There’s only one game this season I’ve gone back and watched again from start to finish: Mike Mussina’s May 7th start against the Mariners, where he pitched eight innings, gave up five hits, one a homer, struck out 12, and walked none. Mussina’s been otherworldly so far this year, and watching him I know that it’s not that he’s particularly lucky–he’s working with top-shelf stuff and great command. Batters are left walking back to the dugout shaking their heads and asking their hitting coach: “What am I supposed to do with that knuckle-curve he’s throwing for strikes?” And the coach shrugs, because he doesn’t know either.
It was a great game, because it made me sit and think about what pitchers are and become: Mussina was almost forgotten last season, his years of excellence not recent enough, and now he’s offering a traveling clinic on how to pitch.
And this, in turn, leads me to wonder about Freddy Garcia’s failure to move from future ace to ace. I wrote about this a little last September and found that Garcia had been lucky in his good seasons with seeing balls put into play turned into outs by the fine Mariner defense of 2000-2001.
The buzzards are circling over Jerry Manuel, the Cards wouldn’t gain much by swapping Vina for Alomar, and the Rangers’ pitching woes continue. Plus news and notes on Billy Koch, Eli Marrero, and Colby Lewis.
For the second time in a week, Joe dips into the ol’ e-mailbag, this time answering questions about Rafael Palmeiro’s candidacy for the Hall of Fame.
Eli Marrero could be gone for a while, Ken Griffey Jr. could be back soon, El Duque is following in Robb Nen’s footsteps, and Will admits that he soon will Think Different [TM].
The Astros sort through their mess at shortstop. The Brewers have gone high school-happy in the draft. Eric Byrnes creates a pleasant problem in Oakland. Plus news on Richard Hidalgo, David Krynzel, Barry Zito, and Tim Hudson.
If there is any one theme to Baseball Prospectus, it’s that we look at the game in a different way. This is the legacy of Branch Rickey that we all aspire to and hope will change baseball for the better. The stathead outlook is well established, if regularly assailed. The medheads are developing as an offshoot of performance analysis, looking at one new way to analyze things. There is no performance unless a player walks on the field and even then, so many things are colored by health that it is next to impossible to understand performance without understanding health. Kerry Wood throws 141 pitches and we all rail, but he throws zero pitches without the invention of Dr. Frank Jobe and the intervention of Dr. Jim Andrews.
Kerry Wood makes pitch count advocates shriek in horror, Mike Piazza may see a dramatic decrease in his squatting, Jose Canseco is no Jim Bouton, and Billy Beane has some sort of waffle-related disease.
Craig Counsell has played on two World Championship teams, for the Florida Marlins as a rookie in 1997, and the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2001. After getting off to one of the best starts of his career with a .387 OBP this season while playing everyday at shortstop and third base, Counsell dislocated his right thumb and suffered a torn ligament. He was pronounced out for 10 weeks. After surgery to repair his thumb, Counsell hopes to begin rehab in three weeks, while spending time with his wife Michelle and their first child, born May 3. Counsell recently chatted with BP about coming back from injuries, the virtue of plate discipline, and his approach to hitting.
Yesterday, Rafael
Palmeiro became the 19th player in major-league history to hit 500
home runs, joining the club with a three-run blast to right field in the
seventh inning off the Indians’ David
Elder. His achievement has been met with lukewarm response, unusual
for someone reaching such an important milestone. Not only has no eligible
500-home run hitter ever been left out of the Hall of Fame, none have ever
sparked serious debate over their candidacy.
Palmeiro’s accomplishment, though, is being hailed not as the signature feat
of a great player, but as an example of just how “cheap” home runs
have become in the early 21st century. Palmeiro’s qualifications for the Hall
are being questioned, and he’s being lumped in not with Reggie
and Eddie
and Michael
Jack, but with modern DHs like
Roger Angell, The New Yorker’s celebrated baseball writer, has a new compilation out titled Game Time, which contains many new pieces along with some previously published ones as well. BP correspondent Alex Belth caught up with Angell last weekend and talked about growing up a New York Giants baseball fan, the present-day Yankees, plus other topics New York baseball-focused and otherwise.
