Baseball Ranting and Rambling

2004-05-11T14:40:00.000-05:00

This SI.com's Verducci has piece which talks about an interesting thing called the SPF (Sleeper Predictor Formula) developed by Elias Sports Bureau in the 80's. It's neat, and is something that might be worth watching for the remainder of the season (this years team is Cleveland).

2004-05-05T01:11:00.000-05:00

Because sometimes the simple beauty of the game in the sunset speaks for itself.

2004-05-02T09:46:00.000-05:00

For Rob.

2004-04-26T21:51:00.000-05:00

Funny stuff. I hate on-base conversations, but this is too funny to not like.

2004-04-14T01:17:00.000-05:00

Yeah, this is gonna be very sporadic, but will give me a chance to rant less to my friends directly (basically, if you are reading this, there is a good chance I'd bring this up in conversation with you, and there-by giving you a chance to tell me to shut the hell up early in the conversation).

I want to talk about Barry Bonds today. Over Easter Break I enjoyed ESPN, and didn't enjoy their constant cut-aways to Bonds' at-bats, because they made me feel like I should actually like the guy. But I did actually get to see him hit 660 & 661. Two comments:
A) He is an ass-hole. Seriously Barry, run after you hit the ball. Yes we all know it went really far, we don't need to see you stand around and swagger like you've down a 12-pack and want to prove you're still not loaded in the batters-box.
B) He can hit that ball a ton. As much as I dislike him, damn, he can crush it.

Ok, so after those quick points, I got to thinking about a point Gammons (or someone else) made on Baseball Tonight (which should have hired me or anyone who is not John Kruk) which boils down to:
When Bonds starts getting closer to 700 we will have to evaluate if he could be the greatest ever. But, we will also have to reevaluate exactly how amazing Ruth was, since he hit more HRs himself than every other team in the league (I believe he did this twice, but I haven't checked this recently, and you'll have to take my word for it).

So I decided to look at the top 10 in HRs and HRs vs League Average, both in pure totals, and in Percentages (*Active, I don't know why, but everyone else seems to do this).
Total:
1) Hank Aaron 755 - 100%
2) Babe Ruth 714 - 94.6%
3) *Barry Bonds 661 - 87.5%
4) Willie Mays 660 - 87.4%
5) Frank Robinson 586 - 77.6%
6) Mark McGwire 583 - 77.2%
7) Harmon Killebrew 573 - 75.9%
8) Reggie Jackson 563 - 74.6%
9) Mike Schmidt 548 - 72.6%
10) *Sammy Sosa 540 - 71.5%

vs League Average (not counting '04)
1) Ruth 622 - 100%
2) Aaron 457 - 73.5%
3) *Bonds 426 - 68.5%
4) McGwire 405 - 65.1%
5) Jimmie Foxx 403 - 64.8%
6) Mays 389 - 62.5%
7) Lou Gehrig 377 - 60.6%
8) Ted Williams 376 - 60.5%
9) Mel Ott 373 - 60.0%
10) Schmidt 367 - 59.0%
...
16) *Sosa 317 - 51.0%

What does this data say? I have no friggen clue, but I'd guess it means that the gap between 1 and 8 in total HRs is less than the gap between 1 and 2 in HR v LA might make Ruth's HRs seem more impressive. And the 1-10 gap is more than the 1-3 gap, again, makes Ruth's seem much more impressive, when taken in context with the era in which they played.

Well, it's late, and I have HW to do, so, if you have comments, let me know. . .

2004-03-01T16:56:00.000-05:00

I'm baaaaack.
Not really, but I do plan to start posting again semi-regularly (mind you I'm doing this right before I leave for Nebraska this weekend, and for Spring Break right after that).
But I will do what I can when I can.

2003-08-17T13:11:00.000-05:00

Well, since I have a few minutes to kill before RA training starts once again (2pm today, 5th straight day of University training, tomorrow begins in-hall stuff), I'll throw up some more people's WSG. I just got some of Lee Sinins' awesome daily e-mail's and decided it would be intersting to do the worst 10 people in RCAA (Runs Created Above Average) between the two leagues. So here it is with WSG first, then RCAA.

1. T Womack - .408 - (-32) RCAA
2. A Cora - .415 - (-23)
3. B Ausmus - .418 - (-28)
4. C Izturis - .430 - (-28)
5. R Clayton - .453 - (-35)

6. C Guzman - .461 - (-22)
7. En Chavez - .474 - (-29)
8. J Hernandez - .493 - (-24)
9. R Calloway - .497 - (-22)
10. K Harvey - .508 - (-23)
11. A Gonzalez (CHI) - .508 - (-25)

I was really surprised to see just how bad Ausmus' season has been. In 111 games, he has a grand total of 76 hits, 34 walks and 30 RBIs with a stellar OPS of .574. Tony Womack's season has also been incredibly crappy, with 8 walks in 309 PA or 2.59% BB/PA. For a quick comparison, Sori has 4.85%, which is 1.87 times better, and this is including Sori's amazing crap streak through which we are now suffering through. Maybe Pujols has stolen Sori's abilities and only the amazing Jose Contreras - Freedom Fighter Extrordinare (sp?) will be able to swing the balance of intergalactic power back to its rightful owner.

Wow, that was stupid as hell.

2003-08-17T11:39:00.000-05:00

Matsui is, and should be, out of rookies' league - With Ichiro, people say he should be considered. With Matsui, people say he shouldn't. Seattle, yes. New York, No. First Time, Yes. Second Time, No. So on, and so on. And here are the only 7 rookie O qualifiers in order of WSG (OPS is second stat).
1. H Matsui (NYY) - .600 - .819
2. M Teixeira (TEX) - .560 - .793
3. A Berroa (KC) - .559 - .813
4. R Baldelli (TB) - .559 - .772
5. S Podsednik (MIL) - .554 - .774
6. T Wigginton (NYM) - .539 - .736
7. K Harvey (KC) - .508 - .694

A few notes about this, first we see that Godzilla has seperated himself from the pack offensively. I think if Ichiro won, Godzilla should at least be given some serious consideration. Do I think that Japanese League players have an advantage over AAA players coming up? Hell yes. I argued the same thing a few years ago when Ichiro-mania swept the country. But you can't have it both ways. I think the problem is the contract issues in the Japanese leagues. Players can't leave for X-many years, and then there are other things that have to happen, yadda yadda ya. They need to fix that to allow a more free flow of talent across the Pacific. I would consider making the Japanese leagues almost a super-AAA type league, with teams having direct association with each other. Just a proposal. Another note is that I was surprised to see only 7 qualifying rookies in both league. I think the AL should go to Godzilla, and the NL should go to one of the hot young pitchers, either Willis or Webb (although both have been slowing down a bit as of late).

Don't forget, Pujols is at 30. People are paying attention now. I've been thinking he might be one of the people to get in the ballpark lately, with Ichiro being the other. My guess is that he won't break 40, probably 34 or so, but who knows, it's a game.

2003-08-14T13:37:00.000-05:00

OK, quick post of current top 7 OPS guys translated into WSG (still w/o the proper % of baserunner situations). SLG:WSG:

Bonds: 1.270 : .858
Pujols: 1.120 : .808
Helton: 1.078 : .773
Sheffield: 1.033 : .735
Delgado: 1.021 : .706
Edmonds: 1.010 : .730
Giambi: .990 : .682

Again, Giambi is very low, and i haven't really had the time to figure out why (I think his low 2B/3B total has something to do with it (17)). And . . .back to RA training.

2003-08-13T09:27:00.000-05:00

OK, quick post re: WSG.
It appears that .600 appears to be the loose cut off for All-Stars, and .775 is the ballpark figure for MVP consideration. Another added benefit of WSG over SLG and AVG is that you have a larger sample space to derive your data from, and that lowers your error, so your confidence in the number is greater. I can explain this more later, but if you flipped a coin twice and it came up twice heads, it wouldn't be unusual, but if you had flipped it 10 times and they all came up heads you might think something is up. I'll put up more numbers tonight maybe to support this. RA Training starts in 3 minutes.

2003-08-13T01:31:00.000-05:00

Seriously, I will write stuff soon, but I have dorm-related stuff that needs my attention now. I've probably lost all my audience, so it might not even be worth it, but if you liked my crap let me know, otherwise this may fade.

2003-08-10T14:58:00.000-05:00

So-Called Experts Are Wrong Again About the Yanks - Yah, this sums it up. AL/NL MVP/Cy 2/3rd of Season Awards coming in a day or so.

2003-08-08T11:02:00.000-05:00

Upon further thinking, I realized I should probably restate why I created this WSG thing. First, SLG is an inherently flawed stat. Second, OPS counts certain elements twice, while only counting others once. Third, to create a single stat which considers all aspects of getting on base, as well as advancing existing baserunners in a non-team specific situation allows us to rank players using stats which are independent of team success.

First – SLG is based on the assumption that in all situations, a homerun is worth four times as much as a single. But in regards to advancing baserunners, that is only the cases when the bases are empty. When there is a man on 2nd, or men on 1st and 3rd. A homerun is only twice as effective at advancing baserunners. This means that a homerun is not always worth four times that of a single. With my current percentage distribution of baserunners (which again, is wrong, and needs to be fixed), a homerun is worth about 2.68 times that of a single. This seems counter intuitive, but re-read my earlier posts about this, and I think it makes more sense.

Second – OPS is a combination of OBP and SLG, both of which value hits, while only OBP weighs walks. So this means if someone has a high AVG component of SLG, this will be counted again in OBP, which will have a much greater effect than someone who has a medium AVG component of SLG, and a high walk rate which will only be counted in the OBP part of resultant stat. While I can’t think of any examples off the top of my head, I’m pretty confident in the above statement.

Third – This point deals mostly with the removal of RBI and Runs as a factor in considering player worth, and trying to place each batter in a team-neutral and environment neutral setting. While the final stat would most likely need to be balanced for park-effect, the success of the surrounding team on a player’s WSG would not be seen. This is because the percentages taken in evaluating the value of each type of base hit is taken from the neutral league context, and therefore, negates all team effect on an individual player’s success or failure in this stat. The argument that a player on a good team would get up more isn’t an issue here, since this stat is not a cumulative stat, such as 1B, or RBI, but one that is based on the percentage of time the player is successful when up to bat no matter how many times he is up to bat.

I think that is a good summary of why I felt a new stat was needed. Read below for more details on the nuts and bolts behind it. Comments, questions?

2003-08-08T00:21:00.000-05:00

A few more comments after reclaiming the computer. . .
I really liked the idea proposed by Baseball News Blog (who runs a good website, but is on vacation for a bit), to combine the AL East and West for the rest of the season in the standings and only the top three teams make it. So here is what he calls, the AL Coastal Standings:
Yankees : 69-43 - .616 - XX
Mariners : 69-45 - .605 - 1.0
Red Sox : 67-46 - .593 - 2.5
Athletics : 66-48 - .579 - 4.0
OK, so I may have screwed up the GB column, but you get the point. In case you were curious how close the AL Central leading KC Royals are, their record is 60-53.

Now to try and use my brand new WSG stat on this season's leaderboard, here are the top 10 in OPS, top 5 in AVG, OBP, SLG with their respective WSG.
OPS
1 B Bonds - 1.229 - .833
2 A Pujols - 1.120 - .810
3 T Helton - 1.084 - .778
4 J Edmonds - 1.042 - .741
5 C Delgado - 1.024 - .712
6 G Sheffield - 1.015 - .722
7 M Ramirez - .993 - .707
8 J Giambi - .992 - .684
9 T Nixon - .992 - .713
10 B Mueller - .978 - .693

AVG
1 A Pujols - .372 - .810
2 T Helton - .356 - .778
3 I Suzuki - .337 - .600
4 B Bonds - .330 - .833
5 E Renteria - .330 - .635

OBP
1 B Bonds - .510 - .833
2 T Helton - .449 - .778
3 B Giles - .441 - .683
4 A Pujols - .440 - .810
5 M Bradley - .429 - .670

SLG
1 B Bonds - .719 - .833
2 A Pujols - .680 - .810
3 J Edmonds - .648 - .741
4 T Helton - .635 - .778
5 C Delgado - .600 - .712

Interesting to see how Giambi is the only sub-700 player in the top ten of OPS in WSG. Obviously I must have screwed up big time, since we all know how amazing Giambi is. Now for a few Yankees, Robin Ventura, and for my Marlins and Phils fans in the crowd, Lowell and Thome.

Nicky J - .654
D Jeter - .621
J Posada - .613
Godzilla - .592
A Soriano - .589
B Williams - .556

A Boone - .567
R Ventura - .554

J Thome - .651
M Lowell - .684

I thought Sori's number was very low, but remember that Sori's OPS is only .823 and that's below Jeter, Posada and Giambi. This stat isn't amount of playing time dependent, so its good (like AVG/SLG/OBP) for evaluting partial season results (good for the injury prone Yanks). Also, should I be worried that in 6 games, Boone has to draw a walk in pinstripes.

