A rundown of the contenders for the two open Indians rotation slots. Thurston or Cora: who’s the man at second? This could be a big season for Ichiro! on the Mariners’ career lists. All this and more news and notes from Seattle, Los Angeles, and Cleveland in today’s Triple Play.
Subway should call the agent for Victor Diaz and see if he’s interested in shilling for the company. The Mets’ own male version of Oprah is back to the normal-sized player that the Dodgers thought highly of, rather than the rotund version they shipped off for two months of Jeromy Burnitz. A rumored move to third base was mentioned in St. Lucie, however, as his inability to turn the double play was becoming an issue in camp.
For all the criticism that the Devil Rays take–deservedly–for their on-field misadventures, they do medhead well. Over the past three seasons, no one has done it better. How can a team be so bad in most areas and so good in another? The simple answer is commitment. At some point, the Rays management decided that losing players to the DL was unacceptable. With trainers Jamie Reed (now of the Texas Rangers) and Ken Crenshaw and team doctors James Andrews and Koco Eaton, the Devil Rays did the medical equivalent of signing Alex Rodriguez and Pedro Martinez. From the simple to the technical, the Devil Rays’ medical staff has become second to none. It shows. While their dollars lost to DL stats are skewed by the fact that they don’t spend many dollars, they were among the best in days lost to the DL. The question is, do they get enough advantage from what seems to be their one area of excellence? For now, the answer is no. Keeping mediocre-at-best players healthy only keeps a team from plumbing the depths of replacement level.
The Diamondbacks left themselves thin in the outfield. The Royals’ off-season moves could pay off in the standings. The Phillies need to get Chase Utley in the lineup. These and other news and notes out of Arizona, Kansas City, and Philadelphia in today’s Prospectus Triple Play.
One of the most important differences between a starter’s job and a reliever’s is that relievers often have to enter the game with a crisis already brewing. In addition to the normal pitching responsibility of preventing batters from coming around to score, the reliever often has the task of preventing runners already on-base from touching home as well. His handling of those inherited runners is a critical part of his overall job performance, but it’s one that gets very little attention in mainstream baseball coverage. It doesn’t show up in ERA or any other widely available stat; and while you’ll occasionally hear a mention of a reliever’s “stranded runner percentage,” that’s not a number you’ll find listed in the tables of your morning paper. Besides, just measuring the percentage of inherited runners that were stranded (or the percentage that scored) doesn’t paint a complete picture of the inherited runner issue. For one thing, in many cases those inherited runners are still on base when the reliever leaves the game. If Joe LOOGY comes in the game with a runner on second and none out, he strikes his batter out, and then gets taken out of the game, it doesn’t make sense to count that runner as “not stranded” or “not scored”. To see this in practice: Tom Martin was easily the majors’ best reliever in percentage of inherited runners scored, according to STATS Inc.’s list, and Buddy Groom was the AL leader. But those ratings of Martin and Groom, both situational lefties, were inflated by the fact that they didn’t finish innings nearly as often as the average reliever. They didn’t allow their inherited runners to score partly because they were taken out of the game before they had a chance to.
If you’re anyone other than a key decision maker for most teams in baseball, you’re probably aware that you shouldn’t place too much emphasis on spring training stats. Besides the obvious (to most) sample-size caveats, there’s also a litany of other reasons not to take Cactus or Grapefruit League numbers terribly awfully really very seriously. For one, an inordinate amount of the playing time goes to reclamation projects, prospects not quite ready for competition at the highest level, minor league vagabond types or veteran performers tinkering around with a new pitch or reconstructed swing. It’s simply not the sort of premium level of competition you’ll find in regular season contests. While spring training numbers should be taken more seriously than, say, laundry instructions or warning labels on beer, they’re still not to be imbued with head-slapping importance. All that said, this time out I’m going to take a look at a handful of spring performances that do have a reasonable degree of import for one reason or another.
In 1980, the world witnessed a hockey Miracle. In 1999, the United States watched its down-and-out Ryder Cup team explode into a jarring celebration on the 17th green. We love international competition. In 2005, we’re hoping to see a rumored World Cup of Baseball.
So, as is our wont, we’ve started poking into some numbers. Assuming the World Cup comes to fruition, and assuming (big assumption) everybody plays, how might the teams stack up?
So far, it’s been all U.S. On the hitting side, we named eight starting position players to come up with each team’s total MLVr+D, a crude measure of hitting and defense, measured in terms of runs plus or minus Major League average. We focused only on those countries with a sufficient number of players in Major League Baseball to field teams: the U.S., the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico (treated as a separate country just for fun), and Venezuela. At the end of our analysis it was readily apparent that Team U.S.A., and even a Second Team U.S.A., had more than enough firepower to cover the competition–so we posited a “World” team made up of all other countries except the U.S. mainland.
