As I’ve previously written, a good way to judge the efficiency of a team’s front office is to compare the amount it spends on players to the number of wins it registers beyond that which could be attained by fielding a replacement-level club on which everyone earned the major league minimum salary. To compute this, I’ve assumed that a replacement-level club would play .300 ball, which translates to 48.6 wins in a 162-game season. A club’s “marginal wins” thus equals ((winning percentage -.300) x 162). For marginal payroll, the baseline assumes a 25-man active roster and three-man DL with everyone earning the major league minimum of $300,000, which would produce a payroll of $8,400,000. As several people have reminded me, the 2003 Tigers broke the formula. Their 43-119 record is worse than I had thought possible–the first team in 40 years to finish with a sub-.300 winning percentage. How bad were the Tigers? Compare them to the last two clubs to lose as many as 110 games: the Montreal Expos and San Diego Padres, who both finished 52-110 (.321) in their inaugural season of 1969.
Jason Schmidt took a lot of, well, rhymes with “Schmidt” on Saturday when he didn’t take the ball for Game Four. We soon learned why: Schmidt has pitched since early August with a torn flexor tendon. Surgery will be necessary to correct this, and the procedure was actually recommended back in August. After consultations with several orthopedists, Schmidt elected to continue pitching after being advised he could not exacerbate the injury. This injury is very similar to one suffered by Robb Nen at the end of the 1999 season. After having surgery on Oct. 7, 1999, Nen was able to return for Spring Training with minor limitations and went on to have a phenomenal 2000 season. The outlook is good for Schmidt’s 2004, a season one hopes will come without the questions about his fortitude. Tim Hudson left Game Four of the Sox-A’s series after only one inning with an injury, alternately described as a hip flexor and as a strained oblique. Hudson will have an MRI on Monday to determine the extent of the injury, which sources tell me is a strained oblique. Hudson will not be available for Game Five, but the MRI will determine when–or if–Hudson would be available, assuming there are games he’d need to be available for.
If the shot of Ugueth Urbina tackling Ivan Rodriguez as Rodriguez holds up a baseball in triumph isn’t on the front page of Sports Illustrated and every other sports publication next week, just fire all the editors. That was one of the single greatest pictures I’ve ever seen in sports, an amazing display of joy. Just remembering that whole sequence gives me chills as I sit here and write about it 12 hours later…the arc of the baseball looping into left field, as J.T. Snow tries to find second gear…Jeff Conine getting rid of the ball quickly…Rich Aurilia desperately waving Snow to the inside of home plate…the collision…Rodriguez tumbling back, gripping the baseball…Snow dropping his head to the plate in disappointment…Urbina diving onto his teammate… I’m not sure Rodriguez still isn’t holding that baseball. He may show up with it in his hand on Tuesday. Heck, he may show up with it at his Hall of Fame induction.
In the Oakland sixth, Ramon Hernandez chops one past Nomar Garciaparra. The runner on second, Miguel Tejada rounds third, but is obstructed by third baseman Bill Mueller. This is rule 7.06b–a play is not being made on the obstructed runner–and again third base umpire Bill Welke did everything right. He points to the location of obstruction with one hand and shouts “Obstruction.” He does not throw two hands up in the air repeatedly signaling a dead ball. It may seem like a confusing distinction, but they are very distinct and again, it is not unreasonable to expect a player, especially a professional, to know the rules of the game he plays. Tejada, though, assumes this obstruction is the same as the obstruction he witnessed innings before. Unfortunately, he is wrong. The play is not dead and no bases are awarded. The play is ongoing and it is the responsibility of all players, offensive and defensive, to continue the play to its end. I have heard arguments that calling Tejada out was the easy way out for the umps with an obvious scapegoat. I disagree. Tejada being put out was due to his own ignorance of the rules, indefensible for a professional, but probably the norm. Tejada’s ignorance is also not something the umps have to compensate for…”Well, he thought the play was over. That is why he stopped. We should give him home.” Sorry, no dice. Tejada’s job is to finish the play. If he is safe, well then, he is safe. If he is called out, it is in the umpire’s judgment whether he would have been safe if for the obstruction and if so, the umpire will overturn the out due to the obstruction.
The Giants deserved to lose.
I haven’t written that kind of condemnation more than a couple of times in my life, but I have also never meant it more. The Giants played brutal baseball Friday afternoon, making poor decisions, executing routine plays poorly, and showing a complete inability to have good at-bats in game-critical situations.