Also ESPN.com's stats don't seem to match MLB.com. Maybe they're off by a day or so, but Ramirez's OPS is .993 on MLB.com, and .982 on ESPN.com which makes no sense. So I'm throwing that disclaimer out there post-initial post. Some improvements I think I should make to make this a more universal stat, is that I'd have to balance it versus the league averages in order to eliminate era differences in statistics (not to take away what these guys are doing out there, but just to try and equalize era effects, this might also be done with the % of baserunners in certain situations). But for now, I hope that holds you folks over, and gives you some modern day, and all-time reference points to work with. Enjoy. . .

2003-08-07T22:22:00.000-05:00

Well, AC was fun, but now, back to the fun of stats. . .
OK, what I did was figured out the average advancement for all hits as I did before with 1B and 2B and here are the final totals (I changed 1B totals to make them a little more optimistic about baserunner advancement).

BB = 15
1B = 28
2B = 40
3B = 48
HR = 56

So just using these figures, we have the following BB:1B:...:HR relationship based on a BB = 1;

1.00:1.87:2.67:3.20:3.73

These are misleading becuase they weigh all base-runner situations as equally likely to occur. Now I have no stats on the distribution of the times each situation happens, so I'm going to use an awful approximation and say that 40% of the time players come to plate with no one on, and 20% of the time they come to the plate with a man on first, and assume that the other 6 situations occur with an equal probability of 6.67% of the time. If anyone has any better statistics on this, or know where I might be able to find them, I'd sure appreciate that. But, with using those distributions, here are the new results (in the ratio form with BB=1):

1.00:1.63:2.50:3.13:3.75

Also we may need to balance for the number of offensive players on base (including the man up to bat) at the time of the walk/hit of your choice. Here are the results, once again in ratio form, but these are not adjusted for the percentages as the previous set was:

1.00:1.81:2.67:3.29:3.92

And now adjusted for the percentages:
1.00:1.45:2.38:3.13:3.88

So this may give us better numbers to work with for a new WSG stat we are trying to create. Here are the top 10 all-time OPS seasons converted into (this version) of WSG (which still has major faults, the main one I can see is the percentages of what happens when, but there may be others) and the top 6 all-time players' and their career OPS.

Season (OPS:WSG):
Bonds ('02) : 1.381 : 0.912
Ruth ('20) : 1.379 : 0.941
Bonds ('01) : 1.379 : 0.925
Ruth ('21) : 1.359 : 0.941
Ruth ('23) : 1.309 : 0.903
Williams ('41) : 1.287 : 0.896
Ruth ('27) : 1.258 : 0.910
Williams ('57) : 1.257 : 0.952
Ruth ('26) : 1.253 : 0.861
Ruth ('24) : 1.252 : 0.869

Career:
Ruth : 1.164 : 0.816
Williams : 1.116 : 0.791
Gehrig : 1.080 : 0.769
Foxx : 1.038 : 0.747
Helton : 1.032 : 0.742
Bonds : 1.023 : 0.728

A few short observations since the computer is in hot demand here, and it took me like 30 minutes to compute those numbers. . . I think the stat might show some promise, it does need a little tweaking regarding the percentages of which situation happens how often. Also, how sick is it that T Williams is on that list, 16 years apart? And how about Ruth showing up 6 times? Ok, that's it. . . for now. . .

No mo' Mando. But the Curse of Jeff Nelson has been lifted!

2003-08-05T00:10:00.000-05:00

OK, I've been reading Bill James, yadda yadda yadda. Here's my problem, the idea of batting average as the key indicator is stupid. Just dumb. Yah, I know its good for . . .blah blah blah. OBP is the same thing, except it tell you whether the person can draw walks which are almost as good as singles. For getting you on base they're equivalent to 1B, 2B, 3B so why don't we consider them in AVG? It doesn't make much sense if you think about it. This point has been made a million times over, but I felt repeating it would finally convince people.
Anyway, my problem really is that in game situations a walk is almost as good as a 1B. If no one's on base, they are the same. If a man's on third, a single will usually score him, while a walk will do jack except make a double play ball more likely. So now my problem is, in creating a slugging-esque stat which includes BB (WSG - walk slugging, I couldn't think of a better abbreviation), how do I weigh walks? They're obviously not equal to 1B, but if we set them equal to less than 1 (the value of a single) we run into a problem.
Example of Problem (Weight 1 BB=2 1B):
Disciplined Hitter (Guy A): 20 PA, 5 BB, 3-15 with 2 1B's, 1 3B.
UnDisciplined Hitter (Guy B): 17 PA, 0 BB, 6-17 with 5 1B's, 1 3B.
A: .200 AVG/.400 OBP/.333 SLG/.375 WSG
B: .353 AVG/.353 OBP/.471 SLG/.471 WSG
Obviously most teams would want a guy who has a OBP of 47 points higher, and in this situation, most teams would rather have Guy A (although this is an awfully designed example, and would make more sense if I thought it out longer). The ratio of 1 BB= 2 1B is also not feasible, but even if we value it as 1 1B = .75 BB, Guy A still would lose. Again, don't look too deep into this example, but think up your own, and you can see that if in this WSG stat you value a BB as less than 1, you could in theory punish someone for walking. The more I look at this the more I begin to think I shouldn't even include this example, but maybe someone out there will be able to show me a flaw in my logic, or offer supporting evidence.

Assuming my supposition is correct, that a walk needs to be valued at 1, how do we change the values of the other base hits to represent their true value. Are we even sure that a double is worth twice a single? Here's the possible man on configurations, and we'll see what the logic tells us. Again this won't be super-accurate, because there are cases where a single with a man on third won't score the man on third, but we'll deal with the majority of cases. Cases:
*Bases Empty. Double is worth twice a single.
*Man on 1st. Single gets man on 1st and moves other to 3rd (again, this might not be the most common case, but we'll assume it is - 3 Bases Gained). Double scores man on first and puts man on 2nd (5 BG).
*Man on 2nd. Both cases score the man. (Single 3 BG, Double 4 BG)
*Man on 3rd. Both cases score the man. (Single 2 BG, Double 3 BG)
*Men on (1,2)/(1,3). Single scores 2nd/3rd, and advances 1->2 (4/3 BG). Double scores both (7/6 BG).
*Men on 2,3. Both men score (Single 4 BG, Double 5 BG).
*Bases loaded. Single has 2,3 score, 1->2 (5 BG). Double scores all (8 BG).
Our totals leave us with 25 BG from singles, and doubles give us only 40 BG (these are with conservative estimates for singles also). While these cases may not, and do not, occur with the same frequency in games, if we assumed they did then we would have that a 1 1B = 1.6 2B, which is probably a low estimate, but still would be a number less than double the value of a single.

OK, that's it for now, chew on this faithful viewers, send in comments/questions/fan mail/hate mail and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. Once again, I am leaving the blog for a few days, this time a trip to Atlantic City for a pair of nights.

2003-08-04T22:34:00.000-05:00

SI.com - Power Rankings: "Not everybody is impressed with Billy Beane's latest trade-deadline pickup, well-traveled Jose Guillen, who has a rep as selfish and temperamental. 'Guillen is merely a younger version of Raul Mondesi,' one NL official told The Daily News of New York. Ouch, that left a mark."

That made my evening.

2003-08-03T21:59:00.000-05:00

While in Cooperstown I stumbled across an old book store and found two copies of Bill James' old Baseball Abstracts, which are now being talked about in a lot of new media, so I figured, why not, and bought them ('83 and '86 I think). I've really enjoyed them, and they've inspired a few ideas which I was going to write about here in some depth before I realized I hadn't examined the recent trades in any depth (either for you, my faithful reader, or for me, I had been going on my gut, which wasn't exactly accurate).

Watching this new set of Yankees (minus Raul and Robin), something reminds me of the style of ball that they used to play back in the "good 'ole days" of the late 90's. I know this is an 'uber-optimistic' claim, and it comes after watching three games (of which they lost 2 - but I don't want to talk about that right now, my language wouldn't be appropriate in mixed company). So this may be a bit of an overstatement, but the extra speed and youth seem like a throwback of sorts. First I'll disect the 3B situation, for both speed and power, then I'll look at The Raul vs the 3 Guys Who Are Replacing The Raul.

Boone this year alone has 16 SB (3CS, 84% Success Rate), while in Ventura's last 5 seasons he only has 9 SB (12 CS, 43%). Boone is 6 years younger than Ventura and even when Ventura was younger he never stole more than 4 bases in a season. While I'm not saying we need a switch to a hit and run team, it is nice to be able to move people over with a little bit more success which comes from extra speed on the basepaths. For the AVG/OBP/SLG stats I'll go with this year, and then the average of the last three years.
Boone: .270/.335/.462 -- .268/.333/461
Ventura: .246/.337/.384 -- .243/.355/.420 (his power has disappeared this year)
So Ventura has typically been better at getting on base, but his power which kept him in this race has gone away, and didn't appear to be coming back anytime soon. Boone's OPS was above .825 in both '00 and '01, but dipped to .753 in '02 but this year is back to .797 and Ventura had been below .780 in both '00 and '01. So this seems like a good trade had it been straight up, but unfortunately the Reds were not in that desperate a fire-sale. The real value of this trade appears to be in the difference in value of Claussen vs "Crosby and Proctor" who are both performing quite well at AAA, but as Larry from RLYW reminded me, are 25 and 26, while Claussen is 24 and has already had Tommy John. So this trade for now will receive an incomplete grade (with the Yankees getting a passing grade, but unsure of where it will fall in the C- to A- range) and will only be fully grade-able when any of the prospects reach (or don't) the show, OR if they are trade bait next year, OR if either of the two 3B's make a significant impact as the season goes into the homestretch.

Comparing Raul w/ his three replacements (I don't think it's clear yet who will replace him in anything more than a platoon role) I'll standardize all their statistics from the last three years based on a 162 game season, so from now on it will be Raul vs DGS (I like the name Dellucci the best, so that gets to go first). SB/CS will be based on the last three seasons, while the AVG/OBP/SLG will just be based on this years info (I'm not that motivated).
DGS: 4/3 (57%) - Note: None of these three have really tried to steal anything w/ the exception of Dellucci this year and Sierra early in his career.
Raul: 25/10 (71%)
Definate edge Raul.

DGS: .256/.316/.408
Raul: .255/.326/.465
Again, edge Raul.
Why do I still prefer this to Raul? Because he was a jackass. Always was, always will be. Same reason I have serious reservations about Sierra, but Torre said he had everything worked out with him from the first time around. I have to wonder though if the lack of Raul's arm will cost them any runs in the post-season. In today's broadcast before Matsui [screwed] up, they said "LF - below average arm, CF - below average arm, RF - average arm." That doesn't exactly inspire fear in the opposition when they're on the basepaths in a close game. But this trade (forgetting the rest of the details, and just looking at it as Raul and $2 mil for DGS) get the Yankees a B. With the stat-numbers alone I want to give this a C/C+ but a few of the intangibles come into play here... Raul's 32, Dellucci's 29, Garcia 27, Sierra 37 (avg 31). Not really a deal breaker, but I think if they're more interested in keeping Dellucci and Garcia, the few extra years may mean they stay on a little while as role/platoon players who can get accustom to the Yankee system while I think the writing had been on the wall since the day of the Raul trade last year that he was gone after this season (Vlad was mentioned as a possible replacement back then). The attitude also make this a better than just numbers deal. I know that the "gut instinct" is what sabermetrics tries to remove, but I think even Beane knows what a bad attitude can do to a clubhouse (rumors were that Jeremy Giambi got shipped off to Philly for exactly that reason). Also Raul had been in a major slide since the early part of the season and showed no signs of life. So these are a few of the reasons why I bumped this trade up a few plus-minuses.

So the trades seem to be a slight improvement, with the future impact being directly related to Claussen's sucess vs. the AAA players gotten by the Yankees. For this season, it depends on the DGS trio being adequate and Boone staying steady, but the trades seem to be good for the Yankees even w/ the loss of Claussen.

In the "Pettitte Free Agent Watch of '03"-related news, during today's game the YES broadcasters mentioned that he has said he can't imagine playing for any other team, and that he's more than comfortable waiting until the end of the season to work on those details. He also said he understood managment's position in waiting until the season finishes to watch his health which was a major question after last season's set of injuries. So hopefully the managment will realize they need the rock-steady Pettitte to help anchor the middle/bottom half of this team's rotation for at least the next few years.

My one sentence about cricket: Seriously, the whole sport is being held together with the same logic used to convince anyone to back the WNBA. (Try and read a cricket news story, and you'll understand)

2003-08-03T08:27:00.000-05:00

ESPN.com - Page2 - Trade deadline special: This will have to act as filler until I get a chance to write some stuff up here (hopefully later today). Just pretend I'm as funny as these guys and you'll keep coming back for years.

2003-07-31T23:27:00.000-05:00

I swear Murcer just said the following about Donnely for ANA, "Here's a guy who made his debut. . . as a rookie. ....(Insert incredibly long pause here where you try to figure out why the hell he just said what he did) .... who was 30." Just a funny moment becuase the pause was waaay too long to be in the middle of a sentence.

I had another post here, but Blogger ate it. Hhmmm, pooosssttsss. . ..

