The State of Baseball April 28th Edition – Part Two

Now let’s look at the standings, shall we?

The division leaders are Tampa, Minnesota, Oakland, St. Louis, New York, and San Diego.

Which of these makes sense, and which are ridiculous? First of all, the Rays look awesome. Price looks like he’s breaking out (3.11 FIP, hardly any home runs and a below 3 walk rate), Longoria is mashing, Upton looks like he has his power back, Pena is hitting home runs, Carl Crawford is doing what Carl Crawford always does, Niemman Davis and Shields look good and Matt Garza looks ridiculous (His 5 runs allowed against the Blue Jays notwithstanding). They’ve scored the most runs in the league by a comfortable margin, and have 5 starters who have given them 4 starts each.. all with ERAs below 4.. in the AL East.

By the way, have you ever seen a more complete rotation front to back? They have two potential aces, and then 3 numbers 2’s. It’s ridiculous. It’s like when Atlanta had Maddux, Glavine, Smoltz, Millwood, and Neagle (Need I remind you that Sir Dennis Neagle was a premier pitcher from 1995-1998. He amassed 65 wins during that time and his highest ERA was 3.55. This while having to face roided up superbeings like Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds and Ken Caminiti on a regular basis).

Their bullpen isn’t even awful, either. Rafael Soriano hasn’t blown a save, or his arm. Grant Balfour has had an encouraging start, as has Andy Sonnanstine and Dan Wheeler (Who I’ve always liked. He gives up the bombs but his WHIP is always fantastic. If nothing else, he’s exciting). Even that Lance Cormier character has been good. When I mention that these guys have had good starts, I mean that they have ERAs under 3.

Here’s another diatribe. It seems many people who subscribe to the new school of baseball related statistical analysis sometimes latch on too tightly to sabermetric stats. But I don’t think one should throw ERA under the same rug as RBIs and wins. Wins in large part measure how good of an offense you had, and have little reflection on the actual player’s ability. RBIs measure in good part how effective the players in front of you are at getting on base, not necessarily your ‘clutch’ -ness. ERA measures how many runs you give up. It’s quite simple. As a pitcher your goal is to give up as few runs as possible. As such ERA measures your overall effectiveness as a pitcher. Sometimes a guy might have a 2.00 ERA but have awful peripherals. This doesn’t mean that the pitcher did his job poorly despite the sparkly ERA. He did awesome. He gave up very few runs. What the peripherals will tell you is that you can’t expect that ERA to continue to be so low. That’s where metrics such as FIP come in. FIP should be used to predict performance more than it should be used to evaluate it. Basically, you can have a ton of RBIs and not be helping your team. And you can have a ton of wins and not be helping your team. But you cannot be have a good ERA and not be helping your team (Particularly as a starter.. relievers have that inherited runners scored issue which I will dismiss as not significant enough to matter for now). At least that is my understanding. So perhaps the Tampa Bay Rays bullpen will not be so effective the rest of the year, but for April they’ve done a very good job, and that is indisputable.

Then we have the Twins, who are now 14-6 and have nearly-the-Franciso Liriano of 2006, an awesome catcher, an awesome first baseman, an awesome leadoff man, a good right fielder, shortstop, second baseman and DH plus an improving left fielder who can be replaced at any time by a hall of fame slugger who has something left in his tank. As well as a decent rest-of-the-rotation and an awesome bullpen. I will write more on them in coming days, of course.

Oakland has been getting by. Ben Sheets isn’t very good; this has been established. He just doesn’t have his once immaculate control. Which would be okay, except he doesn’t have his strikeout ability anymore, either. Justin Duchscherer, however, has been a revelation, besides a few extra walks. Goes to show what a crapshoot coming back from injury is. You might end up with 2009 Liriano (Sheets) or 2010 Liriano (Duchscherer).

