PEC-ing Order

Now that I have gone through a cursory overview of several teams for the 2006 season, I can break it down just a little further, examining individual performances for the upcoming year. Baseball Prospectus recently released its 2006 PECOTA projections, providing a useful analytic tool as one of the most accurate forecasting tools known to baseball fans. What is PECOTA, you ask? First, what it’s not. More to the point, PECOTA is the brainchild of BP’s Nate Silver. It uses a combination of historically comparable players, performance data (recent and career) and playing time progressions. Taken together, the profile has been historically remarkably accurate, and was made even better this year by the inclusion of groundball-flyball data, which is especially helpful for evaluating pitchers. For a more complete description, BP offers the full implement of explanations here.

So far, BP has only released a titanic spreadsheet listing every player’s weighted mean projection, so weeding through the mess can be quite a task. The mountains of data are very intriguing, though, so I’ll dedicate a fair amount of time to it. Today, I will start with the Twins position players before continuing with the pitching staff later in the week. Eventually, I plan to also look at some of the players across the majors whose PECOTA projects to have big gains or losses. After all, I should probably dedicate at least one in five columns to the Twins if I’m going to pretend to be a Minnesota blogger. For sporting sake, let’s assume that the 2006 lineup will stack up something like this:

LF- Shannon Stewart: 2005 line, .274/.322/.388, 9.0 VORP; 2006 projection, .276/.339/.412, 4.8 VORP. It seemed reasonable that 2005 was an aberration for a player who doesn’t really rely on his speed and who exhibits very good plate discipline. But reality does not look so optimistic with PECOTA treating 2005 as a sign of his decline instead of a string of bad luck. The hardest part to swallow is that his one brilliant half-season will mean Gardenhire keeps him at the top of the lineup no matter how poorly he performs. Even Christian Guzman got that privilege and he was never even good.

2B- Luis Castillo: 2005, .301/.378/.374, 27.7 VORP; 2006, .299/.374/.364, 24.1 VORP. We are all pinning our hopes for an improved offense on Castillo’s relatively narrow shoulders, so it is a relief that the other 30+ burner at the top of the lineup is not in the midst of a rapid decline. He won’t hit for power, but he’s never hit for power, so let’s be realistic. Also, don’t worry about the 3.6 runs of VORP he is projected to give up, as PECOTA is judicious with playing time projections, and Castillo’s a safe bet with a small 12% Collapse Rate.

C- Joe Mauer: 2005, .294/.372/.411, 40.9 VORP; 2006, .299/.361/.453, 33.1 VORP. Mauer’s power progress (gaining about 40 points of SLG) is the most important marker in his development. Young players with good walk rates can take a few years to start hitting for power. Also, his 48% Improve Rate is exceptional for a player coming off of a strong year (improve rate is defined as the likelihood that he will replicate last year’s EQR/PA).

CF- Torii Hunter: 2005, .269/.337/.452, 24.4 VORP; 2006, .272/.330/.460, 19.2 VORP. Hunter also projects to a -2 fielding rate in CF, another sign that age is catching up with the face of the team. I would say that Hunter is no longer a star, but that would be assuming that he was a star at some point in the past. There is something to be said for a .460 SLG in CF, but a return to offensive respectability won’t be Hunter’s responsibility.

1B- Justin Morneau: 2005, .239/.304/.437, 8.6 VORP; 2006, .270/.336/.493, 21.4 VORP. Even though PECOTA does not have an inbuilt mechanism to account for diminished performance for players who played hurt, it still has Morneau making strides. He has a huge 27% Breakout Rate (20% improvement), a range usually reserved for rookies who had only a handful of PA the year before. .270/.336/.493 would have been disappointing last year, but it looks pretty good from where I sit. He’s also projected for 28 HRs, tantalizingly close to the 30 that has eluded Twins batters for the last 18 years.

DH- Rondell White: 2005, .313/.346/.489, 30.0 VORP; 2006, .292/.338/.463, 15.7 VORP. Don’t look at the decline as much as what he replaces. Jacque Jones is pegged for 6.0 runs of VORP, so even White’s comparatively modest season looks much healthier in context.

RF- Mike Cuddyer: 2005, .263/.330/.422, 14.2 VORP; 2006, .265/.339/.436, 14.8 VORP. For those who still think that Cuddyer is waiting to fit into a full time job somewhere that will make him comfortable, rest assured that he can be a productive player while squarely below star-level. His 21% Breakout Rate is very good, so don’t be shocked if he spikes in his age 27 (prime) season. Also, the positional alignment is more of an educated guess than a normative suggestion, so take it with a grain of salt.

3B- Tony Batista: 2005, Sushi/Anime/Honor, Japanese Stereotype VORP; 2006, .245/.289/.400, -0.4 VORP. If it is any consolation, BP recently pointed out that Batista’s fielding advantage over last year’s 3B rabble offsets his weak bat. Also, keep in mind that Terry Tiffee started 24 games at third last year and had cumulative OBP and SLG less than .300. Batista can only say that of his OBP year in and year out. He’s also only slated to play 69 games. Who am I kidding- this section is the most depressing thing this side of a burn victim section of a hospital.

SS- Juan Castro: 2005, .257/.271/.386, 2.2 VORP; 2006, .255/.287/.379, 1.0 VORP. Castro isn’t in the lineup for his bat so much as his glove, but that principle can only go so far. The main offseason goal was to improve the offense, and the Twins stand to start four players with SLG of .400 or less and two with sub-.300 OBP. Maybe it is improvement, but not to a level that can make the postseason.

Others receiving significant playing time:
SS- Jason Bartlett: 2005, .241/.313/.335, 4.2 VORP; 2006, .271/.340/.394, 17.3 VORP. And guess what; he projects as a better fielder than Castro, too!