2003-07-31T21:57:00.000-05:00

Two quick links re: trades. The first is from Bronx Banter which has what might be the funniest title I've seen. The second is the Futility Infielder who I need to break down and add to my list on the side of the page sooner or later.

In other news, does every fan in Anaheim feel the need to wave like a tool when they get in the behind home plate box? This isn't a quick "hey" wave, this is a "my pants are on fire and if you don't come to help me right now I'll never be able to walk again so please stop" wave. It's just annoying.

2003-07-31T21:14:00.000-05:00

OK, today was a two for one baseball extravaganza. First was my trip to the Hall of Fame, Second was the trade deadline and the moves which came. First the HOF.

It was pretty sweet. I haven't been there in 8 or 9 years, so it wasn't how I remembered it, but it was still pretty impressive. The Hall of Plaques was really impressive and had a mystical aura around it. I also found a sweet new nickname, "Big Poison." Other than that the hall was pretty nice, but a bit overwhelming as there was so much stuff right after the impressive stuff from the era before it. The display of WS rings was nice, you get to see what they really play for, the bling. The displays seemed to be pretty packed in, and the crowd wasn't exactly always as polite as one would expect. But all in all it was a nice day trip, and definately worth seeing. The shops surrounding the HOF were nice too, very tourist focused, but just autographs of just about any one you could imagine. I was thinking about getting a Yaz autographed photo of him from his days at Notre Dame, but it was $150, and thats a bit out of my price range these days (I also saw a Joe D ball which was $450). Also I went into the research center, and got to look through a lot of old pictures of Joe D which I might include in my research paper (one or two nice ones with Joe and Ted W).

I realized today I really need to start thinking about what I'm going to do to focus my research next semester, and any advice or comments would be greatly appreciated.

As for the trade deadline, I'm not sure I'm ready to dissect these trades just yet, I'd like to read more about them. But here's my quick breakdown. Boone for Claussen seems to lopsided in the future dept, but when you see what we got back from the Dodgers it seems like we added two quality AAA players (although one source said one was AA, and one AAA, YES said they were both AAA). The trade for White seems a little dangerous with his health issues, but assuming he gets healed up, he'll be a real nice addition to a less than stellar pen. I'll write more about this tomorrow. Tonight I'm again going to try and throw posts up during the game, but I may just go to bed as I got up pretty early to head out this morning.

2003-07-30T23:31:00.000-05:00

Murcer and Kay are talking about how Appier got cut and will get 12 million (they figured $7 mil after taxes). They asked each other what they would do with it. They both said money wouldn't change them. I hate when people say that. If I was ever asked that I'd be honest, "Hell yes this is going to change me. I'm gonna finish school, but screw grad school. I'm not working a hard job. I'm gonna drive a nice car. I'm gonna live the good life. " But no one is throwing money at me. But ohhhh, if they were.

And unfortunately, I'm not going to be able to turn in a complete game tonight. My allergies are killing me, and we (my dad and I) are getting up early to head to Cooperstown. So with that, g'nite.

2003-07-30T23:04:00.000-05:00

They're talking about Mondesi and what happened in BOS. I agree that what he did was wrong, and when he came over from TOR he did have a huge chip on his shoulder, but it seemed to go away with time and Torre's presense. Apparently playing time was what did it, not Torre/The Team. They made a great point in that his comment about how this is a good trade for him shows something about his goals as a player since he's going from a team 1 1/2 games up, to a team 11 or so games back. This is also a good move, hopefully, to improve clubhouse chemistry which the Yankees had in boatloads during the earlier wins, as did the Angels last year. I think that's an untangible which is very important, and I feel BOS and OAK have it this year. OAK from having guys come together up the system and BOS with a bunch of what appeared to be medium-quality free agent signings coming together with a common goal, and with some very good players leading the way.

2003-07-30T22:37:00.000-05:00

SI.com - Baseball - Power Rankings: Trade deadline looming: In between innings I've been chatting up my friends and been surfing. A few of these short team summary's have been funny, but the quote in the KCR one was hilarious. It's really pretty funny if you know county fairs out in the country. Maybe someday I'll recall some of my favorite memories of one of my county fair visits (I had to do it for a job, not voluntarily).

2003-07-30T22:12:00.000-05:00

I think as much as anything I just missed the mindless drivel that announcers of baseball game spit out during those boring streches. Example, Kay and Mercer tonight (I think that's who's calling it) were talking about how managers have to manage different personalities. So one of these two putzes says, "yah its a lot like that in the booth, I have to keep you happy." "well, i'm pretty easy to make happy, whenever you walk in the booth." Just stupid stuff like that is what you miss when you only catch a game every other week (FOX's Sat game, which has two of my least favorite broadcasters at times).

2003-07-30T21:48:00.000-05:00

Giambi just hit a blast. I don't think the right fielder took one step. He just turned around and watched it. 30 HR on the season for the first bagger. . .

2003-07-30T21:45:00.000-05:00

In Game Post #1.
Posada is a putz for getting caught off base (3rd base) and thrown after a throw to 2nd by the C.

Garrett Anderson is slugging .634 according to YES, but only .592 according to ESPN. Which is confusing. So I looked up all time SLG stats to see what was the best single season and best above league average. I knew Bonds was #1 on all time, but I wondered how much above average that was.

Top 10 All Time Slugging Seasons
SLG YEAR SLG
1 Barry Bonds 2001 .863
2 Babe Ruth 1920 .847
3 Babe Ruth 1921 .846
4 Barry Bonds 2002 .799
5 Babe Ruth 1927 .772
6 Lou Gehrig 1927 .765
7 Babe Ruth 1923 .764
8 Rogers Hornsby 1925 .756
9 Mark McGwire 1998 .752
10 Jeff Bagwell 1994 .750

Here is the all-time list of players above average in slugging.
SLG YEAR DIFF PLAYER LEAGUE
1 Babe Ruth 1920 .447 .847 .400
2 Babe Ruth 1921 .425 .846 .421
3 Barry Bonds 2001 .423 .863 .440
4 Barry Bonds 2002 .376 .799 .423
5 Babe Ruth 1923 .363 .764 .401
6 Babe Ruth 1927 .361 .772 .411
7 Lou Gehrig 1927 .354 .765 .411
8 Ted Williams 1957 .334 .731 .397
9 Babe Ruth 1926 .331 .737 .407
10 Babe Ruth 1924 .330 .739 .409

I can't explain for the discrepancies in the YES and ESPN stats, but I figured I'd throw these stats up there with the current MLB leaders.
SLG
SLG SLG
1 Barry Bonds .731
2 Albert Pujols .684
3 Jim Edmonds .656
4 J Guillen .629
5 C Delgado .624
6 T Helton .622
7 G Anderson .593
8 G Sheffield .592
9 B Boone .591
10 M Ramirez .589

More to come as the game goes on. . .

2003-07-30T14:23:00.000-05:00

You're gonna have to stick with me over the next week and half while I'm home. Even though I have the time to write while I'm home, I just realized I am very allergic to my house, especially the room with the computer. About 1hr after I got home my right eye turned almost pure red and it started crying (just that eye too). But now I have cable so I can actually watch the Yanks and baseball in general, so hopefully the two will counteract each other.

To continue the non-baseball post of the day, here is the non-baseball site of the day. Radio Storm is a streaming radio station which offers 6 streaming stations, and the quality is pretty good (I'm using a cable modem, so I can't say what it would be like with a 56K connection). More baseball stuff to come tonight. A real late game for the Yanks, so if you're lucky I might offer during game live commentary.

2003-07-30T11:30:00.000-05:00

OK, here is my outline for the Yankees over the next 2-3 seasons. I know its midseason, and about 36 hours or so before the trade deadline, but assuming the major pieces stay intact, here's what I'd like to see the Bombers do, what pieces to keep onto, and what to get rid of. Mondesi's arm was amazing, but his attitude wasn't, so him leaving for sunny Zona doesn't break my heart or my future Yankee lineups.

C - Jorge Posada - He's signed 'til '09, and by the end of that season he'll be 35. There is a team option/buyout on 2007, but by then age will begin to be a much more serious concern. Pudge is the same age (actually about 3 months younger), and has had major injury problems, but Piazza, while no where near the defensive catcher Pudge is, hasn't had major catching-preventing injuries until this year, and he's about 3 years older than Posada, so that leaves some hope Jorge can avoid major injury for a while.
1B - Giambi/Johnson - One of thearticles in today's NewsDay says that the Yankees should trade Johnson for Giles. Could a more short sighted suggestion be made? Johnson is 7 years younger than Giles and Giambi. Giambi is an adequate defensive 1B, but Johnson is better, and after next year, letting Giambi DH 1/2 the games isn't a bad decision. This tandem is pretty important since Johnson at 25 or so was near the league leaderboards in a crap load of offensive categories. Giambi's locked up until the end of 2008 with a team option on '09, but by then I'm not sure how his defensive game will hold up.
2B - Soriano - Duh.
SS - Jeter - See 2B's comment.
3B - ???? - This is where we need to look into the magical 8-ball of free agency. I have two options, both of which rely on Steinbrenner's willingness to shell out for a WS he's been pining for. Option A) Lowell - He's making 3.7 million this year, and is having a season worth of probably twice that. He'll be a very sought after guy after this season. Option B) Tejada - Yes, he does play short. But I think very few teams are going to be interested in paying what he wants (and deserves, this year I think is just an fluke). This season he's making 11.3 million, and his price tag will go up, but not too much after this lackluster year. But I think he can adapt to the hot corner, and would give the Yankees a great young infield. Also, for the love of pete could we demote Henson to AA for a while. Let him get this baseball thing figured out.
LF - GODZILLA - He's signed for the following two seasons, and I think once he gets more used to big-league pitching he'll do just fine. If next year goes well, I would be opposed to a mid-season 4-year extension, he'll be 30 at the end of next season, and he figures to keep producing untill mid-30s.
CF - Bernabe Williams - He's signed to then end of '05 with a club option on '06. He's getting up there in age but just keeps producing, and as long as that happens, the Boss remains happy.
RF - ???? - I'd like to see them give Juan Rivera a full season shot, and put some faith in him. I think if we do the 2-yr plan with him, we'd be OK. The two-year plan is what I've seen with Sori, Johnson, and hopefully next year, Godzilla. First year they put up solid, but moderately disapointing figures. The next year they blow-up. Another option is Vlad the Destroyer, but again, he'll be hotly pursued, and other, cheaper options are available.
Pitching:
SP1 - Moose.
SP2 - Wells - Pick up his option. Then maybe another 2-yr deal structured similarly. He's got a rubber arm, and can throw and throw and. . .
SP3 - Pettite - Please resign him. He's been here forever, and is the energizer bunny of this staff. Year in year out, you can expect (at least) 15 W and 190 IP (last year was a career low 134, but still scraped together 13 Ws).
SP4 - Good Weaver (King of the Hill reference) - GW need to be out there, throwing regularly, and if he shows up, not his evil twin Weaver, the Yanks can have one of the great young pitchers in baseball. Giving him up in a trade now would be disastrous, because he's bound to flourish immediately in anywhere other than the locus-esque media of Gotham. But I think, once again, he's turned a corner and can begin to provide some stability at the bottom of this rotation (So this comment is more about this year than anything else, but I really have no idea what's going to happen at this trade deadline so I'm just writing w/o too much focus on the future since Cashman may be gone at the end of this year if George doesn't get his ring). So I'm hoping for the best and putting GW as my 4th pitcher for the next 2-3 years.
SP5 - Lieber/Contreras - Either way. If they both are healthy they offer great trade bait to help shore up the pen or whatever breaks in the next year or two.
The Pen (of Confusion):
Who knows. I really don't know what they're gonna do. So here are a few ideas. A) NO MANDO. If he turns out amazing, fine, then consider it. But otherwise cut this loose faster than a . . . (insert something witty that happens quickly of your own choosing). B) Get the Rocket back. If they could somehow talk the ultimate competitor back into a relief role, think how he would dominate. A 1 or 2 inning guy who would make batters look silly. He could setup option C). C) Mo. D) Mo' Mo. Clone him, and have him set himself up.

OK, so my ideas are probably stupid, but I think some of them merit some consideration Mr. Cashman. The rest of you can write me and bitch. Tomorrow on "Mini-Vacation 3" is sub-trip 1: Cooperstown. I'll be sure and write 'bout that for all you kids in the audience.

2003-07-29T02:11:00.000-05:00

Again, I'm taking off out of town so my blog will suffer. Please stick with me through this time, once I get back on the 9th I should be able to devote some quality time to writing good posts. Between now and then I'll do my best to post every two or three days, I'll be at home (Upstate NY) most of the time, with a few side trips planned (Cooperstown and Atlantic City). Wednesday I'll try and write down what I think the Yankee plan for the next 3-4 seasons should be. I'm not writing this season off, I'm just merely trying to plan ahead. I'm not too sure if this team's chemistry has gelled just yet, but I think we'll know in a little while what these bombers are really made of. Well, I'm off to sleep before my flight in the AM, and again, sorry for my crappy posts.

As for Jeff Weaver and his bad luck. . . . I'm sorry for that crappy-ness too.