I was very sad to hear that Bret Anderson just went on the DL with a forearm strain and elbow inflammation. Neither of those sound good. Has it become a rite of passage in becoming a star pitcher that at some point you must undergo invasive surgery? He was pitching very well, sabermetric’s darling as he is. Dallas Braden and Gio Gonzales have both been good, as well. And with Gonzalez that is great news for the future of this team, as he has been terribly hittable in his previous time in the majors, despite an awesome K rate.

The Oakland offense got by for a little while on smoke and mirrors or whatever you want to call it. Now they realize what they have:

A powerless, but still useful and effective first baseman in Barton.

An up and down shortstop in Cliff Pennington. With a recent 4 hit night, his OPS is now over .850.

A serviceable center fielder worth far more on defense than at the plate in Ryan Sweeney.

A previously underrated catcher now transitioning to being overrated in Kurt Suzuki (How many times have we heard how he was ‘quietly productive’ these past few years? Now that he’s had a fast start, he’s actually being noticed during the season and not after it).

And after that it’s just crap crap crap. Good luck, Oakland, I’ve always respected your franchise but there is not nearly enough offense in my mind to hold off three quasi legitimate contenders in that AL West.

You expected the Cardinals. Everyone did. I think a team that is actually well run and competitive (Taaaaampa Bay?) should be moved to the NL Central. It’s just too easy for the Cardinals. Wainwright, Carpenter, Holiday, Pujols. It doesn’t end.

The Mets. Ah, the Mets. Good for them. Their offense really sucks, though. Francouer is starting to come back to earth, Castillo just can’t do it anymore, Bay is slugging .436, Reyes has been awful, and everyone else in the lineup who isn’t David Wright you can’t really expect anything beyond replacement level production. The pitching has been pretty good. I really though Johan was about to fall off a cliff, given his decline in everything the past few years (velocity, K rate, rising walk rate, rising hit rate, rising cholesterol etc.), but I’m actually quite glad he’s been working it out. I still love mah Johan. Mike Pelfrey has been awesome, but everyone knows he can’t sustain a sub 3.50 ERA, much less a sub 1.00. Oliver Perez hasn’t exploded yet, but you know it’s coming. John Maine has exploded, but Jon Niese looks like the solid #3 we all though he would be once he was given a legitimate shot. The Bullpen is walking tons of guys, but has a ridiculously high K rate and has been great in run prevention. Basically the Mets are teetering. They’re like a little blind guy that accidentally jabbed his walking pole into the Phillie’s shin and momentarily subdued them.

I was wondering after last season what team would be stupid enough, besides Dayton Moore, of course, to give Mike Jacobs a contract. Ever since Seattle has given control to that Jack Zurdchek guy, there’s only one option left, Omar Minaya. I’m glad for the Mets that Jacobs has already been cut loose and that Ike Davis has been given a chance to play, but as long as Omar is at the helm, disaster awaits.

And last and least we have the Padres. Well, at least they have some direction. They have some nice middling starters in Correia, Garland and Richard that have performed like nice middling starters. Hell, Richard might even be a semi good starter in time. He pitches at Petco, where anything is possible. I would never count on Chris Young, but with the development of Mat Latos this could be a decent rotation by next year. The bullpen is great. Luke Gregerson is my favorite. He struck out 93 guys in 73 innings last year, and his ESPN snapshot looks like Andy Samberg doing ‘Jizz in my Pants.’

As for offense, I do believe in Kyle Blanks. Just seems like the sort to turn into a good hitter. I admit there isn’t anything of substance that supports that claim of mine, but I;m sure there is somewhere. He’s not hitting .200 but at least his OPS is over .720. Everth Cabrera looks like a problem for a while. He plays like he’s 19; still learning the game and all that. Sorta like Carlos Gomez when he first came up. But Cabrera is already 23. And he sucks! All he can do it run. And if you need someone to run, I can do that for you. Wil Venable looks like he could be decent, same with Headley and Hundley. So there is something to this team, but I don’t know if they can keep these guys together for another year when feasibly they could be a contender. I’m being generous, of course.

And that is that. Long, I know. Sorry. In summary, I predict the Rays, Twins, and Cardinals to retain their division leads. Everyone else is a fluke, I tell ya!

