With Ramiro Mendoza and Brandon Lyon combining to allow two runs
Wednesday, the Red Sox bullpen has now given up 16 runs in 23 9th innings.
They’ve used seven different pitchers to protect 9th-inning leads (plus
Jason Shiell to hold a 14th-inning bulge), and the question of who will
pitch the ninth is a question that every member of Red Sox Nation has been
obsessing about since long before Opening Day.
Much of this stems from a misunderstanding of the “no-closer”
bullpen that the Red Sox assembled this winter. While the strategy downplays
the save statistic, it’s not about random roles for pitchers, which is how
many people have interpreted it. Roughly speaking, the idea is that the
bullpen’s best pitcher will throw the highest-leverage innings, rather than
being used solely in save situations. This is done in part by trading off
low-leverage save situations—-three-run leads in the ninth inning that can be
protected by lesser pitchers—-for higher-leverage situations earlier in the
game.
There are other principles in play as well, such as minimizing the use of
one-batter specialists, and allowing effective relievers to pitch multiple
innings, but the basic idea is to allow game situations, not Jerome Holtzman’s
legacy, to dictate how the bullpen’s best pitcher is used.
The standings present multiple realities.
At the top, of course, there is the genuine reality, the bottom line, the real deal, terra firma: the actual wins and losses of each team. To a statistician, the actual results are just a little boring: they don’t necessarily reflect the likelihoods that this particular result would happen. The Indians, for instance, are 7-20, as of this morning. Ho-hum.
So the second reality, or the first alternate reality, is found by looking at how many games the team should have won, given how many runs they scored and allowed. There are plenty of ways to make that estimate–Rob Neyer, for one, regularly tracks the standings using Bill James’ “Pythagorean” theorem (in fact, Rob recently wrote an article on pretty much exactly what I’m doing here–and believe it or not, I didn’t read that article until after I’d finished drafting this. It must have been in the air). We’ll be just a little different.
If you think tonight’s UTK is shorter than normal, blame it on me. I’ve spent half the day researching A.J. Burnett’s injury, answering email regarding Burnett’s surgery, and writing what is becoming a really long article on Tim Kremchek. The result: my carpal tunnel is acting up more than normal, and I’ll need to try to stop by my chiropractor (yeah, a chiropractor for carpal tunnel…I never would have believed it either) some time this week. For now, please bear with me in this less verbose edition.
The worst-case scenario came true. As Jim Andrews peered into A.J. Burnett’s elbow, he saw a completely torn–by some accounts, “shredded, destroyed”–ulnar collateral ligament. The ligament was replaced and the clock started. We’ll see Burnett again in about six months and he should be back to his old self in 2005, just in time for free agency. By then, he should have a new manager, but for the Marlins’ sake, I hope it’s much sooner than that.
You’ve been hanging ’round these parts long enough. You’ve heard the party line, once or twice or 20 times: Higher payrolls don’t result in higher ticket prices. Correlation is not causation. Salaries don’t shift demand curves. It’s Economics 101. Simple, textbook stuff.
The problem with this line of argument–the problem with a lot of economically-based arguments–is that it’s easy to let the theory get ahead of the data. Well, I should state that more precisely: It’s easy to let an oversimplified theory get ahead of the data. A lot of what you learn in Economics 102, and Economics 201, and graduate-level classes that I was too busy drinking Boone’s Farm to take advantage of, is that much of the theory you master in an intro-level class is based on a particular set of assumptions that can prove to be quite robust in certain cases, and utterly misleading in others.
A lot of people shun economics for this very reason–we’ve all had coffee shop conversations with the scruffy, Skynard-mangling philosophy major who is fond of spewing out faux-profundities about the irrationality of human nature. He’s missing the point, of course, but so too is the Ayn Rand-spouting prepster from down the residence hall who conflates assumptions with hard rules.
In either case, a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. Economics, though it sometimes harbors pretensions to the contrary, is above all else a behavioral science, and an empirical science. If the theory doesn’t match the data–well, it’s not the data’s fault. This is especially important to keep in mind when evaluating something like ticket prices to baseball games, a commodity that is unusual in many ways. As we’ve stressed frequently, ticket prices ought to be almost wholly determined by demand-side behavior–the marginal cost of allowing another butt in the seats is negligible. But baseball tickets are unusual in other ways, too: They’re very much a luxury good, and their prices are determined by a finite number of decision-makers who may be subject to conflicts of interest. It’s certainly worth evaluating the available data to see whether we can put our money where our mouth is.
