A Hodgepodge Of Links

I really wish I had time for a detailed and focused post, but alas, life intervenes. Here are some links that I found interesting to help tide you over:

• The Red Sox released starting pitcher and failed mega-bargain Brad Penny. Coupled with John Smoltz’ ineptitude and subsequent departure, this development is more than a little bit satisfying considering the praise heaped upon the Red Sox for their low-cost offseason shopping. I have a serious but unrealistic suggestion, though: the Yankees should look into acquiring Penny. The Red Sox couldn’t afford his poor performance because (a) he was effectively their #3 starter and (b) they’re in the thick of the playoff race. Surely, however, Penny would be an upgrade on the Sergio Mitre/Chad Gaudin duo that currently occupies the Yankees’ fifth rotation slot, right? Rob Neyer may well agree with me.

• Deadspin has a brief but outstanding piece about the damaging role of machismo and toughness in professional football. I’ve often thought about making this same point, but Dashiell Bennett conveys in a few hundred words what would have taken me about a thousand. Beware: some of the language in the accompanying video clip is a little off-color.

• An appeals court has ruled that the government was wrong to seize the list and samples of the 104 Major League Baseball players who tested positive for banned substances in 2003. Great, this really helps David Ortiz and Alex Rodriguez, who have had their reputations and accomplishments tainted by the egregious violation of their basic rights. What do the players think? Most seem to want the entire list released which, as I’ve said, is a horrible idea. Brian Bannister has the right idea though. Just another reason he’s one of my favorite pitchers.

• Schadenfreude for Louisville (and probably many Kentucky) fans.

• Masochism for Knicks’ fans.

Happy Thursday, everyone.

Fan Interference’s First Poll

Because this is clearly a hot topic:

Mariano Rivera’s Cy Young Candidacy Relies On The Overvaluing Of Closers

A little over a week ago, I offered my opinion about who should win the American League’s Most Valuable Player award. In a roundabout sort of way, and after wondering why Kevin Youkilis hasn’t garnered more support, I said it’s clear that Minnesota’s Joe Mauer is most deserving of the honor. In fact, this is the rare race in which there is an unquestionably right answer; Mauer is the league’s most valuable player, and if you think otherwise, you are wrong. Baseball Prospectus’ Joe Sheehan agrees with me, even if he is more optimistic than I am about the voters ultimately choosing Mauer. In any case, I no longer feel compelled to participate in this particular debate (unless he doesn’t win, in which case you will most certainly be hearing from me).

I hadn’t thought much about the American League Cy Young award race until last night. I was watching the MLB Network when former player-turned-analyst Dan Plesac said something very closely resembling the following:

“I’ll tell you what, Mariano Rivera should be in the thick of the Cy Young discussion. He’s simply the best ever at his position and he’s having another great season. To have a guy that can come in and get the twenty-sixth, twenty-sev… uh, the last few outs of the game every time, that’s a huge advantage for a team. I know there’s the Rolaids award for relief pitchers, but he should be in the Cy Young discussion.”

After chuckling at Plesac’s struggle to remember the number of outs typically required for a baseball game to end, I paused to consider his opinion. Then I rejected it.

As I’ve mentioned several times, 70 innings of brilliant pitching are not as valuable to a team as 200 innings of excellent pitching. One time, I was condescendingly instructed “not to think of it as innings pitched, but as appearances, as the number of games a player can affect” (had this person written his suggestion, I’m positive he would have written “effect”). This is also wrong. A team must throw a minimum of 1,458 innings to make it through a baseball season. You can divide the pitchers up into however many appearances you’d like, but the minimum number of innings is static. Wouldn’t you rather have 15% of those innings soaked up by an excellent pitcher, instead of 5% by a brilliant one? Especially when that 5% is often against the bad part of a lineup with a three-run lead? This is why I disregard relief pitchers as Cy Young candidates. Unless the reliever throws 100 brilliant, high-stakes innings (no, the 9th inning does not automatically qualify), he’s not qualified to win the award.