The State of Baseball April 28th Edition – Part One

On this fine Wednesday, I find it imperative to examine the state of baseball as it stands right now.

On Tuesday Dodgers GM Ned Colletti, he of the incompetent rhetoric behind picking up TWO washed up Ortizes, declared that perhaps his best player, outfielder Matt Kemp, is dogging it on defense and on the basepaths.

“Why is it? Because he got a new deal? Can’t tell you. But you know, it’s below-average. If this is the last day of the season and people are voting for the Gold Glove, his name is not even on the ballot. It’s a shame that he would go from where he was a year ago to revert back to when the ball goes up in the air and you’re not sure where it’s going, or if it’s going to get caught…As frustrating as 18 games is, there’s 140-some games left to play here, I’m not trying to jump to conclusions.”

Yes yes this is how you run a baseball franchise! With your owners in utter turmoil, the team in last place, and everyone in the greater L.A area questioning your sanity amid the flurry of confusing pickups you made this offseason (And your entire tenure as GM*), you go out and criticize your best player. For something completely unproven beyond a few isolated incidents (A couple misplayed fly balls and one or two instances of running to third on a groundball hit to the left side). The worst part, of course is that Colletti made his criticisms so glaringly public. David Pinto of Baseballmusings got it right in my opinion, when he contrasted Colletti’s handling of the situation with Brian Cashman’s situation with Derek Jeter. While new measures of defensive capability were coming out and showing Jeter to be a pretty bad shortstop, Cashman dismissed these claims in defense of his shortstop. In private, however, he talked to Jeter about improving. Not only did Jeter work on his defense and get better, but Cashman never looked like the bad guy. Colletti looks like the bad guy.

*Giving up on Jason Werth, Cody Ross, Dioner Navarro. The contracts of Juan Pierre, Nomar Garciaparra, Jason Schmidt, Andruw Jones (for 36.3M AFTER he hit .222 the year before), Esteban Loaiza and so on. All GMs have these sorts of lists, and they all make mistakes, but all of these transactions occurred in the past few years and are quite pronounced in their awfulness.

Then we have the new Ryan Howard contract, which seems to be reaffirming the divide between the statheads and the mainstream journalists. This divide appeared to have gotten fuzzier lately, with most people at least giving some credence to, if not UZR or FIP, at least OPS and and OBP. But all that progress gets thrown out the window when a 30 year old man with already possibly declining skills gets a 5 year contract paying him 25M per.. and that contract doesn’t even kick in for two more years.

Yes it’s nice to keep your hometown stars. There was no bigger proponent of the Twins keeping Joseph Mauer than I. But this almost seems like Bill Smith is the smart kid in his class, and he’s always coming up with these great ideas like locking in his superstar who is in his prime and shows superhuman athletic ability to a megadeal, and then his kid brother Ruben Amaro tries to copy him and the results are just sloppy. He got the superstar part down, but missed on the athletic ability and prime part. He got the megadeal part right, but in contrast to the Mauer deal, he got hardcore swindled. Mauer would have cost the Twins millions and millions more on the open market, and Smith preempted that with a cost conscious signing that nonetheless represented a decent bargain. All of those who praised Smith come down on Amaro for being completely stupid. Except his metaphorical mother, the Philadelphia media, who nurtures Amaro’s ability to “Have the right idea.”

It’s like Bill Smith was at an auction, and got into an endless bidding war with Ron Shapiro, Mauer’s agent. They would bid higher and higher, sweating, seething. They never bid what they couldn’t afford and only went up in the smallest of increments. They were skilled bidders at their finest. When it was over, both men more or less got what they wanted, and they felt good knowing they had fought tooth and nail for it.

Ruben Amaro walked up and bid 125M dollars, even though his glasses were foggy and he couldn’t tell if he was signing Howard or Albert Pujols. So he figured he’d split the difference.

