Earlier this week, the merry BP Brigade was found shooting the baseball breeze in the bullpen at our secret HQ, the Prospectus Nexus. As our lovely girl Friday Esmé Chimère
(author of BP’s upcoming column for our female readers, “The Boys on the Basepaths”) tended the hibachi, weighty topics were bandied about like the tainted games of the 1919 World Series that suggested to Ring Lardner pretty bubbles marred by cancer spots.
One of the questions we briefly kicked around and the YOU-crew has gnawed like a bucket of Sammy Byrd’s legs ever since is that of where a manager makes his primary contribution to his team’s fortunes. Some would say that the manager’s main job is morale-building. Before agreeing, we should probably ask Larry Bowa what he thinks. It was easy to eliminate in-game tactics, because aside from the odd obsessional bunter (Don Baylor) or compulsive lefty-righty switcher (Tony LaRussa), these are largely rote decisions.
It has been suggested elsewhere that constructing the batting order was where the manager most exerts his influence. This is closer to the heart of the matter, a minor truth in search of a major one. It’s not what order the players bat in that defines the manager, but who is allowed to bat in the first place.
BP has been at the forefront of using statistics to help evaluate minor league players, but not every top prospect will be found among the leader boards. James Loney is a perfect example of someone BP ranked highly despite a superficially unimpressive performance during the 2003 season. At first glance, it is hard to get excited about the numbers he produced in Vero Beach last year. He hit .276, drawing only 43 walks and knocking 41 extra-base hits, leading to a pedestrian .338 on base-percentage and .400 slugging average for a .277 EqA that ranked seventh on his own club. As a first baseman, that isn’t the kind of production that usually makes people sit up and take notice. However, a deeper look inside the numbers reveals a more detailed story.
The Expos need to find a replacement for Tony Armas. The Giants’ rotation may be in trouble. The Blue Jays should expect improvement from Josh Phelps and Eric Hinske. These and other news and notes in today’s Prospectus Triple Play.
Are the Angels the favorites in the AL West, according to PECOTA? How hard did Dusty work Cub starters in ’03? And do the Tigers have a better option than playing Alex Sanchez every day? All this and much more news from Anaheim, Chicago, and Detroit in your Thursday edition of Prospectus Triple Play.
The Royals head into the season with four lefties potentially in the rotation, definitely an oddity. From a health perspective, does this mean anything? Digging into the data, the answer is a simple “no” with the usual caveat of small sample size. Across age spectrums, lefties and righties tend to be within a few percentage points of each other in risk. At times lefties are higher, and at others, righties take the lead. The differences are near random and point to this as something that Royals fans can ignore.
What the Royals cannot ignore is their continuing downtrend when it comes to their medhead stats. They were near the bottom in days lost do the DL in 2003, and were saved by their budget from being near the bottom in dollars lost. It always strikes me as penny-wise and pound-foolish when teams operating under real or imagined budget constraints don’t do more to make sure that the money they’re spending stays on the field.
Alex Rodriguez…Derek Jeter…Jose Reyes? Reyes no doubt trails the left side of the New York Yankees’ infield in matinee idol status, but it may not be long before the 20-year-old sets aside a slice of the Big Apple–if he hasn’t already. In a 69-game sampling of the big leagues last season Reyes batted .307 with 21 extra-base hits and 13 stolen bases in just 274 at-bats. Reyes, who set a New York Mets rookie record in August with 39 hits, also flashed the leather by not committing an error in his last 35 games. The young Dominican made such an impression that he was mentioned as an early candidate for National League Rookie of the Year honors before missing the final month of the season with a left ankle sprain. Now, the potential All-Star returns for another go-round, with hopes of making Mets fans everywhere remember his name for years to come. Despite having to battle a strained right hamstring that could keep him out of the season opener, Reyes recently discussed his rapid climb through the minor leagues, playing in New York and what’s expected of him–among other topics–with Baseball Prospectus.
Some people don’t take spring training seriously enough. Fans head down to Arizona where they stay in cool hotels built around buttes, swap Tootsie Rolls for autographs, watch games in the sun, while poor saps like me toil away, pounding out columns under overcast skies as that day’s member of the executive committee whips us with the content-producing cat o’ nine tails. Teams play split-squad games. They’re required to send a couple of anticipated regulars so what fans come out see some recognizable names, but I have to ask: If you’re an average fan, it’s a beautiful day, you’re drinking your first beer in the sun, would you care if the Tigers sent out Fernando Vina or Cody Ross? Would you get up and demand a refund because Craig Monroe was out there in the outfield instead of Alex Sanchez? And some people take spring training far, far too seriously. I call these people “Ozzie Guillen.”
The allegedly cash-strapped D-Backs give Brandon Webb peace of mind. Calvin Pickering has another summer in Omaha ahead. The Brewers will take their time with J.J. Hardy. Wiki Gonzalez will get a closer look at Mount Rainier. These and other happenings in today’s Transaction Analysis.
A two-sport star at Stanford University, Joe Borchard chose a professional baseball career in the Chicago White Sox organization over a career as an NFL quarterback. Now 25 years old, with talented outfielders in front of him (Magglio Ordonez, Carlos Lee) and behind him (Jeremy Reed), Borchard faces a pivotal point in his career. Told earlier this week that he’ll begin the year at Triple-A Charlotte, he hopes to get back up to the big club soon, with an eye on claiming a starting job. BP recently spoke to Borchard–before news of his demotion–about his off-season training regimen, his quest for a steady job in the big leagues, his choice of baseball over football, and more.