BP favorites Marcus Giles and Bobby Kielty finally get their due, but Johan Santana’s imprisonment threatens to start a new revolution. Plus notes on the Braves’ bullpen usage, Torii Hunter’s slump, the bizarre tale of Josh Hamilton, and Lou Piniella’s quest for an aura-emitting closer.
One of the baseball stories I managed to catch while on my vacation was Bud
Selig’s
announcement that he would not pursue a new contract after his current
one
expires. This means that his tenure as commissioner–one that began with
him
taking the job on an interim basis a decade ago–would end in December
2006.
It’s no secret that I’ve disagreed with how Selig has run the game, in
particular his anti-marketing strategies in pursuit of a favorable
labor
agreement. The short-term gain of a Collective Bargaining Agreement
that
benefited management wasn’t worth the years of damage Selig and his
cohort
did with their relentless bashing of what was a healthy industry.
Declines in
attendance, TV ratings and revenue, as well as fiascoes like contraction
and
the Expos situation, can largely be traced to Selig’s efforts to
convince
people that baseball wasn’t viable, wasn’t competitive, and wasn’t
worth their
time.
With a new CBA in place, though, and Selig setting his own exit date,
it’s
time to look forward and see what can be done between now and the end
of 2006.
What positive steps can and should be taken to ensure that Selig leaves
the
game in better shape than it’s in right now? Every now and then this
year, I’m
going to pick an aspect of the game and lay out what I think should be
done to
improve it. While I’ll isolate one level of the game in each column,
the ideas
I’m presenting need to be viewed as a whole, as one big plan to get
baseball
where it needs to be.
I’ll start with the game’s ownership, because I think everything grows
from
that. Over the past decade, baseball has brought in a number of owners,
both
individual and corporate, that have had a net negative effect on the
game.
From grandstanding over taxpayer-funded ballparks and inflated claims
of
losses, to taking short-term approaches in a long-term industry, the
most
recent set of “lords of the realm” have been a disaster.
The Rangers work through the pleasant dilemma of Blalock, Teixeira and not enough space to play them both. The Cardinals have Albert Pujols learning underhand throwing drills. And the White Sox hope to limit the crazy people running on the field to Morganna and Ozzie Guillen on Sox Alumni Day.
Thanks to everyone who emailed their congratulations on the one-year anniversary. As I told many of you, what makes this fun for me is meeting readers–both in and outside of baseball–and getting to know them. There are great people in baseball: People who love the game like Peter Gammons and Rob Neyer (who has a kicking new Modesty Panel website); people like Alex Belth, Lee Sinins, and Jamey Newberg; people like the guys at BP that I’ve read for years, not to mention new friends like Nate Silver and Ryan Wilkins. People like…well, I can’t name the various players, trainers, and doctors I’ve gotten to know, but you know who you are and I know you’re reading. So thanks to you…each one of you.
I said yesterday that people were reading this column, but I said nothing about everyone being able to learn the lessons. Jack McDowell certainly doesn’t get it, and we’ve known for a while that Jeff Torborg and Brad Arnsberg don’t get it either. I’ll say it again: There are certain factors that make a pitcher more likely to get injured, and when a pitcher exhibits signs of injury or overuse, it is the responsibility of the manager and pitching coach to use that pitcher in a manner which will keep him healthy while retaining the maximum amount of value.
That said, it seems quite apparent that both Torborg and Arnsberg knew that one of their players was injured, but rode him hard nonetheless. This is absolutely inexcusable, and both men are–flat out–to blame for the loss of A.J. Burnett. Scalies fans, your manager and pitching coach just cost you at least two wins in 2003 (per his PECOTA projection) and a staff ace for the better portion of two years. For a team with serious financial issues this is simply untenable, and if anyone in that front office has the remotest of clues, that person needs to fire both men. Do it now, before Josh Beckett or Brad Penny gets badly hurt.
