The world according to Neuro

The first names are in!

2006-11-29T20:07:00.000+01:00

So there's the first names out of the high hat of Walt : Adam Kennedy and Kip Wells. At least it sounds better than last off season!

Once again the Cardinals pick up another one of their draft picks, as Kennedy was the 1st round number 20 pick back in 1997. In 1999 he made his Major League debut with the Cards and in March 2000 he was traded to the Angels with Kent Bottenfield in return for Jim Edmonds.

Of course Kennedy is now reunited with former righthand David Eckstein, which definitely should be a huge benefit over the uncertain and unsteady second base situation last season. Looking at the fielding of last season's Cardinals vs Kennedy last season, Kennedy's numbers per 1000 innings are lower by quite a margin. However, this also includes errors : 7.9 per 1000 against 11.9, which is over 30% less! Less speed, more precision, I would say.

                Inn     PO  A   E   DP  Fpct    Range   PO/k    A/k E/k     DP/k
Cardinals 2006  1429    340 492 17  127 .980    5.24    238     344 11.9    89
Kennedy 2006    1141    205 361 9   76  .984    4.26    180     316 7.9     67

Offensively it's a simple story. Put Kennedy's numbers against those of Aaron Miles and Ronnie Belliard and let the numbers do the talking.

            Avg     OBP     Slg     SB  HR  AB  R   RBI
Kennedy     .273    .334    .384    16  4   451 50  55

Miles       .263    .324    .347    2   2   426 48  30
Belliard    .237    .295    .371    0   5   194 20  23

Kip Wells then. His record isn't overly impressive with 57-74 in 8 years and everything he has led the league in was negative (walks and losses in 2005 and wild pitches in 2001), but you have yo keep in mind that of the 8 years he only pitched for a winning team twice. With a winning percentage of .422 in his 4 full years in Pittsburgh against the team's .442, there is reason for caution, but it's not completely hopeless. It's quite similar to Sidney Ponson's .429 over 1999-2003 in Baltimore. Oops, wrong example ;) Hey, he might be like Frank Tanana : 31-49 in 3.5 years with the Rangers followed by 51-37 in the following 3.5 years in Detroit between 1982 and 1988.

While looking at the above, I noticed that only 3 Cardinal pitchers broke the 100 innings mark this year, Carpenter, Marquis and Suppan. 100 innings, not 200! That's the first World Series winning team with less than 4 pitchers in triple digits since.... the 1889 New York Giants! Between the two only the 1997 Indians reached the World Series.

What's very curious is that between 1901 and 1990 there were only 6 teams who had less than 4 pitchers over 100 innings (excluding 1981). Since 1990 there have been 28 of which 12 between 1995-1997! The tendency towards less endurance actually started around 1980. Then the average number of innings pitched was 97 (from starters to closers). This steeply declined to 72 by 1990 and over the last 10 years has been hovering between 64 and 69. Meanwhile the number of games for pitchers who ended up with between 50 and 100 innings has been on a steady incline, suggesting the development of bullpen usage.

Unfinished business

2006-11-01T22:50:00.000+01:00

I suppose it's time to release these bits. Not good enough to evolve into decent posts in their own right, but also too interesting to simply throw away. Been working on this over the past weeks on and off. Hell, when I started the bit on the 1987 Cardinals, the 2006 Cardinals were still playing the Padres. Now they're the 2006 World Series Champs! Yeah! Isn't winning just so much better when all so called experts predict an easy exit in the division series?

-------------------

On 15 December 1976 Anthony La Russa jr., 32 years old, was traded by the Chicago White Sox to the St.Louis Cardinals. It was Tony La Russa's last stop as a player. Going the other way was the Cardinals 5th round pick of the 1973 draft, Randy Wiles. Yes, this is a piece about a bunch of rather insignificant players.

Wiles made his Major League debut on 7 August 1977, entering the game in the bottom of the ninth with one out and runners on first and second. He game up the game winning single to the Royals' John Wathan. The next day things went better, though. At home against the Mariners, Wiles once again entered in the ninth with one out with first and second loaded and the score 4-4. This time he fended off two batters and through a homer by Lamar Johnson in the bottom of the inning scored his first Major League win. Three more games followed in the next week.

Wiles' last game was the 18th of August in Yankee Stadium. Entering the game in a hopeless situation in the bottom of the 8th, it looked like just another game to get through. With one out and a man on first, Wiles neatly got rid of two more batters to end the eigth. The Yankees were leading by five, so the game was well and truly locked. Then came the White Sox attack : single, homer, single, out, double, single, sac fly, single, walk, single, intentional walk, out and all of a sudden the Sox were leading the game 10-9! So once again Wiles was in a win situation and that's when it went wrong. He walked Munson, Lou Piniella sacrificed to move Munson to second, after which Chris Chambliss homered to hand Wiles and the White Sox the loss. That Chambliss was looking at the ball and not the pitcher became clear when he admitted he through he'd hit the homer off Drave Hamilton, who was on the mound before Wiles. A mere five days later the Cardinals claimed Wiles on waivers.

Meanwhile Tony La Russa spent his time with the Cardinals organization down in New Orleans, playing triple A ball for the Pelicans in the Superdome. Indeed, the great big Louisiana Superdome hosted Minor League Baseball for one season and TLR was part of it!

-------------------

Only two divisions ever have averaged a winning percentage over .550 and those are the 2001 and 2002 AL West. The strongest ever NL was the 1987 East. In itself these facts aren't very interesting, but lets look at the 1987 NL East anyway, as it presents us with a different way of winning.

Random fact number one : Since the Cardinals won the division in 1987 with only 94 homeruns, the 1988 Dodgers have been the only team to win a division with less than 100 longballs. The Cardinals were one of only six team in Major League history to win their division with less than 100 homeruns, while conceding more than 100. The others are the 1945 Dodgers, 1959 White Sox, 1965 Dodgers, 1973 Mets and 1978 Royals.

Since the game is about scoring more runs than your opponent, these feats are quite remarkable. Here's from where the Cardinals and their opponents scored.

             Cardinals       |      Opponents
From    ER     UR            |  ER       UR
3      321     52            | 239       20
2      208     28            | 187       20
1       85     10            |  83       12
B       92      2            | 129        3
       ----------------------+-----------------------
       706     92      798   | 638       55    693

From third it's 373-259 in the Cardinals' favour, from any other base it's 425-434. In other words the Cardinals were just lethal with a man on third. So how were the runs from third scored?

HR       14
Triple    8
Double   42
Single  129
No hit  180

Topscorers from third on singles and non-hits : Vince Coleman with 62 runs, Ozzie Smith with 43 and Willie McGee with 31. Coleman's phenomenal speed made a big difference here. Just looking at the at bats with him on third, he went out once, remained on third 50 times and scored 54 times. The Cardinals had 671 at bats with someone on third. 26 of those had the man on third out, 362 had him remain on third and 283 resulted in a run from third. Coleman was the only one to score in over 50% of the at bats he was at third (for those with more than 5 ABs)

Another interesting number is the 52 unearned runs from 3rd the Cardinals scored. In fact the Cardinals had the highest number of opposition errors among NL teams with 151. With a line-up built for speed, I suppose the opponents were too much in a hurry to make their play and started making more mistakes.

A closer look on Coleman's base stealing.

Base    SB      CS
2nd     85      13
3rd     24      5
Home    0       4

So how vital were these steals? Unlike most speedy lead off hitters, Coleman could not count on much power behind him to propel him along the bases, which shows in his runs. 3 runs came from homers, 12 from first, 30 from second and a massive 76 from third. So Coleman needed batting average (mainly Ozzie Smith's .303) and his own speed to move closer to home. If we look at the number of times Coleman was on each base and how many times he scored from there, the importance of his steals is immediately clear.