Mariano Rivera’s proposed candidacy gets even more dubious when you look at the numbers themselves. Look at Rivera’s key statistics compared to the two most qualified Cy Young award candidates, Zach Greinke and Felix Hernandez:

• Rivera: 53 IP, 1.87 ERA, 1.0 HR/9, 1.5 BB/9, 10.0 K/9
• Greinke: 173.1 IP, 2.44 ERA, 0.5 HR/9, 2.0 BB/9, 9.5 K/9
• Hernandez: 178.1 IP, 2.73 ERA, 0.7 HR/9, 2.7 BB/9, 8.7 K/9

Greinke and Hernandez (the former in particular) have performed about as well as Rivera, but in three times as many innings pitched. That has much greater value to a team than Rivera’s small but brilliant contribution.

I think there’s no chance of Rivera actually winning the award, so I’m not as worked up about this as Mauer’s candidacy. But I think Plesac’s misguided opinion of closers’ contributions to a team is fairly common and needed rebutting. A good starter is more valuable than a great closer, period. Assuming Mauer wins the AL MVP award, I hope that this realization is the next frontier in Cy Young voting.

The Only Time I Will Ever Defend A Mets Fan

Watch this…:

… and tell me how the beer pourer should ever be allowed into another Major League Baseball game. He pours a beer on a Mets fan’s head, and then when the fan has the audacity to get really angry about it, the pourer indignantly punches him in the face. Incredible. I hate him for making me defend a Mets fan.

Time for the Tim Lincecum-Ubaldo Jimenez pitching matchup. Enjoy your Sunday.

Archimedes, Descartes, Pythagoras… Papelbon?

The face of genius

At the risk of generalizing about professional athletes (too late, already happened), this is why sports networks should employ them for their knowledge of a game’s mechanics, and not for their analytical skills:

“We’re 8-4 against them this season,” [Jonathan Papelbon] said about the Bombers, who begin a three-game set at Fenway Park tonight. “We beat them half the time.”

Wow.

Today’s Head-Shaker

Plaxico Burress gets two years in prison for accidentally shooting himself in the leg with his unlicensed firearm.

Donte’ Stallworth gets 30 days in jail – and is released after 24 – for killing a guy while driving drunk.

Are there any lawyers out there that can explain this to me?

Why I Do This

Two days ago, I read a Baseball Prospectus interview with Fox Sports’ Pete Macheska. Macheska, who is the Emmy-winning lead producer for the network’s Major League Baseball coverage, oversees what I have long-considered to be the least progressive baseball broadcast on television. Before reading the interview, I consciously hoped to myself that the interviewer would focus on the network’s continual resistance to embracing even the most basic of the “new age” baseball statistics. Thankfully, that’s exactly what happened, even if Macheska’s response truly and viscerally bummed me out for about an hour. Here are the most important – and most disconcerting – quotes:

“My feeling nowadays is there’s so many stats, and the people that are most important—the announcers and the producer and the director—are not in control of those stats.”

So I asked Macheska about OBP, a fairly straightforward stat that’s starting to show up on the broadcast templates of other networks, but not on Fox. His response points to another factor that has an impact on the stats viewers get to see.

“Yeah, we’ve talked about stuff like that. But I think if you listen to Tim McCarver’s philosophy, on-base percentage is different for Albert Pujols compared to a guy who can run. I think what’s pertinent is that a .429 on-base percentage for Albert Pujols, someone who’s not as speedy as, say, Jose Reyes – it matters differently. That’s Tim’s philosophy, and we just sort of follow that.”

Things we have learned so far:

1. Key members of a baseball broadcast aren’t familiar with many of today’s statistics.
2. Pete Macheska listens to Tim McCarver. Peruse this, and you’ll know why that’s bad.
3. Tim McCarver thinks that Albert Pujols making an out hurts the team less than a fast guy making an out.

It continues:

“Eric Karros may have a different opinion than Tim McCarver or Mark Grace, so you may see [differences]. But basically we go by Tim more or less when we set the template, and on something like on-base percentage we just decided not to. I’m not saying we shouldn’t revisit that, but I think Tim is the one that’s not… he wouldn’t be against it, but I don’t think he’s as thrilled with that as others are. If you put on-base percentage on there, you’re making the graphic longer, and sometimes less is more. Each spring you go through these types of decisions and you ask, what’s the risk/reward? If you feel it’s not adding a lot, then you leave it off. And the other thing is, sometimes you can put up a statistic and the announcer doesn’t believe in it, or if it needs explaining they don’t explain it properly. Then what have we really accomplished except confusing people?”