DH/OF- Lew Ford: 2005, .264/.337/.377, 15.5 VORP; .278/.343/.416, 14.6 VORP. Ford’s 2005 confused me so much that his was the first forecast I looked up after downloading the PECOTA spreadsheet. Players who debut late tend to peak early, but continuing last year’s performance would be Paul Loduca’s career arc to the extreme. I’m glad to see that he has a solid chance of a rebound, which could be useful considering the injury concerns of Hunter, Stewart and White.

IF- Nick Punto: 2005, .239/.296/.335, -2.0 VORP; 2006, .255/.319/.361, 6.2 VORP. The best thing about Punto is that he’s alphabetically next to Albert Pujols, so one could accidentally read his projection as an 88.3 VORP. Did you realize the Punto recently got a raise? Whose idea was that? That would be like a football player having a historically bad season, getting badly injured, then finding himself in legal trouble for indiscretions from his time spent on the IR, then demanding job assurance and a bigger contract. No, not quite that absurd.

All told, the tools for a better offense are there, but at least a couple of them are hidden on the bench (Bartlett, Ford) and a couple others have substantial injury issues (Morneau, White, Hunter). I'll have more in the line of summaries after looking at the pitching staff next time.

Alligator Blood

Baseball Prospectus runs rankings in a certain one of its own stats every day on its main page. They have enough stats that they can continually update the display throughout the year, ranging from best Team Defensive Efficiency to worst VORP among NL catchers. Today, the stat ranking was the top AL relievers in terms of leverage, which caught my eye because two Twins, Nathan and Rincon, ranked in the top seven. I looked deeper, and it brought up a series of interesting questions.

The first interesting stat that jumped off the page was that eight of the top nine relievers (min 40 IP) in terms of leverage played for winning teams. That fact may not seem surprising at first, but it should once you consider the nature of reliever game-state leverage. Think of what it means to be pitching in a high-leverage state: the later and closer the game is, the higher the leverage of the situation will be. All games are close at the beginning, but the better or worse a team is, the less close the game tends to be as it gets towards the end (which is the time when a) relievers pitch and b) leverage ramps up). In other words, teams around .500 should have higher leverage situations than teams who are very good or very bad, as they tend to separate even within a nine-inning sample- the same rationale for why winning blowouts is a better measure of a good team than winning one-run games, which is that it involves less luck and more skill. It doesn’t so much matter whether the team is stronger at the plate or in the field, since game-state stats treat every run as equally important, even though it is actually probably a bit more difficult to score the first run of the game in the 7th inning than it would be to score the 10th run of the game in the 7th inning due to bullpen usage patterns and psychological concerns, but that is another issue for another time. That is to say that the leverage would be the same going into, say, the 8th inning of a game with the score 3-2 as it would be if the score was 12-11.

So having eight of the top nine relievers playing for winning teams (including six on 90 win teams) is something of an aberration; it should be roughly equally balanced between winning and losing teams who are all close to .500 (meaning they maximize high-leverage situations by playing in less blowouts either winning or losing). To see if that aberrant result was repeated in the NL, I skipped over to the senior circuit’s leverage report, which featured an astounding six pitchers from 79-83 win teams in the top nine, meaning fully two-thirds of the highest leverage pitchers in the league came from a range covering one-third of the NL’s teams. While the sample is not large enough to prove much, it confirmed my belief that the AL report smelled wrong.

That query got me on the subject of how these teams got so many high-leverage situations, since it is not realistic to think that the Yankees, Angels, Indians and White Sox were ALL playing a disproportionate number of close games. That turned out to be basically true- the AL Central teams were close to league average in one-run games, the Yankees were well below average and the Angels well above. But that raised the question of performance in close games; perhaps it was strong bullpens that made these teams winners, which would explain part of the statistical aberration. If all of the pitchers who led the league in leverage were exceptionally successful in those situations, it would go a long way towards transforming a good team into a very good one. But there is even a strong amount of variation in that category, as the Yankees and White Sox were very good in one-run games, the Indians very bad and the Angels about as good as they were in less close games.

Taking a step back, though, one-run games don’t tell us everything about how well a bullpen performed. Due to the save rule, most managers treat a one-run lead the same as they would treat a two- or three-run lead, and games where the bullpen pitched well enough to allow the offense to get close can actually work against them (which might help explain why the Indians one-run record is so bad even though the bullpen was good). In fact, all five of these teams, including the sub-90 win Twins now, have bullpens with excellent reputations. So if the leverage stat is correct and all of these teams had many close scores late in games, what made the difference? The obvious reaction would be that the Twins offense was deficient, but the nature of the question standardizes that solution away; the run scoring/run preventing combination in the early innings got them into close games just like those units for the White Sox, Indians, Yankees and Angels, but they turned that multitude of high-leverage situations into 83 wins rather than 93 or more, as the other four did.

Now, I understand that there are methodological concerns here, namely that the Twins had more pitchers near the top of the leverage list (3 of the top 14), meaning they probably had even more high leverage situations than these other teams who were represented by one or two pitchers at the top. Still, I think it demonstrates that the Twins big three of Nathan, Rincon and Crain have been slightly overrated exactly because they pitch in such high-leverage situations. Look what it did for Jose Mesa; he completed a year of sub-replacement level relief for Pittsburgh but ranked third in the league in leverage and was able to get a lucrative contract out of it with Colorado. The same effect may be at play for the Twins. If you see a pitcher pitching at big times frequently enough, he may start to seem like a big time pitcher, inflating his reputation over his true ability.