Base    Times on base   Runs    %
1           254          12    4.7
2           161          30   18.6
3           112          76   67.9

With each base his chance of scoring more than tripled.

So the Cardinals primary weapon was speed. It's a rarity to see speed win without power, though. Since the beginning of divisional play only the Royals (1976, 1978) and Cardinals (1985, 1987) won their division with over 200 steals and less than 100 homeruns. Note also that the 1987 Cardinals only had the fifth best ERA in the National League, so it wasn't superb pitching either.

116 wins and not making it

2006-10-09T13:09:00.000+02:00

In 2001 the Seattle Mariners had an amazing 116-46 record, tying the 1906 Chicago Cubs for the most wins record. However, in October the team went flat on its face and didn't even make it to the World Series.

By the end of April they were leading the division by 9 and they never had to look back. From game 7 until the end of the season the Mariners had a winning percentage of over .700 and they in fact led the division from start to finish. Late in the regular season there was no indicator that things were going downhill in Seattle. A 15-6 September was followed by a 5-1 end to the regular season in early October. Overall June and July were the Mariners' worst months with a .667 winning percentage. With no less than five regular batters over 30 (Dan Wilson, John Olerud, Bret Boone, Al Martin and Edgar Martinez) the team was bursting with experience.

Two games seem to be pivotal in the Mariners' post-season demise : game 3 of the ALDS and game 4 of the ALCS.

With the ALDS tied at 1 the Mariners and Indians travelled to Jacobs Field. The once mighty Mariners were completely destroyed and the game ended 17-2.

The game started well with Ichiro Suzuki singling, Mike Cameron doubling and Edgar Martinez being intentionally walked while Brett Boone struck out. John Olerud was then walked with the bases loaded to score Suzuki. Two foul pop outs got C.C.Sabathia out if his first inning jam, after which the bottom half of the inning displayed much the same with Omar Vizquel singling, Roberto Alomar doubling and Juan Gonzalez singling to put the Indians 2-1 up.

The Mariners then went down in order in the top of the second and started the bottom of the inning with an error by Boone to allow Travis Fryman on. A single by Einar Diaz and a two out triple by Omar Vizquel made it 4-1 to the Indians. By this time starter Aaron Sele was replaced by Paul Abbott, who promptly gave up a homer to the first batter he faced and surrendered 4 runs in his first inning to make it 1-8 after 3.

The question is why Sele was pulled. By the time the Mariners took the field in the bottom of the third their chance of winning had gone down to about 16%, so why not let Sele pitch through trouble and keep Abbott fresh for game 4?

Over the course of the season Sele had done reasonably well agains the Indians with a 3.95 ERA over 13.2 innings in 2 starts, while Abbott had been pounded in his start against the Tribe for 6 earned runs in 7 innings. Yes, Abbott's lifetime record against the Indians was great with a 5-0 record and a 2.77 ERA. However, 2 of those wins came as a reliever for the Twins back in 1991 and 1 was in the 6 ER/7 innings game in which he was lucky enough to receive enough run support from his offense. Sele's lifetime record against the Indians up to 2001 wasn't exactly brilliant : 5-7 in 17 starts with a 4.99 ERA. So yes, if Lou Piniella believed they still had a chance to win the game, pulling Sele was probably a wise move.

Anyway, for game 4 this put the Mariners in a difficult position. They were now in a situation where they had to win two to stay alive and had no choice but to use their two top pitchers to try and do it, knowing they'd be unavailable for the opening games of the ALCS.

Lets sidetrack for a moment and see how 5 game division series winners do in general.

Year 5 Team     Opp.            Result
2005 Angels     White Sox (3)   1-4
2004 Astros     Cardinals (4)   3-4
2003 Red Sox    Yankees (4)     3-4
2003 Cubs       Marlins (4)     3-4
2002 Twins      Angels (4)      1-4
2002 Giants     Cardinals (3)   4-1     WS : 3-4 vs Angels (4,5)
2001 Yankees    Mariners (5)    4-1     WS : 3-4 vs Diamondbacks (5,5)
2001 Mariners   Yankees (5)     1-4
2001 D'backs    Braves (3)      4-1     WS : 4-3 vs Yankees (5,5)
2000 Yankees    Mariners (3)    4-2     WS : 4-1 vs Mets (4,5)
1999 Red Sox    Yankees (3)     1-4
1997 Indians    Orioles (4)     4-2     WS : 3-4 vs Marlins (3,6)
1995 Mariners   Indians (3)     2-4

That's 13 5-game division series winners, of which 5 survived the LCS and 2 won the World Series. Take into account that of the 13, 2 ended up playing each other and 2 more met in the World Series.

While the Mariners were lucky enough to be the only 5-game division series team in history to meet another 5-game winner in the LCS, the prospects to go all the way were already grim.

For the ALCS the Mariners were up against the Yankees. In the regular season Seattle had a record of 6-3 against them, with a 3 game sweep in New York, a 1-2 series loss in Seattle and a 2-1 series win back in New York.

Of course having had Garcia and Moyer pitch games 4 and 5 and the Yankees not having used 2 starters in 1 game in their 5 game series against Oakland, the series started with the Mariners number 3 against the Yankees number 2, putting the Mariners at a bit of a mental deficit for the first game.

In game 1 Andy Pettite kept the Mariner bats quiet, pitching 8 strong innings to help the Yankees win 4-2. Game 2 was more of the same. While the Mariners managed 6 hits, a 3 run second inning was enough for the Yankees to head to Yankee Stadium with a 2-0 lead.

Game 3 then finally saw the regular season Mariners hammering away. With a seven run sixth they laid the foundation for a 14-3 victory to bring them back in the series. However, game 4 saw the fallout of having used Abbott against the Indians. Now Abbott, the Mariners number 4 pitcher was up against Yankees ace Roger Clemens. While Abbott kept the Yankees hitless for 5 innings (even when he did give up 8 walks), his counterpart allowed only 1 hit with 4 walks. The game went into the bottom of the ninth tied at 1 when Alfonso Soriano hit a one out, two run homer to end the game and put the Yankees within a game of the World Series with a home game remaining.

Now lets concentrate on game 4 of the ALCS for a minute. What would have been the starters scenario had the Mariners let Aaron Sele pitch through trouble in game three of the ALDS? In reality Moyer and Garcia had pitched the previous days, Sele was on three days rest after already having pitched on three days rest in is previous outing in game 1, so Abbott was the only option. Had Abbott pitched game 4 of the ALDS, Garcia would likely have pitched game 5 and the ALCS would probably have started with Moyer, Sele and Garcia. The logical option for game 4 would then have been Jamie Moyer pitching on 3 days rest.

While Abbott didn't give up any hits and the 8 walks didn't have any consequences in runs, his lack of control had him pulled after just 5 innings and possibly had the offense a bit too eager to score with the constant threat of their pitcher being about to give up some runs. From the 6th inning the only baserunners were Lampkin, who walked in the 7th, and Boone who homered the Mariners into the lead in the top of the 8th. A solo homer by Bernie Williams in the bottom of the 8th tied the score, after which 2000 AL rookie of the year Kazuhiro Sasaki gave up a 2 run walk-off homer to Alfonso Soriano to give the Yankees the win.