Tim McCarver doesn’t believe in on-base percentage or, if he does, he doesn’t know how to explain it properly. I would just like to take this moment to point out that on-base percentage is defined as how often a player gets on base. It’s likely to confuse people, I know.

Even with my intense displeasure with what I was reading, I decided not to blog about it because there’s not much to talk about. It’s just another example of a prominent media member not putting in the time and effort to understand the changing landscape of baseball coverage. It was disheartening, but not worthy of a post.

Then, I stumbled upon Dave Cameron’s piece at FanGraphs. He simply asks why mainstream media folk and sabermetricians spend so much time trying to convince one another that their opinion is unquestionably right. He argues that we don’t need to all be of the same mind – particularly with respect to award winners – because the easy access to baseball statistics allows for objective retrospection, no matter what you believe. He says that regardless of who wins what awards, we can look back on this season, remember who was good, and pass on that personal truth to whomever we see fit. The money quotes:

With the invention of the internet (thanks Al!), we don’t need to look back through a list of MVP awards to remember who was good way back when. We have baseball-reference for that. History isn’t recorded in trophies, but in data and stories, and we now have the capability to store a massive amount of both. No matter who wins the AL MVP award this season, we’re going to have a ridiculous amount of information about what happened on the field in 2009, and we’ll be able to show our kids and their kids just how much fun it was to watch Joe Mauer play baseball. The history of the game, as told by us, won’t be changed one iota by how the BBWAA votes in six weeks.

If they want to think that Teixeira was the most important player to his team in the league this year, that’s fine. Most of us probably disagree, and we’re under no obligation to report that as any kind of factual statement. I’ll be telling people that Mauer was the most valuable player in the American League for 2009, and I’ve got a mountain of information to back it up. How other people view the definition of the word value has no real world impact on me.

. . .

Let them vote for whoever they want. I don’t care.

I do care, and the Baseball Prospectus interview with Pete Macheska shows exactly why. I want people to understand how baseball works because the qualities necessary to do so – objectivity, creativity, flexibility, and plain old persistence – are some of the most admirable characteristics around. I care that the right person wins each award because, like many people, I want the world around me to make sense. I care because I want people to make smart and reasoned choices. I care because I believe in open-mindedness and a receptiveness to new ideas. I care because the failure to even to attempt to understand something – total, out-of-hand rejection – falls somewhere in between crippling and repulsive. I care because the moment you’ve simply decided to stop listening, learning, and entertaining new ideas, you’ve pretty much packed it in as a person. I care because my greatest fear is that I’ll one day end up like the very people I’ve criticized in this space – obstinate, defensive, lazy, and resistant to change.

Call me melodramatic, but that’s why I do this. It’s not to make people feel dumb or make me feel smart. It’s to reveal the sheer intractability of much of the sports media with the simple hope that one person will read this, say “hey, that makes sense,” and start looking at things a little bit differently.

The Chicago White Sox Are Not “Underachievers”

Kenny Williams and Ozzie Guillen, possibly bickering about whose idea it was to trade Nick Swisher for Wilson Betemit

Yesterday, Chicago White Sox general manager Kenny Williams offered his opinion about the state of his team:

“I’m not happy with the past road trip. We lost two games that we should’ve won. That [would've] put us a half game out of first place. We’ve thrown away a dozen games that way this year. We’ve deserved what we’ve got. I’m not happy. I’m not happy with a lot of what I see, we’re underachievers, period.”

Manager Ozzie Guillen shared Williams’ feelings:

“The way Kenny built this ballclub, there’s no doubt we’re better than .500. Look at our lineup, look at our pitching staff. Don’t look at our defense, please. Don’t look at that one, we’re horrible. But if you look at the team and say this is a .500 team, you have to be wrong.”

