Game 124 -- Homers!
I didn't watch this "contest" that closely. The Indians aren't a terribly compelling opponent and as many runners as they got on base against Gio Gonzalez, things never really felt all that jammy. Part of that is presumably because Gonzalez only allowed five hits and one walk. A hit-by-pitch (which always gets pushed to the bottom of the box score for no good reason) and a couple of A's errors (three, really, but two were by Jeff Larish on the same play) kept things interesting, but not interesting enough.
Larish filled in admirably with the bat, homering in his first trip and singling later on. The homer must have come as a surprise to Kevin Kouzmanoff: "Third base man hit power? What?" Kouzmanoff hasn't gone yard since July 31st, in that notable launching pad in Chicago. His last extra-base hit came on the 17th, a full week ago, and that was a game he didn't even start. Larish's double-error, though, reminded us all of why Kouzmanoff might be worth having out there. He doesn't boot routine balls the way Larish did, blowing a double-play, and he doesn't then panic and throw the ball into the dugout when he does boot the original play.
Coco Crisp homered, singled, and doubled, and thus has his SLG up to .475. That leads the team, with only Jack Cust close at .450. Coco is the leadoff man, of course. It's a fair question to ask whether perhaps DAric Barton, he of the .389 OBP and the sub-.400 SLG, ought to be hitting first, Cust second (.392/.450) and Coco third (.346/.475). But Barton and Cust clog the bases! (Which is maybe a fair point, given that Crisp has 22 steals, a number he'd surely not have were he hitting behind Barton and Cust.)
Either way, the Kurt-Suzuki-bats-third experiment has to end. .243/.301/.378 is his line on the year. That's awful. I mean, he's a catcher, and a good one. He's not utterly popless (that .130 ISO would look solid if he were hitting .280), but Cliff Pennington is outhitting him, and he's a threat on the bases to boot.
Rajai Davis stole his 37th base of the year. Whoa.
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Saturday, August 21st, 2010, 9:30 pm
Game 122 -- The Rays turn the tables
Oakland spent the last two nights coming from behind and beating the Rays by one run, so it's only fair that Tampa pulled that trick on the A's tonight. A catalog of disappointments:
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- David Price threw more than forty pitches in the first inning and still lasted six, though getting four runs in six innings against Price is an accomplishment.
- The A's had a 4-2 lead with two outs in the eighth. Ugh. The Ivy League proves itself overrated once again.
- Kevin Kouzmanoff flailed his way to three strikeouts in three at-bats (and one sac fly), chasing the kinds of pitches he's been chasing all year long. Solid defense and power that would look more impressive if he weren't a righty hitting in Oakland mean he's not a total disaster as a baseball player, but the guy has a .292 on-base percentage and the way he gets there is infuriating to watch. Kurt Suzuki's numbers are basically the same (identical SLG, lower BA by .010, higher OBP by .012), but there's something about the aesthetic of his swing that doesn't make me get nearly as angry at him for his failures.
- Steve Tolleson started at shortstop and went 0-3. Cliff Pennington is a goddamn good luck charm, Bob Geren. You start him until he gets malaria and begs out of the lineup.
- Travis Buck's entire career.
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Friday, August 20th, 2010, 10:45 pm
Game 121
The second batter of the game, Ben Zobrist, hit a medium-hard ground ball toward second base, on the right side of the bag. It wasn't going to be an easy play, requiring a backhand and a solid throw, but it's one we've seen Mark Ellis make hundreds of times in his years in green and gold. Unfortunately, Mark Ellis got the night off, and Steve Tolleson booted the ball. I firmly believe that Ellis is one of the more underrated players in the game -- he's no All-Star, but he's a very useful player. The problem is that his value comes almost entirely from his glove and that's not a skill that people find it easy to appreciate without watching. With the A's on national TV at most twice a year, fans don't get a lot of chances to turn him into a national glovely folk hero the way A's supporters have.
Cliff Pennington is turning into an artist with bat, ball, and right-field line. His third inning double might have actually hit the line itself, after last night's big two-run double hit the base of the wall some tiny distance inside the line. If he can keep popping occasional doubles, and if his defense is actually as good as my perception says it is (not Gold Glove caliber, but above average, in the +5 range), he can be a valuable player. His offensive skill is such that he's unlikely to be getting big paydays in arbitration a few years hence. If all goes well, though, he'll be nontendered or traded when he hits arbitration as the team welcomes Grant Green to the roster.
Speed, baserunning ability, and contact skills got the A's their first and second runs in the bottom of the third. Following Pennington's double, Coco Crisp hit an infield single on a cue shot toward shortstop. Jason Bartlett just had to eat the ball, unable to even make a throw. (Speed.) With a 1-1 count, Crisp and Pennington got enormous jumps and pulled off a double-steal. John Jaso didn't even get a throw off, in part because it looked like he wanted to throw to second, but no Ray covered the bag. (Speed, baserunning. Also luck.) The pitch was a strike to Barton, and a decent pitch to hit, but the recognized that the runners were going to move up and trusted his ability to hit with two strikes, so he took. (Contact.) He then did, in fact, do a nice job making contact with two strikes (contact), knocking a single up the middle that scored Pennington from third and Crisp, running hard and getting a good jump, came home ahead of BJ Upton's throw (speed, baserunning). I've joked about it on Twitter before, but if you went back 10 years and told an A's fan that this was how the offense would be built in 2010, they'd laugh in your face. "Beane likes Matt Stairs," they'd say.
