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June 15, 2004
by Joe Sheehan
On Sunday, I was watching the Long Beach State/Arizona game, eventually won by
the Wildcats in 11 innings. There were a couple of things that popped up in
the 11th, during Arizona's game-winning rally, that I wanted to examine.
The bottom of the inning began with Long Beach third baseman Danny Mocny
making a terrible throw on a ground ball by UA's Moises Duran. The error put
Duran on second base with no one out. Wildcats' shortstop Jason Donald came up
and immediately showed bunt.
Now, this is a situation we see all the time in MLB. A team gets the
game-winning run to second base with no one out, and tries to bunt him over to
third. I'm not questioning that tactic; as James Click's recent series on sacrificing showed,
that's a viable use of the bunt, even if everyone east of Belmont Shore knew
it was coming. My problem is with what Long Beach State didn't do.
June 14, 2004
by Joe Sheehan
Sometimes, you have a great idea for a column, and the facts just don't lend
themselves to the story.
So you write about the process.
See, in Houston tonight, we're going to be treated to a terrific
intergenerational pitching matchup, as Mark Prior and
Roger Clemens meet for the Cubs and Astros. And I was
thinking that you might be able to trace the history of great pitching through
maybe a half-dozen games in baseball history. Prior is facing Clemens, and
Clemens must have had to face a similarly great pitcher in the early years of
his career, and so on.
As it turns out, you really can't do it. It seems that pitchers of this
caliber don't take each other on as often as you would hope, and once you miss
a link, you get off track pretty quickly.
June 11, 2004
by Joe Sheehan
It was 9:30 p.m. on a nondescript Tuesday night in April. The Bronx air was a
little damp, a little cool, and filled with tension and frustration. The
Yankees trailed 8-4 to the Oakland A's in the eighth inning, having watched
their nominal ace blow an early 4-1 lead while pushing his ERA up to 6.55.
Coming off an embarrassing three-game sweep by the Red Sox, this game was
pushing the 8-10--soon to be 8-11--team ever closer to one of those mid-1980s
scenes in which a manager, a pitching coach, and two or three random clubhouse
attendants were fired.
Then Bernie Williams singled. Then Alex Rodriguez singled right behind him. Then Jason Giambi walked.
By a little after 10 p.m., the Yankees had a 10-8 lead and a new lease on
life. That half-hour, in which they beat up Jim Mecir and
Ricardo Rincon for six runs, looks like the most important
moment of the 2004 season. The Yankees won that game, the next seven after it
and have gone 30-9 since then, buring the field on the way to posting, by far,
the best record in baseball. A team that couldn't score to save its life in
April, that put up an anemic four runs in losing three games to its hated
rival on the last weekend of that month, has hit like a team full of
Jeff Kent clones since then...
June 10, 2004
by Joe Sheehan
It's no secret that I don't like interleague play. It's a gimmick that throws the schedule into chaos for the sake of letting the Yankees play the Mets six times.
If that's an exaggeration, it's only a slight one. The selling point of
interleague play is the eight or nine "natural rivalries" that are
played out each season, with the rest of the interleague schedule built around
them. Whatever nonsense is spread about allowing fans in cities of one league
to see the stars of another is just smoke and mirrors, because in some places,
it will take 30 years for the entire other league to make a visit.
I wouldn't mind as much if MLB would just admit that interleague play exists
for the natural rivalries. Ratchet it down, make interleague just those games
each year and force everyone else into two matchups built around those two
weekends. MLB would rather sell the idea that interleague is hugely popular,
publishing context-free attendance figures--four of six interleague series are
on the weekend again, all are in June, and the natural rivalries will drive
the attendance gains--as part of the perpetual misinformation campaign.
June 8, 2004
by Joe Sheehan
High school or college, position player or pitcher, the one constant in the
amateur draft is that no one seems to like Scott Boras' players.
That was rarely as evident as it was yesterday as two Boras clients, each
considered the #1 draft prospect at one point during the college season, fell
to #12 and #15 on a draft day marked by an all-out search for pitching.
The Padres, picking first, passed on Florida State shortstop Stephen Drew to
instead take local high schooler Matt Bush, who signed almost immediately for
$3.15 million. Bush was probably only the second-best prep shortstop prospect
in the pool, and joins Adrian Gonzalez has a recent overall #1 who holds his
spot in history more for financial reasons than talent ones. Drew, who was
rumored to be the Padres' choice as late as Friday, slipped all the way to
#15, where the Diamondbacks ended his torment. Given that the gap between #15
money and #1 money has range from $2-$3 million over the past few years, a
heck of a negotiation awaits Drew and the Snakes.