That said I kind of feel like this won’t be the catastrophic deal that most baseball pundits will, and have, assessed it as. Sure, Howard is getting old and has a huge, bulky frame. But as Joe Posnanski points out, there is precedent for Howard’s type of body* holding up over time, Jim Thome and Fred McGriff being notable examples. I just look at how, ever since his MVP season in 2006, Howard has been at odds with the sabermetric community. They would point out how he struck out a ton, and couldn’t sustain a decent batting average. That he didn’t walk enough to offset that. That his defense sucked. That he couldn’t hit lefties enough to be considered a force in the game. Well today, Howard has improved his average, his walk rate, his defense and his ability to hit lefties. Not to levels that are good, but which are marked improvements. And every year when Howard is hitting .210 in June and people are complaining about how he’s done for, he comes back and ends up with almost 50 home runs.

*I’m reading this everywhere. What is meant by Howard’s body type? Because Howard is a large black man, he is expected to decline? I think the intended meaning for this generalization is that Howard has old player skills, meaning he excels at walking, hitting for power and striking out while being quite bad at speed and hitting for average. I’m not sure this quite suits Howard, who has had plate discipline problems his whole career, isn’t as slow as his size suggests, and has actually never had an awful batting average. He bottomed out at .251 in 2008, but other than that has managed lines of .313 and .279, which, given his prolific strikeout tendency (Meaning poor contact rate) is actually really really good. He’s not Adam Dunn, in other words, and he might not qualify for the broad definition of what it means to have ‘old player skills.’ So just because previous large black men such as Mo Vaughn and Cecil Fielder have flamed out doesn’t necessarily mean that Ryan Howard will, because he does have a distinct set of skills that can’t be broadly generalized into the concept of the ‘old player.’

Maybe that’s how this contract plays out. Maybe he turns into David Ortiz. You can’t know. And although Amaro should’ve been able to slice 30-40% off of Howard’s ultimate price tag, he made his fans happy. And Philly fans are fairly volatile. The team looks great this year, however, so it will be a few years before Amaro gets officially burned at the stake.

Finding it Hard to Not Get Ahead of Myself

Now that the Minnesota Twins have a .750 winning percentage, it seems as though all the pre season hype (Which I contributed to!) was really on to something. So let’s start with the bad news:

Joe Nathan is hurt and Jon Rauch is still really pedestrian. He’s 6 for 6 in save chances right now, and I hope he continues this ‘Fernando Rodney from 2009’ luck for the whole season but I’m not counting on it.

Jose Mijares is really fat (10 pounds heavier than last season, apparently), has no command, and now his elbow has landed him on the DL.

Pat Neshek might have to go on the DL, as well, which sucks because unlike Mijares, he’s pitched really well.

Denard Span still hasn’t quite gotten it going, although his OBP is now up to .375 so that’s nitpicking.

J.J. Hardy, while certainly a stratospheric upgrade over previous Twins shortstops of recent memory, looks like he generates almost all of his production off of mistakes. I’m starting to doubt his ability to handle good pitching.

Kevin Slowey and Nick Blackburn look very hittable, with WHIPS of 1.74 and 1.50, respectively.

Now the far more plentiful good news:

The bullpen has a 1.66 ERA and has only walked four batters.

The top 7 hitters in the lineup all have OBPs over .324, and the two players with OBPs below that are batting 8 and 9. In other words, Gardy has actually constructed a good lineup, based on the actual skills of his players.

O-Dawg is starting to hit, and his current slash line of .280/.333/.420 is almost exactly what we should expect from him over the course of the season. Along with his solid enough defense, that means we’ve gotten a great pick up so far.

The middle of the order in Mauer Morneau Cuddyer Kubel Thome and Young all have OPS’ over .800 and have, with the exception of Mauer and his .537 SLG, two home runs.

The Twins have the best run differential in the American League and trail only the Phillies for supremacy throughout baseball. They are tied with the Yankees for first in the AL in terms of runs scored, and are one behind the A’s in terms of runs allowed.

Delmon Young has two walks (Already!) and is slugging .567 with almost acceptable, but certainly improved, defense. Plus, his BABIP is only .269, meaning he could be performing even better with average luck.