Following up on Game 120's Kevin-the-ballkid story, it turns out that while the TV cameras only caught him giving two balls to the cute redhead, he actually gave four. And the bullpen guys sent over a fifth ball with a message asking for her number. After that display of affection, how could she say no? Story here.
I love Travis Buck, and I recognize that Joaquin Benoit is a really good pitcher, but their battle in the bottom of the eighth shows why Buck is probably going to spend next year in AAA or be traded for a bucket of crushed walnuts. You can't chase that many pitches out of the zone while hitting for as little contact and power as Buck does and be a viable major league corner outfielder. He doesn't really bring much on defense or the bases, either, so if he's not hitting, what's he for?
If this A's team were going anywhere, Cliff Pennington would be a national treasure. He's short, he doesn't have any power, and he throws every single ball from shortstop with every ounce of velocity he can muster. But in the last couple of games, with his timely right-field doubles, spinning-and-throwing defensive plays, and hustle down the line to take advantage of Ben Zobrist's errors (ok, that only happened once), he's been a huge part of the A's victories. Here's last night's win probability roundup. Here's the night before's (see the sixth inning double?). And here's the walkoff hit against Toronto (and note also the Yunel Escobar double play).----------
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Cliff Pennington is turning into an artist with bat, ball, and right-field line. His third inning double might have actually hit the line itself, after last night's big two-run double hit the base of the wall some tiny distance inside the line. If he can keep popping occasional doubles, and if his defense is actually as good as my perception says it is (not Gold Glove caliber, but above average, in the +5 range), he can be a valuable player. His offensive skill is such that he's unlikely to be getting big paydays in arbitration a few years hence. If all goes well, though, he'll be nontendered or traded when he hits arbitration as the team welcomes Grant Green to the roster.
Speed, baserunning ability, and contact skills got the A's their first and second runs in the bottom of the third. Following Pennington's double, Coco Crisp hit an infield single on a cue shot toward shortstop. Jason Bartlett just had to eat the ball, unable to even make a throw. (Speed.) With a 1-1 count, Crisp and Pennington got enormous jumps and pulled off a double-steal. John Jaso didn't even get a throw off, in part because it looked like he wanted to throw to second, but no Ray covered the bag. (Speed, baserunning. Also luck.) The pitch was a strike to Barton, and a decent pitch to hit, but the recognized that the runners were going to move up and trusted his ability to hit with two strikes, so he took. (Contact.) He then did, in fact, do a nice job making contact with two strikes (contact), knocking a single up the middle that scored Pennington from third and Crisp, running hard and getting a good jump, came home ahead of BJ Upton's throw (speed, baserunning). I've joked about it on Twitter before, but if you went back 10 years and told an A's fan that this was how the offense would be built in 2010, they'd laugh in your face. "Beane likes Matt Stairs," they'd say.
Following up on Game 120's Kevin-the-ballkid story, it turns out that while the TV cameras only caught him giving two balls to the cute redhead, he actually gave four. And the bullpen guys sent over a fifth ball with a message asking for her number. After that display of affection, how could she say no? Story here.
I love Travis Buck, and I recognize that Joaquin Benoit is a really good pitcher, but their battle in the bottom of the eighth shows why Buck is probably going to spend next year in AAA or be traded for a bucket of crushed walnuts. You can't chase that many pitches out of the zone while hitting for as little contact and power as Buck does and be a viable major league corner outfielder. He doesn't really bring much on defense or the bases, either, so if he's not hitting, what's he for?
If this A's team were going anywhere, Cliff Pennington would be a national treasure. He's short, he doesn't have any power, and he throws every single ball from shortstop with every ounce of velocity he can muster. But in the last couple of games, with his timely right-field doubles, spinning-and-throwing defensive plays, and hustle down the line to take advantage of Ben Zobrist's errors (ok, that only happened once), he's been a huge part of the A's victories. Here's last night's win probability roundup. Here's the night before's (see the sixth inning double?). And here's the walkoff hit against Toronto (and note also the Yunel Escobar double play).----------
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Thursday, August 19th, 2010, 11:20 pm
Game 120 -- Another day, another one-run win
First thought of the night, as I semi-live-blog this game (read: I'm not going to write down everything that happens, and I'm also not watching entirely live): Conor Jackson really looks like Walter, Jr. in Breaking Bad. The unfortunate thing is that in his first at-bat, he hit the ball with about as much authority as you'd expect a 16-year-old kid to do against Andy Sonnanstine, resulting in a weak grounder to third with runners on second and third and no outs in the top of the first. In other words: the A's got on board the "can't drive runners in" train early tonight. All's well that ends well, sure, but ground balls to second base from right-handed hitters get old.