With the series 3-1 to the Yankees, the situation was near hopeless for the Mariners. Their strongest pitcher, Jamie Moyer had pitched only two days before the game, while staff ace Freddy Garcia, 18-6 with a 3.05 ERA in the regular season, hadn't exactly displayed stellar activity in his 3 play off games so far. And thus they started game 5 with the guy in which they'd shown no trust in in the division series : Aaron Sele.

The game was then decided in the 3rd inning when David Bell made an error to allow Scott Brosius on base. After that a Soriano single moved Brosius to second, a Chuck Knoblauch sacrifice bunt moved him to third and Derek Jeter's sacrifice fly scored the opening run with two outs. With a double by Dave Justice and a homer by Bernie Williams, Mariners starter Aaron Sele was faced with four unearned runs and the Yankees had the series in the pocket, while the 116 win Mariners were left empty handed.

Renteria for Looper : good, bad or no other way?

2006-09-28T14:46:00.001+02:00

I was going to write this one about what happens to Cardinals first round draft picks in general, but ended up looking at one particular case : Braden Looper.

Looper was the Cards 1996 first round pick and a third pick overall. Debuting as a starter in single A with a 3-6 record and a 4.48 ERA in 12 starts, he moved to double A Arkansas where he turned into a closer before the end of the year and making his Major League debut. In only his second year Looper became the closer in triple A Memphis before being traded to Florida.

Looper, Armando Almanza and Pablo Ozuna were traded for Edgar Renteria in December 1998. When we look at the value for money (VORP/million dollar) this seems like a very bad deal on the surface.

     |         Renteria          | Looper, Almanza, Ozuna  |
-----+-------+-------------------+------+------------------+
1999 |  33.6 |  2,000,000        | 21.2 |   401,000        |
2000 |  33.3 |  2,250,000        | 13.3 |   660,000        |
2001 |  15.4 |  4,500,000        | 20.3 |   480,000        |
2002 |  49.4 |  6,000,000        | 25.7 | 1,146,000        |
2003 |  75.3 |  6,500,000        |  6.4 | 1,425,000        |
2004 |  27.3 |  7,250,000        | 24.2 | 2,500,000        |
-----+-------+-------------------+------+------------------+
    | 234.3 | 28,500,000  8.221 |115.8 | 8,209,000 14.106 |

With Ozuna's limited exposure to the big leagues, we can leave him out of the equation. He's yet another one of those huge prospects (Minor League player of the year in 1998!) who never made it. Besides, he turned out 4 years older than was thought around the time he was with the Cards. Almanza did gain quite a bit of time in the big leagues, but considering the numbers that had more to do with the fact that he played in Florida than with his actual talent. Which more or less makes it a straight trade Looper for Renteria. Based on his numbers Looper would have been the Cards closer from about 2002, which is exactly when they got Izzy.

The other matter is who would have played shortstop over the 1999-2004 period if the Cards hadn't had Renteria. 1998 started with Royce Clayton as shortstop until he was traded to the Rangers. Once Clayton left, the Cards made do with Luis Ordaz. Ordaz never turned into an everyday player, so they were in need of a replacement. However, the shortstop free agent market was thin that year. Pat Meares was there, but he was only granted free agency on 21 December, a week after the Cardinals traded for Renteria. Besides, Renteria was the up and coming star for the future.

Over the period 1999-2004 Renteria's 28.5 million in salary was the fifth most amount paid for a shortstop. Only Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, Nomar Garciaparra and Barry Larkin earned more. Ex-Cardinal Royce Clayton earned a little over 20 million in those six years, so what if the Cards had held on to him?

     |         Clayton          |          Larkin           |
-----+------+-------------------+-------+-------------------+
1999 | 30.4 |  4,500,000        |  55.4 |  9,000,000        |
2000 |  6.4 |  4,500,000        |  42.4 |  9,000,000        |
2001 | 12.4 |  4,500,000        |   8.6 |  9,000,000        |
2002 |  5.2 |  4,500,000        |   8.7 |  5,300,000        |
2003 |  1.9 |  1,500,000        |  12.9 |  5,300,000        |
2004 | 17.3 |    650,000        |  26.5 |    700,000        |
-----+------+-------------------+-------+-------------------+
    | 73.6 | 20,150,000  3.653 | 154.5 | 38,300,000  4.034 |

OK, so we can conclude trading Clayton was a good move. From what I'm reading in Google Groups messages around that time, Barry Larkin was at one point also a target for the Cards, but thankfully they didn't pursue him. His name and reputation made him a hugely overpriced, over the hill shortstop for most years of the end of his career. With it being an even better thing that they didn't end up with Meares, who apparently managed to earn over 3 million per year for 4 years while not actually contributing, it would appear Renteria was about they best the Cards could have done. Now lets see what it could have been like without the trade and thus without having to get Isringhausen.

While Looper's VORP over the 2002-2004 period amounts to 61.6 for the 4.4 million he was paid, Izzy cost 17.75 million and delivered 49.9 worth of VORP. So for 2002-2004 that leaves 17.75-4.4+6+6.5+7.25 = 33.1 million to spend on a shortstop. That amounts to about 10 million a year, which was not enough for ARod or Jeter, leaving only the aforementioned Barry Larkin, Rey Ordonez and Nomar Garciaparra as more expensive options than Renteria. Garciaparra had a deal through 2004 in Boston (originally through 2002, but the Red Sox had picked up their options for 2003 and 2004 by the end of 2000). Ordonez was firmly rooted in the Mets organization, so there's no way the Cardinals would have been able to acquire a better shortstop than Renteria without giving up something.

They might have been better off trading away other players, but that's in hindsight. With about 1.5 million available in 1999-2000, 4 million in 2001 and 10 million in 2002-2004, a combination of well above average shortstops would have been a definite possibility. However, it's too vague to start talking about possible maybe deals that never were here.

Cardinal Offense

2006-08-30T16:54:00.000+02:00

What is it with the Cardinals this year? That the pitching is a disaster is a given, so lets see how it working at the plate. In general there's a lot of improvements, but the many injuries leave their scars.

Lead off

From a .295 average and .368 on base percentage last year to .280/.340 now. About 94% of the 557 at bats so far were from David Eckstein (476) and Aaron Miles (50) and it's those 50 Miles ABs that drag the totals down. Eckstein's number as lead off are .290/.348, while Miles recorded .260/.315. It's clear that Eckstein's injuries didn't only hurt him.

Despite a lack of power for Eckstein (1 homer this year against 8 last year), his base travelling has improved. Back in February I wrote it was .342 last year. Now it's .366 with 65 runs, 122 singles, 14 double, 1 triple, 1 homer, 30 walks, 14 hbp, 7 steals, 6 times caught stealing.

Eckstein's improved run rate has a lot to do with who are batting behind him. Compared to last year the slugging percentages of batters 2 through 6 have all improved from a combined .494 to .529, mainly thanks to Albert Pujols phenomenal power.

Heads and tails

The middle of the ballgame is solid from a Cardinal perspective. It's the lack of finishing power and the lack of knocking out the opposition in the early rounds that are the problems.

In the first two innings this year, the Cards hit a homerun per 32 AB. Last year that was one per 23 AB. Not that homeruns are all that counts, but it shows almost a lack of wanting to hurt the opposition right from the start. Compared to the fourth and fifth where batting averages have risen above .300 and with a homerun every 20 AB in the fifth, that's a weak start where apparently a lot more is possible. It looks as if the team actually needs to be trailing to perform as their batting averages is highest when trailing by one. When leading the Cardinals bat .259, but when trailing it's .285.

The tail end of the game provides the same problem as the start. In innings six through nine they bat .254, twenty points below the overall average.

Why?