Justin Morneau’s back has not been a problem. He’s hitting .341 with a team leading 11 walks and a .512 SLG.

Francisco Liriano shut down the potent Boston Red Sox lineup for 7 innings, allowing 4 hits, 2 walks and striking out 8. His ERA stands at a 2006-like 2.08.

Carl Pavano and Scott Baker have performed exceptionally well. Baker has allowed fewer than 1 home run per 9 innings, and Pavano is combining good performance with some of the luck he never got last year in his FIP coming in over a run lower than his actual ERA. The performance of the 3 starters I have just mentioned renders the mediocrity of Slowey and Blackburn so far, as far less significant.

The Twins have taken series wins from the Angels (Hegemonic power of the Al West), White Sox (Only team besides Twins to win Central division mutiple times in past 8 years), Red Sox (2004 and 2007 champs who have made the playoffs every year but one since 2002), and Royals (Dayton Moore’s mom says his team is a bunch of ‘go-getters’).

The 3 losses have come against Jered Weaver, Mark Buehrle and John Lackey. But the team has also beaten Jon Lester and Zack Greinke convincingly. The point here is, the Twins have handled bad pitching (A weakness of some recent Twins teams, ain’t that right, Kyle Davies and Jeremy Sowers), and have about broken even against good pitching. To me, that’s the sign of a legitimately good team.

Killerawesomesweet (Game 8)

Today was the grand day in which Target Field was unveiled for regular season use. I got to my T.V around 1:30 and alternated between watching the pre game ceremonies and a computer animated Garfield show from France. I normally avoid shows involving Garfield, or France, but the ceremonies were rather awkward, not because of the content but because of an awkward PA announcer. He’s the sort to announce our first baseman as:

JUUUSSSSTINNNNNN!!!! morneau.

The fans didn’t seem super enthused by the PA guy, either, which made it more uncomfortable. The Red Sox players seemed a tad confused, as well.

But then the game started, and in rather bizarre fashion. Pavano started off Scutaro (Not Ellsbury, who thought his ribs were broken but really just turned out to be a pussy), with a ball. Then Marco lined a hit to left center. And then Pavano picked him off in what probably should have been a balk (But I really don’t know what constitutes a balk, any more than I did back when I pitched in 8^th grade. That was one playoff game my coach would rather forget). Then Pedroia ripped a double, but Pavano calmed down and got Martinez and Youkilis. A scoreless top of the first, but in all honesty Pedroia’s double probably should have come with Scutaro on second. But hey maybe there’s some home field magic already.

Span walked in his first appearance at Target Field, Hudson singled, and Mauer laced a line drive nearly over the head of relatively washed up former top prospect Jeremy Hermida. Morneau probably felt obligated to hit a home run to christen his new park, but instead hit the ball 300 feet short. Cuddyer made similar (Broken bat) contact but managed to muscle the ball to left field for the park’s first run. Then Jason Kubel ripped a liner to right and no one seemed to care all that much. People generally don’t care what Jason Kubel does; he’s like a funny looking kid who overcame adversity as a young child and through hard work became the smartest kid in his class, only Ron Gardenhire is his unappreciative alcoholic father.

YA CAN’T HIT LEFTIES YA AIN’T NO SON A MINE!

But dad, I hit four home runs today, and one was off a lefty!

WHY CAN’T YOU BE MORE LIKE YOUR LITTLE BROTHER PUNTO? HE’S A SWITCH HITTER!

In any case, his single brought home the second run at Target Field, which has almost no importance even though it came against a lefty who figures to challenge for the AL Cy Young, Jon Lester. Yes, a lefty, and a good, possibly great (3.15 FIP, 225 K’s in 09) lefty. You know, the type of pitchers Kubel is supposed to suck against even though he showed improvement last year against them despite hardly getting a chance to face any? But hey Kubel will probably sit on Wednesday in favor of Brendan Harris again. Rest those knees.