In the wake of the loss, the focus is on Jose Cruz Jr., whose Little League drop of a fly ball in the 11th inning started the Marlins’ game-winning rally. When I think of Cruz, though, I think of his at-bat in the top of the inning. The Marlins intentionally walked Neifi Perez to load the bases–no, I couldn’t believe it, myself–and bring up Cruz down with the Marlins down 3-2 with one out. Cruz’s mandate in that situation was clear: find a way to bring in an insurance run. He was facing Braden Looper, whose command had been shaky from the first batter he faced, and whose only out had been recorded on a sacrifice. Given the matchups and the skills of the players involved, it seemed certain that the Giants would add to their lead.
Cruz hacked away at the first pitch and missed, then took a 1-1 cookie–the Giants took more hanging breaking balls in this game than I thought imaginable–to fall behind before chopping a grounder to Derrek Lee, who calmly got the force at home. J.T. Snow then grounded to second, ending the rally. Twenty minutes later, bedlam ensured when a winning run that perhaps should have been a tying run crossed home plate.
“What are the best and worst things about the broadcasts so far?” – M.T. So far, it’s been pretty grisly from a fan’s perspective, I think. The 10 p.m. EDT start for the Hudson/Martinez matchup was unconscionable. Then, to add unbelievable insult to injury, ESPN adds David Justice to the broadcast booth in violation of the Geneva Convention. I know that everyone watching the game has probably done something during their lives that warrants strict and painful punishment, but inflicting Justice and his commentary on an unsuspecting public was beyond the pale. It’s also possible, if the game was broadcast outside the U.S., that ESPN may have committed an act of war against a number of sovereign nations. But now that they’ve done that, they might as well finish us off with a healthy dose of Chris Berman and his old-10-years-ago nicknames. Should Justice return to the booth, I will personally make an appeal to Amnesty International to begin a letter-writing campaign. I’m pretty sure that if we work together, we can get Bono to make a mission of conscience to Bristol.
The Braves get a PECOTA mini-evaluation. Shannon Stewart is somehow getting support as AL MVP. And Aubrey Huff gets recognition for a job well done. All this and much more news from Atlanta, Minnesota, and Tampa Bay in your Friday edition of Prospectus Triple Play.
Ever watch a particular at-bat early in the game and know you’re seeing the pivotal moment? That’s how I felt in the third inning of yesterday’s A’s/Red Sox game. Down 5-0 after gift-wrapping four runs in the bottom of the second, the Sox picked up back-to-back doubles and a walk to cut the lead to 5-1 and place two runners aboard with one out. Todd Walker grounded to first, setting up a Barry Zito/Manny Ramirez battle. This was going to be it. Either the Sox were going to cut the lead to a manageable 5-3, with Ramirez atoning for his brutal misplay of Eric Byrnes’ second-inning fly ball and Zito displaying the inconsistency that had dogged him throughout the year, or the A’s were going to escape with a four-run lead and having turned back the Sox’s attempt to recover from the second inning. When Ramirez flied out to left, the game felt over. It was. The Sox picked up just four singles the rest of the way, with Zito abusing every hitter in the lineup by changing speeds and wielding a Shelley Long-after-"Cheers" curveball.
Sox fans, how’s that 10 p.m. start working out for you?
I had no problem with MLB giving the A’s a postseason home game at night for the first time since, well, maybe ever. That said, I do think the AL playoff structure as a whole is pretty ridiculous. The Yankees and Twins ended up with about 52 hours between the end of their first game and the beginning of their second. The A’s and Sox will have about 13 hours. That’s not fair, and it’s the direct result of letting TV considerations override common sense. You can give the A’s a night game or you can give the Yankees and Twins the off day; you can’t do both.
As so often happens with things Selig, whatever could go wrong, did. The A’s and Sox played 12 innings in a shade under five hours, ending just before 3 a.m. EDT. Worse still for Sox fans, the game ended in defeat, as Ramon Hernandez laid down a perfect two-out, bases-loaded bunt to drive home the winning run, this after the Sox had blown a ninth-inning lead.
Those who stuck it out saw an exciting ballgame. It wasn’t the much-anticipated pitchers’ duel, and it wasn’t exactly a great game, but it was exciting. Todd Walker and Erubiel Durazo traded roundhouse punches for most of the night, with each player coming up a hero against a southpaw. The two starting pitchers were off their game, combining to allow six runs on 16 hits in 13 2/3 innings of work. Pedro Martinez wasn’t himself, striking out just three batters and allowing four walks.
Jerry Manuel gets his fond farewell. The Cardinals get a PECOTA mini-evaluation. And the Rangers get to look forward to seeing Ramon Nivar and Juan Ramon Dominguez in the future. All this and much more news from Chicago, St. Louis, and Texas in your Thursday edition of Prospectus Triple Play.