It could be many things, of course. I'm looking at it from a few thousand miles and just see the numbers. It could be the curse of the weak division. The almost assurance that no matter how much below their level they play, the Cards are going to make the playoffs anyway. The curse of underperforming in the post season, the "lets save the best for last" idea. Who knows. For now I'm going with the many disruptions in the line up due to injuries. These are professional athletes who I expect will give 100% no matter what. Or am I naive? Either way, unless the pitching improves by a lot very quickly, I fear the play offs will once again be short.

Baseball : Weaver?

2006-07-11T12:28:00.000+02:00

I go away for a week and the Cards acquire Jeff Weaver from the Angels, while sending a double A player to California. What the hell???

A quick look at Weaver's Baseball Reference page shows Sidney Ponson as most similar pitcher at age 28. That's right, Ponson gets booted from the rotation to be replaced by someone who's pretty much exactly the same. What's worse is that Weaver costs twice as much even when the Angels pay half his salary!

So how come a pitcher with a 78-87 record in his first seven years in the majors earns 9 million a year? Lets have a look at Weaver's contracts.

2001 : 1 year/$0.425m
2002 : 1 year/$2.35m gone into
2002 : 4 year/$22m (2002:$2.4m / 2003:$4.1m / 2004:$6.25m / 2005:$9.25m
2006 : 1 year/$8.325m

In perspective, the Tigers hand Weaver a 4 year/22m deal to a pitcher who'd gone 33-43 in his first 3 years. Why? Sure, he was relatively young at 25, but he wasn't the guy who helped Detroit be better. Obviously there wasn't much to win with the Tigers in those years, but it's telling that they unloaded his weight on the future payroll and sent him to the Yankees, who don't care how high the payroll is anyway.

A year and a half after not blossoming in the Big Apple, Weaver got sent to LA together with Yhency Brazoban, Brandon Weeden and a pile of cash with ancient Kevin Brown and his $15M salary going to the Yanks. I guess I just don't understand it!

Now last season Weaver was pretty decent with 14-11, a 4.22 ERA, 1.17 WHIP and a 3.7 K/BB ratio. A new deal with the Dodgers didn't work out with Weaver allegedly asking for a 3 year/$27m deal. Instead he joined the Angels in a 1 year/$8.325m deal.

Half a season later and with a record of 3-10 with a 6.29 ERA, 1.52WHIP and 2.95 K/BB ratio, Weaver moves to the Cards. Why? Why? I'm sorry, but I really don't have a clue. If his record isn't bad enough, his endurance is. He went 7 innings 3 times in his 16 starts and he went less than 6 on five occasions. The Cards desperately need to take the pressure off the bullpen and this isn't the way to do it.

And don't tell me they've gotten him as trade stock, because who's going to bite? With the Angels supposedly paying half of his remaining salary, he'll still cost $2m for the rest of the year after which he's out the door anyway. The only thing I can see happening is that the Cards trade Ponson and end up effectively paying about $2.5m for a number five starter and possibly end up getting one of the cheapest 90+ wins rotations in recent memory. And they should trade Mulder as well.

Searching for a light, by numbers

2006-06-11T21:57:00.000+02:00

The Cardinals are leading the division with a 36-25 record. A .590 winning percentage sounds good enough and on the surface you'd think nothing is wrong. However, before Albert Pujols got injured that was 34-20 for .630. That's a 40 point drop over 7 games! And with Pujols out for up to six weeks, play offs are in danger if things don't getting better quickly.

Lets assume for a second that El Hombre indeed returns exactly after six weeks, which would be 9 July. That's another 19 games without him. The 2-5 record since his injury would make that a 5-14 stretch to reach a record of 41-39. Throughout history 30 teams with a record of 41-39 or worse after 80 games have reached the play offs. On 4 occasions they went on to win the World Series.

Kansas City Royals   1985  41-39  91-71
Florida Marlins      2003  40-40  91-71
St.Louis Cardinals   1964  39-41  93-69
Boston Braves        1914  36-43  94-59

So the Cards won it all from that sort of worst case scenario. In fact 4 of the 30 play off teams were Cardinals. In 1930, 1996 and 2001 they reached the post season from respectively 41-39, 41-39 and 40-40.

This team's by no means done. JEd's not fit, Carp's just coming back, Marquis pitches like shit, Yadi's only just getting to acceptable levels. If that's all going to improve, a .500 record over Pujols' absence is more realistic and that would make it 46-34. Compared to 41-39 that's an additional 100 teams who reached the play offs, among which 22 World Series winners.

Of course absolute numbers don't say much. Since the introduction of divisions in 1969, 988 teams competed in Major League Baseball. 192 of them reached the play offs (19.4%). Of those 192, 25 had a record of 41-39 or less after 80 games. 544 teams with a record worse than 41-39 did not make the play offs. OK, that's a bit more worrying, isn't it? 4.4% of 41-39 or worse made the play offs since 1969. That obviously contains all the really hopeless cases as well, so lets limit the numbers to those teams with a record between .500 and .525 in other words similar to where a worst case Cardinals would roughly be. That's 175 teams since 1969, 25 of which reached the play offs for 14.3%. Still not very good, but by no means impossible if Pujols comes back anywhere near his former performance.

Lets say Pujols doesn't comeback at his mega level of before the injury and/or other injuries affect the team. Lets put them at .575 for the second half of the season. That's 47-35 on top of 41-39 for a total record of 88-74. 28 of those records led to 7 division championships and a wild card since 1969. And what if they manage .600 after El Hombre's return? 90-72 happened 25 times for 11 division titles and a wildcard.

Finally for the less negative .500 during the injury, we're looking at 93-69 (13 times, 5 times division and a wildcard) to 95-67 where all's ok as all 15 of those reached the play offs.

1987 Padres : from below .250 to less than 100 losses

2006-06-08T12:51:00.000+02:00

That the season is pretty much over for the Royals is a given and that they're heading for their third consecutive 100 loss season is also clear. This would make them the first team with three consecutive 100 loss seasons since the Blue Jays did it in 1977-79 and only the fifth team to do so since WW2. However, there's still a slim chance to recover.

There's 8 teams in Major League history that had a winning percentage of below .250 after 57 games. Taking their full season winning percentages to 162 games, there's only one team who'd had less than 100 losses : the 1987 San Diego Padres.

Team Year  W-L (57 games)   W-L (Season)   W-L (162 games)
KCA  2006 13-44    0.228
SDP  1987 14-43    0.246   65-97          65-97
MIN  1982 13-44    0.228   60-102         60-102
PHI  1904 13-43    0.232   52-100         55-107
BAL  1988 14-43    0.246   54-107         54-108
DET  1996 13-44    0.232   53-109         53-109
BSN  1911 13-44    0.228   44-107         47-115
BOS  1932 11-46    0.193   43-111         45-117
WSH  1904  9-45    0.167   38-113         41-121

In 1987 the Padres struggled off the line, starting the season with five losses. After 51 games they were 12-39, never winning more than two in a row. That changed from 12 June when San Diego embarked on an unlikely six game winning streak and a 11-3 run. The run spanned 3 of the 4 game series at San Francisco and home series against the Dodgers, Giants, Astros and Braves.

Up until 12 June everything seemed to go wrong. The Padres scored only 3.7 runs per game, while getting 5.4 against. In only 10 of the 61 games they scored over 5 runs, while averaging a seriously poor 2.7 in the other 51 games. In only five games they limited their opponents to one run or less.