Daric Barton really seems to like hitting against Sonnanstine. He basically hit the same pitch to the same place with the same force in each of his first two trips, roping liners into right field for doubles. It's when he's hitting balls like those that you start dreaming on John Olerud comparisons. Is that fair? Maybe! Barton's wRC+ this year stands at 119 -- Olerud put up a 118 mark in his second full season, and in his age-25 season, 1994, he hit for a 124. (That carefully ignores the monster 181 wRC+ he had in 1993 for Toronto. 363/473/599? Wow.) We could talk fielding, but it'd be apples to oranges, UZR to TotalZone, and I don't want to head down that rabbit hole tonight. Suffice it to say that they're both probably above average to approximately the same degree. Is that enough qualificatory modifiers for you? Did you know, by the way, that John Olerud is 6'5" and Daric Barton is only 6'0"? Barton's built a little thicker than Olerud was (former catcher and all), but he's just not all that big. Power's about more than physical size, of course (Ryan Sweeney proves that on one end, and Hank Aaron on the other), but it surely helps.
Coco Crisp made an absurd play to take a homer away from Matt Joyce in the top of the sixth to keep Cahill's homer troubles from becoming homer disasters. Crisp did a little best-of-times-worst-of-times action on that play, though, racing back to the wall and timing his jump perfectly to make a clean catch on the ball, but then twelve-hopping his throw back toward first, allowing Carlos Pena, who'd rounded second, to get back to first easily. Still, the range is obviously vastly more important than the arm, so I'll take it.
Let me provide some advice to major league managers: if your relief pitcher walks Kevin Kouzmanoff, remove him immediately. It's really hard to walk Kevin Kouzmanoff. Like "swings at 36% of pitches out of the zone" hard to walk. (Context: he's basically tied with guys like Miguel Tejada, Jose Lopez, Ichiro, and Jose Guillen in that category.) So if your man manages to throw four pitches to Kouzmanoff that are so balls that even he doesn't want them? You need to send that hurler to the showers. As it happens, that's what Dan Wheeler did tonight! The A's got a couple of runners on ahead of Kouzmanoff, and Wheeler was brought in to face him. After the walk, Wheeler did get Rajai Davis to hit a first-pitch squibber with the bases loaded, but it was such a squibber that the only out was at first, resulting in a run scored. Cliff Pennington then followed with a roped double to the right field corner that hit the base of the wall on the fly, scoring two runs and giving the A's a 4-3 lead. By the way, Rajai Davis? Love the guy. Really do. But when you're facing a pitcher who just walked Kevin Kouzmanoff (again: KEVIN KOUZMANOFF) to load the bases and you get a first-pitch breaking ball? I think you wait on that pitch, let it sail by and see what you get later in the at-bat. But never let it be said that Rajai Davis has any pitch-recognition skills at all, I suppose.
Do umpires give players more leeway when they know a call is on the border? Tonight's home plate ump certainly gave Evan Longoria the benefit of the doubt. When Cahill struck him out looking to end the eighth on an outside fastball that was, putting it delicately, questionable, Longoria vociferously expressed his disagreement. The umpire told him something (presumably along the lines of "it was a strike" or maybe "shut the fuck up") and Longoria walked back to the dugout, still cursing, but not at the umpire. I've certainly seen players sent to the clubhouse for less than that, but in a tight game, on a tight call, I admire the umpire's ability to not strictly enforce the rules. I'm all for deterrence, but would throwing Longoria out in that situation have actually made him think twice about arguing the next time? Of course not. It was a heat of the moment decision. All it'd do is delay the game while Joe Maddon came out to argue and get himself thrown out in protest.
Meanwhile, if you weren't watching the A's feed tonight, you missed a treat. There's a ballkid who mans the left field line that Ray Fosse and Greg Papa just love -- he looks a little like Trevor Cahill, and dude goes all out for balls, dives and slides (sometimes unintentionally -- his footwork isn't the best), so they give him some attention pretty frequently. Tonight, though, what they showed us was him giving two different foul balls to a cute redhead sitting in the second or third row. Even better: he got booed for it! But you know what, ballkid? I don't boo. I acknowledge the pimpin'. Good show, sir.
So the final in the game was 4-3, Jerry Blevins pitching the ninth (with two lefties leading off the inning and Mike Wuertz having pitched a lot, and poorly, last night) after Trevor Cahill went eight. Let's repeat that: eight more innings with just three runs allowed for Trevor Cahill. How you view his Cy Young candidacy depends on where you fall on the RA-DIPS spectrum. Cahill entered the game second in the league in ERA, behind just Clay Buchholz, but his FIP (3.96) is third on his own team (behind Gio Gonzalez and Dallas Braden). His xFIP rank is a little higher, but still well outside that top five or seven pitchers we should be considering for the award, and still behind Braden. SIERA? 4.18. Ranks 35th or so. You're not going to find an ERA estimator that likes what Cahill is doing this year, and that's fair. His K-rate is just above five and his BABIP is insanely low (.212). This is why even SIERA, which knows how to account for the extra double plays his sinker generates, ranks him pretty poorly. Given all that, it'd be pretty hard for me to give him any serious consideration come awards season. For the traditionalists, though, going by his near-league-leading ERA and 13-5 record, I'd hope that the same logic that leads them to vote for Buchholz allows them to throw some love to Baby-Faced Assassin #2.----------
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Daric Barton really seems to like hitting against Sonnanstine. He basically hit the same pitch to the same place with the same force in each of his first two trips, roping liners into right field for doubles. It's when he's hitting balls like those that you start dreaming on John Olerud comparisons. Is that fair? Maybe! Barton's wRC+ this year stands at 119 -- Olerud put up a 118 mark in his second full season, and in his age-25 season, 1994, he hit for a 124. (That carefully ignores the monster 181 wRC+ he had in 1993 for Toronto. 363/473/599? Wow.) We could talk fielding, but it'd be apples to oranges, UZR to TotalZone, and I don't want to head down that rabbit hole tonight. Suffice it to say that they're both probably above average to approximately the same degree. Is that enough qualificatory modifiers for you? Did you know, by the way, that John Olerud is 6'5" and Daric Barton is only 6'0"? Barton's built a little thicker than Olerud was (former catcher and all), but he's just not all that big. Power's about more than physical size, of course (Ryan Sweeney proves that on one end, and Hank Aaron on the other), but it surely helps.