Pavano then allowed the Sawx to spray line drives all over Target Field, most of which Denard Span caught. Thus far in the season I feel as though our outfield has caught a high percentage of line drives (Cough, Kevin Slowey, Nick Blackburn). And this is odd, since our outfield figures to be historically bad in terms of range. But perhaps Span adjusting to his position and Delmon Young becoming mobile again have had positive benefits.

By around the 4^th inning Pavano had chilled out and was pitching craftily like he did in his first start, moving the ball around and making hitters guess wrong. Plus the come backer he fielded with his bare hand was kinda badass. The New York media really tried to portray Pavano as a whiny girl, but honestly I haven’t seen much of that. What I have seen is a guy with a great strikeout to walk ratio, a great performance in the postseason, the ability to snag liners with his bare hands, and a total of two runs allowed in 13 innings thus far.

Then who should hit the first homer at Target Field? Part time designated hitter Jason Kubel. He’s heating up a bit, and he better if he wants regular at bats despite coming off a .900 OPS, 100 RBI, .300 avg season. Not that I put too much value into basic statistics and pretty round numbers; I just figure Gardenhire would.

Span was 1 for 3 with two walks, and although his average is still in the toilet, his OBP is starting to rise. Plus he stole two bases off of poor Victor Martinez.

Mauer went 3 for 5 with two doubles. He already has 5 on the season, and he’s hitting over .400. I’m starting to think his 2009 performance is more in line with what he can do than any previous season. He looks transcendent at the plate. You’ve heard of the concept of the three outcome player? Basically those are guys who either hit home runs, draw walks, or strike out. Some examples are Mark Reynolds, Adam Dunn and Ryan Howard. Well, Joe Mauer is a new version of the three outcomes player. He either rolls a bouncer to the 2^nd baseman, gets a hit, or walks.

Jon Rauch keeps “doing the job.” Those FSNorth analysts keep lavishing praise upon Rauch, completely ignoring how he was inches away from blowing a game against the Sox when Alex Rios just missed a home run, as well as generally inducing long fly balls in order to get outs. The closer position is the easiest to find replacements. A pitcher will succeed 80% of the time just throwing grapefruits. A good closer will succeed 90% of the time. Jon Rauch figures to be in the middle of those extremes. He’s going to blow a game, and it might happen very soon, and he’s certainly pitched poorly enough to have blown a save already. Thanks to a lot of fly balls to the deepest part of the park, lots of 3 run leads, and a competent defense, he’s managed success so far. But don’t praise him for “stepping up” and “shutting the door” because any of the Twins other pitchers (Besides Mijares) could have managed the same success, and probably more convincingly. Rauch himself seems to know this, warning fans that he’ll save a lot of ugly games. But Ron Coomer and Tim Laudner didn’t hear that quote, they only see 5 for 5 in save chances (By the way, get Tim Laudner out of there; he’s more backward and vague than Joe Morgan).

As you can see, Rauch’s tattoo is even more badass than initially thought. I never understood the I on his neck, but now it appears to be placed in sequence with several other letters whose significance I don’t understand.

That said, the bullpen as a whole looks fantastic. Crain has never looked better with his fastball regularly clocking at 95 and his slider biting like I’ve never seen. Neshek looks a lot like his old self, Guerrier looks like a decent 7^th inning guy, Duensing is pitching well. I want to try Alex Burnett in more high leverage situations, just to see if he has some success. If he does, maybe the front office can come to their senses and release Clay Condrey, knowing that if they need more bullpen depth, Anthony Slama is still waiting.

Also, have you noticed that there has only been one indisputably poor performance from the starting staff thus far? I’m not totally sold on Slowey, given his extremely hittable and lucky performance in Anaheim, and Liriano did walk a bunch of guys, but overall this is the sort of rotation that can produce 100 win seasons when paired with a prolific offense and a decent bullpen (I say this after reading Joe Posnanski’s book about the 1975 Reds, The Machine). Wait, the 2010 Twins have a prolific offense and a decent bullpen.. does that mean..?

Yes the Twins are going to be the best team in the AL this year. That’s a call.