One big issue I didn’t address when I wrote about the wrong-headedness of the earned run rule last month is the idea that, while the rule may have outlived its usefulness today, it was necessary and meaningful in the error-filled early days of baseball. An old friend, Steve Thornton, put the argument well in a recent letter:
Your article on UERA, and the follow-up piece in Mailbag, are interesting. While I agree with you that the current system hasn’t made a lot of sense for the past 50 years or so, I think you’re missing, or glossing over, the history of the earned run.
Americans have many rights, but as many recessions and depressions have revealed, the right to work is not one of them. Conversely, there is no compulsion to stay at a job a moment longer than you want to. If you’re not happy, if you can’t put the same spirit into the job that you used to, or the job is taking more than it gives back, just move on.
Easier said than done, of course. Every day, many of us trade a little misery for the security of a paycheck. Even when more rewarding fruits are obviously ready to be plucked from the tree, the cubicle we know sometimes feels safer than the office that we don’t. Sparky Anderson chose security for the last half-dozen years of his career. Long after it was clear that Detroit ownership had quit on the team, even past the point that the strain of losing sent him home with nervous exhaustion, he stayed on as captain of a sinking ship.
Leaving aside whether anyone should take seriously statements made by the guy
who said he was moving the White Sox to Tampa, on the face of it the idea
is a no-brainer. In terms of market size, the New York metro area is
mind-bogglingly huge, dwarfing every other market in American baseball.
Even splitting the market in half (OK, more like 65/35) the Yankees and
Mets each have enough TV-rights firepower to blow away the rest of the
league at free-agent time. You could put a team in Jersey and three more
in Brooklyn, and each of the six area franchises would still have a larger
populace to draw on than the likes of Milwaukee or Cincinnati.
I posited that this might be the profile of the “Hidden Hitter”–one who, like Ordonez, wields the lumber with impunity in the majors despite an underwhelming record of performance coming up through the minors. This idea applies really only to power production, and the metrics I focused on were primarily SLG, ISO (Isolated Slugging Percentage, or SLG minus AVG) and XB% (extra-base hits expressed as a percentage of overall hits).
To test this further, I picked the brains of my BP label mates to come up with a laundry list of hitters who meet this profile. By no means is this an exhaustive litany of said prototype, but it will provide a deeper look into whether the Hidden Hitter profile is worth our time.
It’s weird…for all the power the Orioles supposedly added over the winter,
they’re just 12th in the AL in home runs. Larry Bigbie leads
the team with four. They’re fifth in runs, though, as the top five guys in the
lineup are all putting up at least a .320 BA and a .380 OBP.
If you were thinking about climbing on the bandwagon, don’t: the rotation’s
composite strikeout-to-walk ratio is 79/75.
With Nomar Garciaparra’s return getting closer, the Red
Sox are going to have an interesting decision to make. Mark
Bellhorn is third on the team in OBP and out-hitting Pokey
Reese by what would be about 50 runs over a full season. I think
Reese has to be in the lineup behind Derek Lowe, but none of
the other Red Sox starters gets enough ground balls to justify playing him
over Bellhorn.
How Terry Francona handles this is the first real test for him as Red Sox
manager.
The Rangers are off to a torrid start this year, thanks in part to the contributions of Alfonso Soriano (.321/.357/.472 after Monday night’s victory over Tampa Bay).
Soriano has undergone a couple of changes since his last incarnation as the undisciplined Yankee second baseman whose terrible second-half and postseason campaigns were enough to trigger Bronx Jeers at his every at-bat. The switch from the neo-classical, interlocking N-Y to the tacky, scarlet T on his uniform breast is the most obvious, but Soriano has also changed batting order positions (Buck Showalter has him hitting third, instead of first, a role that he is considerably better suited for). He’s also switched birthdays–or at least, birthyears. Turns out that A-Sore was born on the 7th of January, 1976, and not the same date in 1978, as he was previously listed.