Coco Crisp made an absurd play to take a homer away from Matt Joyce in the top of the sixth to keep Cahill's homer troubles from becoming homer disasters. Crisp did a little best-of-times-worst-of-times action on that play, though, racing back to the wall and timing his jump perfectly to make a clean catch on the ball, but then twelve-hopping his throw back toward first, allowing Carlos Pena, who'd rounded second, to get back to first easily. Still, the range is obviously vastly more important than the arm, so I'll take it.
Let me provide some advice to major league managers: if your relief pitcher walks Kevin Kouzmanoff, remove him immediately. It's really hard to walk Kevin Kouzmanoff. Like "swings at 36% of pitches out of the zone" hard to walk. (Context: he's basically tied with guys like Miguel Tejada, Jose Lopez, Ichiro, and Jose Guillen in that category.) So if your man manages to throw four pitches to Kouzmanoff that are so balls that even he doesn't want them? You need to send that hurler to the showers. As it happens, that's what Dan Wheeler did tonight! The A's got a couple of runners on ahead of Kouzmanoff, and Wheeler was brought in to face him. After the walk, Wheeler did get Rajai Davis to hit a first-pitch squibber with the bases loaded, but it was such a squibber that the only out was at first, resulting in a run scored. Cliff Pennington then followed with a roped double to the right field corner that hit the base of the wall on the fly, scoring two runs and giving the A's a 4-3 lead. By the way, Rajai Davis? Love the guy. Really do. But when you're facing a pitcher who just walked Kevin Kouzmanoff (again: KEVIN KOUZMANOFF) to load the bases and you get a first-pitch breaking ball? I think you wait on that pitch, let it sail by and see what you get later in the at-bat. But never let it be said that Rajai Davis has any pitch-recognition skills at all, I suppose.
Do umpires give players more leeway when they know a call is on the border? Tonight's home plate ump certainly gave Evan Longoria the benefit of the doubt. When Cahill struck him out looking to end the eighth on an outside fastball that was, putting it delicately, questionable, Longoria vociferously expressed his disagreement. The umpire told him something (presumably along the lines of "it was a strike" or maybe "shut the fuck up") and Longoria walked back to the dugout, still cursing, but not at the umpire. I've certainly seen players sent to the clubhouse for less than that, but in a tight game, on a tight call, I admire the umpire's ability to not strictly enforce the rules. I'm all for deterrence, but would throwing Longoria out in that situation have actually made him think twice about arguing the next time? Of course not. It was a heat of the moment decision. All it'd do is delay the game while Joe Maddon came out to argue and get himself thrown out in protest.
Meanwhile, if you weren't watching the A's feed tonight, you missed a treat. There's a ballkid who mans the left field line that Ray Fosse and Greg Papa just love -- he looks a little like Trevor Cahill, and dude goes all out for balls, dives and slides (sometimes unintentionally -- his footwork isn't the best), so they give him some attention pretty frequently. Tonight, though, what they showed us was him giving two different foul balls to a cute redhead sitting in the second or third row. Even better: he got booed for it! But you know what, ballkid? I don't boo. I acknowledge the pimpin'. Good show, sir.
So the final in the game was 4-3, Jerry Blevins pitching the ninth (with two lefties leading off the inning and Mike Wuertz having pitched a lot, and poorly, last night) after Trevor Cahill went eight. Let's repeat that: eight more innings with just three runs allowed for Trevor Cahill. How you view his Cy Young candidacy depends on where you fall on the RA-DIPS spectrum. Cahill entered the game second in the league in ERA, behind just Clay Buchholz, but his FIP (3.96) is third on his own team (behind Gio Gonzalez and Dallas Braden). His xFIP rank is a little higher, but still well outside that top five or seven pitchers we should be considering for the award, and still behind Braden. SIERA? 4.18. Ranks 35th or so. You're not going to find an ERA estimator that likes what Cahill is doing this year, and that's fair. His K-rate is just above five and his BABIP is insanely low (.212). This is why even SIERA, which knows how to account for the extra double plays his sinker generates, ranks him pretty poorly. Given all that, it'd be pretty hard for me to give him any serious consideration come awards season. For the traditionalists, though, going by his near-league-leading ERA and 13-5 record, I'd hope that the same logic that leads them to vote for Buchholz allows them to throw some love to Baby-Faced Assassin #2.----------
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Thursday, August 19th, 2010, 8:45 am
Game 119 -- A's win
No legit post on yesterday's walk-off win over the Blue Jays. We had company until late, so I didn't get a chance to watch it.
