrell’s batting average declined in 2003, his hitting peripherals–patience and power–remained very close to levels which he’d previously achieved…
The Astros say goodbye to Jimy Williams. The Cardinals keep plugging along, nursing a seven-game lead in the NL Central. And the Rangers have enjoyed one of the greatest home-field advantages in the league this year. All this and much more news from Houston, St. Louis, and Texas in your Thursday edition of Prospectus Triple Play.
So, I guess I need to open with an explanation…
Tuesday’s column was written Monday night, before the 2004 All-Star Game had been
played. I thought it might be fun to do a diary for the game in advance of it,
using the same format I used in ’03 and
’01,
and writing it as if I was doing so during the game.
I did such a good job of selling it–or such a poor job of selling the
satire–that I got a bunch of e-mails wondering what the hell I was talking about.
My fault for not being over-the-top enough, and for talking Jonah out of a
disclaimer atop the original piece. If you were confused or didn’t enjoy the
piece, please accept my apology.
With the real All-Star Game out of the way–and playing for home-field
advantage for every World Series game for the rest of the millennium wouldn’t
have saved that snoozer–it’s time to look forward to the second half. This is
shaping up to be a tremendous stretch run, with four divisions pretty much too
close to call, and a National League in which 12 teams can consider themselves
playoff contenders. We have some great individual performances to watch, trade
talk is ramping up daily, and baseball has the stage to itself for a few
weeks.
So it’s time for me to put it on the line and make my midseason calls. One
thing, before I get into all this: I have a stubborn streak, and I’m inclined
to believe that the evaluations I made in April still have merit. So for me to change a prediction takes a lot.
After graduating from college six weeks ago, I decided to embark on a classic post-college road trip (a.k.a. postponing Real Life). I eventually found myself in Houston, just in time for the All-Star Game. Given that I had less money in my bank account than the face value of the cheapest ticket to the All-Star Game, I knew scalpers weren’t going to be my route into Minute Maid Park. My mission became clear–find a way into the All-Star Game without spending a dime.
Baseball Prospectus: Looking back on the 2002 draft, for a while people may have been questioning the Twins taking Joe Mauer over Mark Prior. Now, Mauer is up in the majors and doing well. What went into the thought process of drafting Mauer over Prior? How much did Mauer being from Minnesota factor into the decision?
Terry Ryan: A little bit of the hometown aspect went into the selection. And all that’s fine, but it wasn’t the overriding factor. Economics were a part of it too. There were probably a dozen guys in that draft room, and we did our homework, so there were no big question marks. We knew that Prior was a tremendous talent, Teixeira too. We were very equal on Prior and Mauer, with Teixeira a tick behind–he had a broken (leg) at the time. In the end it didn’t matter–both guys will be great players, Prior was a tremendous pick for the Cubs.
We knew more about Mauer than any player in the draft, we’d tracked him since he was 15. We’re a left-handed-oriented organization because of the Metrodome, a lefty-hitting catcher is hard to find, and catching is probably the most difficult position to find, behind maybe only starting pitching.
Welcome all to the results of the Baseball Prospectus Mid-Season Awards.
The points system is 10-7-5-3-1 for the MVP and Cy Young Awards, and 5-3-1 for the Rookie Awards. BP authors’ picks, with all-too-clever comments, are included here, below the awards standings.
Hitters: Ballots, Points (1st Place Votes), (Avg/OBP/SLG/RARP/VORP)
Pitchers: Ballots, Points (1st Place Votes), (ERA, IP, SNWAR or ARP, VORP)
Imagine spending a week at your cubicle at work, slaving away at that TPS report, and then as you hand it to your boss, she tells you, “Thanks, but the company just decided that they didn’t need the report after all. I was just about to e-mail you the memo.”
That’s about how I feel right now. Having painstakingly put together an article on Danny Kolb, which centered around Kolb’s incredible stretch of surrendering no extra-base hits all season, I was all set to have the article published during the All-Star Break–and then Kolb ran into the unstoppable force that is the PECOTA-powered Wily Mo Pena on Sunday.
(Yes, I’m aware that Jason LaRue homered off Kolb before Pena did. But I’ve been working as a journalist long enough to know it’s considered poor form to let the facts get in the way of a good story.)
So the article is ruined.
But you’re going to have to read it anyway, unless you really want to hurt my feelings. I’ve taken the liberty of making some small changes to the piece, in light of Kolb’s Sunday meltdown. Most of the points made in the article still stand, even if the punchline has been spoiled.
Today we dip into the mailbag to cover a number of topics related to recent columns. First, a question stemming from the article on starters’ support of relievers:
I noticed Phil Niekro and Steve Sparks are both on the list of most-helped starters. I would hypothesize that knuckleballing starters are ‘easier’ to help out than their straight-throwing brethren because of the extreme difference in speed/movement between a knuckler and a typical reliever’s mid-90 mph heat. What do you think?
–S.S. (no, not Steve Sparks)
Good theory. Many other readers were wondering the same thing, and sure enough…
All of this touches on why I’m rapidly losing my already withering affection for ERA as even a rough thumbnail estimate of pitcher quality. Michael Wolverton has written cogently on the pitfalls of ERA in the past. I’d go further by saying if you don’t take a pitcher’s BABIP into account, ERA shouldn’t be anywhere on your radar when making player evaluations. I’d liken ERA to the RBI–useful only at the margins, awfully prone to contextual distortions.
When we judge a pitcher’s performance, we need to grant primacy to the things over which he has the most control: strikeouts, unintentional walks, home runs and groundball-flyball tendencies. To credit or penalize a pitcher for how his defense is performing, how luck fancies him or how he wields a dubious skill of marginal influence is to do a disservice to the spirit of analysis.
The Angels’ offense has been marred by a lack of production at first base. The Cubs and Corey Patterson have been at the center of a number of rumors involving Braves CF Andruw Jones. And although the Brew Crew has done an admirable job this season of staying afloat, it would behoove GM Doug Melvin to sell off the remaining usable parts and build for the future. All this and much more news from Anaheim, Chicago, and Milwaukee in your Wednesday edition of Prospectus Triple Play.
Orioles’ prospect John Maine has struggled since being promoted to Triple-A, worrying some of his stathead supporters. Reliving his days as a member of the Blake Street Bombers, Vinny Castilla is once again taking full advantage of the Coors Field Effect. And the Mets could look to current Pirate Kris Benson as a back-of-the-rotation option if they try to make a run in the NL East. All this and much more news from Baltimore, Colorado, and New York in your Monday edition of Prospectus Triple Play.
Tuesday night, 32 men from each league (selected by 64 separate and distinct methods), will battle it out for supremacy and the right to host the weekend World Series games and, in the process, get more traffic in bars with big screen televisions in the host city because people don’t have go get up early the next morning to work the night after Games 1 and 6. What I think would be much more interesting would be a tournament featuring All-Star teams from the six different divisions.
Knowing that this is a crazy idea (and having to belay the idea of them wearing uniforms identifying their divisional allegiance a la the Little League World Series), I have instead taken the liberty of selecting these six best-of teams. I’ve done it primarily using VORP, but with a touch of subjectivity thrown in here and there (but not too much, since analytical types such as we are, we’re conditioned to breaking out in rashes whenever we get too subjective).