In the 11-3 streak that followed, the Padres scored 5.7 per game while conceding 3.9 per game. Tony Gwynn was on fire, hitting .478 and Carmelo Martinez provided clean up power with 5 homeruns and 17 RBI's while walking 14 times in the 13 games he played. The odd thing is that looking at the individual stats and scorelines, the Padres didn't perform spectacularly well apart from the Gwynn/Martinez tandem. Only five players hit above .250 and while the pitching was solid, two starters averaged less than 3 K/9 and Lance McCullers, who had 2 wins and 3 saves, only managed a 5.65 ERA.

What seems to have been a major problem is the lack of stability in the lineup. In only 9 games the Padres started with the same players as the game before. Trouble started when it became painfully clear that veteran Steve Garvey's days were numbered. Batting only .211, his career ended early May, necessitating a shift from the outfield to first for Carmelo Martinez. Later on in the season things worked out better with John Kruk as full time first baseman and Martinez back to the outfield.

If we look at the stats of the Padres in the 11-3 stretch, the lineup tool at Baseball Musings shows they could have scored 0.3 runs/game more. Over that period, the ideal lineup was Ready, Martinez, Mitchell, Gwynn, Mack, , Templeton, Santiago, Jefferson. In reality this obviously never happened as no manager in his right mind will have a pitcher hit sixth. Still, the best lineup with the pitcher in the usual number nine slot was only slightly less productive with 5.995 runs against the 6.012 of the top one. Besides moving the pitcher down the order, it reverse the positions of Santiago and Jefferson. Curiously, this was one of the few lineups the Padres did not use throughout the 1987 season.

Actually, when looking at the VORP figures the pitcher as sixth in the batting order doesn't look that strange. With the exception of Eric Show all pitchers have a better offensive VORP than the team's regular shortstop (Gary Templeton), centerfielder (Stan Jefferson) and the second base platoon (Joey Cora & Tim Flannery). While the pitchers compare to pitchers, it's still very worrying that a team has no less than five guys with over 200 plate appearances and a VORP worse than -5.

The team's actually an interesting mix if we look at their careers. Tony Gwynn is obviously the guy who had to carry the team, but there was definitely some talent there. Kruk went on to play the world series with the Phillies, Santiago was rookie of the year, Stan Jefferson was once a first round draft pick by the Mets, Shane Mack won the world series with the Twins in 1991, Templeton and Martinez were part of the 1984 Padres who reached the World Series, Kevin Mitchell had won the world series with the Mets in 1986 and would reach it again in 1989 with the Giants. So the question is, why didn't this work out for San Diego?

Over the year, Santiago, Kruk, Ready and Gwynn all hit above .300. The problem was that with the exception of Martinez everyone hit below .250 and in Jefferson and Templeton there were two guys who had over 400 at bats with a batting average below .230. Martinez actually hit 5 of his 15 homeruns during the 11-3 stretch. Why he didn't hit more the rest of the season? Beats me!

So that's half a decent batting order. Now how about the pitching staff? Dodgy at best is my first judgement. Of the eight guys who started more than ten games for the Padres, five have a career winning percentage of over .500, with Storm Davis as the best by far with his 113-96 record. Problem for the 1987 Padres was that he wasn't anywhere near his best level yet. With a 6.18 ERA and a K/BB ratio of 1.03 he was far from the guy who won 35 games for Oakland in the next two seasons. At the time it wasn't that strange he was traded in August for Dave Leiper and Rob Nelson.

The core of the rotation was formed by Eric Show and Ed Whitson, who were the only two pitchers to start over 30 games for the Padres. The two had combined for a 29-17 record in San Diego's World Series year in 1984, but three years later only managed 18-29. The bullpen was solid, led by 35 year old veteran Goose Gossage, who shared the close role with Lance McCullers.

The total picture is that when your starters aren't too good and the batting order is filled with weaknesses, there's no way a good bullpen and two or three good batters are going to turn things around. Not even Tony Gwynn. The 11-3 stretch seemed to be the result of various factors working at the same time in a situation where that wouldn't normally happen. Nothing short of a lucky break like that is going to help the Royals stay under 100 losses.

Cardinals, 38 games into 2006

2006-05-16T15:00:00.000+02:00

We're now well over a month into the season and the Cardinals lead the division with a 24-14 record. Time to see how the new faces have affected the team so far. Last year's record after 38 games was also 24-14.

Jason Marquis is the biggest chance among the four starters that remained from last year. Last year around this time he was 5-2 with a 3.17 ERA, 32 Ks and 14 walks. Now he's 4-4 with 5.33, 21 and 21. The change from Matt Morris to Sidney Ponson so far yields no difference as both were 3-0 after the team's first 38 games. Morris had a lot more strikeouts, though.

The revamped bullpen performed a lot better, despite a slightly worse record (6-5 & 11 saves now, 3-5 & 16 then). The ERA improved from 4.00 to 2.58 despite a rocky Isringhausen so far. Overall the Cardinals staff is damn near unbeatable once they stop giving up homeruns. So far they've given up 38 this year against 32 at the same time last year. Especially Mulder (8 now vs 2 last year) and Izzy (3 vs 0) are having trouble keeping the ball in the park.

Not sure yet whether Busch III has anything to do with the increase in homers. In the first 38 games last year, the Cards played 21 at home in which 42 homeruns were hit. 25 of those were by Cardinals, 17 by the visitors. This year it's 22 home games and 46 homers. Despite 12 by Pujols, it's 24-22 in total. So based on this very minimal set of data, Busch III seems to yield a similar number as Busch II.

While looking at data for this post, I ran into this. Fantastic! The amount of long shots into extreme leftfield is interesting. Longest shot in Busch III to date : King Albert. Of course.

The series that twisted the 1991 season for the Cards

2006-05-10T14:33:00.000+02:00

Before their second series against the Pirates in 1991 the Cardinals had a 24-18 record against Pittsburgh's 26-15.

When the Pirates took the field in Busch Stadium on the 27th of May, they started red hot and never looked back. Orlando Merced opened with a double, Jay Bell helped him along with a sacrifice bunt. The pressure was on and the Pirates kept it that way. Andy van Slyke walked before Bobby Bonilla singled in the first run and more importantly kept the pressure on by moving van Slyke to third. Barry Bonds sacrificed to score van Slyke after which Cardinals pitcher Bob Tewksbury's nightmare had a final twist with the Mitch Webster triple that scored Bonilla. The Cardinals were unimpressive offensively and Pittsburgh's 4 run fifth wasn't even necessary. Doug Drabek pitched a one hitter to open the series and set the tone. Only Bernard Gilkey's single in the sixth kept it from being a no hitter. In actual fact only Gilkey and Ray Lankford got on base, the latter on a Merced error.

In the second game the Cardinals provided more punch, but ended up just short of wiping away a 5 run 5th inning of the Pirates. In the ninth the Cards rallied to 9-8 and had pinch runner Geronimo Pena on third with two outs, but Craig Wilson flied out to rightfield to end the game.

The third game was pretty much like the first one. The Cardinals again only managed one hit, Jose Oquendo's triple in the third, and Pittsburgh's four run fifth inning sealed the victory.

The series sweep put the Cardinals 5.5 games behind the Pirates and while they kept up with Pittsburgh's pace for most of the season, they never overcame the sweep. The closest the Cardinals got to the division lead was 4 games behind at the end of June and a few times in August, but in the end they were 14 behind Pittsburgh.

If the Cardinals would have won the series 2-1, that would have made it 26-19 for them and 27-17 for Pittsburgh and they'd have been in more of a fighting position instead of having a gotten the mental punch the series sweep gave them. If we look at the times teams in the same division had respectively 26-19 & 27-17 and 24-21 & 29-15 records, the fairly limited data show that getting swept rather than posting an average result in the series lowered St.Louis' chances of finishing above Pittsburgh by more than 20%!