I’m sorry, but I don’t see any evidence to support their labeling of the White Sox as “underachieving.” The team is 61-58 this season, and has outscored opponents by 15 runs. Three games above .500 is just about what you’d expect for a team with a +15 run differential, so there’s no argument there. But maybe Williams and Guillen are referring to the individual performances that actually comprise a team’s runs scored and runs allowed. Maybe they see a roster full of players that simply haven’t done what was expected of them.

Let’s look at the offense first. 33-year-old Paul Konerko has improved his OPS from .782 to .819. Given that players in their 30s rarely make real improvements, this can’t been seen as disappointing. Alexei Ramirez’s OPS has dropped from .792 to .749, but his OBP has increased and he’s on pace for the same number of home runs, so there’s not much to complain about there. 35-year-old Jermaine Dye is having basically the same season as last season, except for a decline in doubles. But… he’s 35. Somehow, 33-year-old Scott Podsednik has given the White Sox 418 plate appearances of .297/.349/.392 hitting, which currently stands as the second-best season of his career. That’s actually a huge bit of overachieving. 32-year-old A.J. Pierzynski has improved his OPS by nearly 100 points, which is both improbable and fortuitous. 38-year-old Jim Thome is having a marginally better season than last. Rookie Gordon Beckham has been incredible at third base. Second base and center field have been offensive black holes, but that’s what you get when you rely on Chris Getz, Jayson Nix, Brian Anderson, and Dewayne Wise for production. The only truly disappointing bat in the White Sox lineup has been Carlos Quentin, who simply hasn’t returned to form following his return from a foot injury. On the aggregate, however, you could make a pretty strong argument that the White Sox have actually overachieved offensively.

Maybe the pitching staff has regressed since last season. Mark Buehrle is pitching almost exactly as well as he did last season. Gavin Floyd’s ERA has increased very slightly, but he’s walking fewer batters, striking out more, and keeping the ball in the ballpark. His ERA should drop to a sub-2008 level. John Danks‘ ERA has risen from 3.32 to 3.96, but relying on him for a repeat performance would be imprudent management. Jose Contreras has been much worse than last year, which is to be expected from a 37-year-old with one good season to his name. Clayton Richard was league-average before being traded to the San Diego Padres in the Jake Peavy deal. Bartolo Colon was the Scott Podsednik of the pitching staff, improbably giving the team 62 innings of 4.19 ERA ball before getting injured. The bullpen has basically repeated its very good 2008 performance. Last year, White Sox relievers posted a 4.06 ERA, .731 OPS against, and 2.49 K/BB. This season, those numbers are 3.85, .732, and 2.11. As you can see, White Sox pitching hasn’t underachieved either. The defense has been exactly as bad as it was last season, too.

It appears to me that the White Sox are truly and sustainably exactly what Ozzie Guillen denies they are – a .500 team. Offensively, the team has overachieved at every position except for second base and center field, positions Kenny Williams apparently chose to punt by relying on awful players for league-average production. The pitching staff has seen consistency from those in their primes (Buehrle, Floyd), growing pains from those approaching it (Danks), and ineptitude from the inept (Contreras). None of that should be surprising to Williams or Guillen.

In the end, Williams’ and Guillen’s shared assessment is a reminder of how managers of questionable quality think. Far too often, they look at previous season’s good individual performances and decide that they will hold constant. They decide that the player has sustainably improved his skills, and that his excellence will become his new norm. In other words, they see what they want to see instead of what a reasoned mix of statistics, scouting, and common sense suggests. This failure to evaluate personnel properly affects the perceived needs and ultimate construction of future teams. It also leads to quotes like the one above, which baffles me not because I agree with it, but because it’s so obviously wrong.

Kevin Youkilis’ Strange Absence From AL MVP Consideration

Although currently undeserving, Kevin Youkilis has been strangely absent from the AL MVP discussion.

I had a wild Saturday night this past weekend. Around 10:30, I tuned the radio to the Yankees-Mariners game. Then, I got into bed and fell asleep. At some point between 11 o’clock and midnight, however, I woke up to the soothing sounds of a good, old-fashioned debate about who deserved the league’s Most Valuable Player award.