I do not mean to say that the Twins relief aces are bad pitchers. Actually, they all rank in the top 13 in the league in WX (reliever win expectancy, compared to league average, not adjusted for leverage), implying that they are solid through and through. Still, don’t look for any of them to break through in the near future, as underrated pitchers would tend to be those with high WX’s and low leverage, otherwise known as dominance in mop-up duty, a combination that allowed pitchers like Scot Shields, Scott Linebrink and Ray King to fly under the radar in 2004 before posting higher-leverage, higher-profile 2005s. Similarly, don’t be surprised if Dan Wheeler, Al Reyes, Jason Frasor and/or Justin Duchsherer step into brighter lights in the coming season.

Up for the Downstroke

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been looking into 2005 records across MLB and picking teams that are good bets to improve or decline, but remain under the radar. Toronto and Florida are obvious examples of teams who are a good bet to change their record from last year in one way or another, but I’m more interested in teams who have not received much attention, but are good bets to surprise next year, for better or worse. As I have mentioned earlier, teams with great records or terrible records are generally good bets to change the next year. No matter how good or bad a team is, approaching 100 wins or losses usually takes some luck, which was certainly the case for several teams last year. In today’s final edition of the series, I construct an honorable mention list for teams on the decline to accompany the Yankees and Padres on my disappointments list. The trend of lucky good teams and unlucky bad teams is even more present in today’s column, as I put the kiss of death on several reigning division champions. Keep in mind, though, that if any of the teams on this list manage to repeat the over- or under-performance regarding their Pythagorean projections, their records won’t change as much as one would anticipate. On the other hand, even a basic understanding of regression to the mean would indicate that luck or other intangible factors will not persist. More importantly, anyone dealing in projections cannot take luck as given; it’s exogenous.

Honorable Mention:

Chicago White Sox: As much as I complained about the Pale Hoes last season, I have to admit that I really like their off-season moves. Orlando Hernandez looked like the one rotational weak link last year as he advanced in years, and Kenny Williams used the extra revenue that comes with being the champ to spin him for Javier Vazquez, a solid workhorse at very least, leaving Brandon McCarthy in reserve. He also managed to get rid of a situational lefty who did not get along with management for a useful and versatile backup (Marte for Mackowiak), much more successfully than Terry Ryan did with J.C. Romero. I’m not entirely sold on Jim Thome’s health, as players with his profile don’t typically recover very well, but they are deeper and more powerful than last year. Still, no team was luckier last year than the White Sox in more ways than one. For all the hype about last year’s pitching staff gave up two more runs than divisional foe Cleveland while the offense scored 49 fewer runs. Based on their Pythagorean record, they were the win-luckiest team in the league, and RS-RA stats don’t have the same shortcomings regarding defense as other metrics. Also, a team built around players like Jermaine Dye, Jose Contreras and Bobby Jenks stayed healthy for nearly the entire season. Making Jim Thome a cog in that equation makes the likelihood of a cataclysmic injury even luckier. Regression on either of these fronts could cost the champs a playoff spot in a tough division, even though they are better than they were last year.

Los Angeles de Los Angeles: While the Angels weren’t as lucky as the Sox in 2005, their seven game edge over the A’s in the AL West is cut down to a .7 game advantage when run differentials are taken into account. Theirs is more of a traditional story of decline with Paul Byrd, Jarrod Washburn and Funky Ben Molina exiting stage right after their appearance in the ALCS. Byrd and Washburn may not stand to compete for the Cy Young anytime in the near future, but they performed very well for the Angels last year, and they have to replace that performance to get back to the same level, whether it was a fluke or not. Washburn’s 48.8 VORP and Byrd’s 37.3 rank them in the AL’s top 20, and Molina was the third best on the Angel’s offense. Shifting Erstad to CF will be an improvement over Steve Finley on offense and defense, but the pitching rotation behind Colon and Lackey will not be nearly as strong. Santana moves from the back of the rotation to the middle with the oft injured Kelvim Escobar and Hector Carrasco bringing up the rear instead of adding to their bullpen depth as they would be better served to do. Add in the aging effects on Erstad, Anderson, Cabrera and Kennedy and that Angels will be hard pressed to keep up with the surging White Elephants.

St. Louis Cardinals: Between LaRussa and Pujols, the Cardinals have become one of my favorite teams in the National League over the last several years. Unfortunately, their success the last two years didn’t earn them rings, and the window of opportunity is beginning to close. Jim Edmonds is talking about retirement at the end of the season, and his 50.4 VORP is well below the 74.4 average he established the previous three years. Getting Scott Rolen back will help, but losing Larry Walker and Reggie Sanders (4th and 5th on the team in VORP, respectively) will not. The replacements, Larry Bigbie and Juan Encarnacion, are not of the same caliber, and the rest of the offense performed up to their ability last year making it hard to find how the surplus runs will materialize. The good news is that they have put enough distance between themselves and the rest of the division to hold off the competition for one more season. Milwaukee is getting better, but they finished last season 19 games behind the Cards. Houston is going in the wrong direction, and the Cubs only chance is Zambrano, Prior and Wood remaining healthy all season (in other words, Kerry Wood has to be someone other than Kerry Wood, as injuries are as central to his identity as sequins to Liberace). With a few breaks in the postseason, the Cardinals could make one more run at the title. Luckily, they have a 26 year old who may be the game’s best player around whom they can build.