TeamA TeamB  A  B  Eq.  A%
26-19 27-17  11 14      44.0%
24-21 29-15   2  8  1   22.7

In fact the only two occasions a 24-21 team beat a 29-15 team were in 1987 when both the Brewers and Tigers ended above the Yankees with respectively 91-71 and 98-64 against 89-73. In 1936 the Cardinals and Cubs both ended with 87-67 after the Cards had the better start.

With the two one hitters, the Pirates robbed the Cards from using their main assett in those days : speed. Not that it matters much how your lineup is constructed when you don't get on base in the first place, but looking it the numbers it struck me that the players batting second (mainly Ozzie Smith) had a much higher OBP than the lead off hitter (Ray Lankford), which is traditionally uncommon. We're talking .382 vs .305 here. I decided to put the numbers into Baseball Musings' lineup tool. Not the people, but the actual position in the batting order. With the lineup as is, runs scored calculates to 3.938. Best options were :
2nd, 5th, 6th, 4th, 3rd, 7th, 9th, 1st, 8th
2nd, 5th, 1st, 4th, 3rd, 7th, 9th, 6th, 8th
2nd, 5th, 1st, 4th, 3rd, 9th, 6th, 7th, 8th

These all gave 4.029 runs per game. While the difference in itself isn't huge, over a season it would amount to about 15 runs. With 651 runs scored and 648 against, the Cardinals had a Pythagorean record of 81-81 against their actual record of 84-78. Adding 15 runs would make the Pythagorean record 83-79. It's not a huge difference, but with those extra runs at the right time, the impact could have been a lot bigger. The Cardinals played 15 games in extra innings of which they lost 5. One extra run in the ninth of each of those games would already have made a huge impact.

Long term vision on the Marquis trade

2006-05-01T11:33:00.000+02:00

From Atlanta : Jason Marquis, Adam Wainwright, Ray King
To Atlanta : JD Drew, Eli Marrero

Jason Marquis

Costs : $3,525,000 over 2 years
VORP : 2005 : 18.8, 2004 : 39.0

Adam Wainwright

Costs : $300,000 over 1 year (?)
VORP : 2005 : -2.0

Ray King

Costs : $2,750,000 over 2 years
VORP : 2005 : 7.5, 2004 : 20.3

J.D. Drew

Costs : $4,200,000 over 1 year
VORP : 2004 : 78.7

Lost to free agency

Eli Marrero

Costs : $3,000,000 over 1 year
VORP : 2004 : 23.6

Traded after 2004 : to Kansas City with cash for Jorge Vasquez. Baseball America called the amount of cash 'significant'

Jorge Vasquez

Costs : neglectible
VORP : 2005 : 1.5

Added up, the bare numbers look like this:

Cardinals : $6,575,000 for 83.6 or $78648 per VORP
Braves : $7,200,000 for 103.8 or $69364 per VORP

That's excluding the amount of cash Atlanta sent to KC. Anything over $1 million would make it equal on the vorp/money level. However, there's more to it than the trade itself. The Cardinals needed to replace Drew, the Braves needed to replace King and Marquis. In his last season in St.Louis Marrero was filler material and didn't exactly occupy a starting position, while Wainwright was still a minor leaguer.

Drew was replaced by expensive free agent Reggie Sanders. The replacements at the Braves are a bit more complex as they did a complete overhaul of the pitching staff. I suppose Antonio Alfonseca could be seen as King's replacement. He picked up a lot of relief innings in 2004 and was signed just 10 days after King was traded away. Marquis had been demoted from the rotation to incidental bullpen work, so in that sense the Braves didn't actually replace him with anyone substantial.

Reggie Sanders
Costs : $6,000,000 over 2 years
VORP : 2005 : 23.1 , 2004 : 15.5

Antonio Alfonseca
Costs : $1,350,000 over 1 year
VORP : 2004 : 22.6

Adding this to the previously found numbers gives:

Cardinals : $12,575,000 for 122.2 or $102,905 per VORP
Braves : $8,550,000 for 126.4 or $67,642 per VORP (excluding cash considerations)

Ouch! It's clearly J.D.Drew's 2004 vs Reggie Sanders' 2004 making the huge difference. On the other hand, the Cardinals still have Marquis and Wainwright and acquired Bigbie and Miles for King. The Braves only have Vasquez left as an indirect result of the trade. In the end I see the four Cardinals turn the long term balance of this trade in Redbird favour.

Pujols : on his way to a new record?

2006-04-26T08:08:00.000+02:00

Albert Pujols just keeps pounding those balls out of the park. With his 12th homerun in 61 at bats, he's an early threath to Barry Bonds' record. Bonds needed 18 more at bats to reach 12 and further more had a stretch of 45 at bats without a homerun between #40 and #41. It's obvious that Pujols' pace will slow down a bit, but if he stays healthy and reaches 600 at bats, his current pace has him on track to reach over 100! But lets not get carried away too much here.

Quickest to 12 HR in 2004
    Player              AB          HR/AB
1. Barry Bonds         89          45/373
2. Troy Glaus          125         18/207
3. Jeromy Burnitz      130         37/540
4. Rod Barajas         131         15/358
5. Steve Finley        138         36/628
6. Jason Bay           140         26/411
7. Mike Lowell         144         27/598
8. Luis Gonzalez       145         17/379
9. Jim Thome           148         42/508
10. Vinny Castilla      149         35/583

Quickest to 12 HR in 2005
    Player              AB          HR/AB
1. Frank Thomas        97          12/105
2. Tino Martinez       104         17/303
3. Adam Dunn           129         40/543
4. Richie Sexson       136         39/558
5. Cliff Floyd         137         34/550
=. Derrek Lee          137         47/594
7. Troy Glaus          141         37/538
=. Wily Mo Pena        141         19/311
9. Alex Rodriguez      143         48/605
10. Bobby Abreu         144         24/588

It's interesting to see that only Troy Glaus is on both lists. Both lists also show that the early birds don't necessary end the season on top. On the 2004 list only 3 players made it into the top 10 at the end of the season, while in 2005 four made it into both top 10s.

In 2004 Pujols reached 12 after 166 ABs and last season it took him 198. He finished with respectively 46 and 41 homeruns.

To be continued...

Top ERA, bad winning percentage

2006-04-25T10:08:00.000+02:00

While everyone agrees Roger Clemens has a stunning year last year with a phenomenal ERA, his record of 13-8 doesn't look quite that special.

Clemens is only the fifth pitcher since 1945 who started at least 20 games, ended up with an ERA below 2.00 and won less than 15 games.

Player (Team Year)       ERA   W-L    CWpct CERA
Joe Horlen (CHW 1964)    1.88  13-9   .491  3.80
Gary Peters (CHW 1966)   1.98  12-10  .468  3.91
Tommy John (CHW 1968)    1.98  10-5   .421  4.13
Nolan Ryan (HOU 1981)    1.69  11-5   .444  4.02
Roger Clemens (HOU 2005) 1.87  13-8   .491  3.80

Based on pitchers with 20 games started in a season since 1945, the correlation formula for ERA is 5.2132-.1086*W. This is a very strong correlation of .9777. Winning percentage has a formula of .1892+.0232*W with an R-squared of .9372. Clemens' 13 wins would make that a winning percentage of .491 and an ERA of 3.80

The 3.80 ERA in 211.3 innings would account for 89 earned runs, whereas Clemens only allowed 44. A large part can be explained by Clemens having the second lowest opponent RR (R-HR/H+BB-HR). Clemens' RR was .198, by far the best rate for regular starters. Jarrod Washburn was the second best with .217. Looking at the list, the Astros defense comes into view. Of the top 10 RR, 3 pitchers are Astros. Andy Pettitte ranks third with .231 and Roy Oswalt sixth with .245.