The games so far have gone according to form, not in the sense that they’ve been predictable, but in the sense that each series has its strengths. Want slugging? Got it. Want great pitching? Got it. Want strategy? Got it. Want to second-guess managers? We’ve got that too. Want to see the best players that baseball has to offer? We might not have all of ’em, but there’s certainly plenty. (Even the announcing has been pretty good, but more on that later.) All in all, it’s a great time to be both a baseball fan and a medhead. The only negative so far? The fact that I’m up at nearly 2 a.m. watching the Red Sox play a phenomenal game in Oakland. Oh well… there are worse fates, I suppose.
While wondering if seeing high-speed film of Chad Bradford might make a biomechanist’s head explode, here are the injuries from today’s games…
Lots of mail pursuant to the Game Scores 2.0 piece…
Dayn,
Yesterday Kerry Wood shutout the Mets who fielded a lineup that was major league only because the players were allowed to wear Mets uniforms. Shouldn’t the game scores somehow represent the lineup a pitcher faces. A Pedro or Mulder shutout of the Yanks full-strength lineup simply can’t have the same game score as Wood’s “masterpiece” yesterday. BTW, the PCL champion Sacramento Rivercats (Crosby, Koonce, Grabowski, German, Edwards, et. al.) fielded a better lineup than the Mets yesterday. Check the Cats’ MEQs.
Regards,
H.W.
Ideally, H.W., there would such a variable, but that would just about 86 any ease-of-calculation appeal game scores might have. But the idea is certainly correct: not all outings, be they gems or disaster starts, are created equal. (For instance, take a gander at the cast of forgettables Eric Milton mowed down in his 1999 no-hitter.) It’s not quite germane to game scores, but Keith Woolner’s Pitcher’s Quality of Batters Faced reports are highly instructive in this regard.
Two of baseball’s best front offices have once again done their jobs well, and Oakland and Boston will face off in the five-game ALDS. It’s really a classic matchup, with a tremendously vicious offense against a team built primarily on pitching and defense. The thing that would surprise many in the mainstream media is that the team built on pitching and defense is wearing Green and Gold.
The Astros came up short to the Cubs. Barry Zito had another good year, despite what many people in the media think. And the Brewers are looking to keep building their farm system for the future. All this and much more offseason news from Houston, Oakland, and Milwaukee in your Wednesday edition of Prospectus Triple Play.
Gardenhire handled an awful situation well and got good performance from pitchers he probably doesn’t want to be leaning too heavily on. Now, he has a one-game lead and the certainty that he can bring back Santana in Game Four. It helped that Bernie Williams’ Corpse was on display. While much of the post-mortem seems to be focusing on Alfonso Soriano’s throw to the Fulton Fish Market on the same play, it was Corpse’s brutal misplay of a Torii Hunter single that changed the game. We go through this every year with the Yankees. Maybe it’s time to issue a public challenge of some sort, because the naked-emperor thing is getting out of hand. To hear Joe Morgan and Jon Miller–a combination I enjoy–go all Claude Rains when the Yankees display the defensive ability of Kuwait is ridiculous. It’s as if they expect service time or postseason appearances to make plays, disregarding the fact that Williams hasn’t been even an adequate center fielder in two years. He can’t throw–as evidenced on the first run of the game, when he just missed gunning down Cristian Guzman at the pitcher’s mound–and his diminished lateral range no longer makes up for a first step measured in geologic time.
Marcus Giles left Game One after brushing Eric Karros and injuring his ankle. He landed awkwardly, stretching the achilles tendon while landing with nearly his full body weight on a dorsiflexed foot. Giles will undergo treatment, and at deadline, the Braves expect him to be a gametime decision. Mark DeRosa would be his replacement if necessary, though Jesse Garcia replaced him when he left the game.
Mike Lowell stayed on the bench for Game One. That fact tells us a lot about his health, as Lowell has had some measure of success against Jason Schmidt (708 OPS). With Lowell’s small sample size lack of success against Kirk Rueter and Sidney Ponson, it’s unlikely he will see the plate unless it’s almost an emergency situation. Perhaps I was wrong, and this is a situation like the Scott Rolen fiasco last year.
The Red Sox have no injury concerns, I’m told. More than one source told me that Trot Nixon is as close to full-go as he could be this late in the season. As well, the same sources told me independently that they thought Pedro Martinez would be allowed to go as deep into the game as he can go with no pitch or inning limits. The Red Sox go into the playoffs as the healthiest team, and as I’ve said roughly four thousand times, that could be just the difference they need.