I’m Pretty Sure it Means “Saint Diego”
We’ll Have to Agree to Disagree

In searching for an overrated NL team or one who is ripe for a big fall, there are a few obvious choices. First, the Florida Marlins are a lock to lose more than 79 games, but that story is not particularly exciting or surprising, so I’ll skip it. Losing the Rocket puts Houston in the same boat, looking at a mediocre offense to go with only two of the big three. Washington and St. Louis are in similar trouble, facing an uphill battle to get back to their level of performance established last year. But the team I’m picking to spotlight is one that had a superficially successful off-season coming off of a postseason performance. So what makes San Diego’s situation problematic? Just as in the case of the Yankees which I discussed last week, the Padres have age issues which could start to slowly become a drag on the offense. Unlike the Yankees, many of the Padres have troubling injury histories which makes the age even more of a problem. Also like the Yankees, the Padres’ win total last year was bloated from what it should have been based on their run totals. Before going into greater detail, I’m going to officially anoint the Padres an upcoming disappointment by bolding their name.

San Diego Padres
2005 Record- 82-80, Pythagorean Record- 76-86
Notable Gains- Mike Cameron, Mark Bellhorn, Chris Young, Termel Sledge, Vinny Castilla, Doug Mirabelli
Notable Losses- Ramon Hernandez, Sean Burroughs, Chris Hammond, Akinori Otsuka, Joe Randa, Mark Loretta, Xavier Nady, Rudy Seanez, Adam Eaton

For a team with as much roster overhaul as this, the San Diego core remains relatively the same as it has been for the last several years. The lineup is still centered on Ryan Klesko and Brian Giles with Trevor Hoffman closing out games at the end. For all the noise they made in the offensive changes, the new starters look quite a bit worse than those whom they replaced. Here’s a look at it, position by position.

C: Out- Ramon Hernandez (29 years old, .274 EQA last year), In- Doug Mirabelli (35, .259)
2B- Out- Mark Loretta (34, .267 while injured), In- Mark Bellhorn (31, .256)
3B- Out- Joe Randa (36, .273), In- Vinny Castilla (38, .260)
OF- Out- Xavier Nady (27, .270), In- Mike Cameron (33, .285)

There is also the possibility that Mark Bellhorn loses out to Jesse Barfield at second, a 24 year old who hit .310/.370/.450 in the hit-happy PCL last season. Also, the defensive upgrade of Nady to Cameron allows Dave Roberts to shift to left, giving them two speedy glovemen to man the wide open spaces of Petco, albeit two glovemen on the wrong side of thirty with substantial injury issues over the last few years. No matter how you look at it, the offense is old with only Khalil Greene under 30. Brian Giles, the best offensive player is 36 and has nowhere to go but down.

The crux of the issue is that the Padres were not a very good team last year, lucking out and winning a terrible division with a sub .500 Pythagorean record. Now, Kevin Towers, who is a very good GM, seems like he has to remain competitive rather than trying to build from within. While some of their moves show foresight- like the acquisition of Chris Young for Adam Eaton, which makes the younger and cheaper, not to mention possibly better-, others are positional patch jobs that sacrifice value- like trading Loretta for career backup Mirabelli- and still others are image conscious moves that keep the team old and expensive and prevent retooling- Giles, Hoffman. Last year’s strong bullpen took a couple of hits when it lost Seanez, Hammond and Otsuka, but they have shown the ability to squeeze value out of live arms. The bigger problem is that they stand to get worse due to age, injuries or plainly bad moves across the board while the rest of the division gets a little better. San Diego’s best hope is that Roberts and Cameron have the same effect that Rowand and Podsednik had on last year’s White Sox, winning several games on difficultly quantified defensive ability. More likely, they will fail to again win six more games than their Pythagorean projections and they will fall behind resurgent Los Angeles and San Fransisco clubs.

Emphasis on the “Bombers”

After a brief digression to talk about Bruce Sutter’s beard, I’m back on track today, resuming my series on teams who are rising and falling, but whose changes might fall under the radar. Before I get into my first forthcoming disappointment, I’d like to remind everyone that the series is based on where I see teams falling relative to the popular perception of their progress.

With that said, today’s column is about an aging team with high expectations. The common sentiment is that the AL East was once again the sole property of the Yankees after Johnny Damon kissed Curt Schilling on the forehead while Bud Selig washed his hands and sealed the Red Sox fate. Still, the Yankees have enough of their own issues that Damon alone- himself vastly overrated- will not be enough to get them back to last season’s 95 wins. Before I go into more detail, it’s about time I gave this segment a heading.

New York Yankees
2005 Record- 95-67, Pythagorean- 90-72
Notable Gains- Johnny Damon, Kyle Farnsworth, Ron Villone, Mike Myers, Octavio Dotel, Miguel Cairo
Notable Losses- Tony Womack, Tom Gordon, Mark Bellhorn

The first warning sign for a team about to decline is that they played above their heads the year before. The Yankees have been especially lucky (or good in some immeasurable way) in some crucial situations the last few years. In 2004, their run differential predicted 89 wins while their actual record came out to 101-61. The second place Red Sox won 98 games, 96 by their Pythagorean differential. This year, both teams’ Pythagorean differentials predicted 90 wins, and the Yankees won 95, just enough to beat the Sox on a tiebreaker. As I mentioned in my previous article about the Blue Jays, the AL East elite is ripe for the picking due to a combination of over-performance and age. The Yankees are a prime example.

Look at the offense, for example. There has been much hullabaloo about the fact that Robinson Cano is the only regular making less than $10 million next year, but that says as much about the team’s age as it does about their qualifications. Due to major league service time rules, players don’t usually become free agents until they are in the middle or last stages of their primes. Players are supposed to reach their physical peak from age 27-29 and drop off at different rates after that period, and there are not terribly many exceptions (A-Rod became a free agent before his prime because he came up so young). Simply having a player who makes $10 million in a season is a pretty good sign that that player has already had his career year (Jason Giambi, anyone?).