I will say this: after Coco Crisp's two doubles, one homer, one walk game, his batting line is up to .289/.354/.478. He's surely over his head when it comes to the power (I think ZiPS ROS has him pegged right at a .418 SLG), but when you combine that solid on-base ability with solid power in a plus (maybe plus-plus) center fielder, you can see why Billy Beane thought he was worth the injury risk.
Oh yeah, and 19 steals in 21 attempts, too. And the best hair on the team. And the best name in baseball. I'm sure if you search the archives of this site, you'll find me saying mean things about the awful idea of signing Crisp when we've already got Rajai Davis to fill the "mediocre fast guy" role. I eat my words (if indeed I ever said them) happily.
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Wednesday, August 18th, 2010, 12:30 am
Game 118
Tonight's 6-2 win over the Blue Jays was particularly notable from a non-game-analysis perspective for two at-bats, each by Daric Barton. In the first, following a leadoff double by Coco Crisp, Barton, who had bunted in that situation some ridiculous number of times so far this year, smacked a double of his own, scoring the A's first run. Then, in the seventh, with Coco Crisp on first in a tie game with nobody out, Barton again knocked a hit, this one a grounded single to right. The bunt was hardly an obvious play in either situation, but Barton has defied those rules all year long. It's unclear what's changed, but I'm not going to worry about it given the outcome.
The rest of the game featured what's becoming a typically excellent Dallas Braden start, anemic batwork by the A's, and a number of stolen bases. Baserunning has been the theme of the year for the A's, which made the the play on which the A's took the lead in the seventh fitting. First, Coco Crisp stole third with Conor Jackson at the plate and Barton on first. After Jackson struck out, Jack Cust bounced a ball weakly to second. Barton slowed up so the ball wouldn't hit him, then did a bit of a dance in an attempt to avoid Aaron Hill's tag. Hill got the out anyway, but was put off-balance, resulting in a bad throw to first that squirted past Lyle Overbay. Thusly was the inning-ending double-play avoided, allowing Coco Crisp to come home from third. Further, and what made the play really exciting, Jack Cust motored around to second on the bad throw, despite the ball not getting all that far away from Overbay (and despite Jack Cust still being, well, rather Custian).
The A's then added a couple more runs on some line-drive singles and a horrifyingly bad defensive play in left field by Travis Snider. (Future first baseman Travis Snider, one hopes, for the sake of his psyche.) From there, it was over. Craig Breslow (until he got hurt on a line drive) and Mike Wuertz shut things down and the A's finally won a game.
One other note: Steve Tolleson doesn't really look like a Steve Tolleson. He's taller and skinnier than I figure he should be. I picture more of a Ty Wigginton type.
Tomorrow has that Marc Rzepajtahjthag%$@%ski guy pitching against Gio Gonzalez in the rubber match.----------
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Saturday, August 7th, 2010, 11:40 pm
Tim Marchman on bitch tits
I think it was Jonah Keri who pointed out (via Twitter, Reader/Buzz, or his blog -- I'm not sure which) Tim Marchman's blog, about which I had not previously known. (Marchman is a former baseball columnist for the New York Sun.) The following quote (link) illustrates why I'm incredibly grateful to Jonah for doing so:
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Formestane is an aromatase inhibitor; it's not magical dope in its own right, but is taken with other drugs to, among other things, prevent the growth of breasts. Drug testing skeptics can note that the three players who tested positive for bitch tit avoidance didn't test positive for drugs that would cause bitch tits.----------
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Sunday, July 18th, 2010, 7:00 pm
Joe Posnanski on LeBron James
It's an oldie (as in: it was posted nine days ago), but it's not particularly a goodie. I wanted to share some of Joe Posnanski's thoughts on LeBron James, Dan Gilbert's letter, etc., to show that just because Posnanski has built a reputation as a forward-thinking guy in baseball, that doesn't mean that city loyalties and a failure to dive into basketball analysis the way he has in baseball won't stop him from spouting a whole trail of bullshit from time to time.----------
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Saturday, July 17th, 2010, 9:25 pm
Minor league spending
David Laurila at Baseball Prospectus had this interview with John Birtwell, a minor league coach way down the chain in the Marlins' organization. He's new this year, and Laurila asked him a question about what it was like working for the Marlins. He gave a pretty standard answer ("they're great!"), but then alluded to "tight-fisted people" that weren't Marlins people sometimes hampering things. Laurila wondered about this as follows:
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DL: Can you clarify what the organization and affiliates are responsible for, respectively? JB: That's where we often get clouded, because the parent club, the Marlins, seem to take care of our guys pretty well. They pay the players and offer a lot of our equipment, and things like that. But [with the affiliates] when it comes to hotel arrangements and maintenance at the ballpark, sometimes those things leave something to be desired. The uniforms might be too tight; most of the uniforms we have are very old. Again, it's not lack of effort from some people, but then again, today for example, we had to leave at one o'clock in the morning for a game that we're playing on the same day. There was some kind of disconnect, because I don't think that was the Marlins decision as much as it might have been an affiliate decision.That's really interesting to me because it highlights the weird nature of baseball's minor leagues. Uniforms may not be the biggest deal in the world, but field maintenance and ballpark accommodations (training rooms, for instance) seem pretty important. A poorly kept outfield could result in injuries, after all, and subpar facilities might leave the training staff struggling to do its job if the club is faced with a rash of injured players. Travel is also important -- tired players, players stiff from a long bus ride or a poor night of sleep, might be more prone to hurt themselves at game time. What this story illustrates, then, is a major league team might look to change an affiliation. Considerations like having your AAA team close to your major league team are important, but so is having an affiliate that doesn't cut corners with assets that you're paying for them to take care of. I've read writers discuss the affiliation picture from the perspective of the minor league clubs: a AA owner obviously wants to be affiliated with a team that's going to send a bevy of exciting, good, high-profile prospects through, players that the team can promote as alumni down the road and that will draw crowds while they're on the team. This side of the picture, though, of the major league organization's needs for the minor league team to not be (forgive me) bush league, is one I hadn't seen before. ----------
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Thursday, July 15th, 2010, 10:20 pm
Steve Slowinski on sabermetric history
I'd rather just post this as a comment on DRaysBay, but you can't do that until three days after you sign up with the site, so I make my own post here instead.