June 7, 2004
by Joe Sheehan
As you read this, MLB teams are distributing the cream of the amateur baseball
talent amongst themselves. It's no secret that this is a difficult year for
selecting among that talent; there is no Mark Prior or
Rickie Weeks in this pool, but rather a top tier of players,
mostly college pitchers, who all seem to have some problem with their
curriculum vitae. We know that no team is going to
be completely happy with who they pick.
For better or for worse, a draft is judged largely on what happens in the
first round. The lion's share of bonus money is handed out to #1 picks, and
teams trot their first selections to press conferences and ballparks as a way of showing their fan base the future.
The emphasis on the first round is why teams should be a bit nervous about
today's festivities. Four years ago, the player pool was similarly unexciting,
and the first 30 picks from the 2000 draft have generated precious little
performance, and the players still labeled prospects show little sign of
saving the first round of that draft. The first round of that draft appears to
be on its way to being labeled a complete disaster.
June 3, 2004
by Joe Sheehan
If you have electricity, then by now you've seen footage of Milton
Bradley's tantrum in Tuesday night's game. To recap, as Bradley
stepped into the batter's box in the bottom of the sixth inning against the
Brewers, something occurred which caused home-plate umpire Terry Craft to
eject him.
After being tossed, Bradley erupted at Craft, to the point of having to be
restrained by Jim Tracy. He left his bat, helmet and batting gloves at home
plate, and once back in the dugout, tossed the contents of a ball bag in the
direction of Craft and then tried to play catch with Brewers left fielder
Geoff Jenkins. It was a historic meltdown, comparable only to
George Brett reaction to being ejected from the Pine Tar Game in
1983.
June 2, 2004
by Joe Sheehan
First Base: Jason Giambi, Yankees. A few years ago, this was
the toughest call in baseball, with five or six guys with legitimate claims on
the vote. Now, it seems like all of those players have slipped a couple of
notches, with the top remaining one, Jim Thome having moved
to the National League. The top five first basemen in baseball, by VORP, are all
in the NL.
I went with Giambi over Carlos Delgado, Rafael
Palmeiro and Frank Thomas, although it's a
half-hearted choice. The guys having the best 2004 seasons, like Ken
Harvey (not actually on the ballot) and Tino
Martinez, just don't have the kind of track record that pulls my vote
from the established greats. Palmeiro or Thomas would make a perfectly good
choice as well.
This position is a good example of why basing All-Star status on first-half
stats is silly. By the end of the year--hell, maybe by the All-Star
Game--Palmeiro and Delgado will probably be outperforming Harvey and Martinez.
The shape of a season shouldn't dictate honors.
June 1, 2004
by Joe Sheehan
I kicked off a mostly lazy Memorial Day weekend by catching the Dodgers and
Diamondbacks Friday night at Dodger Stadium.
Normally, I'd throw together a game report, but it was more a social event
than a working night for me. Sophia and I were there with our friends Shelly
and E.J., and unfortunately, the vagaries of L.A. traffic kept everyone from
getting in before the bottom of the second. Without a scorecard, and with a
lot of conversation about an adorable one-year-old (not ours), an impending
move to Arizona (also not ours), and a retirement (no, again), I don't have
nearly the remembrance of detail to provide a good report. Randy
Johnson was dominant for five innings, Cesar Izturis
made a great grab to start a double play, and Bob Brenly pulled some
head-scratching moves with his relievers.
While at the game I did pick up, and fill out, an All-Star ballot. Like reading box
scores, the practice of punching out chads while sitting in Row J has
fallen victim to the Internet Age. Now, you can log on at MLB.com and ballot-stuff to
your heart's content. For some reason, Internet ballots are capped at 25 per
person, while any season-ticket holder with an awl and some free time can pop
out a couple thousand during the balloting period. I'm not advocating either,
but I don't think some guy with a man crush on Raul Ibanez
does any more damage to the process than the entire nation of Japan getting
second-tier outfielders into the AL's starting lineup.
May 28, 2004
by Joe Sheehan
Even after losing their last two games to the Florida Marlins, the Cincinnati
Reds still have the best record in the National League, now tied with those
same Marlins. They hold a half-game lead over the Astros in an NL Central that
is separated by just 4.5 games from top to bottom.