The biggest question mark on the Angels’ postseason hopes is the back of Vladimir Guerrero. He’s the new poster boy for trunk and core strengthening, coming out of a specialized program to counteract the effects of a disc problem. Like Ivan Rodriguez before him, Guerrero worked hard and showed no signs of any recurrence. He’s been wearing a brace throughout spring training, but it’s merely precautionary. The worst-case scenario is a recurrence which could be treated through similar conservative therapy or surgery. The downside given his value isn’t that great. The biggest actual concern is Troy Glaus. His shoulder, repaired in the off-season, might force him across the diamond. That slot is now held down by Erstad, who’s better off in center according to pretty much everyone not employed by the Angels. For now, Garret Anderson, who has a bum right shoulder, takes center field and faces a situation similar to Bernie Williams’ last season. The injury causes Anderson trouble both throwing and extending his arms and could eat into his power slightly. Anderson moved over to make room for Guerrero and Guillen. Yes, Virginia, it is possible to have too much talent sometimes.
The Braves may have Hung Jaret Wright out to dry. The Twins need to find room for their 7,529 outfielders. The Devil Rays have pitching issues. These and other news and notes in this Wednesday edition of Prospectus Triple Play.
Matsui’s impressive career across the Pacific has people comparing him to Barry Larkin in his prime, and there is no doubt that he had a phenomenal season in 2002, and a pretty good one in 2003. According to Clay Davenport’s translations Matsui posted a line equivalent to a .291 EqA in 2002, putting him near Derek Jeter offensively among shortstops, clearly among the best in the game. He slipped to .267 last year, approximately the same production Angel Berroa gave the Royals in his debut season. PECOTA pegs Matsui as a rebound candidate in 2004, projecting a weighted-mean EqA of .279 with a VORP of 39.0, again putting him in the upper tier of major league shortstops. However, a significantly large portion of his value is tied directly to his power, and the translation of power numbers from Japan to MLB may be the area we know the least about.
Here’s the bigger issue, which I’ve saved for the second half of the article: Every other major league team takes it on the chin because of the relocation committee’s failures. The Expos make almost nothing revenue-wise. Since baseball bought them, they’ve run Opening Day payrolls of around $40 million for two straight seasons. Plus $35 million a year to keep the lights on in the offices…work out their share of MLB media deals, divide by pi, and…the Expos probably cost Major League Baseball $40 million more than if they were a team that could manage to break even. Consider revenue sharing, that’s easily going to be another $50 million, and now we’re talking about serious money. Unless you’re an Expos fan, the team you root for paid about $2.75 million a year under the old labor agreement and will pay more than $3 million this year. If this drags on for the entire season, 29 teams will have paid out a little shy of $10 million each for another team to compete against them. If it wasn’t so stupid and contrived, and if you didn’t know the history of how things got to be this bad, it’d be enough to make you sympathetic to contraction.
Ozzie Guillen loves his closers. The Cardinals look like they have their rotation set, after all. And the Rangers still have a few positional battles to evaluate on the field. All this and much more news from Chicago, St. Louis, and Texas in your Tuesday edition of Prospectus Triple Play.
Last week, the A’s made their first major contract commitment since the ill-fated Jermaine Dye signing, agreeing to a six-year, $66 million extension with Eric Chavez. The deal is the biggest in franchise history, and coming on the heels of the departures of Jason Giambi and Miguel Tejada, is being hailed as a sign that Steve Schott is intent on keeping the core of his team.
While conceding that the commitment to Chavez is probably a necessary one for a franchise whose on-field success has translated to higher, but not still not impressive, attendance, I just don’t think it’s a great baseball deal. The obvious comparison is to the Cardinals’ Scott Rolen, the National League’s best third baseman and a player who also signed with his current team without testing the free-agent market.
Bobby Jenks: The next Goose Gossage? Bobby Estalella finds a job. Tony La Russa finds a new broken toy in Tony Womack. Syracuse could give the Devil Rays a good battle. These and other pontifications in today’s jam-packed Transaction Analysis.
The Red Sox and Yankees are trying to get all of their injuries out of the way…or at least it seems that way. It’s doubtful that these early-season injuries are all that the two teams will have. The pressure of being very evenly matched throughout the season could keep some players on edge and–knowing every game is important–could lead to more diving, sprinting, and colliding in order to get that little extra edge, and potentially more injuries. I’ve said throughout the spring that one of these teams will collapse and miss the playoffs, but I’m not sure which one. Like Vladimir Guerrero last year, a minor disc herniation is becoming a major problem for Trot Nixon. Nixon is following the same protocol–therapy, then injections, then surgery–so the Sox are hoping that like Guerrero, the cortisone injections and a core-strengthening regimen will get Nixon back in mid-May. Use Guerrero as the comp here and you’ll likely be able to spot exactly where Nixon will be back. We’ll know shortly whether the injections worked.
The Astros bench leaves much to be desired. The Brewers have a group of prospects that could be making an impact as early as this season. And the A’s finally forked over the cash to keep one of their young, productive stars. All this and much more news from Houston, Milwaukee, and Oakland in your Monday edition of Prospectus Triple Play.