So let’s take a tour of the Yankees, position by position. Jorge Posada will be 34 next year, not a particularly desirable age for a catcher, and his statistical record mirrors it. Posada’s OPS has gone from .923 to .881 to .782 the last three years while his WARP has gone from 10.4 to 8.4 to 6.5 over the same span. His defense has followed the same trend, his rate going from 106 to 101 to 98, the first time he’s been a below average defender since 1999. A rebound is exceedingly unlikely, but even if he stays at the same level, his most similar player is now Mike Lieberthal- not the greatest ever. Jason Giambi will play first base, which makes sense, since his three year OPS at 1B (.990) is almost .200 points better than his OPS as a DH (.798), and the sample is over 500 ABs at each spot. The downside is that he was 4 runs worse than a replacement first baseman last year, posting a miserable fielding rate of 88 (12 runs worse than average per 100 games). Since first isn’t particularly demanding, he’s probably better off taking the field, costing the team those runs and putting up a decent year at the plate. Problem is, none of these issues are going to get better after his 35th birthday. A-Rod’s 30, Jeter’s 31 and both are still very good, but A-Rod’s 2005 looks like Jeter’s 1999, and neither will ever have better seasons than those. A-Rod’s conditioning and pedigree makes me think that he will continue to be extremely productive, but it would extremely difficult for him to improve on such a great season, thus keeping the run differential the same. Even Cano played over his head last year, slugging almost .60 points better than PECOTA expected with .25 more points of OBP. He’s a good player, but not an All-Star, nor the stud he was last year. In the OF, three players over 30 have their own issues. Matsui is very consistent, and I expect him to remain at the same level, but I mentioned earlier that Johnny Damon’s stats will take a hit going from Fenway to Yankee Stadium, compounding the effects of aging. Sheffield is the worst case of the three, seeing his OPS slip from 1.023 to .927 to .891 the last three years. As with Posada, an older player (Sheffield’s 37) doesn’t usually reverse a three year trend like that. It’s not that the Yankees offense will suffer that badly, but I don’t see much room for improvement over what they got last year, and it will be difficult to continue performing so far over their run scoring/prevention abilities.

The pitching isn’t altogether different, as Randy Johnson and Mike Mussina started showing their age (3.79 and 4.41 ERAs respectively, not what we have come to expect from the superstar aces), and I don’t know what evidence suggests a reversal. Carl Pavano should be better and more durable than last year, but his improvement should be more than offset by the regression to the mean by Wang, Chacon, Wright and Small sharing the 4th and 5th starter slots. Just as on offense, the upside is not nearly enough to offset the natural decline of age (Sheffield, Posada, Johnson, Mussina) combined with a couple of fluky performances (Cano, Chacon, Small) coming back to reasonability. The bullpen will be better, but not enough to reverse the tide, and certainly not enough to get them 10 more (predicted) wins, back to the 100 win plateau everyone seems to expect.

I’m Bruce Sutter, Baby! The Cock of the Walk!

Today’s column theme could be returning to reality, which would be appropriate to me not only for transitioning my rising and falling series into its second half, but also for its timing, on the eve of my final semester of undergraduate work. But I’m not the only one with a fancy ceremony in the near future (sorry for that shamelessly stretched transition), as Bruce Sutter was elected to the Hall of Fame today, headlining something of a lackluster class. So I’ll put off the forthcoming disappointments for a day or two in order that I comment on Sutter’s election.

First of all, I should clear the air on the facial hair issue. Some people think any facial hair looks sloppy, but I believe the opposite; pretty much any facial hair is better than none at all. I love the ‘80s Keith Hernandez porn-stache, the Priestly-to-Prior borderline lamb chops, Jeff Bagwell’s imitation of Scott Ian from Anthrax circa 2000, Gagne’s goat and Kevin Millar’s Hulkamania Fu Manchu. I even liked it when Shaq sported his “sideburns only” do, perfectly complementing his bic’d skull with some carefully crafted chops. Bruce Sutter may wear the crown for baseball’s best facial hair in the all-time category with his Bob Seger-esque mountain man beard. In fact, this picture of Sutter approximates my own head and facial hair styling now, so it would be natural to think that I’m a big Bruce Sutter fan. On the contrary, I’m not particularly fond of voting in any relievers unless they are remarkably dominant AND have some other qualification on the resume. Mariano Rivera will retire with much more impressive stats than Sutter AND he has his World Series heroics to bolster his case.

The case for Sutter does not even seem particularly compelling to me. True, I did not see him at his most dominant, recording the final out of the 1982 World Series, winning the 1979 Cy Young and leading the league in saves five times. Maybe the “you had to be there” defense and some intangible “vibe” rating make Sutter a better candidate than, say, Bert Blyleven (whom has withstood criticism for not being dominant or electrifying enough), but his performance record should also speak for itself. Sutter piled up 300 saves with a sub-3.00 ERA, but struck out at least a batter/inning only three times in his career (his 2nd-4th seasons) and barely topped 1000 career IP. The tank was basically empty by the time he got to Atlanta at age 32, so the BBWAA is essentially voting for nine years of very good, but relatively infrequent relief pitching- he topped 90 IP only 6 times. I’ll even concede that he was probably the best relief pitcher in baseball for most of those seasons, but usage patterns beg the question of how much that title is worth. I certainly don’t think that Cooperstown is the correct answer. If one batboy stands out above the rest for a decade straight, does that qualify him for the Hall of Fame, just because he clearly the best at what he did? More appropriately, is it really necessary for every position to be represented in every generation? If MLB had an absolute dearth of decent catchers for ten or fifteen years, I hope that the BBWAA would not elect an average player just because he was the best available.