2003-07-27T22:15:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the delay in posting after my return from the great state of Kentucky. The city of Louisville is a real nice place, and it's nice to see friends after a summer stuck in a basement (where my room is). And I got some great news as I found out one of my freshman year roommates will return after a 1 year absense (sp?). I also didn't want to jinx Weaver, but apparently, he took care of that in the 7th. After the 6th he had 100 pitches, and Torre pulled him when I thought he should, but apparently it didn't work out. But Giambi got his 29th, and there's still 6 outs left in the ball game for the Bombers.

Minor League Stadiums
I don't have too much stuff to write about, so I'll talk a little about stadiums (I know there's always material in baseball, I'm just tired, and haven't been keeping up on articles, news and rumors). In the past two years I've been to five stadiums at just about every level. Yankee Stadium and Wrigley are amazing, but the environment of each of these two are very different, but I don't really want to focus on those two for now. I think minor league parks are the most interesting, because it shows you a little of everything, the town, the region, the local businesses (who sponsors), etc. The A stadium is Coveleski Stadium where the South Bend Silverhawks (ARI's A) play ball. This is a little (5,000) stadium which is pretty standard in layout, with a "sunken" field. The outfield has no seats, but is a sloped grass hill where you can watch the game and kids can run around. The tickets are around $6 if I remember, and Monday is dollar everything (tickets, hot dogs, beer, soda, etc.). I've gone a few times where there were only like 200 people, so you can sit just about anywhere you want (Monday's apparently are more crowded). Everything is real clean and nice and its a good time.
The AA stadium is NYSEG Stadium where the Binghamton Mets (NYM's AA) play. Its a little bigger than the Cove (6,000), and also doesn't have outfield seats, and in the outfield you see the train tracks which run through parts of Binghamton. I don't remember anything else of major note about this Stadium, except Buddy the Bee is a good mascot, and the free stuff distribution is pretty good, he works his way around the whole stadium. Tickets are a $7 I think, and I don't remember what hot dogs and other stuff run, but everything is pretty clean, and its a fan-friendly stadium.
The AAA stadium is the Louisville Slugger Field where the Louisville River Bats (CIN's AAA) play. This is a fairly large (11,300) stadium, with seats all around the field, and a Jumbo-Tron in leftish-Center. This is a really great stadium, I really enjoyed it. There are a good number of vendors both around the stadium, and wandering around the seats. In the right-center area there are picnic benches which certain companies rented out, and another area where you can just go and sit and eat. Papa John has stations around the stadium, but they run a little steep in the stadium. Beer/Soda was in the $3-4 range depending on size, and hot dogs were around $2. There is a second level of seating behind home plate. Most of the free stuff goes to the people in the behind first-home plate-third area, and doesn't come out to the outfield and further down the lines. The concourse around the stadium is nice, and you can buy shots and mixed drinks at the Jack Daniels store/area. The tickets are $7 I think, and you can get pretty good seats walking up, even though they usually draw 9-10K/game. The stadium is located near the waterfront and if you get there too early before the game it's a really nice place to walk around. This is where the biggest fireworks show in the world is every year (Thunder Over Louisville - two weeks before the KY Derby or so). If you enjoy fireworks, this is the thing to see. They shut down one of the bridges and load that with fireworks. They have to float two barges down the Ohio River and put one on each side because the smoke is so thick from the bridge you couldn't see the other side's fireworks. After friday night games the River Bats have fireworks, and they were pretty good. All-in-all, a great place to watch a ball game, and I heartily recommend it to anyone. Also if you're in town, the Louisville Slugger Museum is a lot of fun and you can get a customized bat with your name on it for about $35-45 in about 1 hr (order before the tour and its ready by the time you get out).

Race
Steve Sailer and Eric McErlain have some interesting things to say in regards to Ralph Wiley's piece in which he basically calls Bill James a racist. Wiley himself comes back later with a few comments in this chat session. A bit pro-Bonds line here now, even though I think he's a jackass, I do think any attention drawn to a quality museum (I'm going on a hunch here, I highly doubt it is just thrown together), is good both for the game in general, and good to acknowledge the problems in our game's past, which were mirrored in our country's past. Like GI Joe says, "Knowing is half the battle."

A few more random comments about my trip and things in general. NBC's show The Restaurant is a crazy show, the premise is they have to get a restaurant built and ready in 6 weeks. Tonight's show is the first night they're open for business, stuff's on fire, the main guy's car gets towed, and he's is cursing like a sailor, it's awesome. And on the topic of food, turns out two visits to White Castle in one day is sure to put you in a good deal of pain. But since I don't get there very often, it was worth it. If you don't know what White Castle is, its a fast food 24-hr joint with these small (1.25"x1.25" or so) hamburgers that are 47 cents. They're greasy, they don't have much meat, they're thrown together, but boy are they good. But they also come back to haunt you a few hours later.

OK, so the Yanks are now down 6-3 going in the 8th (2 outs). Jeez. Weaver throws great, and this happens. Oh well, I guess if I mention him pitching in this then everything falls apart.

2003-07-23T21:06:00.000-05:00

Bernie Moving Upstate?
This is a topic which I mention a few posts ago, is Bernie Williams Hall worthy? Or even close? I am really entering this with no idea what the answer is going to be. Lets lay a few basics down (AVG/OBP/SLG/OPS/BB/HR/RBI):
Career: .308/.392/.498/.890/827/226/998
Career Highs: .342/.435/.575/1.010/100/30/121
His best season appears to be 1999, which accounts for the career highs in AVG, OBP, HR. Baseball Prospectus ranks his defensive rate for his career as a 98, which means he is two runs below average per 100 games.

In the Bill James' Historical Abstract he has Bernie rated as the 37th best CF after the '00 season.

So far in his career Bernie has 263 WS (not including the 7 he has from this season so far, because you're not supposed to figure this out for partial seasons, but I'm not including it, because the jury is still out for him on this season). With this many WS he's now (about) the 266th player overall all time on the WS list (The list was made after the '01 season, so I just added his '02 totals, so their may be other active players who have passed him). Now this is definately not a very high career total, but there are HOF'ers below him, Stan Coveleski has 245 WS (the Single-A D'Back affliate in South Bend (the Silver Hawks) play in Coveleski Stadium). But for the most part, the players surrounding him were considered very good in their time, but just outside the HOF caliber player level (3 former Yankee examples: Mattingly (263), O'Neill (259), Canseco (272)). So on that scale, he's obviously not there yet. His career high season in WS was 33, in 99, and he had a 30 WS season in '02. He was the 34th best player in the 90's despite not playing over 100 games untill '93.
Assuming this year he gets healthy, and has an average half season, he'd finish with around 16 WS, and will be 34. Assuming he can put two more solid (by his standards seasons) of 24 WS, and two "mop-up" seasons of 12 each. That would take his career total to 351 WS which would put him in the top 100 of all-time. After '01 Clemens had 351 WS, Roberto Alomar had 345, Biggio and McGwire each had 342, Palmeiro and Ryan had 334, . So, assuming he puts up the numbers in the next four years I'm assuming (which is a big if), he would be around some players who definately belong in there, and some who don't. So this kind of leaves us no where.

And now, the heavy stats, I fired up my handy-dandy Sabermetric Baseball Encyclopedia (which if you're reading this, and even halfway enjoying this, you really would enjoy this software, it is fantastic and Lee's daily e-mails are top shelf). So the lists I'm generating here are based on the past 100 years (1903-2002) and CF'ers, this isn't super organized, but I'll try and keep them in some semblance of order. I'll also try and put in other modern and well-known players to keep things in perspective. Also sorry if the columns don't line up, I have to figure out how to make that work sooner or later. . .

CAREER STATS:
Totals
AVG (min. 2500 ABs)
1. Ty Cobb .372
2. Tris Speaker .345
...
5. Joe DiMaggio .325
...
12. Kirby Puckett .318
...
16. Bernie Williams .308
...
20. Willie Mays .302

RBI
1. Willie Mays 1903
2. Tris Speaker 1536
...
5. Ken Griffey, Jr. 1358
...
10. Bernie Williams 998
...
15. Kirby Puckett 874

Home Runs
1. Willie Mays 660
2. Ken Griffey, Jr. 468
3. Mickey Mantle 464
...
10. Bernie Williams 226
11. Steve Finley 222

Doubles
1. Tris Speaker 792
2. Ty Cobb 568
...
T7. Ken Griffey, Jr. 370
...
10. Bernie Williams 353
11. Joe DiMaggio 345

Extra Base Hits
1. Willie Mays 1323
2. Tris Speaker 1131
3. Ty Cobb 901
4. Ken Griffey, Jr. 873
...
13. Bernie Williams 631
...
16. Kirby Puckett 561

OBP (min. 2500 ABs)
1. Ty Cobb .442
2. Mickey Mantle .431
..
10. Bernie Williams .392
...
12. Jim Edmonds .384

SLG (min. 2500 ABs)
1. Mickey Mantle .587
2. Joe DiMaggio .579
3. Hack Wilson .577
4. Ken Griffey, Jr. .562
...
12. Andruw Jones .503
...
15. Bernie Williams .498

OPS (min. 2500 ABs)
1. Mickey Mantle 1.018
2. Hack Wilson .984
3. Joe DiMaggio .982
...
6. Ken Griffey, Jr. .940
...
12. Bernie Williams .890

Total Bases
1. Willie Mays 6066
2. Tris Speaker 5098
3. Ty Cobb 4611
4. Ken Griffey, Jr. 3882
...
15. Steve Finley 3027
16. Bernie Williams 2968
17. Kirby Puckett 2939

Runs Created/Game
1. Mickey Mantle 10.26
2. Ty Cobb 9.57
...
8. Ken Griffey, Jr. 7.80
...
13. Bernie Williams 7.15

Vs. League Average
AVG
1. Ty Cobb +.097
...
4. Kirby Puckett +.057
...
13. Bernie Williams +.038
14. Willie Mays +.038

RBI
1. Willie Mays +671
2. Joe DiMaggio +654
...
6. Ken Griffey, Jr. +481
...
13. Bernie Williams +221

Doubles
1. Tris Speaker +388
...
T9. Kirby Puckett +74
T9. Lenny Dykstra +74
T9. Joe DiMaggio +74
...
T19. Bernie Williams +56

Extra Base Hits
1. Willie Mays +541
...
6. Ken Griffey, Jr. +306
...
21. Bernie Williams +126

OBP (min. 2500 ABs)
1. Ty Cobb +.098
2. Mickey Mantle +.094
...
9. Bernie Williams +.051
...
19. Ken Griffey, Jr. +.040

SLG (min. 2500 ABs)
1. Mickey Mantle +.190
2. Joe DiMaggio +.175
...
6. Ken Griffey, Jr. +143
...
31. Bernie Williams +.071

OPS (min. 2500 ABs)
1. Mickey Mantle +.285
2. Ty Cobb +.252
...
8. Ken Griffey, Jr. +.182
...
20. Bernie Williams +.123

Total Bases
1. Willie Mays +1939
2. Ty Cobb +1759
...
6. Ken Griffey, Jr. +1122
...
10. Kirby Puckett +628
...
15. Bernie Williams +548

Runs Created/Game
1. Mickey Mantle +5.58
2. Ty Cobb +4.89
...
7. Ken Griffey, Jr. +3.29
...
15. Bernie Williams +2.03

So those are seem very consistent, he's almost always in the 10-15 range for all of these stats. I don't know though if the 10-15th best CF belongs in the Hall. Some of his total stats will increase, as will the gap between him and the league average. So if he has 2-3 more good seasons in him, he may end up in the 7-11th range. Again, I don't know if this is good enough. Griffey appears to have made it pretty solidly with or without a return from the latest of his menagerie of injuries in Cincy. Bernie's a 5 time All-Star, 4 time Gold Glove, so he gets some recognition for his skills. He also is on and off again in the top ten of a plethora of batting categories (his page on B-R.com).

Final conclusions:
Right now, Bernie, while having many stats better than Puckett, does not deserve to be in the Hall of Fame. But he does deserve mention when they talk about current players who have a chance at the Hall. He needs three more 26-27 WS seasons to have a very solid claim to the Fame (Hall of, . . . I was shooting for a nice rhyme thing). I think if he has two more good (25ish), a 20, and two 17s, then arguments could definately be made that he belongs there. I think right now he is probably the 2nd best overall CF in the game with respect to the entire career (Griffey's #1). I'm sure arguments could be made for either Edmonds or Finley who appear here and there on the previous lists, but they don't have the balance between categories that Williams does. So, I'd say if his career ended today, he has a 5% shot. Two or three more decent seasons, maybe 20-30%. Two or three more good (27-29ish WS) seasons 45-55%. But those numbers are just taken off the top of my head.

One sentence: Bernie is very good, but somewhat underrated league wide as an offensive force, he's very consistent, and at some point in the future may have a legitimate claim to a bronze plaque in lovely Upstate New York.

My references for this have been:
Baseball-Reference.com;
Sabermetric Baseball Encyclopedia;
Win Shares - Bill James;
The New Bill James Historical Baseball;
The Scouting Notebook 2002;
Leveling the Field - G. Scott Thomas.
Rich's Weekend Baseball BEAT (He did this with Ken Griffey, Jr.)