Steve Slowinski wrote a nice
description of wOBA, a stat I don't love for reasons I can explain later
(and have explained elsewhere). In it, though, he writes, "These are the sort
of questions that plagued saberists for a number of years, until someone (Tom
Tango, I believe) decided to run some empirical tests and establish - once and
for all - the value of different offensive outcomes." Isn't that wrong? Here's
the
wiki at Tango's site on linear weights (which are, of course, at the bottom
of wOBA): "The pioneer of Linear Weights was Canadian sabermetrician George
Lindsey, but the concept was expanded upon and popularized with [Pete] Palmer's
Batting Runs." Lindsey and Palmer go back decades.
Nobody else seems to have brought this up, so maybe I'm misunderstanding something and Slowinski's statement is totally justified. As I understand what he's saying, though, and as I understand sabermetric history, he glosses over years of important work by giants in the field.
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Sunday, July 11th, 2010, 5:00 pm
Joe Posnanski uses WAR against Joe Girardi
Link here. The basic idea is that Joe Girardi made a rather large mistake choosing Paul Konerko over Kevin Youkilis for the AL All-Star team.
The article illustrates the difficulty I have with the calls for there to be people proselytizing advanced analytical methods -- the simplification inherent in that exercise takes away the complexity of the measurement, and thus hides the problems with those measurements.
The lengthy discussions of UZR and the battles over where exactly to set replacement level show that none of this stuff is settled in the way that Posnanski implies it is here. There is a discussion in the comments, for instance, over the value of using single-season UZR, and one person asserts that while true talent may not emerge without three seasons of data, UZR in a season is still a measurement of what happened. This, of course, is precisely the assertion that Colin Wyers (and probably others, but Colin's work is what I know best) has been challenging for at least the last few months.
I don't expect all of Posnanski's commentators to read The Book Blog and follow these debates. I do expect someone who sees his job to be, at least in part, a popularizer of statistics to stay up with the current knowledge. If not bleeding edge, then at least cutting.
I probably wouldn't have said anything if Posnanski hadn't said this: "But I donŐt need to know HOW my iPad works to enjoy it." That's true for the iPad in most instances. It Just Works. But the Fangraphs version of WAR, because of the instability of UZR, arguably does not Just Work. And thus you do need to know how it works in order to "enjoy" it. (In this case, substitute "use to support arguments about baseball" for "enjoy".)
As long as I'm picking on Posnanski, though, I should note that he points out Baseball-Reference's different calculation of WAR from the Fangraphs version. Posnanski asks "smart[] baseball people" to "compromise" on this issue. If nothing else, this illustrates my point that Posnanski doesn't understand the stats enough for me to feel comfortable with him using them the way he does. WAR, as has been pointed out over and over again, is not a statistic: it is a framework. Into the framework you plug in the offensive measure you prefer, the defensive measure you prefer, the replacement level you prefer, and the positional adjustment you prefer. The various implementations of WAR around the web (I believe that StatCorner has even a third WAR, and there may be others I'm not aware of or am not thinking of at the moment; and that's even putting aside WARP, which is, I think, essentially an implementation of WAR (although it of course predates the creation/naming of WAR)) plug in the components they like. That is why the come out to different answers sometimes.
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Thursday, July 8th, 2010, 12:20 am
Luck and bad players -- links
Today's links, despite the misleading title, aren't really related, except insofar as they're both about baseball and they're both a few days old. (As an aside, I've decided to make this blog yet more focused -- the title, after all, is Beaneball. That doesn't really work if I spend half my time here writing about the Lakers. Basketball posts, including Lakers playoff rants, will end up on The Woj instead. This blog won't be limited to the A's, but it will be limited to baseball.)