If that sounds familiar, it's because we've been here before. The six teams in
the Central have been playing this game almost since realignment. For example,
a year ago today, the top four teams were just 3.5 games apart, with the whole
division showing just a nine-game spread. It took until the second week of
June, when the Reds and Brewers started collapsing, for the division to
separate. On May 27, 2001, the top four teams in the division were within four
games of each other.
The NL Central just hasn't had exceptional teams, so the early part of the
season has often been spent beating up each other, and getting beat up by
whichever of the East or West is up in a particular year.
May 26, 2004
by Joe Sheehan
Here's a nod to Buck Showalter, who moved Hank Blalock
down to sixth in the lineup last night against Scott
Schoeneweis, after batting him second against everyone for the entire
season (and most of '03). Blalock has improved slightly against left-handers,
enough to warrant his continued playing time against them, but not enough to
justify batting him second. Moving him down in the lineup acknowledges the
team's need to score runs while allowing Blalock to keep getting reps against
southpaws.
More teams should find this middle ground, rather than either stubbornly
batting guys who can't hit one side in the same lineup spot all the time, or
giving up and sticking them into a platoon.
May 25, 2004
by Joe Sheehan
I was checking out BP's Adjusted Standings report this morning. I think we're
far enough into the season that the report is useful in indicating which
teams' win-loss records are clouding their true performance, for better or
worse. Schedules are pretty unbalanced--how many games have the Red Sox played
in Skydome this year? Six? Seventeen? Twenty-five?--and the effects of under- or overperforming
Pythagenport, or being particularly efficient or inefficient in generating
runs out of offensive events, are beginning to be felt. It's interesting to
look at these gaps and find the performance issues--great, now I'm going to
trip spam filters--that cause them.
Take those Red Sox, for instance. With 228 runs scored and 180 runs allowed,
their record of 27-17 is a match for their Pythag mark. But according to Clay
Davenport's calculations, the Sox should have a 241-167 edge in runs. The
offensive gap, which has cost them at least one win, is mostly explained by
the team's early-season struggles with runners on base: 251/.342/.403, as
opposed to a whopping .281/.364/.468 with the bases empty. There's no reason
to believe that the Sox have some inability to hit with runners on--most teams
hit a bit better in that situation--and their performance in May has been much
better than what they did in April, so they should be find going forward.
May 24, 2004
by Joe Sheehan
Three days after first getting the news of it, the death of Doug Pappas seems
no more real than it did on Friday. I know that denial is a stage of grief,
but it's easy to get stuck there when you find your friend quoted in the
paper, as Doug was in yesterday's Denver Post, the words from an
interview conducted well before his passing.
That Doug would be sharing knowledge even after his death is appropriate. The
man is gone, and we're all less for that loss, but what remains, what will
remain, is his amazing work. From his efforts as part of the Society for American
Baseball Research to his writing for Baseball Prospectus to his nascent
Weblog, Doug spent much of his life sharing knowledge with others. Without fanfare, every day Doug made the world a little smarter, a little better, and
did so for nothing more than the fact that he enjoyed it.
May 18, 2004
by Joe Sheehan
Given the caliber of competition, it's entirely possible that at least one
RotY award winner has yet to make his major league debut. If Willis and Berroa
can win the award based entirely on what they did after mid-May, certainly
other players can. So which prospects currently in the minors are set to make
the leap, and garner award votes come the fall?
May 17, 2004
by Joe Sheehan
The closer role developed over a period of years, evolving out of the 1970s
role of ace reliever, a guy who would pitch 120 innings a year in chunks of up
to three at a time. Herman Franks ratcheted down Bruce
Sutter's workload for the Cubs in the late 1970s, using him solely to
protect leads late in games, and Tony La Russa went even further by
eliminating multiple-inning outings for Dennis Eckersley in
1988. With Eckersley, a new meme took hold: a team's best reliever had to be
used to get outs 25 through 27 if those outs coincided with a lead of less than four runs. It was the ultimate triumph of statistics--the convoluted save rule--over logic.
At its core, the closer myth holds that those last three outs are the most
important, and therefore the ones you want your best pitcher throwing. If the
closercentric bullpen is to go the way of pullover jerseys and flying-saucer
ballparks, convincing people within the game that there are other, more
important outs will be a good place to start.
May 14, 2004
by Joe Sheehan
The Giants lost again yesterday, falling to 15-20 and eight games behind the
Dodgers in the NL West. That gap may be misleading--the blue boys are 10-0 in
one-run games, which has inflated their record--but it's hard to see how the Giants
can make up even the true five- or six-game difference between the teams.