Burnett looks like he’s headed for Tommy John surgery, though the final determination won’t be made until Jim Andrews has his elbow open. Count A.J. out for the year.
“Derek,” people sometimes ask me, “you drink a lot of beer. And I by that I mean a frightening amount of beer. What should I, the casual beer drinker, enjoy while I sit at home and watch my Rangers get their ass handed to them game after game?”
So at great personal expense which, my accountant tells me, I will unlikely be able to deduct as a cost of business, I took the time to drink a lot during baseball games so that I could offer this report to you in the hopes that it enhances your enjoyment of this season.
Rich Harden’s hot start fills not one but two teams’ farm news. Daryl Clark may have just earned the only mention of his career alongside Barry Bonds. And Craig Biggio’s showing little with the bat and hurting his team in the field, surprising no one but his employer.
I’ll start today with thank you. It’s been a year since I started publishing UTK, first as a stand-alone and now as a part of BP. I’m nothing without my readers and–love me or hate me–people are reading.
In one year, I’ve covered an average of 12 injured players per day, written an average of 1900 words per day, had my first radio appearance, started my own show, gone from three subscribers–who really didn’t ask for it in the first place–to over 3000, gone from an email I hoped I could get 100 people to read to a spot on the Baseball Prospectus’ staff. I’ve gone into clubhouses, met players, GMs, doctors, trainers, and even some of the hangers-on that populate the world of baseball. I’ve made mistakes, said things that were stupid and things that bordered on prophetic, and everything in between; but the one thing I’m proudest of is that I’m starting to hear people talk about injuries. They discuss them as something similar to on-base percentage–that if we teach the players the right things, the game can be improved.
Kevin Millwood celebrates his no-no, Todd Helton lobbies for Mark Prior Boulevard, A.J. Burnett becomes Brad Arnberg’s latest injury victim, and Juan Pierre laments pro wrestler Buff Bagwell…er…Fernando Vina’s 20th inning single.
Sometimes, the game loves you back.
I spent last week on the road, first on a trip with my wife, Sophia, then off to see an old friend from the East Coast who was out on this one. I didn’t see much baseball from the 19th through the 26th, even missing the highlight shows most of the time. It was a good break; I remarked to Sophia on Tuesday, as a game aired on a television in the back of a restaurant, that I was really starting to miss the game. While I was enjoying our trip, I was also looking forward to getting back to “normal” life a little, immersing myself in the game and writing again.
With my travel complete, yesterday was the first time in a while I’d had a chance to follow a day of baseball the way I usually do, watching games on television and following the untelevised ones online. I picked a pretty good day to return, because almost as if the game missed me and wanted to show me just how much, baseball provided a ridiculously entertaining day of highs and lows.
Welcome to Part 2 of our look at the importance of hot starts. If you haven’t already, read Part 1 first. We’ll wait for you to get back.
Last time, I looked at how teams fared at season’s end after starting the season with a particular record, varying the data by looking at starts of varying lengths. While I pointed out general trends in the data (as well as the exceptions that proved the rule), I did not sum up the data concisely into a single, coherent formula to predict a team’s final record. That’s what today’s article is about. In Part 3–yes, there will be a Part 3–I want to examine how the interaction between a team’s record at the start of the season, and its record the previous season, affects its final winning percentage.
Yesterday, Commissioner Bud Selig announced his intention to retire when his current five-year term expires on December 31, 2006. I’ll believe it when I see it.
Selig claims never to have wanted the Commissionership. Less than a month after becoming Acting Commissioner on September 9, 1992–after leading the insurgency which forced his predecessor Fay Vincent to resign in midterm–Selig told Hal Bodley of USA Today that he planned to remain in office “two to four months.” In December 1992, he assured Claire Smith of the New York Times that he had “zero interest in the job.”
Jose Vidro is The Man in Montreal–or wherever the Expos are calling home these days. The best hitter on the planet might also be the fastest man on the Giants roster, and that fits right in with manager Felipe Alou’s baserunning philosophies. Frankencatcher is a valuable Jays contributor, while Kelvim Escobar might be a double-agent. Quick updates on minor-leaguers of note for each team.