John Hart and the Rangers knew full well about the change in birthdate before agreeing to acquire Soriano for Alex Rodriguez. Indeed, baseball teams–and baseball fans–have grown pretty well used to these sorts of surprises; before Soriano, there were only a few hundred other players whose reported birthdates were revealed to be incorrect. With a few exceptions like Bartolo Colon, however, most of those guys were marginal prospects in the lower minors, and not an established star like Soriano, for whom any change in expected performance could potentially cost his club the equivalent of millions of dollars in value.
Lost in the glitz of Sosa, Wood and Prior among Cub stars is the club’s All Star-caliber third baseman, Aramis Ramirez. Jim Hendry pulled off a steal of a deal last July, snagging Ramirez, Kenny Lofton and enough cash to cover a big chunk of Ramirez’s leftover ’03 salary for the forgettable Jose Hernandez, B-level pitching prospect Matt Bruback and player to be named later Bobby Hill, who while possessing the most upside of the trio, also had ample holes in his game and is now a 26-year-old semi-prospect, still waiting to click.
The beauty of the deal wasn’t just the Cubs’ ability to land two key contributors for last year’s playoff run. It was securing Ramirez for the affordable rate of $6 million in 2004. While he’d struggled badly in 2002 and early ’03, much of those struggles stemmed from injuries, including a bad ankle injury that took him far longer to overcome than most expected. Still, this was the same Ramirez who hit .300./350/.536 in his first full big league season at age 23, the same Ramirez who showed huge power as he climbed the minor league ladder. He could stand to ratchet up his plate discipline a bit, but you’re still talking about an elite player at a key defensive position who turns 26 this season, won’t break the bank this season and could be the rare free agent worth paying to retain long-term. Railing against Pittsburgh owner Kevin McClatchy and his money-hoarding reign of error won’t win any pennants. Having the presence of mind to fleece the Pirates in their stupor just might.
The Angels need to resist the urge to trade one of their top prospects. David Segui is injured again. Brad Hawpe is getting a chance in Colorado. Eduardo Villacis gets called for an emergency start for the Royals. And Bubba Crosby finds out exactly what a New York Minute feels like. All this and much more news from around the league in your Tuesday edition of Transaction Analysis.
There are groundball pitchers, there are Groundball Pitchers, and then there’s Brandon Webb. From the moment he was called up from the minors last season, Webb has become the premier sinkerballer in the league. His 3.44 G/F ratio last season was second in the majors behind only Derek Lowe; this year, his ratio of 3.82 dwarfs that of any other pitcher. No other qualifier has a ratio above 2.5; Lowe, who has too few innings to qualify, is only at 2.76.
But Webb has something going for him that Lowe doesn’t: He’s also a dominant strikeout pitcher. For his career, Webb has 203 whiffs in 217 innings, or 8.41 per nine innings. Since entering the rotation full-time in 2002, Lowe is only at 5.00 per.
Over the last 20 years, the number of pitchers who fit Webb’s profile–a power pitcher with a high G/F ratio–is very small, and includes such luminaries as Greg Maddux (in his prime) and Kevin Brown. Long-term, there might not be a safer pitcher to bet on than the Diamondbacks’ #2 starter.
Lots of e-mails on two unrelated topics: Jason Bay and Peter Gammons’ comment about pitchers using steroids. Let’s start with Peter’s comment: Yes, steroids would help pitchers. It’s always been my understanding that steroids, used properly (and yes, there is a proper way) would benefit pitchers MORE than it would hitters. Not only would they increase strength, but the drugs could be used to assist recovery, something pitchers definitely need to worry about. Strength alone won’t immediately put on velocity, but someone who already has the mechanics to put together an 88 m.p.h. heater could probably find a couple extra m.p.h. if his mechanics held together.
Jason Bay doesn’t seem like the type to start an e-mail flood, but since many of the questions were similar, I’ll go with it. Asked if Bay’s surgery was “botched” or if the Pirates are “hiding something,” I went to my best Bucs source. He flatly denied either suggestion, and implied that that the Pirates were just erring on the side of caution. I’ll also note that teams, in my experience, seldom out-and-out lie about injuries. They’ll dance around facts using every rhetorical trick in the book, but get them off the record or back them into a logical corner and the truth flows freely. Bay started his rehab assignment with a 1-3 night, so he should be about a week away from Pittsburgh.