I hope you've enjoyed this long and hopefully coherent post about Bernie W. If you have any comments, please feel free to send them on in. I'll be away from a computer until Sunday, so I may not add anything for a while as I'm going on a long weekend mini-vacation.

2003-07-23T15:21:00.000-05:00

Tom Verducci's Mailbag: Bonds had no business disrespecting Ruth - I'm really can't let this die. I know I should just let it go, but . . .

2003-07-23T12:38:00.000-05:00

ESPN.com: MLB - For some, major moves needed to stay afloat. Worth checking out this Neyer article about who needs what. Will probably have that Bernie piece up this evening.

2003-07-23T04:13:00.000-05:00

Rich's Weekend Baseball BEAT - An interesting look at where Ken Griffey, Jr. pops up (so far) as ranking among all center fielders since 1900. One name I kept seeing pop up near (*cough*or above*cough*) his was Bernie Williams. I've long felt Bernie has been a very, very good CF, and underrated as a top CF, but I never really considered him Hall worthy. But according to Baseball-Reference.com he meets at least one, and probably two of their criterea which can be used at a quick glance to evaluate HOF status. The other two he falls well short on. I'm going to look more into this tomorrow, because it's 4AM now, and I have my final research session tomorrow at 1, and I'd like to leave a decent last impression on my advisor.

2003-07-22T17:49:00.000-05:00

Winning Used to Be Everything - A great article about Lou Piniella. Sweet Lou. . . I hope he can turn it around down in Tampa Bay. I think with a few years and a decent payroll, he can.

2003-07-22T17:29:00.000-05:00

A quick note about payroll which I completely forgot when writing yesterday's post. The Devil Rays payroll with respect to cap space is $31 million, but the Devil Rays cut Greg Vaughn back in March. So if you take his $9.25 million off that number, you get $22.4 million. Which means double their salary is less than that of the 29th team. So a lot of the information in that post is off, but the main point of that rant was to try and demonstrate the problems in payroll distribution.

2003-07-22T09:59:00.000-05:00

A Scouting Primer: Hitters - Baseball Primer - An awesome article showing a little of behind the scene action. Screw math research, this look a whole lot more fun.

2003-07-22T00:32:00.000-05:00

2003 baseball payrolls based on team info is here. And player by player info is here at Major League Baseball Player Contracts. And now, the amazing analysis which people love me for. . .

The Yankees payroll is unbelievable. $180,322,403. Just ridiculous. Lets put this in perspective, in terms of other baseball teams (since comparing this to the real world is just a waste of time since the entire idea of people being payed this much to play a game, and making this much money off a game is wrong, and might need to be examined as one of the many things wrong with this country).

So here we go. . . The Yankee payroll is 5.69 times the Devil Rays payroll ($31.6 million). The Yankee payroll is 3.19 times the A's payroll ($56.6 million). The Yankee payroll is over twice that of the Angels ($86.6 million). You can have the entire Cubs and Mariners payroll together, and have $1.47 million left over for managers and a nice car. How would you like Atlanta and Toronto? You'd be almost halfway to buying yourself the Devil Rays too. If you have an extra $2.2 million lying around you can have the Devil Rays, the Expos, the Royals, and the A's. The difference between the Yankees and the next closest team (Mets, $116.3 million) is enough to pay for the Marlins.

Are there problems in the distribution of payrolls in baseball? Even as a Yankee fan I'd have to admit yes. But to immediately blame Steinbrenner is a mistake. He's playing by the rules every other team voted for (the Yankees were the only team to vote against the new system). But the cap isn't hard, or even medium-hard. But the bottom end is as much a problem as the top end. The difference between the bottom two teams is $14.2 million. The difference between the next two is only $1.4 million. As much as we need a cap, we also need a floor. The fact that Devil Rays can sit at $31 million dollars is almost as bad as the fact the Yankees can sit at $180. If you take the gap from 1-2 after #2, you get to the the 4th lowest team. If you take the gap from 29-30 and add that to #29, you get #22 team. While the top gap seems bigger, the gap for both is about 1/3rd of the top/bottom team's salary.

To throw out loose suggestions, $50 million floor. A $90 million dollar first level cap, and a $150 million 2nd cap. After the first cap, a 1/4th of your overage is your tax. When you go over the second cap, you have a 1/2 of your overage (of the 2nd cap) is tax, and the difference between the 2 caps goes to 1/3rd.

This will never happen because the MLB's player union is too strong, and unless we have a long strike/lockout it's going to be tough to weaken them. But then again the owners are going to get rich if the players don't. I'm in favor of this ridiculously un-gonna-happen proposal. Halve everything. From the top to the bottom. Owners make half, players make half. Tickets and hot dogs are now half. But this isn't gonna happen, so pining for it won't make it so. I'm very interested to hear any other sugestions anyone has, so send them on in.

Just for a quick reference to another league, the NBA floor is around $32.8 million, and the cap is $43.8 million. But their whole luxury tax system is super-complicated. The Trail Blazers, for example, have a payroll exceeding $100 million. Here is a link, if you want to dive more into this.

2003-07-21T18:58:00.000-05:00

Armando Benitez top 10 meltdowns and Consistency from Benitez? Yankees roll the dice are just a few of the millions of articles written which are undermining my confidence about Mando. But I guess it doesn't matter what I think about him. An interesting thing mentioned in one of these is the allusion to Bobby V saying John Franco tried to undermine Mando. I also like Goose's comment, "[Mando] throws the (bleep) out of the ball." I think with Torre's handling of Mondesi as an example of how Torre can work with a guy many refered to as a bad man in the clubhouse. I remember one time last summer when Mondesi carried his bat a ways down the first baseline after hitting a homer off the D-Rays. After he came back into the dugout Torre took him aside and said, "That's not how we do things around here." Mondesi later said he understood, said there had been some history between him and the team before, and that he was sorry.

As I'm writing this the NYY v TOR game is tied at zero. Weaver's on the mound. I'm interested to see how he pitches, and how high his count gets if he gets in trouble in any innings. Mind you, when I say, "I'm going to see how he pitches," that means I'm going to read what the Sportsline.com update says (I've found this is the best of all the in-game trackers out there, better than SI.com, ESPN, and MLB.com).

2003-07-21T15:39:00.000-05:00

Mike's Baseball Rants - It's The Joe Morgan Chat Day The Music Died. If you don't know what this is, then you definately need to go to it.

Nothing has really happened in the world of baseball lately (past 10 hours), so I don't have too much to talk about, I'll probably be back later tonight with some amazing commentary which will rock your socks off, but until then, go read Mike's Joe Morgan Chat Day thing.

2003-07-20T12:06:00.000-05:00

Bonds drops the ball - Barry may love the Negro Leagues Museum now, but apparently when he hit 73 he couldn't give the time of day. When I go to Cooperstown I'll be sure and complain that there are no black players enshirned there. Oh wait, they are there? Oh. Well, then there must be no mention of the fact there once was a Negro League. . . Oh wait, even the web site has this video on it. I haven't been to the Hall of Fame in probably 7 or 8 years, so I honestly don't remember how much they have devoted to the Negro Leagues and the injustices done those players, but I seem to remember the Hall didn't hide it or ignore it. But I'll be back this summer, and I'll be sure to take note just for you big guy. . .

Look, Barry, you have a chip on your shoulder, knock it off, and remember you get paid $80,000 A GAME. What's that Barry? A game I say? Yes, it's just a game. And you get to do it for a living. And you seem to make a pretty good living. So please, spare us your oh-so amazing view of baseball history. And next time someone (like the Negro League Museum) calls you, please, at least have the common freakin' courtesy to return the calls. This goes for the rest of you, pro athletes or not.

OK, that was an anger filled rant. I'm sorry. I have no problem with Bonds wanting more done to remember the wrongs of yesterday, but I do have a problem with him being a Johnny come lately with these things, and then forgetting them, or even worse, using them to build onto that enormous chip on his shoulder which has kept growing at the same pace as his head.

OK, I'm done now, honestly. . .

2003-07-19T18:14:00.000-05:00

SI.com - In the year 2000 ... - An article which gets mentioned for many reasons. 1) Reference to the Conan's hilarious In The Year 2000 sketch. 2) Severe concern about Mando's (as Mr. Armando German Benitez will be known from here on out) postseason performance. 7 HRs in a mere 30 1/3 postseason innings. *gulp*. 3) Reference to the Mets' AA team, the Binghamton Mets, who I grew up loving (well, they started when I was young, but they're my local minor league team). 4) Ripping on USA Today's 10 ways to fix baseball which was so awful I won't even link to it here. It really was awful.

Mando came in today in the 8th with a two run lead, then gave up a hit, a GDP, a hit, and a walk on four straight. Then Torre gives him the hook. He's gonna give me a heart attack come October. Hell, come August. . .

Today on FOX was the Cards at the Dodgers, and I saw Tino play for the first time in forever (I've been without cable for most of the summer), and it made me a little nostalgic. Then I looked up his Win Shares for the past two and a half this seasons, and compared them to Giambi's numbers (Tino was with NY for one of these seasons);
Tino had 43 (21 w/ NYY), Giambi had 80 (38 w/ OAK). That's a difference in the past season and a half of 20 win shares. So thats about 13 WS, and is like adding a '02 Andy Pettite to Tino. Couldn't find a better comparison, so that's the one I'm sticking with. Well, B Daubach had 13 last year with BOS as a 1B.

Also, the novelty of typesetting technical documents wears off after about two hours to make 2 finished pages. Well, at least the Yanks won.

2003-07-18T11:38:00.000-05:00

Society fuels Bonds' remarks - An interesting counter-argument to what I'd said the other day. Not saying I've changed my mind about Bonds, and his attitude, but it does have a few quotes other sources may have left out that add a little balance to Bonds' rant. His (Bonds') main point is that he feels Henry Aaron doesn't get the respect he deserves as all time home run king, and I think that's partially true. People give him the record, but also say that he never hit more than 47 HRs and that it was just that he lasted forever. Well, in baseball thats not easy to do for 22 seasons (see Ken Griffey, Jr. who is out for the rest of this season and who has played seasons of 145, 111, 70, and 52 in Cincy). In Aaron's entire career he only played less than 110 games once (his final season, and in which he still played 85 games). He played more than 150 14 times, more than 130 18 times (17 straight). He was a machine. He is the home run king, and his accomplishments are, and have been, recognized by people for the past 30+ years. Maybe not as much as Ruth, but that's because Ruth was Ruth. He was more than a great baseball player, he was a cultural icon, bigger than life, etc. He was bigger than Jordan ever was. We, in this modern era, have trouble picturing a ballplayer such as Ruth as such a national hero, especially since we now know of his vices. But we also are used to the media telling us every little detail of player's off-season (and during) season exploits. OK, enough ranting for now. I might come back and compare these three (Bonds, Aaron, and Ruth) in a few days, but I'll have to see. Just found two more articles about this, from ESPN. This one is titled Barry's head has swollen, which strikes me a humorous because of the steroid questions. Does anyone has pictures of him as a rookie and now which show the change in head size? I might have to look this up. This one by Ray Ratto talks about a dugout sharing the Babe and the Barry. Neat, not sure I agree with his outcome, but a good read none-the-less.

GODZILLA!!!

2003-07-17T19:18:00.000-05:00

The Numbers Game and The Professor of Baseball are two articles about the current king of SABRmetricians (found these on the Baseball News Blog). He does work for the BoSox, which I guess we won't hold him against him. The Historical Baseball Abstract is one of the most fun coffee table/bathroom books for baseball fans. Any player (most of whom I've never heard of) has a great couple paragraph write-up. The Win Shares idea is very, very complicated (I'm just starting to work through the details).

Since we're on the topic of Bill James, I'll finally come back to The Return of Rickey '03. Why are the two connected in my mind? It's because of the write up in the Historical Abstract about Rickey. James said he was once asked if Rickey was a hall of famer, and he responded "If you could split him in two, you'd have two Hall of Famers." That just always stuck with me. OK, now on to my opinion and analysis of his Rickey-ness' return. Rickey is one of the most unique ballplayers of all time, a great symbol of the free-agency, me-first attitude, go to the highest bidder. But then again, he just loves the game, and doesn't want to quit, just because he likes playing so much (or so he says). His OPS numbers the past two years were a little below average (30 points in '02, and 35 points in '01), but that's still respectable. Last year Christian Guzman was 71 points below league average for OPS. And for a 41-42 year-old it's not too shabby. This will be his 25th season and his 9th team (he's had several repeat stints with several team (I want to say 4 with the A's, and 3 with the Yanks, but this is probably wrong). While with the Independent League's Newark Bears the Rickey (I have actually heard himself refer to himself in the 3rd person, so I figure I can at least pay the Rickey the same curtosy (sp?)) was batting .339 with 8 HR, and 33 RBI, and 9 stolen bases. All in all, I think he'll be a good utility player for the Dodgers, and probably will help them a lot more than he'll hurt them. From the Newark team we heard nothing but glowing reports of his great team play, and his willingness to help teach young players the game and how it should be played.