First up is Will McDonald at Royals Review asking "Are We too Hard on [Willie] Bloomquist?" I'm not terribly interested in that question, to be honest. The portion of the piece that grabbed my eye, though, was this:
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As weird as it sounds, if Bloomquist was 20% better, he'd probably be out of baseball right now. If Bloomquist had been a slightly better hitter in the minors, I doubt the Mariners would have so quickly made him into a utility player, not wanting to mess up a potentially decent 2B. Now a 20% better Bloomquist still wouldn't have ended up as a useful Major League infielder, and he would have been viewed as a failed 2B prospect. If this guy can't hit enough to play 2B, there's no point in making him an OF. But because he was worse, he emerged as a jack of all trades, because he had no potential to lose.That's a really interesting thesis, and it's one I think I buy. With certain exceptions, teams tend to treat super-sub players with a focus on the "sub" rather than the "super". Chone Figgins comes to mind as an exception, of course, but I'm not sure I can come up with any others. The players who develop enough defensive facility to function anywhere on the field are those who were never given a shot in the majors (or the high minors, often) to just settle into a position and develop. Beyond Willie Bloomquist, though, what does this mean? Does Chone Figgins prove that even players with offensive potential can be moved around without significant fear that their development will be retarded? I don't know if we can go that far -- don't forget, Will Carroll includes a "position switch" factor in his injury system because there is (apparently, at least) some evidence that switching positions does create some additional risk. Maybe the lesson is that teams should be both less and more indulgent with that player who is Willie Bloomquist + 20%. One could simply say "teams should get better at recognizing which hitters aren't going to make it as everyday starters in the bigs", but that's not helpful -- of course they should. That's the entire program of a front office. So given that this is a lot easier said than done, perhaps the piece of advice is that unless a guy has a surefire bat, if they have the ability to move around the field, maybe you should try moving them around the field. Imagine a team that develops an Albert Pujols at first, a Colby Rasmus in the outfield, and then a whole bunch of guys who can move around the field, playing at two or three different positions, giving the manager all sorts of splits flexibility to match up lefty-righty, groundball-flyball (thinking about both offense and defense here), what have you. If nothing else, that'd be pretty fun, right? Link number two is Phil Birnbaum at Sabermetric Research on July 4th discussing the role of luck in sports. He praised a Canadian writer for recognizing what he called "macro luck" (a blown call by a referee late in the game, Diego Maradona's Hand of God, etc.), but wished that we'd also recognize "micro luck" when discussing and analyzing sports. I don't like those terms -- the two kinds of luck Birnbaum is discussing are the same except for the optics. A pass that goes awry by two inches, resulting in the difference between a chain of passes leading a minute later to a shot on goal and a turnover, is not different, in my mind, from a penalty kick that just misses, ending the match. They just happen at moments of different leverage and (thus) different levels of fan and media focus. I don't want that nitpick about terminology to undermine Birnbaum's completely correct point, though: we can't talk about a pitcher getting lucky when an umpire gives him an extra inch outside or a fielder getting unlucky when a ball hits the third-base bag directly in front of him unless we're also willing to recognize that every single play, every single physical motion involves imperfection, thus uncertainty, thus luck. This doesn't mean we have to stop talking about how a player is good or bad, or a performance is good or bad, but my horse in this particular race is that I'd hope it can help us remove the morality from sports. A player is not a better person than another because his three-point shot was two inches more on target than another player's. That is the discourse of sport, but I think it can be changed. ----------
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Wednesday, July 7th, 2010, 12:15 am
Sickels on Gio Gonzalez
In an attempt to keep this blog moving even when I don't have much long- or medium-form to say, I'm going to try to do a little more link-sharing. My links will often be a few days, or even weeks, late, but I'll try to keep them relevant, if not necessarily timely.
Today's link is to a "Not a rookie" post by John Sickels about Gio Gonzalez. My takeaway: it's easy to forget just how young Gonzalez is. He was drafted out of high school and his early minor league performances were so good that the White Sox basically had no choice but to promote him aggressively. His inning counts were still pretty low, so he wasn't being pitched aggressively, but he was just 22 when he hit the majors with the "A's. He struggled that year, 2008, with bunches of strikeouts and way too many walks. He's cut his walks back to a manageable 4.2 BB/9 this year, though his strikeout rate has fallen from the 9-10 K/9 of his first two Oakland years to just 7.3 this year. Still, because of the declined walk rate, his FIP and xFIP are still fine, hovering in the 4-4.5 range, perfectly respectable for an American League starting pitcher who doesn't cost his team much in terms of salary.
Now is about when he gets expensive, though, so it'll be an interesting question for the A's at the end of the year. Particularly if his ERA ends up in the 3.5 range that it's in now, he could get a decent payday in arbitration. On the other hand, since he'll still just be 25 and thus theoretically improving, that payday might underpay him enough that the A's would like to keep him around.
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Friday, July 2nd, 2010, 4:20 pm
Steve Blake to the Lakers
I was going to twitter a bunch of Steve Blake thoughts, and I even started down that road:
Then I realized that I could probably do better just saying some stuff in a blog post.
As I said, four years seems a bit rich for a guy turning 30, but it's probably
the cost of doing business. As Migs and I have discussed many times, 2013
isn't even a concern for the Lakers. You win as much as you possibly can while
Kobe is still healthy and productive and you just punt everything else down the
road. This could lead to some nasty 49ers-style teams, as they took exactly
that strategy in the late '90s, but Flags Fly Forever, so I'll take it.