Freshly minted Dodgers GM Paul DePodesta has plenty of challenges ahead of him. The Dodgers, a team historically accustomed to success, haven’t made the postseason since 1996 and don’t appear poised to break that trend in the upcoming season. If they don’t, it’ll be the organization’s longest glory drought since they wallowed in mediocrity from 1921 to 1940.
This season, the club does have well defined needs, but those needs–offensive production of some kind–are sweeping and not easily addressed. Although there have been a few rumors floated by the press (Jose Canseco, Adam Dunn, Jason Kendall, Larry Bigbie), DePodesta has yet to make the headline-grabbing move that Dodger nation awaits with bated breath. Although his tenure in L.A. will certainly bring its share of major trades, I’m not so sure that one is in the immediate offing. A panic move isn’t in order; a reevaluation of the “Dodger Way” most certainly is. The organization has famously relied on pitching since moving Westward, and it served them well for many years. Stockpiling quality arms is praiseworthy, but not when it’s achieved at the utter neglect of the offense. The Dodger Way must change.
A positional switch is in order for the Orioles. The Rockies have a top-prospect to look forward to in Chin-Hui Tsao. And despite popular belief, acquiring Mo Vaughn was actually one of the better moves of the Steve Phillips Era. All this and much more news from Baltimore, Colorado, and New York in your most recent edition of Prospectus Triple Play.
The 1980 season opened under the cloud of a threatened mid-season labor stoppage. In March the players voted 973-1 to strike if the owners persisted in their demand that a club losing a free agent receive a major league player from the signing club as compensation–in effect converting the signing of a free agent into the equivalent of a trade. Hours before the strike deadline, the parties settled all other issues and agreed to revisit the compensation issue the next year. On the diamond, the Philadelphia Phillies rode their league-leading payroll to their first (and so far only) World Championship. Owner Ruly Carpenter blames himself and his fellow owners for rising salaries, noting that “no court can compel you to spend millions on players.” For proof, Carpenter needed to look no further than Oakland’s Charles O. Finley, who rode the majors’ lowest payroll to an 83-79 record in the year of Billyball.
A change last year from long-time trainer Kent Biggerstaff to a new staff makes it difficult to assess with statistical certainty, but many of the more bizarre medical stories last season came from Pittsburgh. Whether it was the ‘sudden discovery’ of an injury to Jason Bay or the saga of Brandon Lyon’s shoulder, the Pirates’ medical staff raised questions around the league. Coming into the 2004 season, the Pirates will be facing the same challenges. Most of their offense last year was expected to come from the bats of Brian Giles and Jason Kendall. While Kendall remains, his name continues to come up in trade talks. Giles was dealt for, among others, Jason Bay and Oliver Perez, two players with significant injury concerns. While contention in the NL Central probably isn’t possible in ’04, health could be the difference between being bad and being the Tigers.
Lineup changes for the Red Sox, a look at the Reds’ 2004 outfield, and a comparison of last year’s Padres offense with this year’s. All this and more news and notes from San Diego, Cincinnati, and Boston in Tuesday’s Prospectus Triple Play.
As a big college basketball fan, I spent a good chunk of last week watching the conference tournaments and trying to dope out who would be in and who would be out of this year’s NCAA championship. Like many people, I had Utah State in the field instead of Richmond, which was my only miss after a perfect record in ’03. Even though I didn’t see that coming, I think the committee did a good job in sorting through the eligible at-large teams and filling out the field.
However, I stromgly disagree the way in which the panel seeded the teams. I think they screwed up the Big Ten teams beyond belief. They gave a bit too much credit to the way some squads–such as Maryland and Xavier–finished their seasons, while applying criteria haphazardly in other cases. They’re the experts, and they have to consider dozens of factors, but my informed-outsider position is that they made some errors.
Yesterday, I got to thinking about how this line of thought also applies to my evaluations of baseball teams. Each year, I have some teams rated well ahead or well behind where most other writers and analysts have them. Some of you are already nodding your heads, remembering my touting the Padres and Reds, or my dismissals of the Angels and Marlins. Hey, I was wrong, and that’s going to happen. Sometimes I’m out there and right, as with the Mets in 2002. Either way, as long as I can go back and understand my analysis, and perhaps learn from a mistake or gain confidence in a particular point, it’s all good. I’m only right all the time when I disagree with Sophia.
Looking ahead towards the 2004 campaign, I can definitely see some teams whose “Sheehan seeds” are going to be much different than the consensus. Unlike in the NCAA tournament, however, I can’t hide behind a one-game-and-out format to defend my decisions. That’s the beauty of the baseball season; it brings out a team’s strengths and weaknesses in a way that the other sports just can’t match.
There’s a number of ways to indicate the bipolar nature of this team, but looking above you’ll see that there’s one big problem that the White Sox face heading into 2004: not enough innings on the board. The bullpen is again supposed to be a strength of the club, but Guillen is again an open question. He at least should have a healthy bunch this season, assuming he doesn’t tax them when his starters aren’t able to go as deep as he’s expecting. PECOTA doesn’t have high hopes for Shingo Takatsu, but at least this pen is deep. In fact, instead of looking for the innings in the rotation, this is where Guillen should be looking. If he could overcome ‘the book’ and start using this deep and potentially very effective pen for longer stretches, he’d be placing his team in a much better position to win.