Yesterday I commented that Benitez would have less pressure as a set-up man, and in today's ATM Reports Lee Sinins disagreed with those who made the same claims:
"Benitez is known for being the best pitcher in baseball if you're trying
to blow a big game. I can't stop laughing at those who are insisting that, by moving into the setup role, there will be less pressure on him. If people would get their heads of stat books, and not looking at a silly measure like "saves", they will realize that the setup innings are where more games are won and lost by every single team in baseball every single year. Those are the real pressure innings and deciding to sabotage your team by putting a pitcher with a fragile psyche into those innings is a move that Benedict Arnold would have been proud of."

I guess I was right to initially be nervous. I must say that Lee's several daily (free) e-mails are amazing in quality. I also own his Baseball Encyclopedia, and it is an amazing tool which is very, very useful for all baseball fans. You can do just about anything with it. This is his webpage, and the link to get the free e-mails is near the top on the right.

Also the archives are all screwed up, so if they don't work, and you want to read them, let me know and I'll try to get them fixed. Also, please send in comments, etc, so I can make this better.

2003-07-16T22:18:00.000-05:00

Well, the Yankees pulled the trigger on that trade. Here's what the Mets got from ESPN:
Anderson, 24, is 1-0 with a 4.79 ERA in 22 relief appearances for the Yankees this year. Garcia, 22, is 3-6 with a 3.32 ERA in 11 starts and five relief appearances for Class-A Battle Creek. Bicondoa, 24, is 3-2 with a 3.54 ERA in five starts and 10 relief appearances for Class-A Tampa.

I just realized I made a mistake in an earlier post, I was worried about the Yanks losing Clausen in the trade, which they didn't. According to ProspectReport.com, J. Anderson is an honorable mention of the Yankees farm system. The other two aren't mentioned anywhere I can find, so I'll leave that for now (if I find any links I'll throw them up here).

What the Yankees get back is a moody, but undeniably talented closer who'll act in a much lesser pressure filled role as a set-up man for one of the best in the game. Benitez has 8 win shares which puts him in the top 10 of NL relievers, and he joins Mo who in his partial half season puts him in the top 5 of AL relivers. I'm a little more excited now about this trade than I was 24 hours ago. He's a power pitcher (ESPN classifies this as someone whose (BB+SO)/IP > 1.13, and Benitez is 1.5). Benitez fact "o' the trade": His middle name is German.

2003-07-16T20:27:00.000-05:00

Got Win Shares by Bill James today. Have just gotten through the early stuff, and am about to hit the meat of the formulas. I read the short form in the beginning and was motivated to figure out the Win Shares at the break for everybody's favorite team. But then I realized a) someone has probably done this already on the web, and b) my spreadsheet doesn't work since the great windows reinstall of 4 days ago. But I kept poking around, and found a link to the AL and NL totals. Reposted here for your viewing enjoyment, the Yankees lineup.

18 - J Giambi
18 - A Soriano
14 - J Posada
12 - H "Godzilla" Matsui
11 - M Mussina
10 - D Wells
9 - R Clemens
9 - D Jeter
9 - M Rivera
8 - B Williams
7 - R Ventura
6 - R Mondesi
6 - A Pettitte
6 - N Johnson
4 - C Hammond
3 - J Weaver, T Zeile, A Osuna
2 - J Contreras, E Almonte, K Garcia, R Sierra
1 - J Rivera, A Reyes, B Claussen, S Hitchcock, J Anderson, E Wilson, J Flaherty

The one thing that sticks out at me is that Nicky J has 6 and has missed a big part of the season. He'll make a big impact once he gets back. He was on course for a breakout year. It's the second year thing with the Yankees. Sori came up, was OK, then *boom*. Nick came up last year, was OK, then *boo. . . broken hand*. But we got a whole half to play. And I'm looking forward to it.

2003-07-16T09:54:00.000-05:00

Bonds ripping The Babe feels like blasphemy is a great article by Greg Cote. Bonds claims to have "wiped Babe out" as a left handed hitter. Are you kidding me Barry? Yes, you have some of his records, but you also play in a age where HRs are more common than Benitez blowing saves. (At least) Twice in his career Ruth had more home runs than any other team in his league. Chew on that one for a few Barry. He also would have probably made the Hall as a pitcher if not for his decent ability with a stick of lumber (I have some comments about that in the archives, which appear not to work right now).
I really like the way Cote ends it, "Give him (Ruth) respect."

2003-07-16T01:04:00.000-05:00

Does Home Field Matter?
I was reading Only Baseball Matters and wanted to see if in fact, home field did matter in the post season. I've also looked at the past 5 postseasons all 3 rounds (I'm just too tired to do more, but if a few people are interested, I'll gladly do it). In the past 5 years the home team is 87-74 (54%). This isn't as impressive, but its a hair better than regular season results (53.2%).

But it appears as though that in World Series home field does matter. In the past 20 years, the home team is 71-45 (61.2%). In the past 15 years the home team is 55-30, or 64.7%. Only twice in the last 15 years has the away team won more than the home team ('96,'97). In the five years prior to that it happend 3 more times. Only six times has it been split in the last 20 years, and 4 times it was because it was a sweep. 6 times in the past 20 years has the home team won more than 5 games, and only once has the away team won 5. 3 times in the last 15 years the home team has won all 7 games ('01,'91,'87).

So that's my two cents, I think this my not prove home field matters, but it definately shows it may have a greater impact than in regular season games. If you think my stats are wrong, they may well be, I'm a little tired, and am compiling them by just re-reading all the results from Baseball-Reference.com. If you have any comments, please feel free to let me know (ltgrant AT baka DOT com).

2003-07-15T23:45:00.000-05:00

This is the first guest column (although Matt may soon become a co-author) on this site. He describes his work as "I went for a few stats, but it turned out to be a sentimental fan piece."

Florida Marlins Report: A Return to Glory Imminent?

In 1993, the fledgling Florida Marlins won their very first game of their very first season. In 1997, they won the very last game of that season, earning the title of World Champions. Since then they have sold off stars and replaced them with young up-and-comers who they have also shopped around to avoid spending money. Well now they are on the verge again. With Dontrelle Willis in the fold, the Fish are pushing for a wild card birth. Will they fall into their old ways, or is this a return to the glory of 6 seasons ago?
The Marlins appear to be willing to spend to contend. During the offseason they opened their wallet and signed Pudge Rodriguez to a $10 million contract. They recently acquired Ugueth Urbina to bolster the pen for the stretch run. They took Mike Lowell off the market, and are now in the market for slugger Juan Gonzalez. Put Juan Gone in that lineup and they are a pretty potent bunch. Check out these numbers at the break, with Gonzalez inserted:
Juan Pierre 0 HR, 25 RBI, 44 SB, .298 BA, .358 OBP
Luis Castillo 6 HR, 26 RBI, 14 SB, .311 BA, .375 OBP
Ivan Rodriguez 13 HR, 59 RBI, 9 SB, .300 BA, .375 OBP
Mike Lowell 28 HR, 76 RBI, 2 SB, .275 BA, .351 OBP
Juan Gonzalez 23 HR, 66 RBI, 1 SB, .288 BA, .321 OBP
Juan Encarnacion 12 HR, 58 RBI, 15 SB, .283 BA, .324 OBP
Derek Lee 19 HR, 52 RBI, 15 SB, .263 BA, .372 OBP
Alex Gonzalez 12 HR, 53 RBI, 0 SB, .288 BA, .332 OBP

I don’t know how many other teams can field an everyday lineup with all-around numbers like that. LT’s Yankees can, and better, but with far more money invested in it, and hey, we can’t all be the Yankees. A fact worth mentioning is that the Marlins are putting up these numbers despite playing in an overwhelmingly pitcher-friendly park. They do most of their offensive damage on the road. Granted, Juan Gone will probably be a Yankee soon enough, and he would probably veto a trade to FLA, but if Pudge, all our Hispanics, and the lack of a state income tax can talk Juan into coming to south Florida, watch out. Add him to our pitching staff and there could be a Fish sighting in October.
Trade Derek Lee for Jeff Conine now. Mr. Marlin (12 HR, 63 RBI, 4 SB, .285 BA, .343 OBP) belongs back home. He is a leader, he drives in runs and hits for average better than Lee, and most importantly the fans love him. With Conine and Dontrelle in the lineup, Pro Player will be jumping all the way to game 6 (thanks a lot Gagne) of the Series.

With all that said, the Marlins will have to be special to come out of the tight NL. The Braves and Giants are too good for the Marlins to beat unless they play outside of themselves. But they won the Series as the Wild Card in 1997, and they didn’t even have Dontrelle then, so I they can pull it off with a little Mr. Marlin magic.
After October, all the Marlins have to do is retain people. They have Brad Penny, Josh Beckett, Dontrelle Willis, Mark Redman, and Carl Pavano. That is a good enough staff without Burnett, since Willis, Penny, and Beckett will either get better or get hurt, they are so young. As much as it pains me to say it, they should let AJ Burnett go. He won’t return to form until 2005, and although he was the staff ace, and a good one, clear room to resign Lowell and try to keep some other people like Luis Castillo around. If the Fish make the playoffs, I say you either open up the checkbook to pay Pudge, or you let him go and clear some space to bring in Vlad Guererro to fill Juan Gone’s shoes (he is only here for one year). It’s all about opening up the wallet. The Marlins could easily contend for years with this lineup of 20-something studs. Problem is they don’t make any money because the stadium sucks. With Willis and Conine, Floridians will like baseball again. Those two will draw 30,000 to Fish games. I know, I saw how much people love Jeff Conine and Dontrelle, I am one of them. Then Miami and Loria must get together and put a stadium in downtown Miami so that the fan base will want to go to the park. If that is done, either sign Pudge or go get Vlad and let Ramon Castro catch. A new park with Dontrelle and a Hispanic star like Pudge or Vlad, coupled with Mr. Marlin retiring in Teal and Black will revive baseball in Miami for years to come.

2003-07-15T23:22:00.000-05:00

What a game. AL won a real thriller. I stopped putting comments up when I realized I'd get too emotional about my comments (and start cursing like a sailor). The Godzilla comment was when I realized I should probably take notes and write after I calmed down. I make outrageous claims during the game. Godzilla is the greatest player ever, Nomar is everything that's wrong with baseball, I could have hit that ball out of the park. This is why I cut myself off.

First things is the Umps making that judgement call about the ground rule double and scoring the run which should have been on third. At first I thought this was a great thing because then people would blame the umps instead of Selig, but then Selig would be blamed for making the game count. I think the fact hte game counts is a good thing, becuase otherwise its just random chance, and this is better than random chance (see wild card Marlins getting it over the central champ Indians).

I was going to whine about the Hasegawa 2 hr homer. My comment was going to be, "leave it to a Mariner to blow something with important playoff implications." But now, I can breathe easy.

The Bud commercial with the warning moat was by far and away the funniest commercial I've seen in a long time. I can't remember any from this years Super Bowl that were that funny. The alligator was a great touch. Just enough over-the-topness

Tim McCarver had the funniest line I've heard in a game in a while (mind you I've only been watching the Saturday day games since I've come back to school in early June); "Yes and next year they've decided the winner of the World Series decides the home field advantage in the All-Star Game." Just a great humorous touch in the middle of a game. Very funny, even for Timmy. Who gets on my nerves like no other in the post-season. My all time favorite McCarver quote was "Craig Counsell is the best two-strike hitter in baseball" during the '01 WS. C'mon Tim, he may be good, but the best? He is a true blue ND grad, but even I won't give him that, everyone knows that's Hideki Matsui.

The whole time I was watching with Mike who's staying here for the Summer Hall thing, and he kept saying he didn't like the way they said the game was "definately over" after 7 innings. They kept coming back to it, and back, and back, . . . He kept saying that "games aren't over to they're over." And boy-oh-boy was he right. My favorite non-Yankee Gagne got lit up like a roman candle on the Fourth of July (or, for my French friends, Bastille Day). But I was glad to see him pitch, but I was even happier to see the AL win.

Mike did have one hell of a comment which cracked me up, "Remember when Jeremy Giambi was good." I just started cracking up. Giambi's best lines from his best seasons: .285 AVG, .414 OBP, .505 SLG, 20 HR, 57 RBI. So I don't think I'd ever call him good. He was maybe average, but good, no. When I can figure it out, I'll put up his win shares.

I'm very worried about the Yankees trading Anderson for Benitez. You could be trading a future rotation member for a 2nd/3rd rate closer (who would be a 2nd-ish rate setup man), who we'll only have for 1 year. It just worries me about how short sighted the team is at times. They need a youth infusion in the rotation. Hopefully they'll be able to hold out and give a B and C prospect. I think they're too afraid of the Red Sox getting him that they'll give up too much.

I'll probably have guest commentary up later from Matt Harrigan later.

2003-07-15T20:53:00.000-05:00

Taking out Godzilla after going 1 for 2 is a dumb dumb idea. He's the best player on the field right now. Hell, he's the best player ever.
Ok, so i'm a bit ticked about my boy being the first guy out. But he is good, and did make an average catch in center.