While the Houston defense is among the top defenses in the majors, their numbers are not that much better to warrant the entire difference. It's more the lack of run support that made Clemens' record a lot worse than it could have been. If we look at the games where he didn't get a decision, Clemens had a .99 ERA and never gave up more than 2 runs in a game. On no less than 5 occasions the game was lost 0-1. Over 11 games the total score was 22-30 for 4.73 runs per game while the league average in 2005 was 8.90. Overall the Astros scored 4.25 runs per game, which is more than double of what they did in Clemens' no decision games. Should the Astros have scored their average runs in Clemens' no decisions, he would possibly have won 6 more games for a 19-8 record, which matches his ERA a lot better. In another 4 games Clemens left the game with a lead that was promptly blown by the bullpen (Lidge on three occasions, Spring on the other). So with proper run support and a working bullpen, 23-8 would have been in the books for sure.

According to the previously mentioned correlation formulas, 23 wins should be good for a .723 winning percentage (23-8) and a 2.72 ERA. All of this show how irrelevant the wins statistic really is. A few details go wrong and a superb pitcher's record looks mediocre.

Pujols power

2006-04-18T16:43:00.000+02:00

Well, the season's well underway and Albert Pujols is writing baseball history seemingly without effort. 4 homeruns in consecutive at bats have brought him to 9 in 44 ABs. Perspective : that's .205 HR/AB. In 2001 Barry Bonds did .153 over 476 at bats, which is the single highest number for any player with 40+ ABs in a single year.

Of course it's still early in the season and if we look at the players who had at least 9 homers through 18 April in the last 20 years, we see the outcomes are very different over the whole season. However, all of them needed significantly more at bats to reach 9 homeruns.

Homeruns through 18 April:

2001 Luis Gonzalez      10 (57 AB) ARI     57 in 609
1997 Larry Walker       9 (53 AB)  COL     49 in 568
1996 Cecil Fielder      9 (64 AB)  DET/NYY 39 in 591

The Major League record through 31 May is perhaps a closer record to look at. Barry Bonds had 28 in 2001. He went on to 73 in 476 at bats for the season. Leaving aside the steroids issue for a moment, how does Pujols' 9 relate to that? The Cardinals have 40 more games until the end of May. In the Cardinals' first 13 games, Pujols averages 3.38 at bats. Lets take into account he might walk more and goes down to 3 at bats per game. That would give him an additional 120 AB until the end of May. If he continues his rate of .205 HR/AB that would give him 33 HR by 31 May. If he gets down to his level of last season (41 in 591 AB) that would make it 17. In order to beat Bonds' record, he'd need .158 HR/AB. It seems rather unlikely, but wherever Pujols ends up, it'll probably be one of the great power feats of the post-steroid era.

Double playing with another guy

2006-04-06T16:32:00.000+02:00

One day you write about it, the next day he's already lost the spot. Junior Spivey's been demoted and Aaron Miles will be the Cardinals' starter at second for now.

With double plays he seems to rate worse than Spivey, but is that really a fair comparison? In his two incomplete years in Colorado, Miles ranked respectively -.109 and -.012 from the norm set by Todd Helton. However, as we've seen with Eckstein and Pujols last year, when the first baseman has an extremely high double play rate, his double play partners will struggle to match their norm even when they have high rates of their own.

So in order to get some perspective on Miles numbers, lets look at how other Colorado second basemen rated in the Helton era. I've had a look at those who played over 50 games at second.

Year Player            DPRate 1bRate Norm   Diff
1998 Mike Lansing      0.819  1.162  0.897  -0.078
1999 Kurt Abbott       0.625  1.044  0.809  -0.184
1999 Terry Shumpert    0.763  1.044  0.809  -0.045
2000 Mike Lansing      0.699  0.947  0.737  -0.038
2000 Todd Walker       0.573  0.947  0.737  -0.163
2001 Jose Ortiz        0.640  0.913  0.711  -0.071
2001 Todd Walker       0.709  0.913  0.711  -0.003
2002 Brent Butler      0.726  0.925  0.720   0.006
2002 Jose Ortiz        0.505  0.925  0.720  -0.216
2002 Terry Shumpert    0.668  0.925  0.720  -0.052
2003 Ron Belliard      0.782  0.980  0.761   0.021
2004 Aaron Miles       0.612  0.886  0.691  -0.079
2005 Aaron Miles       0.718  0.995  0.772  -0.055
2005 Luis A. Gonzalez  0.621  0.995  0.772  -0.151

So over eight years, only two have performed above the norm with Helton at first. Ron Belliard has outperformed his norm in 4 of the 6 years he played more than 50 games. Only in the last two seasons, while playing in Cleveland, he didn't match his norm. For Brent Butler 2002 was his only season so far in which he played more than 50 games at second.

Thing is, in his two full seasons at first, Pujols' DP Rate averages about the same as Helton's. So if Miles manages to do in 2006 what he's averaged so far and stay about .060 under his rate and Pujols manages a 1.000 rate, that would put Miles at .716, which is about the same as he did last year.

Two games into the season and Pujols and Miles both already have 2 double plays. So far they seem to work well together.

Baseball : double play by the numbers

2006-04-01T14:16:00.000+02:00

On average about 98% of all outs are single outs. Very rarely is there a triple play, so there's about 2% of all outs that are double plays. Percentage wise this is the biggest for shortstops and second basemen. While they in general make their double plays with the first baseman, the latter gets so many single outs that only 0.4% of his outs are double plays. For the second baseman it's about 20% and for the shortstop even 25%.

So how much influence does the fielding capacity of the first baseman have on the fielding stats of the second baseman and shortstop?

Albert Pujols led the majors in double plays by a mile. The St.Louis first baseman scored 175 DPs against number two Todd Helton's 136. Unsurprisingly the Cardinals' second baseman in 2005, Mark Grudzielanek leads that position in double plays with 108. Cards shortstop David Eckstein is only surpased by Pittsburgh's Jack Wilson.

In 2004 Pujols was of a more earthly level and led together with Paul Konerko with 136 double plays. This time the Cards second baseman Tony Womack only ranks 9th in his position, while shortstop Edgar Renteria ranks 12th.

That brings up the question of the chicken and the egg. Did the arrival of Grudzielanek and Eckstein influence Pujols or the other way around?

Over all MLB data for 2000-2005, we find a r-squared of .753 for the double play rates of first basemen and shortstops, which is pretty strong. It means that for 75.3% of the cases the rates relate. The formula : DP/9(ss) = .7783 * DP/9(1b) - .0134. If we apply Pujols' 2004 DP/9 to that, the Cardinals shortstop should have been around .698 or .065 better than Renteria's number. The other way around, Renteria's number would put Pujols at .831 whereas his real number is .880. Eckstein's norm numbers for 2003 and 2004 would have been .579 and .531. In both cases he performed about 30 points better. Both for 2003 and 2004 Renteria performed 40 points below the norm.

