Doug Pappas takes Andrew Zimbalist to task for his latest ill-informed sputtering on baseball, and praises Commissioner Bud Selig’s efforts to save the game.
The miracles of revenue-sharing save the cash-strapped, small-market Angels, in the spring, a manager’s fancy turns to thoughts of manufacturing runs, and we had April 5 in the pool for the first misguided comparison of performance analysis to rotisserie leagues.
It’s Opening Night. It doesn’t have the same ring or even the same importance as “Opening Day,” but it’s still nice to see games that count. It’s fun to see the season open with something like a Doug Glanville full-count walk or a couple sac bunts in the first inning. Oy, baseball is a long season, but this we don’t need. At least Alex Rodriguez went deep. Even better, the game looks great on the big screen and I’m ready–beer, chips and salsa, and coffee–for the 12-hour orgy of baseball that will be my Monday.
Last year, I introduced a new measure of a team’s efficiency: marginal dollars per marginal win. An article by Michael Lewis in the March 30 New York Times Magazine excerpted from his forthcoming Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, used my analysis to illustrate how Oakland gets so much more performance than other teams out of its low payroll.
BP’s authors shoot the breeze, giving their takes on their surprising AL West unanimity, the wide-open NL Central, the viability of Vlad for MVP and Mark Prior for Cy Young, and more.
This will be a transition year in the NL Central, as the teams that
have been
at the top for years cede control to a pair of up-and-comers. Don’t
worry,
though: Those of you desiring sameness can still take comfort in the
Brewers.
For a long time, I’ve been trying to find someone who’s at or near the top of the ladder in an MLB marketing department to talk to me about some of the unique challenges, opportunities, and practices in marketing an MLB club, and to give a spin-free answer to some of the tougher questions that readers have asked about MLB’s policies over the years. On Thursday, I was fortunate enough to talk with the lead executive of an MLB club’s marketing department, and they agreed to answer any questions I threw out, so long as I didn’t give out their name.
Each and every THR came with its own set of pitfalls. Players were analyzed based on several factors, such as injury history, comparable players, style of play, biomechanics, and inside information from my sources. With no good statistics and no usable injury database, early readers screamed and yelled for “proof!” My response: There is no proof to injuries–sports medicine is like baseball before Bill James, and injury analysis is as much art as it is science.
What the THRs did do was spark some discussion, get people thinking about the effects of injury on their favorite teams and players, and bring sports medicine into the conversation more when performance analysis comes up for discussion. Sometimes, the evidence took care of itself, as in the case of Phil Nevin. That one call probably got more notice than any other, but it shows that there’s a method to the madness–add up injury history, a positional change, a player with an odd career pattern, and the advice of the UTK Medical Advisory Board and it’s not voodoo or Satanism, as one Pizza Feeder accused me of, Cotton Mather-style. I’ve said that if I do my job well, everyone will be able to make the same types of judgments with varying degrees of success. With statistics, some of us stick with OPS since there’s no long division; in injury analysis, if you only want the results, I’ll be here.
The end of March is a time of great anticipation in the baseball world. Fans are nearly as anxious as the players to see the teams head north and start getting some hard answers to the questions that surround their favorite ball clubs. Since veterans have generally established expected levels of performance, much of the buzz and uncertainty surrounds rookies who have survived the spring sifting.
The NL East is a mess, with overpaid teams, overrated teams, teams with no
ownership and teams that might be better off with no ownership. It’s possible
that no team will win 90 games, and that the spread from top to bottom won’t
be 20 games.
Readers critique BP’s Tout Wars team, go below the belt for an injury question, and challenge the notion of set rotation roles.
The American League East is moving slowly from a 2-3 configuration to a 2-1-2,
as the Toronto Blue Jays put together not just a good team, but an
organization that will sustain success. The division will be 3-2 by 2005, but
for now, it’s the same rivals dueling for supremacy.
Outfield defense is, at first glance, one of the easier things to measure. If there’s a fly ball and an outfielder catches it, they get at least one out, which is recorded statistically as a putout. But outfielders will almost never get a putout on a ground ball–the best they can do is pick it up and throw it to someone who will touch the base, or tag the runner. Can something that easy provide useful information?
The Red Sox have 682 first basemen, the Reds revamp half their bullpen a week before Opening Day, the Rockies’ three non-Helton infield spots could be the best collective bargain in baseball, and the Pirates choose one set of jounreymen over another for the back end of the pitching staff.
Are the Twins standing too pat? Are the White Sox finally ready to fulfill
expectations? Are there really five teams in the AL Central? Joe Sheehan comes
back from vacation to answer these questions and more.
Over the past month or so, Baseball Prospectus staffers from around the country have had the unique opportunity to host Pizza Feeds in seven different states, celebrating the coming of a new season. And what a celebration it’s been. At these Feeds, we’ve met some of the most loud, opinionated, knowledgable, and entertaining baseball fanatics in all the land–(lots of) men and (a few) women who share the same passion and exuberence for the greatest game in the world that we do. I think I speak for the entire BP crew when I say that it’s been a legitimate pleasure to convene on a few random, lonely Wednesdays and talk baseball with a group of people who are as obsessive as I am, and we thank those who attended for their support and participation. BP is nothing without its readers, and we remember that.