2003-07-15T19:52:00.000-05:00

anticipatory - timmy's word of the day. this guys really gonna get on my nerve. i don't mind him on saturday baseball, but when i care about the game he gets me pissed off.

2003-07-15T19:18:00.000-05:00

sean connery? league of extrodinary major leaguers? c'mon. The effects were neat, but do we need to hawk a movie during the opening. I remember Michael J Fox doing the into to game 7 of the Stanley Cup a few years ago (when Borque won w/ Colorado). That was a great intro, and I think you could open w/ a non-commericalized version. Sell the old names (Bonds, A-Rod, Clemens), the hot new things (GODZILLA!, Dontrelle, Loaiza), and the whole This Time It Counts thing. But I'm excited.
And what a sweet nickname for Willis, "D-Train".
And that American League jersey Scocsia wore in the intro interview was miserable. I hope they don't use those. It looks like the guys are wearing their home teams' jerseys which is good. And I hope they don't feel bad about getting everyone in. I want to win this game. Screw peoples feelings, WIN!

2003-07-15T18:56:00.000-05:00

Major League Baseball : The Official Site - If you're stuck in a computer cluster or something and can't watch the game, you may want to listen to it. I've had pretty good luck with MLB's streaming audio over the past two years. Last year I got the Yankee games and really enjoyed hearing games on radio. Gave an old school feel to the grand ole game.

All-Star Game - This is my favorite way to track the game as it goes on. This is actually the preview of the game, but once it starts it should give you a link near the top. Quick, accurate, no reloading.

2003-07-15T15:12:00.000-05:00

Baseball-Reference.com - Major League Baseball Statistics and History
I'm not sure if I'll get to talk about Rickey's comeback until after the All-Star game, but if you're at this site and haven't gone to this one above, you need to stop reading my crap, and go to this amazing free resource.

2003-07-14T18:22:00.000-05:00

NL All-Stars
C - Javy Lopez - By a hair over Ivan Rodriguez, who's always been a personal favorite, and who's having quite the comeback-ish season which I bet few outside of Marlins fans expected. Lopez has played in 10 less games, which means right now he's not technically a batting qualifier (almost gave me trouble when trying to pick the C). While Pudge has about twice the K/BB ratio, Lopez does have more TB and XBH than him, and that does it for me (along with the 80 points in OPS).
1B - Todd Helton - By far and away. Leading NL 1B'ers in just about everything. A fantastic 1.36 BB/K ratio, which puts him 9th overall in the bigs. Just a great first half.
2B - Jose Vidro - A great blend of everything in this 2B. 1st among NL 2B's with .332 AVG, 1st with .418 OBP, 1st with 46 BBs, 1st with .934 OPS, 2nd with 11 HRs, 2nd with 47 RBIs, 2nd with .506 SLG. Just a good first half with 1.64 BB/Ks. A quick digression into this stat and why I keep coming back to it. I guess some people put a lot of value into the number of K's a guy has in a year, and I don't think that's necessarily a smart thing. An out is an out. But I think if two people's average is close, and you have to pick between them, I guess I'd rather have the guy who puts the ball into play more often than not, and maybe something will happen. I also think this stat shows their discipline at the plate, and their ability to see the ball. If you strike out a lot, then make it count by walking a lot too, or if you don't walk much, don't strike out much. Probably not the best logic, but it works for me.
SS - Edgar Renteria - A four way race between him Gonzalez, Cabrera, and Furcal, but the 10 extra steals, and the extra 30 points in both AVG and OBP really seal the deal. (Comments are getting shorter as I am getting bored, tired, and a headache).
3B - Mike Lowell - Between him and Rolen the numbers are very close. The edge goes to Lowell just for the 10 extra homeruns. And Matt knows he'll sign with the Yankees at the end of the year so he better make one All-Star team as a Marlin.
OF - Barry Bonds - I know I had LF,RF,CF in the AL, here I can't do that because we have both Barry and Pujols playing left. I really have nothing to say about Barry. I mean at this point we need to stop talking about testing him for steroids and start testing to make sure he's human.
OF - Albert Pujols - A great young player who's knee deep in the triple-crown race. C'mon isn't that great analysis? I bet you haven't read that anywhere else. I haven't gotten to see him play defense too much, but if he's not as fast as some players, as Barry insinuated, a move to the DH in the AL wouldn't be a bad idea. But then again, he did play 3 positions last year, so I've got a feeling Barry might just be a little worried. Personally though I don't think he'll get the triple crown. In fact I'd be suprised if he got at least one of them. It's a tough thing to do, and one injury here or the teams offense slowing down, and it's all but over for him. But anything that draws attention to a great young player and the game of baseball is a good thing. So part of me hopes he gets it.
OF - Gary Sheffield - This was a close race between him and Edmonds, but the 45 fewer strikeouts won me over. I know I talked about this being bunk but 45 more balls in play has to make a difference in the course of a half a season. As for the 6 HR differential, this isn't that much, because either guy could go on a tear, and Edmonds first half has been a career half. So Sheffield gets the nod here in this star studded outfield.

LHP - Dontrelle Willis - He is here both on merit and his rocking-ness. His ERA is a sick 2.08 and he has 3.29 K/BB's and 8.84 K/9. So far this season he's won 69% of his starts. For reference, among 10 game winners, Halladay has won 61% of his, Ponson, has won 66% of his, Chacon has won 64% of his. I would have checked all time stuff, but I can't get to my database of info (more on this thing later, it rocks).

RHP - Jason Schmidt - Beats out Brown with his 5 complete games and 3 shutouts. Not sure if that's good for him for the run of the season if his pitch counts went too high. A lot of people have expressed concern over Alou's use of starting pitchers.

RP - Eric Gagne - No doubt. Smoltz may have more saves, and a slightly lower ERA, but . . . Gagne has saved 63% of his teams games. Smoltz has saved 56% of his teams games. What does this mean? A few things. If you consider total saves these two balance out because while the Dodgers play more close games which can be saved, the Braves win more games, which leads to more saves, although they win by bigger amounts. Gagne's WHIP is .750 while Smoltz's is .866, and people are batting 50 points lower against Gagne. Along with all of these things, he has those sweet glasses. And he doesn't play for the Braves. Two more plus points.

Rookie of the Half:
AL - Rocco Baldelli - I love Godzilla as much as anyone. But if you've been an umpteen time all star in Japan, you shouldn't be considered a rookie here. I made the same argment when Ichiro was new here, so it just wouldn't be right for me to go back on those rants of two years ago. But Godzilla is having a great half as well as Baldelli. They have similar stats, with Matsui having better RBI's due to NY's slightly better offense.
NL - Dontrelle Willis - See above. Just a great player. I really hope he keeps it up. Webb gets a very honorable mention, and may be more deserving by the time the season ends. But right now you just can't ignore what Willis has done.

Not gonna bother doing the AL/NL Cy Young, I had enough trouble picking these six. Same reason I'm not picking AL/NL MVPs. I'll try to have my predictions for standings, postseason, and end of the year awards up after the All-Star Game, along with my super-awesome review/commentary on the All-Star Game.

Hope you enjoy these! Send comments and tell all your friends. Please.

2003-07-14T12:59:00.000-05:00

With the All-Star break upon us, and the anger about selections fading now that every other player initially selected to the game has become injured, gotten tired, or just doesn't care anymore, so almost all the "should have been picked" guys are now there, I single handedly will create a nationwide firestorm of media frenzy with my picks for the All-Star Teams. This may come in pieces as I do have a meeting with my advisor in an hour and need to eat lunch (turkey sandwiches today) before that. I'm just going to pick starters (plus a LHP, RHP, and RP) for each team because I'm not in the mood to find every deserving schmuck from here to Detroit. I also can't check defensive stats, so I'll just have to go on what I know right now about their defensive ability.
AL All-Stars
C - Jorge Posada - I almost went with Jason Varitek which would kill me as a huge Jorge fan, Jorge's only batting .252 right now, which 50 points below Varitek. He does have a better OBP (30 pts), but is 100 points behind on slugging, which means Varitek's ISO is 52 points better. What made me go with Posada was that he draws walks at almost twice the rate of Posada, and his secondary average is 80 points better. They strike out about the same. Posada gets an extra .3 pitches/PA. This one is very close, and I could have gone either way. I picked Posada because I'm a Yankee fan. There I said it, and you'll probably see my bias later. I don't know about Varitek's defense, but I know Posada's has gotten a lot better this year over years pasts, he's been pretty conscience about it, and for good reason, he used to be pretty bad at stopping pitches in the dirt.
1B - Carlos Delgado - Just watch out for Giambi in the second half. Boy is heatin' up. Once he gets used to the short porches. . . Delgado might challenge the RBI record, but I have a feeling that Toronto's slide will continue and this will show up in his RBI totals.
2B - Alfonso Soriano - I know Boone and Sori are neck and neck, Boone has more RBIs, but Sori has more steals. I guess again my Yankee bias is showing through, but I think that with this being an All-Star team we'll have plenty of power spread around. So I think the extra 18 SB are the difference maker here. I think Sori would have a couple more RBI's if he didn't bat 1st, Boone bats 3rd in the Seattle lineup which has to account for some of the gap.
SS - Alex Rodriquez - A no brainer, even with Nomar's good season (he's batting 34 points above A-Rod). You just can't not put this guy on your all-star team with his consitency and skill. (I'm putting a permanent disclaimer on my spelling here. I'm not good at it. I know that. But I admit it. I don't have time to spell check usually, so I won't).
3B - Bill Mueller - Huh? That's what I said when I kept looking at the numbers. But his AVG, OBP, and SLG are better than every other 3B I considered. He has more extra base hits as well. So this is my surprise pick of the day so far. But #2 is Koskie. This was a close race, but Mueller just kept leading categories, and you can't really ignore that.
LF - Manny Ramirez - This started as a three horse race, but Anderson got dropped early because of his low walk total. Mora and Ramirez have about equal SO and BB numbers (Manny is one of only 25 players in the bigs to have more BB than SO), but Ramirez has about 70 more AB, and 80 more PA. This is a tight race, but the extra 40 TBs make up for the 30 average points. These two are very close, but Manny is a little more powerful, and hey, chicks dig the long ball. Mora is a worthy All-Star choice, just not mine.
CF - Milton Bradley - Again, this is a close race, but a few things stick out to me that made me pick Bradley over Wells. The first is that Bradley has over twice the walks in 80 less PA. The second is that his OBP is over 100 points better. His slugging is 50 points less, and he has 15 less homers, but his slugging is still a respectable .502. Wells has twice the RBI's but this is a byproduct of the powerhouse offense the Blue Jays displayed in the first half, and the anemic offense which all true Indians fans have come to know and love. Bradley also has 15 steals, which isn't a lot, but does show he has the potential for more, but the 5 CS's are a little worrysome, but nothing way out of wack with league average (which I think is 70%, so he is a little better than that).
RF - Ichiro Suzuki - Suprisingly Trot Nixon initially led the stats columns, but he's 120 ABs short of Ichiro's totals, and I'm not sure if that means he's platooning out there, or what, but Ichiro is just Ichiro, and the more you look at the stats you see that he is the best choice. His biggest competition came from Huff, who has put up a very respectable first half (.304 BA, and .900 OPS). Ichiro's RBI totals are very very low, but this might have something to do with his lack of in game power (apparently his batting practices can be impressive). He has 25 steals, and amazing defense, so this choice works. He does have a surprisingly low number of walks/PA (.053), and the lowest Pitches/PA (3.4) of any qualifying right fielder.
DH - Edgar Martinez - He's at the top of just about every category of the three qualifying DH's. Frank Thomas has had a good first half, its nice to see the Big Hurt back, but he's just not better than Edgar right now.

LHP - David Wells - I started by looking at the top 11 pitches in wins. I know this is an awful way of determining pitcher value, but anyone outside of these guys has at most 5 wins, and if you have less than 8 wins, there better be some special circumstances for you to make my all-star team. I immediately discarded Chris George (KCR), because despite his 9 wins, he has a 7.11 era, which is amazing for guy on track to win 17 or 18 games. Then I realized the bottom 3 guys in this ranking (Buerhle, Rodgers and Brian Anderson (CLE)) didn't really match up with the remaining guys. So they got booted. Then goes Pettitte (despite leading all lefties with 101 Ks) and Washburn for their over 4 ERAs. From my remaining 5 pitchers, all are in the top 20 for WHIP, so that's a wash. Zito and Sabathia have the worst ratio of K/BB as well as BB/9, so they both leave us now. You could pick either Mulder or Moyer at this point and make many good arguments, but the fact Wells has only issued 6 walks this year is unbelievable. Last year when Schilling was on pace to have more wins than walks people made it seem like he was going for 30 wins, and Wells isn't getting this attention because he's . . . David Wells. But I think he's put a great season together, and the biggest thing against him is that he has the most run support (7.44) of all these guys. And there's nothing he can do about that, and his era tells us he'd win w/o that great support, maybe one or two games less, but he'd still win.

