June 9, 2000

The Daily Prospectus

Riffing

by Joe Sheehan

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OK, so "Daily" Prospectus has been a bit of a misnomer lately, as a variety of technical and staffing glitches have cropped up. Fret not: today brings four new articles to your browser of choice, and we'll be back next week with some great new features, a couple of divisional Notebooks and, if we can get the releases, pics from Dave Pease's experience to Amateur Night at Chippendales.

Everything you've heard is true.

• Player          EqA      RaP*
  
  Joe Girardi    .275      11th
  Mark Grace     .312       7th
  Eric Young     .287       7th
  Shane Andrews  .263      14th
  Ricky Gutierrez.304       3rd
  Henry Rodriguez.277      17th
  Damon Buford   .269      13th
  Sammy Sosa     .330       6th
  
  *RaP: Rank at Position
  

  Yeah, Don. Sammy's your problem.

• Speaking of Chicago, the Support-Neutral rankings are back online. Here are the top five starters in baseball through Wednesday:

  Pitcher         SNW   SNL  SNPct   W  L    RA     APW   SNVA  SNWAR
  
  Randy Johnson   8.7   1.3  .871    9  1   1.79   3.45   3.63   4.44
  Pedro Martinez  7.8   0.5  .936    8  2   1.16   3.43   3.47   4.25
  James Baldwin   6.1   2.3  .729    9  1   3.18   1.70   1.84   2.53
  David Wells     6.7   3.2  .673   10  2   3.66   1.61   1.64   2.46
  Kevin Brown     5.8   2.2  .728    4  2   2.81   1.69   1.64   2.40
  

  One of these things is not like the others...

• I'm a baseball guy, but I'm also a Northeast guy, so forgive me for bringing this up here: is there anything as cool as overtime in the Stanley Cup finals?

• Before the "Todd Helton for MVP" craze gets too out of hand, let's try and stop its momentum here:

  Name                  EQA    EqR   RAR   RAP
  
  Mark McGwire         .377   42.4  30.1  21.4
  Todd Helton          .345   40.4  25.7  15.4
  

  As a general rule, you need to be the best player at your position in your league to be the MVP. Helton isn't. And to the credit of the BBWAA, they've done a pretty good job of not being taken in by altitude-inflated raw stats.

  This doesn't factor in position or defense. Right now, Barry Bonds is the NL MVP, with McGwire, Jim Edmonds, Mike Piazza, Jeff Kent and Edgardo Alfonzo in the mix behind him.

  Bonds is so good that Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson is considering ordering the Giants to split him in two.

Joe Sheehan can be reached at jsheehan@baseballprospectus.com.

Joe Sheehan is an author of Baseball Prospectus. 
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