Although the owners and players shook hands on a new collective bargaining agreement last August 30, the final version of the CBA was not published until this week. The eight-month delay becomes easier to understand when one looks at the document. The table of contents alone runs 11 pages; counting the attachments, the CBA itself is 223 pages long.
Over the next few months I’ll be writing a series of articles about the new CBA. These articles will walk through the document from beginning to end, translating the key points from legalese to English and discussing them in the context of past agreements.
The Expos shuffle their lineup, the Giants adjust to life without Robb Nen, and the Blue Jays are happy to have Frank Catalanotto. Plus reports on Brad Wilkerson, Tim Worrell, and Doug Davis.
The Diamondbacks’ rotation is a mess, Bruce Chen’s latest destination is Boston, Willie Harris gets his shot with Aaron Rowand going Mario Mendoza in Chicago, and the Devil Rays scrap the publicity stunts to play the kids. Plus news and witticisms on 19 other teams.
The weird thing about the standings in the AL so far this season is how closely they match the projected standings based on runs scored and runs allowed. Usually this early there are more anomalies, more instances of division rivals whose positions in the standings don’t reflect the caliber of baseball they’ve played. (Clay Davenport has taken this notion to an extreme, which you can find both in last week’s article and every day in his Adjusted Standings.) Looking just at Pythagorean records, though, the entire American League is lining up the way it should.
The NL is quite a different story. The Central’s four contenders are separated by just two games in the stadings, but a whopping nine games based on runs. The Reds’ sweep of the Cardinals closed the gap between the two teams to just a game, but the Cards have outscored their opponents by 50 runs, while the Reds have been outscored by 48, while the Astros and Cubs fall between those extremes. In the West, the seven-game edge the Giants have on the Dodgers is not reflected in the runs the two teams have scored; the Dodgers have a .596/.592 edge in expected winning percentage.
One of the things I’m seeing more and more of–and no, I’m not arrogant enough to take credit for this–is people discussing injuries and their effects on teams and individuals. There’s always been an ebb and flow around big injuries, but I’m starting to see a very subtle shift. There are big debates over pitch counts, discussions with team doctors, and even articles that intelligently discuss age-based overuse. Injury analysis will probably have a slower acceptance curve than performance analysis–and we all know how slow that move has been–but we’re here at the beginning. Pioneers, of a sort. Kinda cool.
I usually try to start off light. I give some fun fact, share a bit of my day, joke about my coffee addiction, or riff on what I like about UTK–that it feels more like me talking to a friend than a big, formal column. Tonight, I’m somewhere between angry, dumbfounded, frustrated, exhausted, and just laughing at it all. As much as injury information and performance analysis is a true disruptive technology–remember that phrase–in baseball, the old school is hanging onto the reins and playing craps with the future of players and teams. Let’s get to the destruction.
I guess PECOTA warned us with the 19.5% attrition rate. I even suggested it might happen. But I sure didn’t see it coming this quickly. After a 28-pitch, breaking ball-filled inning, Josh Beckett was pulled “as a precaution” after complaining of stiffness and pain on the inside of his pitching elbow. Anyone want to venture a guess as to what these symptoms suggest? The Marlins already have Beckett headed to see Jim Andrews. I don’t think Jim gives volume discounts, but he should consider it. The Marlins have treated Beckett with a gentler hand than they did A.J. Burnett. Beckett did cross the 100-pitch barrier in each of his last three starts (6 innings/107 pitches, 7/115, and 6.2/105), but none of these are outrageous counts.
So let’s compare Beckett’s efficiency to that of say, Mark Mulder. Mulder has thrown three straight complete games–a big no-no in the age of strict pitch counts, right? How did Rick Peterson allow this? Simple. Mulder went 96 pitches in two starts, and 105 in the last. Pitch efficiency is looking more and more important. To get back to Beckett, he is headed to Dr. Andrews and we should know more shortly. Until then, try to breathe, Marlins fans. Try to breathe.