I know that this column comes off as very negative, but I do not mean to slander Bruce Sutter. As I said earlier, he has an excellent beard. My major concern is the precedent set by his election as the first generation of one-inning closers heads towards retirement. Sutter was very good, but how can he be elected without Goose Gossage, who, as Joe Sheehan recently pointed out, bests Sutter in nearly every statistical category? Gossage accumulated 10 more saves, 56 more wins, 767 more IP and, most importantly, 28.8 more wins according to Wins Above Replacement Level. Sheehan also points out that Lee Smith, not a deserving HOF’er by most standards, is statistically more qualified than Sutter. I realize that not every exceptional election has opened the floodgates to less qualified players (the election of Koufax did not lead to every 165 win pitcher entering the Hall), but Sutter stands as an important litmus test for the upcoming wave of closers (Eckersley’s career as a starter makes him unique). I think the message that Sutter’s election sends is that voters, unsurprisingly, give relievers too much credit when portioning out the win-pie.

To give you a rough idea of how valuable a reliever can be, consider that Derek Lee led all of baseball with 106.0 runs of Value Over Replacement Player in 2005, Roger Clemens led all pitchers with 80.6 runs of VORP (approximately equal to Jason Bay) and Huston Street led all relievers at 33.3, barely beating out Mariano Rivera’s 32.3 (about the same as Tim Wakefield, Shea Hillenbrand and Kenny Lofton). In other words, pitchers, generally, are not worth as much as position players because of their limited playing time. By the same logic, relief pitchers are less valuable than starters. Adjusting for leverage, Clemens piled up 9.4 Support Neutral Value Added wins over the theoretical replacement player to K-Rod’s 5.6 Expected Wins Added (best among relievers). Putting Sutter in the Hall of Fame indicates that many writers don’t grasp the importance of playing time. Sutter over Blyleven is not the end of the world, but Smith, Gossage, John Franco, Trevor Hoffman and Troy Percival over Blyleven is. Literally, it would be the end of the world by tearing a hole in the universe, or at least something close to that. Hyperbole aside, I’m happy for Bruce Sutter, his beard and his gold-plated diapers, but frustrated with the voters who picked him.

Meow... Thump

Shortly after I sung the praises of the Texas Rangers for next season, Dayn Perry of FoxSports.com wrote a very similar column and came to the opposite conclusions. Perry knows a ton about baseball and has done a great job illuminating the importance of specific park factors, such as what a particular stadium does to a left-handed fly ball hitter as opposed to its general run scoring effects. Still, though, I disagree with Perry’s conclusions because I think he misinterprets some of the data. He argues that the addition of Brad Wilkerson will provide superficial benefits compared to Alfonso Soriano because Arlington has such a powerful run-enhancing effect, but that effect doesn’t change from season to season or from roster to roster. The Rangers play in the same stadium every year, so improving the team will help in any stadium. Yes, the offense will always look better than it really is and the defense worse, but they can succeed with a team ERA above league average or, consequently, an offense tailored to play to the home field advantages (as the acquisition of Wilkerson indicates they intend to make). All told, I think the Rangers have improved a little on offense and a little on the mound from last year in a neutral run scoring environment or in their own home stadium, even if the mainstream media continues to overestimate their offensive ability and underestimate their pitching staff.

That said, I would like to conclude the first portion of my earlier predication series today, giving out some honorable mention awards for teams on the rise. I have to add the caveat, though, that many of the teams listed here may experience a dead cat bounce more than a real improvement. In general, terrible teams have a lot of bad breaks, which is part of what makes them terrible teams. Last season’s Dodgers are an extreme example, where a pretty decent team became a very bad team. But the principle extends even further; if a team lost more than 95 games, there is a pretty good chance they had more injuries that one would expect or else performed below their Pythagorean projections. As a result, we can expect some natural improvement in what can be considered a perverse “regression” to the mean. With that said, here are a couple more teams that should improve on last year’s record.

(Note: I’m leaving off the Mets and Royals from this series. The improvement of the Mets should be no surprise to anyone, and the Royals are so far from competition that even a 20 game improvement would leave them completely irrelevant.)

Seattle Mariners (69-93, Pythagorean- 75-87)- I was hard on the Mariners for the contract they gave to Jarrod Washburn because they probably won’t contend over the course of the expensive long-term deal and would have been better off with one or two-year stopgaps like Jason Johnson or Brett Tomko, if they had to spend money on a starter at all. Also, signing the .300 OBP Carl Everett to DH was a terrible idea, and they could have filled that hole from within for much cheaper and with at least comparable production. Overall, I think the franchise is pretty much lost, especially in perhaps the toughest position in baseball. Still, I think they are set to win several more games than they did last year. Kenji Jojima steps in for a rabble of catchers that was cumulatively below replacement level offensively (largely due to new Florida starter Miguel Olivio’s -12.8 Value Over Replacement Player). The pitching staff can’t be much worse, as Joel Pineiro, Aaron Sele and Gil Meche all spent over 20 starts hovering around replacement level. A full season of Felix Hernandez will help, and Washburn is better than what they had, even if he is a bad investment. Maybe, if they’re really lucky, the huge investment in Adrian Beltre will be less of a disaster this year than last when he hit .255/.303/.413. Seattle is a great baseball city and the team has great ownership and a great stadium. More than anything, I want them to succeed, and I think 75-80 wins are within reach, but they are not ready for contention.