Broadcasters John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman invited the Daily News’ Mark Feinsand into the booth to discuss the candidates. Even in a sleepy daze, it was easy to tell that the three were collaborating in starting the “Mark Teixeira for MVP” meme. Sterling gushed about Teixeira’s unparalleled defense, Waldman about his knack for getting the big hit, and Feinsand about anything that his hosts missed. At the end of the inning, the three concluded that Teixeira is the frontrunner, with Detroit’s Miguel Cabrera (not enough RBIs) and Minnesota’s Joe Mauer (on a bad team) next in line.

Before making my surprising suggestion, I want to be clear about the fact that Joe Mauer has clearly been the American League’s MVP so far this season. Mauer – a catcher – has a .377/.444/.626 line this season, including 22 home runs and only 46 strikeouts. He’s an exceptional hitter at home (1.166 OPS), and merely excellent on the road (.983). In fact, Mauer is having the single best offensive season by a catcher in baseball history (186 OPS+), just ahead of Mike Piazza’s 1997 season. If the season ended today, Mauer should be the league’s MVP, and it’s not even close.

Given that Sterling, Waldman, and Feinsand were intent on ignoring Mauer’s historic greatness, I wondered to myself (and to you, now) why Kevin Youkilis was not mentioned. Certainly, I find the Red Sox first baseman whiny, hyperemotional, and generally unlikeable, but he’s having a superb season. His .311/.424/.564 line trumps Teixeira’s .285/.382/.557, and his home/away split isn’t nearly as comical as his counterpart on the Yankees’. Furthermore – and you will most likely get shot here in New York for saying this – Youkilis’ defense has been better than Teixeira’s. Finally, Youkilis is on a winning team and has that fiery, scrappy, team leader-y (read: he’s white and looks like he’s trying hard) thing down pat, which MVP voters absolutely love. As you can see, Youkilis has satisfied the historically important criteria for MVP consideration, and yet his name remains conspicuously absent from any preliminary lists.

Again, the AL MVP award should be Joe Mauer’s to lose. But for now, I just wanted to help beat back the idea that Mark Teixeira is clearly the frontrunner. After all, he isn’t even the most valuable Yankee.

Bronson Arroyo: My New Favorite Baseball Player

Because he said these things:

“I have a lot of guys in [the locker room] who think I’m out of [my] mind because I’m taking a lot of things not on the [MLB-approved] list. I take 10 to 12 different things a day, and on the days I pitch, there’s four more things. There’s a caffeine drink I take from a company that Curt Schilling introduced me to in ‘05. I take some Korean ginseng and a few other proteins out there that are not certified. But I haven’t failed any tests, so I figured I’m good.”

. . .

“I do what I want to do and say what I want to say. But society has made this such a tainted thing. The media has made it where people look at it in such a super-negative light. I’ve always been honest. I’m not going to stop now.”

. . .

“[Amphetamines are] like bubble gum compared to steroids. You’re playing [night games] in L.A., you fly across the country, and you’re pitching a day game at Wrigley [Field in Chicago]. You telling me you don’t want something to wake you up? You have half this country, maybe more, that can’t function without a cup of coffee.”

. . .

“I can see where guys like Hank Aaron and some of the old-timers have a beef with it. But as far as looking at Manny Ramirez like he’s [serial killer] Ted Bundy, you’re out of your mind. At the end of the day, you think anybody really [cares] whether Manny Ramirez’s kidneys fail and he dies at 50?”

. . .

“You think this country really cares about what ballplayers put in their bodies? If we really care, why are we pumping Coca-Cola in every kid’s mouth, and McDonald’s, and Burger King and KFC? That (stuff) is killing people.”

And my personal favorite:

“If Mark McGwire is hitting 60 homers, the only thing that matters is his performance. People don’t own teams to lose money. If you ask any owner whether they would rather make $20 million and come in last place or lose $20 million and win a World Series, there’s only one guy who honestly would take that championship: George Steinbrenner. Nobody else.”

In an interview that probably took five minutes, Bronson Arroyo was more honest about performance-enhancing drugs and their place in the game than Bud Selig has been over the course of several years.