Blake isn't amazing, but I'll tell you a couple of things he is: a guy with
decent size (6'3", though a bit skinny at 172, according to Basketball-reference.com),
a very good three point shooter (.393 on his career, just one poor season
(2007) from the arc), and a guy who has both come off the bench and played
starter minutes. He's also, for those who enjoy making jokes on Twitter (me),
making fun of sportswriters using cliches (me), and just generally being
exasperated with the state of discourse on race in this country (me), a white
guy who has a vague aura of scrappiness ... but who was actually involved,
along with Udonis Haslem, in a recruiting scam in high school that resulted in
him having to transfer to Oak Hill. (What would we think about a black
point guard with that in his past?)
What Blake doesn't have, either in the numbers (DRtg) or his reputation, is
much defense. Neither did Jordan Farmar, though, so this is probably a lateral
move as far as that goes.
The Lakers have been linked to a few other guys that have got to be out of the
question now (if they were ever in the question -- half the rumors in the
league are probably started by agents to make their clients look better). It's
too bad Mike Miller isn't coming to L.A., but he'd have been five years at even
bigger dollars for a guy the same age as Blake (Blake's a week younger) with
approximately equivalent three-point shooting. (You don't actually think
Miller's going to shoot .480 from downtown again, do you?) Miller does other
things, such as play a position that's constantly backupless for the Lakers
(Luke Walton will get hurt again) and rebound (about twice as well as Blake, by
the percentage numbers), but he's also someone who's used to averaging minutes
he wouldn't get in L.A. (He had a solid year as a benchie in 2006 with
Memphis, but he was a starter before and he's been a starter since.)
Anyway, the other guy this rules out is Tony Allen, and thank goodness for
that. Sure, he played nice defense on Kobe Bryant in the Finals, when his
length bothered Bryant a lot. But he's also an utterly useful offensive
player. It's not just that he can't shoot, it's that he looks completely lost
out there, unsure of where to go and what to do. We already saw the problems a
player like that could cause in the triangle this year, but at least Ron
Artest, if all else failed, could just camp at the three-point line, where he
shot a reasonable 35% on four attempts per game. Allen doesn't have that
option. Sure, Trevor Ariza found a way to make it work (don't let the '09
playoffs fool you -- Ariza's really not very good at threes), but Allen's not
even Ariza-level at the three-ball.
Anthony Morrow is also out there floating around and the whole point of his
availability is that he's a deadeye shooter who, because that's more or less
his whole skillset, should come cheap. It's unlikely, though, that he comes
cheap enough for L.A. to afford him -- he'd have to take something like two
million a year, and he's way too young to be at the "chasing rings" phase of
his career. He needs to cash in and square away his family for life on the next contract, or maybe two contracts. He can worry about rings when he's 30.
Even if he were willing to come for that pay, Blake, Morrow, Fisher, Vujacic,
Kobe, and Shannon Brown is probably a bit of a crowd. (Brown isn't a lock to
come back, but surely the Lakers will try.) Had L.A. signed a small forward
instead of Blake, then in theory they could still lure Morrow, but signing a
guard (point or otherwise -- it's still Triangle Time in L.A., so the
distinction doesn't matter much) probably forecloses this.
This, then, was L.A.'s move, and it was the move the beat writers and rumor
mongers had been talking about since about February. Laker fans can nap from
now Summer League. The rest of the transaction period is basically going to be
dealing with Shannon Brown and filling things out with minimum-salary guys and
the two second round picks. Sleep well.
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I like Steve Blake. I think he'll be a useful player. I like $4M for him. I'm not sure I like four years, but winner's curse, I guess?
Jason Wojciechowski
doctawojo
This does surely, as @daldridgetnt just pointed out, take Mike Miller off the table. He's not coming for the remaining MLE or the Bi-Annual.Jason Wojciechowski
doctawojo
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Sunday, June 27th, 2010, 5:55 pm
Kurt Suzuki has magic!
The post just prior to this one
describes the magic of Monte Moore talking about Ringer Dingers leading to Kurt
Suzuki hitting a homer to left-center field. Today, it happened again.
In the bottom of the eighth of a 2-2 game with the Pirates, Kurt Suzuki stepped
to the plate, saw a couple of pitches, and hit a popup in foul ground between
home and first. Jason Jaramillo, the Pirates catcher, biffed it, right off the
heel of his glove. Ray Fosse immediately noted (probably commenting on the
silliness of the rule) that if Kurt Suzuki hit a homer in this at-bat, it'd
count as an unearned run for the pitcher, Evan Meek.
You don't need me to tell you what Suzuki did on the very next pitch he
saw. It was a shot, too, a no-doubter high and deep into the left field
bleachers.
(Oakland went on to win as Andrew Bailey worked around a leadoff single and a
two-out walk to get the save in the top of the ninth. The single was erased on
a 6-4-3 double play with a typically genius pivot by Mark Ellis. The walk?
Jose Tabata blasted a ball on the ground toward the 3-4 hole ... which bonked
the runner going to second. Greg Papa: "If that doesn't say it all for the
Pirates." I almost feel bad.)
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