Milwaukee Brewers (81-81, Pythagorean 84-78)- I was in on the ground floor on this one, picking them to make the leap last year, and I’m not getting off the bandwagon now. It’s hard to imagine that they will get as much out of Geoff Jenkins, Bill Hall or Brady Clark as they did last year (49.8, 42.7 and 37.4 VORP, respectively), but the progression of Rickie Weeks, the emergence of Prince Fielder and the tremendous IF depth (Corey Koskie, J.J. Hardy, Jeff Cirillo, Russ Branyan, Zack Sorensen competing for time at 3B and UTIL) should help make up the difference. The pitching staff is similarly deep, featuring a solid front three of Ben Sheets, Chris Capuano and Doug Davis in front of Tomo Ohka, David Bush and Rick Helling. Sheets made only 22 injury-marred starts last year and was still very solid. His return to dominance in front of a strong bullpen could make the Brewers a contender in the Central in ’06. Their story doesn’t need to be one of tremendous improvement, as five or six more wins over last year’s Pythagorean record would get them in the hunt, which comes down to 25 more runs scored and prevented. St. Louis stands to slide back a little with an aging core and Houston is down to a big two-thirds, leaving the window open for an emerging contender.

Pittsburgh (67-95, Pythagorean 71-91)- Pittsburgh wins in the low-mid 70s every year, and last year was a bit of an aberration, as they half-heartedly committed to “rebuilding” after trading Kris Benson at the deadline. What that meant was that they wouldn’t make stupid free agent signings and trades like this year’s additions of Jeromy Burnitz and Sean Casey. Neither of those players is right for Pittsburgh, as they are too far along in their career to be bargains and not good enough to make them contend. Still, full seasons from Zack Duke, Ian Snell and Pat Maholm should help. Also, the offense behind Jason Bay shouldn’t be quite as pathetic as it was last year, as the top VORP after Bay’s 81.7 among Pirates at the end of 2006 belonged to Freddy Sanchez, at 17.7. As in Washburn’s case, the team’s acquisitions will make them better, it’s just a question of how much they want to spend to win 75 games. In this case, Brad Eldred and Craig Wilson would probably approximate the value of Casey and Burnitz over a full season at a fraction of the cost. Still, I’m reasonably confident that Pittsburgh will improve on last year’s 67 wins, probably by five or more, but they are a long way from really being any good. How’s that for a ringing endorsement?

Blue in the Face

Los Angeles Dodgers
2005 Record- 71-91, Pythagorean Record- 73-89
Notable Gains- Nomar Garciaparra, Rafael Furcal, Bill Mueller, Kenny Lofton, Brett Tomko, Jae Seo
Notable Losses- Milton Bradley, Jeff Weaver (not yet signed)

Last time I wrote here, I talked about how the Texas Rangers wisely swapped one player for another in a well-planned roster makeover following the installment of a new GM. Another western team has overhauled its roster after adding a new GM and stands to make similar strides in the standings, but with an altogether different methodology. After Frank McCourt’s knee jerked faster than an overprotective parent after curfew, the door hit Paul DePodesta squarely in the ass on his way out the door, taking his 71 wins with him. In a move that would have been sacrilegious a half-century ago, the Dodgers swooped in on the Giants’ number two man, Ned Colletti who brought with him the “win now” mentality that we all attributed to the presence of an aging Barry Bonds in San Francisco. Surrounding Bonds with Alou, Vizquel, Grissom and other aging- no, OLD- free agents makes sense with the clock ticking, but Los Angeles is a different situation. The Dodgers won 93 games in ’04 and 85 in ’03, hardly a self-destruct-worthy recent history. Additionally, they have a strong crop of minor league pitchers and some star hitters drafted under DePodesta’s watch. Last year was an aberration caused by substantial injuries to many regulars, including J.D. Drew, Milton Bradley, Cesar Izturis, Jose Valentin, Odalis Perez and Eric Gagne.

Still, Colletti made his mark. Furcal was one of the stronger signings of the offseason, getting Jimmy Rollins money for a more reasonable duration. At 27, Furcal will just be leaving his prime at the end of the contract, leaving another big payday in his future. Also, this season’s free agent market was so bloated that almost any signing would be a mistake in the long term, so short term contracts minimize the mistakes. Furcal is about a six win player, as his WARP scores from 2002-2004 hover around that threshold before booming to nine last season. His batting stats have stayed relatively constant while his fielding stats improved, making me think he will settle somewhere in between- probably not worth $13 million a year, but better than the six win/year Jimmy Rollins at the same price with more upside and a shorter commitment. The Dodgers have caught some flak for overloading their infield with Mueller (third or second), Garciaparra (third, short or first), Izturis (short or second), Kent (second or first) and Furcal (short or second). Yes, that makes five players for four positions- six, counting the shamefully neglected Hee Seop Choi- with Izturis returning from the DL sometime around June. But with the injury histories of Garciaparra and Mueller combined with Izturis’ recent trouble and Kent’s age makes the depth and versatility much more of a solution than a problem. Seriously, who thinks all of these players will be healthy all season? Credit Colletti with using the Dodgers’ extra cash to cover for injury risks, perhaps DePodesta’s one fatal shortcoming.

Similarly, the pitching staff had lots of interchangeable parts last year- groundball pitchers who avoid HRs but don’t strikeout many batters, like Lowe, Penny and Weaver. On the other hand, their young fill-ins like Edwin Jackson and Derek Houlton were not ready and they fell into trouble when Odalis Perez and Brad Penny missed a few starts. Colletti brought in Brett Tomko and Jae Seo, relatively cheap options in a market where starters were extremely expensive. Once again, injuries to their best pitchers will require Houlton or Jackson to step up, but they are more likely to do so with another year of experience under their belts. If Weaver resigns, which is still a possibility, the starting pitching will be a position of strength. The bullpen is similarly top-heavy, but Eric Gagne is a pretty strong top if he returns from his second Tommy John surgery. Something tells me this is another position that Colletti will fortify in the near future.