RHP - Roy Halladay - It came down to him vs Loaiza (Moose is up there, but I'll catch enough crap for Wells and Sori as it is). Loaiza does have a ERA 1 point lower, but they both get equal run support, so that doesn't mean Halladay is getting off w/ better run support (which you think he would with Toronto's first half offense). Halladay has thrown in 2 more games, and has gone 2 outs further each time on average. He also has a much better K/BB ratio (5 for Halladay vs 3 for Loaiza).

RP - Keith Foulke - 24 saves, 7 wins, 1 loss, 2.68 ERA, 9.66 K/9, 1.97 BB/9, 0.97 WHIP. What else do you want from your closer? I'm not to sure why he has 8 decisions (this is usually a sign of the reliever screwing things up, but I think Oakland has had some middle relief issues). But the fact he's held on to win 7 of them, even if it was his own fault (which I'm not sure they are), is a good thing.

Next, the NL. . . Tonight.

2003-07-13T16:48:00.000-05:00

Wow. I gave up on this thing, but I am now gonna work at this. Really, I will. My goal is to . . . I don't know, get people I don't tell to come here, to come here.

The main reason I'm going at this again is because after talking with my friends this weekend and reading this article, I realized that baseball is not dead, it is in fact alive and well as america's pastime. My friend Mark says that now that his Indians suck (which they do), he follows them more than he used to. I'm pretty sure it's because they suck with potential now, as opposed to other teams in the bigs who just suck. Matt also is all riled up about the season because of his boy Dontrelle, who I must agree, is just fun to watch. Hopefully he'll get some decent innings in Tuesday's all-star game presented by FOX. Hopefully we'll also get to see the Rocket make an appearance and nail some poor chump from the NL. The fact people across the country are so riled up about the mid-summer classic (as they were after last years fun), shows that people around the country, despite what everyone would like us to believe, still care a lot about baseball.

I'm also writing this to hopefully get people who can give me some feedback on my ideas for research this upcoming fall semester. I have a pretty open path to do what I'd like on anything related to baseball and math (which is just about everything). I should be getting Bill James' Win Shares this week, which should give me a great starting ground. I think though, I'm going to have a problem from the get-go with James' idea because it bases the possible worth of players on the number of games their teams win (I think the team gets 3 "Win Shares" for every game they win, and then the total of these is divided up among the players). I think if you had a single great player on an awful team (ie ARod on the Rangers), he would put up the same stats on the Yankees, but there would be more Win Shares to go around. Then again, on the Yankees, other players would fight more for the Shares. OK, I'm gonna hold off on judgement on the idea until I read his book.

The All Star Game debacle of '03. People have written a lot about this, and I will be no different. Should the game count? Sure, why not? I think probably the best idea for home field would be to have the team w/ the best record get it, but until they do that, this is a good idea. I also don't like the idea of having to have every player play (although I don't think this is a requirment anymore). Just getting elected to the game should be enough, as it shows that your peers recognize your ability and want to see you there. The starters should be elected by the fans, and if you think its bad that Godzilla is starting you're an idiot. He may not be one of the top three outfielders, he has merited making it to the game through his play alone. You can't just blame the Japanese fans for "stuffing the boxes," because it sure as hell happens to popular, yet not-quite deserving, American fans every year. I think the fans though are getting better about knowing who deserves it and who doesn't (Pujols over Sosa).

Quick note about Pujols. . . Can he win the triple crown, probably, will he, I really don't know. But he did comment that he thinks it would be tougher to win the triple crown than to hit in 56 straight games. What a putz, it's a lot tougher to hit in 56 straight. If I get motivated I'll put up the statistical breakdown on the web sometime about just how tough it is to hit in 56 straight games.

OK, that's it for now, but check back often, I'm really gonna work at this.

2003-05-13T10:21:00.000-05:00

OK, it's been a while, but here we go about Rafael Palmeiro, who just hit his 500th homerun. A lot of other people have been talking about this, many who know more than me, and here is a good one from ESPN.

This is a big number, and only 18 other players in the history of the game have done this. But, is this enough? Well, obviously not, because there is other stuff that matters. If you hit 500 and batted a career .220, you wouldn't be in. But as for Palmeiro, I don't think he belongs in Cooperstown. If he did the equivalent stuff in basketball or football, he'd belong in their hall of fame, but not for baseball. He belongs in that second tier hall of fame, for the great players, but not the ones you will tell your grandkids about. I can't imagine tell my grandkids that I saw that guy who hawked Viagra play a good first base, and klunk his way along to 500 homeruns at a solid, and very respectable 35 homeruns a season for 8 straight seasons (I think). (On a sidenote its freezing in the room where we have my computer at home and my fingers are numb and typing is going slow) OK, so the Viagra mention is kinda a low blow, but 'eh, its funny. OK, it's really cold, so I'm gonna cut to the chase. Baseball-reference.com says he's most comparable to Fred McGriff, and while I think this is a fair comparision, I don't think Fred belongs there either.

What we need to do is wait about 5 years, and re-evaluate this era to decide what good numbers really are, becuase these guys have stayed healthy, played consistently good, but not great, and just chugged along. Their numbers are good, but I really don't think they're good enough. While they compare favorably to guys from the past, that's because it wasn't common to hit 35 HR a year. I think in the '41 range, the average player hit 7 HR a year and in the last five years the average guy hit 27. That's an amazing amount of inflation. The rate at which 1B's hit HR compared to their AB's has almost doubled from '41 to '02. (I use '41 becuase of my possible research next semester, which is looking less and less likely with each passing day.)

But in a crappy conclusion (since I didn't give enough facts to make this any good), while his career numbers are impressive, Palemeiro is NOT worthy of the Hall of Fame becuase he's not "tell your grandkids good." Also, to put how good he is in his own era into perspective, he has only been an All-Star 4 times in his career. This has to tell us something.

2003-05-04T13:14:00.000-05:00

Read over at Al's Ramblings the idea of OBP being more important to scoring runs than K's or BB's. This is interesting, becuase he makes a really good point that you need to have people on base to score runs (wow, mind blower, 'eh!). And he says K's are overrated becuase what does it matter if you swing and miss on the high heat or ground out to short. I'm gonna look into this. That's it for now, becuase I gotta study (although probably later today I'll look more into it, because i'm an idiot).

2003-05-03T13:13:00.000-05:00

While attempting to study I found this interesting article about the young Cubs rotation. The former DBack catcher says this group could end up achieving great things, I think he compares them to the Braves.

Other than that studying is killing me. I have way too much Russian to memorize. So I'm sooner or later going to give up and look at my other two finals (and the research paper I need to finish). But until then . . .

Also, I cannot study and have on a gametracker of the Yankees at the same time. Just doesn't work. CBSSportsline's the best game tracker if you care, it blows espn and mlb's right out of the water. No refreshing, and its pretty quick. Ok, back to the books. . .

2003-05-02T17:34:00.000-05:00

i am a bum. i need to study. but since espn.com doesn't change every five minutes, i have begun to read more and more of the baseball blogs i've linked to on the left. and the ones they link to. i am going to bomb this russian final. baseball stuff will come a lot more wednesday afternoon. i got a lot of stuff i want to rant about.

2003-05-01T13:09:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure if study days actually aid in the study process. They sure do provide me time to hone my MVP Baseball skills and my NBA Street vol 2 skills.

Yanks won last night, and Mo is back, and struggled a little, but ended up closing out the game. Contreras looked sharp in his first AAA game the other day, which is good news. Well, on some levels. Because this means now people may try and push him into the rotation. Which I'm not sure is good. But then again, I'm sure seventy years ago people didn't think a 5 man rotation was a good idea (ie, Spahn, Sain and pray for rain). But I think in August and September they should rotate him in for each of the starters just to give them two full rotations off to rest. Which hopefully will prevent the miserable performance of last years post season debacle in Anaheim.

Also I think keeping Raul Mondesi is a good idea, not just because he's batting well now, but more importantly because of his arm. A) It's fun as hell to watch him gun someone out at second (I saw him warm up last year at the Stadium, he's unreal); B) it keeps people on first because of pt A; C) THEY DON"T NEED MORE OFFENSE! Yes, right field is traditionally is a positive contributor to offensive, but he's not that awful. Even when he's not batting .347 and has an OPS of 1.030, he's still useful. Ok, I just realized that he batted .232 and had an OPS of .740. So that's not that good, but his average was .007 over league average, and his OPS was only .017 below league average. So that's not awful, but it's not a big time contributor, but at least he's not killing you on offense. He still hit 26 HR last year, which was about league average for regulars. So, again, not an offensive powerhouse, but a defensive monster. And the Yankees have enough offense.

OK, now Giambi. sigh. What are we going to do with this guy. I say trade him for a player to be named later. Not really. I dunno, but I'd start by having him play 1B more (assuming he's healthy). This is something they talked a lot about last year when Nick Johnson was struggling. They said the bad at-bats would sit with him while he was on the bench for an inning or two, and it would snowball. I wouldn't be surprised to see the same thing happen to Giambi if he's splitting time at 1B/DH. Hopefully he'll snap out of it on his own.

See, this is the stuff I do instead of studying.

2003-04-30T09:57:00.000-05:00

This is a great article about why you gotta love Steinbrenner.

2003-04-30T01:59:00.000-05:00

OK, I think the biggest problem standing between me and doing any kind of stat thing fairly is my dislike of Barry Bonds. To me, he is an example of what is wrong with sports today. Hey, I don't the guy personally, and maybe all the things every press person EVER has written about him has been wrong. But one way or another his last two seasons keep popping up as very high on anything I do trying to find the best seasons of the last 65 years (I'll explain this later). I just can't deal with it. I just can't bring myself to say that this man is the greatest player ever. Because I honestly don't think he is. I can't figure out why yet, but when I do, I'll explain. My best guess is that his seasons are great compared to the last 65 years, but if you look at more recent trends, his last two season are only the first of many to be there. But I can't believe the game will let itself go this way. But what do I know, people would much rather see an 7-6 dong-fest than a 2-1 game won on an 8th inning double, bunt, sac fly score.

As for why the last 65 years, I'm probably going to do my paper on the summer of '41 when Joe DiMaggio had a 56 game hitting streak, and Ted Williams batted .406. Both feats are pretty incredible (the closest anyone has gotten to either in the past 61 seasons has been Tony Gwynn in strike shortened '94 with .390 (he still played 110 games) and 39 by Paul Molitor in '87). These are close, but no cigar (Gwynn was 3 hits short of finishing with an .40095 average, Molitor was 17 games short or about 30% short).

PS - Yes I know Rose hit in 44 straight games in '78, but I'll reserve that rant for another day. I'm debating whether or not I should include his feats in any of my work for consideration. I do definately have a rant festering about Mr. Pete Rose.

2003-04-29T23:51:00.000-05:00

Ok, I've been thinking about things to do over the summer (well, if I don't end up staying here and doing research), and I thought maybe developing a way to rank the best player of each year. I know a million people do this, and there are a lots of different ways to compute this (ie Bill James, etc). But I'd like to start from the beginning, just for kicks.
The first thing I think should be considered that isn't usually thrown in, is the team's winning percentage. I know people dispell this becuase you can't control how good your team is. But, like in most sports, I have to believe that good players make their team better. And not just through their own statistics. Michael Jordan and the Bulls, not the six championships, but the two years in between the three year runs. I'm not exactly sure how to factor this in, but I think it must be considered, but not too a huge degree, but it at least factor in.
OK, there are a million other things I need to throw in there, but right now, that's it. I guess average, OBA, SLG, etc, will have to factor in at least some time.

Any ideas? Lemme know.

2003-04-29T13:56:00.000-05:00

Here is my first post with my stat work involved. Many of you have seen this before in my away message. This is the crap I do instead of working on finishing my research paper which is due next week. Is it a bad sign when the first thing your advisor writes on your paper is, "Don't be disturbed by the quantity of red ink."? Well, here are some stats, which, of course, never lie.

Imagine a pitcher, who for 4 years would have the following stats:
-Wins more than 50 Games
-Winning % above .650
-Has an ERA .738% below league average (in '99-'02 - 3.36)
-SO/9 is 1.11% better than the league average ('99-'02 - 7.31)

In '99-'02, there were only two pitchers who did this, Randy Johnson, and Pedro Martinez.
In the '98-'01 time frame you can tack on Kevin Brown's name.
In '95-'98, you again see Johnson, but now add David Cone, John Smoltz, and Roger Clemens.

Now, in the 1915-'18 range, you see two names, Grover C. Alexander (also known as Pete), who won 373 games, had a lifetime winning percentage of .642, and an career era of 2.56. He's in the Hall of Fame.

Oh, the other guy? You probably haven't heard of this little known former Red Sox pitcher.

Babe Ruth.
Stats from '15 - '18
W: 78 L: 40 Winning %: .661
ERA: 2.06 (League Average 2.79)
SO/9: 3.92 (L.A. 3.52)
Shutouts: 17 (L.A. 10)
Complete Games: 92 (L.A. 67)

2003-04-29T13:36:00.000-05:00

"remember kid,
there's heroes and there's legends,
heroes get remembered,
but legends never die."
-The Babe to Benny in The Sandlot

This is why baseball is a sport unlike any other, because of legends like the Babe.
This is why I'm starting this Blog, to try and figure out why people are legends, and who from our time will get there someday.