With Todd Walker in the lineup, Dusty Baker’s bench on
most days consists of Todd Hollandsworth and four guys who
are 13-for-87 with three doubles and six walks this year. Not that Baker needs
another reason to leave his starting pitchers in, but at least three of them
are better hitters than the available pinch-hitters, save Hollandsworth.
I was hyping Ryan Wagner in the offseason, so I should
point out that he’s the worst
reliever in baseball this year, with an ERA of 11.25, and just eight
innings pitched in 10 appearances. The league is hitting .488/.520/.707
against him, and at this point, he needs to be demoted before the words
“David Clyde” start seeping into stories about him. He’ll be back,
though.
There has to be some category for what Hee Seop Choi is
up to: nine homers, no other extra-base hits. Choi, by the way, is at
.277/.405/.692 so far. Derrek Lee is a good player, but the
Cubs could have had Ivan Rodriguez and Choi for what they’re
paying Lee and Michael Barrett. That they don’t is a cost of
employing Dusty Baker.
There’s a lot going on in the world of baseball. Most of it is on the field, but there’s too much happening off the field for my comfort. The ongoing BALCO controversy took on a new, potentially frightening turn when it was announced that the Federal Government is in position now to match all test results to names–putting the identities of the 87 people who tested positive last year at risk of being publicized. It remains unclear to me if those who tested positive are aware that they did test positive. As well, the re-tested samples seized just a few weeks ago in Las Vegas could come public at any time. While I’ve written very little about the case in the pages of BP, I am monitoring the situation closely. When there are important and substantive issues to discuss, we’ll be ready.
Powered by Monster Lo-Carb, on to the injuries…
Very quietly, with almost no fanfare whatsoever, one of the most significant developments of the year just occurred in Denver. As reported in Denver Post, the Rockies are switching to a four-man rotation.
Let me repeat that: the COLORADO ROCKIES are going to a FOUR-MAN ROTATION. In one stroke, Dan O’Dowd has mixed together two of the most compelling issues in baseball analysis today–how to win at altitude, and how to optimize the usage of your pitchers.
Last night, the Rangers added a few more people to their growing bandwagon
with a 4-1 win over the Red Sox. The victory completed a sweep and allowed
them to maintain sole possession of first place in the AL West. They have the
best record in the majors at 16-9, and that’s no fluke; BP’s Current
Adjusted Standings have them atop their division, and also with the game’s
best mark.
There’s something of a
groundswell developing around this team, with two storylines that have
nothing to do with their performance taking over the coverage. One is that
this hot start was made possible by the Alex Rodriguez trade, and the second, that they’re playing so well because of great chemistry.
As with any part of baseball, injuries are visually deceptive. What our eyes tell us may not necessarily be the truth, and is subject to the tests of objectivity and science, with the occasional fallback to experience and educated guesses. Things that appear serious can be nothing, things that appear innocuous end seasons, and things we don\’t even notice add up to disaster. Sports medicine is often more art than science, but we should never feel like we can use a simple formula; there is no 1+1=2 for a medhead. The equations are far more complex, the data often flawed, and the platform ever-changing. It\’s just a reminder that while injuries are an overlooked part of baseball, it\’s still subject to the same vagaries that tell us never to trust our eyes.
I’ve been getting a fair share of e-mail asking whether Barry Bonds’ first few weeks of 2004 have been the hottest start to a
season any player has ever had. I’ve been hesitant to answer, in part because
the sample size was pretty small, and in part because that’s not the easiest
thing to research.
With April all but in the books, however, I think it’s safe to say that Bonds’
.472/.696/1.132 line is historic. It’s not only the best start anyone has had
in the past 30 years, it’s the best month any player has had in that
time.
Now, when I make a statement like that, you can be pretty sure it’s been
researched by someone smarter than myself. In this case, Keith Woolner put
together a list of the best months, by OPS, as far back as 1972…