All told, I expect the Dodgers to gain at least 10 wins, maybe more. But I’m not sure the changes wouldn’t have come with Paul DePodesta in the front office. Certainly, he was dedicated to long term success, a path Colletti may not follow, but Colletti has leveraged the city’s revenue for success now. A return to health by the team’s biggest stars will play a big role, but Colletti has put them in a position to contend in an extremely weak division. Basically, he was making good on Gagne’s plea from the end of last season: “We're the fucking Dodgers. We should be like the Yankees. The Yankees don't rebuild. They go out and get what they need to win.... I don't want to be here if we're just going to play kids and rebuild. Yeah, I put my name on a contract, and I respect that. But the Dodgers' logo was on top of that contract—not the Milwaukee Brewers or the Las Vegas 51s. It's an embarrassment to the city. It's an embarrassment to the fans. It's and embarrassment to everyone who came before us and wore the Dodger unfirom to have a year like this.”

A Good First Impression

For the past week, I have found delight in a remarkably slow-paced life in the margins of the Berkshires in northern Connecticut. I’m staying in a House of Usher look-alike and meeting more sculptors than I knew existed. It has been relaxing and peaceful, but, to most of the people here, “hot stove” is not a figurative term but a reason to try out a new Swedish wood-chopping technique. Luckily, this whole internet fad was not lost on the hippie crowd, so I have been able to keep up with all of the exciting baseball developments. Unfortunately, the biggest news from the last few days was Eric Byrnes signing with Arizona, and while it led me to contemplate the fate of Luis Terrero, I soon tired of that morsel.

But then it occurred to me that transaction news has slowed because most teams have started rounding into 2006 form. Newspapers recently proclaimed the completion of the Twins’ off-season shopping list, and many other teams appear to be in the same boat. In fact, we are rapidly approaching spring training, with only five or six more weeks until pitchers and catchers report. While some questions remain, such as the destinations of Funky Ben Molina and Jeff Weaver and that empty pasture next to Manny Ramirez in Boston, others have been answered sufficiently to begin the prognostications. Some power shifts are obvious, like the direct transfer of wins from Florida to New York in the NL East and the strides that Toronto had better make after mortgaging their future for right now, but others are more discreet. In the next several columns (whenever they may come), I will look more deeply at a couple of teams that stand to make large gains and others that will struggle to get back to ’05 form, especially where it may not be so obvious. First, I will break down the changes for a pair of teams from the West whose fans may not be excited enough.

Texas Rangers
2005 Record- 79-83, Pythagorean Record- 82-80
Notable Gains: Brad Wilkerson, Adam Eaton, Kevin Millwood, Vicente Padilla, Termel Sledge
Notable Losses: Alfonso Soriano, Chris Young

For an internal promotion, Jon Daniels didn’t take long to shake up the roster and show that the Rangers are interested in winning immediately. They have stiff competition in the AL West from the A’s and defending division champion Angels, but Texas is within a stone’s throw of Wild Card contention and could even push Oakland for the division if a few things break their way.

Most noteworthy were the pickups that Daniels made for the pitching staff. Millwood fits well in Arlington as an innings eater who gets enough groundballs (1.34 GB/FB last year) and has had success avoiding homeruns in a bandbox from his time in Philly (posting his best translated HR/9 rate in Citizens Bank Park). Padilla comes from that same stadium, but has had more trouble avoiding homeruns. Padilla replaces the bottom of the Rangers’ rotation, so he doesn’t need to revert to his five win form of 02-03 to be valuable; his 2.8 WARP from last year is all gravy compared to last year’s mess. Young and Eaton may match one another this year in terms of performance, but Eaton has more of a track record and has room for improvement after pitching last year with a finger injury- any injury that prevents a curveball pitcher from throwing a curveball is especially damaging. Young started strong, but faded tremendously in the second half, so it is conceivable that hitters made adjustments to his stuff or that he tired down the stretch. I doubt that trade will be a win for Daniels in the long run, but getting Eaton isn’t such a bad proposition in the short run. Baseball Prospectus recently ran a good (and free) article on the changing Rangers staff that made me think Millwood/Eaton/Padilla would be worth at least three or four wins over last year’s Rogers/Young/Shitstorm trio, not to mention how much better they will be if Rogers hits the wall that has stopped so many 40+ pitchers before him.

Offensively, Daniels’ biggest move was to make good on the persistent Soriano rumors and get quite a booty in return, plugging Wilkerson into CF and the leadoff spot while handing the 2B job over to Ian Kinsler. Wilkerson is at least a five win player, with an upside well above seven, and he should easily outplay Gary Matthews by two or three wins, as Matthews was worth four last year while playing far above his established level of performance. Meanwhile, Soriano’s excuse for not wanting to play in the National League is that it will take him extra time to learn where to position himself defensively against NL batters. He had five years to learn how to position himself in the AL, and he bottomed out in his final season, costing the Rangers 25 runs in the field against an average second baseman. He was so cement-fisted that he was only two runs better than replacement. In other words, Frank Thomas could have approximated Soriano’s value as a second baseman. Kinsler, however, is a solid defender and has hit his way through the minors (.274/.348/.464 at AAA Oklahoma last year). He probably won’t outplay Soriano in 2006, but their value to their respective teams will be much closer than any sportscaster will let on. Without considering money or Sledge’s value as a fourth OF, the trade nets Texas a win or two by a conservative estimate. Factor in Soriano’s forthcoming payday and it looks like a steal.

Akinori Otsuka, who was part of the Eaton trade, will join a live-armed bullpen that has had success the last couple of years and is not an area of great concern. The offense still features Mark Texeira and Michael Young smacking lots of extra base hits in newly named Ameriquest Field, so the overhauled pitching staff, the small offensive gains and the little bit of ground between their true record and their run differential provides lots of hope for better things in 2006.

The next installment will look at the Los Angeles Dodgers and the wonderful situation in which Ned Colletti finds himself.