Over the past few years, I've come around the the idea that while Brian Sabean
may not assemble baseball teams in the same manner that, say, I would, his
track record of success warranted respect. The Giants have succeeded with
mid-level payrolls and seemingly mid-level rosters for a number of years, in
part because many of Sabean's acquisitions outperformed expectations. If we're
going to be about performance, then the record of the Giants from 1997-2003
demands respect.
The 2004 Giants reflect a complete failing of Sabean to do his job, however.
Knowing that he had a player of Bonds' caliber on the roster, he neglected to
bring in a hitter with a reasonable chance of complementing him.
"Protection" has been studied, and it has largely been dismissed as
a myth. Hitters' performances do not depend on having a comparable hitter
behind them in the lineup. However, there is a weak effect on walks and
intentional walks, an effect we've seen taken to the extreme as Bonds has had one
of the greatest peaks in baseball history while surrounded by mediocre
veterans playing replacement-level baseball.
May 13, 2004
by Joe Sheehan
There's an interesting game show developing in MLB these days. With the Kansas City Royals playing down to their talent level, it's becoming clear that they'll have little reason to keep Carlos Beltran through the end of the year, after which they'll lose him as a free agent. (No one, anywhere, thinks he'll re-sign with the Royals.) Beltran has become one of the top 10 players in the game, a complete package of offense, defense and speed. He's going to break the bank as a free agent, and is one of the few players in the trade market with the potential to change a race.
So the game of "Center Fielder!" consists of finding potential
suitors for Beltran and creating trade possibilities, blockbusters, with the
Royals and those teams.
May 11, 2004
by Joe Sheehan
"Addition by subtraction" is one of those terms that seems exclusive to sports, and more specifically to baseball. While it would seem to apply in other walks of life, you just don't see it used very much. "Tina, you know Bob from accounting? He quit." "Heck, that's addition by subtraction; he never made deadlines, and he was always hitting on me."
In baseball, however, addition by subtraction has a long and storied history. Over the past 48 hours, we may have the seen the concept have its all-time peak.
May 10, 2004
by Joe Sheehan
This is my fourth year of having the Extra Innings satellite package. Over the years, I've developed something of a system that determines what my "main" games are in any given time slot. Usually, I'm watching the most interesting pitching or team matchup, or perhaps someone's debut or pursuit of a record. My default if there are no games of note is the Yankee game, and if they aren't playing at a particular time, I could end up focusing on almost any matchup.
Mind you, I do all of this with remote in hand and a scoreboard Web page reloading on my screen so that I can jump to rallies or key moments. It's sometimes hard to believe that a little over a decade ago I was a slave to "Baseball Tonight" and hoping that the New York Daily News had the West Coast box scores. This is really a golden age of sports fandom.
This year, I've been adjusting my personal decision tree. I've found myself watching the Brewers more and more, particularly the latter part of their games, after the 4 p.m. Pacific games come to a close. They're really growing on me. Scott Podsednik is the player people think Darin Erstad is, Ben Sheets is on the brink of a Greg Maddux circa '92 leap, two-way player Brooks Kieschnick, with an OPS nearly 10 times his ERA, is more fun than Jonah Keri on a Boone's Farm binge. Keith Ginter is one of my guys for '04, while the guy he's been starting for over the last week, Junior Spivey, is an underrated second baseman, kind of Ray Durham Lite. Two years ago, I flagged Doug Davis as the pitcher with the best chance to have Jamie Moyer's career, and I root for that every time he takes the mound. Hell, they've even resurrected Ben Grieve!
May 7, 2004
by Joe Sheehan
I got more than a few e-mails yesterday about Webgate, MLB's plan to, as put
by most people, desecrate the bases with a promotional graphic for the
upcoming Spider-Man 2 movie. It's a moo point--"Friends"
tribute--now, as MLB has backed away from the logoed bases in the face of
overwhelming fan and media backlash.
During the day that the plan was in place, I couldn't get worked up about it,
in the same way that I couldn't get worked up about the ads that appeared on
uniforms during the season-opening series in Japan. While I know that some
people consider these things to be an affront, as well as an aesthetic
nightmare, I consider neither to be the case. Certainly uniform and base ads
are less intrusive in person than ballpark signage or between-innings
advertising blasted at 110 decibels. For those watching at home, ads
superimposed on the backstop on every pitch are clearly a greater incursion on
the experience. If MLB could mine one more revenue source without detracting
from the game--and six-by-six painted squares certainly pale in comparison to
the profile of the other marketing messages being conveyed--then more power to
them.
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