Eckstein
Year dp/9(1b) norm dp/9 real dp/9 diff
2003  .761    .579      .612      +.033
2004  .699    .531      .566      +.035
2005 1.177    .903      .825      -.078

Renteria
Year dp/9(1b) norm dp/9 real dp/9 diff
2003 .793     .603      .546      -.057
2004 .880     .672      .633      -.039

If we look at Eckstein's DP/9 over 2003 and 2004, it's pretty similar to Renteria's 2004 number. However, the Cardinals' first basemen rate for 2004 was much higher than that of Anaheim in 2003 and 2004. That would suggest Eckstein's been losing double plays because of the capabilities of the first basemen he played with at the Angels.

So given the 70 point difference Pujols was to be dealing with in 2005, his shortstop would have a DP/9 of approximately .700, which would put him at .917. In reality both his and Eckstein's numbers went up a lot more. The Cardinals' 1.177 DP/9 at first base was the second highest since 200, only surpassed by the 2001 Royals (Mike Sweeney with David McCarty as backup) who made it 1.200

Fact is that Eckstein went from a steady +.034 average over the previous two seasons to a big minus in 2005. Pujols explosive growth obviously plays a part in that. A growth that is as yet unexplained, but maybe the second base situation will shine some light on it.

The r-squared for second basemen and first basemen rates is slightly better at .769. The linear correlation here is DP/9(2b) = .7443 * DP/9(1b) + .0315

Grudzielanek
Year dp/9(1b) norm dp/9 real dp/9 diff
2003  .878    .685      .837      +.152
2004  .706    .557      .531      -.026
2005 1.177    .908      .839      -.069

Womack
Year        dp/9(1b) norm dp/9 real dp/9 diff
2003 (CHN) .878     .685      .396      -.289
2003 (COL) .963     .748      .777      +.019
2003 *      .907     .707      .526      -.181
2004        .880     .686      .655      -.031

*= 66% CHN, 34% COL

This situation looks a lot less straightforward. Both players had seasons where they didn't play much at second base. In his previous years with the Dodgers Grudzielanek pretty much was around the norm, showing that he's a good but not exceptional double play artist. Womack only played second extensively during 1997 and 1998 with the Pirates, when his rate was respectively -.041 and -.005, so overall we could assume Grudzielanek was slightly better than Womack as a double play partner, but not quite enough to make a big difference. All in all it appears that Pujols was simply out of this world last year.

So what are the chances he's coming back to earth? First factor in that is that he's dealing with another second baseman. So far Spivey seems to have the best papers for the job, but considering his spring performance and history of injuries, it's unlikely that he'll work the bulk of the innings.

Spivey
Year        dp/9(1b) norm dp/9 real dp/9 diff
2001        .789     .619      .620      +.001 Mark Grace
2002        .641     .508      .468      -.040 Mark Grace/Erubiel Durazo/Greg Colbrunn
2003        .724     .570      .601      +.031 Lyle Overbay/Shea Hillenbrand/Mark Grace
2004        .736     .580      .713      +.133 Lyle Overbay
2005 (MIL) .720     .567      .601      +.034 Lyle Overbay
2005 (WAS) .852     .666      .663      -.003 Nick Johnson
2005 *      .762     .599      .621      +.022

*= 68% MIL, 32% WAS

Compared to Grudzielanek's rates pre-2005, Spivey seems to be slightly better on the double play front. My impression is that his double play partners this year won't pull down Pujols' level. What remains is the question about whether last year was a spike and he'll come back to more normal numbers this year.

In order to have a larger samplesize, I've looked at double plays per game rather than per 9 innings, as the Lahman database doesn't have innings played info prior to 2000. First basemen had an average of over 1 double play per game 37 times out of 751 times when they played over 140 games. Of those 37 a mere 11 repeated the feat the next year. Whereas the 38 averaged 1.057 in their year, they dropped to .965 in the year after. The ones who averaged over 1 in recent history all dropped below 1, 2 of them sharply.

Andres Galarraga 1.143 (COL 1997) .765 (ATL 1998) .969 (COL 1996)
Todd Helton      1.068 (COL 1998) .974 (COL 1999)
Carlos Delgado   1.037 (TOR 2001) .864 (TOR 2002) .969 (TOR 2000)

All in all it would be quite miraculous if Pujols would keep up his level, but keep counting him to the league leaders. 140 double plays wouldn't surprise me if he stays healthy.

Baseball : Can the Astros do without Clemens?

2006-03-20T22:33:00.000+01:00

While projecting the Astros over at Viva El Birdos, I was thinking about what effect the departure of Roger Clemens will have in Houston. Last year Clemens had a VORP of 80.6, the highest pitcher VORP in the majors. The Astros haven't made a move for a starter in the off season, so either they're convinced Clemens will be back this season or they're somehow convinced they can do it without him.

Their website currently states Oswalt, Pettitte, Backe, Rodriguez, Astacio as the rotation.

            2005    2004    2003    2002    2001    2000
Oswalt      65.4    51.8    32.6    56.4    44.0
Pettitte    72.4    16.2    31.8    31.5    32.1    40.4
Backe       10.9     9.8     2.3    -1.4    
Rodriguez   -1.9
Astacio     -5.7

Wandy Rodriguez through age 26 has Bobby Jones as most similar pitcher on Baseball Reference. The Bobby Jones who played for the Rockies, that is. This is not good news for Houston. Jones had a -13.8 VORP in 1999 at age 27 in his last year as a starter. Ezequiel Astacio got hammered badly in his debut season in the majors. In January 2005 he was ranked as Houston's top pitching prospect, so it's reasonable to expect some performance increase this year. Backe isn't bad, but not quite a star either. While Oswalt's VORP has been averaging in the 50s when he was fit, Pettitte's 72.4 of last season clearly looks like a spike of a pitcher that averages about half of that in the last 6 years.

So taking out Clemens' 80, replacing it with 10 for Rodriguez and Astacio combined, which I think is rather generous, and put Pettitte and Oswalt down for 60. With Backe around 10 again, that leaves a rotation of 140 VORP. That's about what the Cubs and Blue Jays rotation did last year. Those teams finished at respectively 79-83 and 80-82.

The addition of Trever Miller should make the bullpen a bit better, but they'll get a lot of work off the bottom half of the rotation. Whether this bullpen can handle that remains to be seen. VORP-wise the comparison with Toronto continues. The Jays had 143 for their rotation and 86 for their bullpen last season. Houston's offense is quite a bit stronger than what the Blue Jays had, but also has its weaknesses. Will Bagwell return? If so, at which level? Will Preston Wilson perform? Will age catch up with the team? More than enough worries to put last year's playoffs to the back of their minds, I'd say.

Edmonds : what are the options?

2006-03-15T17:59:00.000+01:00

After this season Jim Edmonds' contract runs out. The Cards have a 10 million option for 2007. Question is, should they pick it up or go for the 3 million buyout?

On the current roster there's So Taguchi, Juan Encarnacion, John Rodriguez and Skip Schumaker who can fill in the outfield position.

Encarnacion is under contract until 2008, Taguchi, Schumaker and Rodriguez only for this year. As Encar is primarily starter in rightfield, the replacement likely should be coming from elsewhere. Which leaves the question : who can the Cards get for 7 million with Edmonds' qualities?

Looking at the 2006 ZiPS projections there's 13 outfielders who are younger than Edmonds and have an RC/27 that's at least 90% of Edmonds'. Of those eight have a 2007 salary of over 10 million. Which leaves five options.

Miguel Cabrera. The Marlins are actively shopping him. He's got a 472,000 contract until the end of this year, after that he's going to skyrocket. However, he's young and got a ton of potential. Not sure whether he'd come cheaper than 7 million, though.

Trot Nixon. On the final year of his Red Sox contract, earning 6.5 million a year. Obviously more a rightfielder than a centerfielder and with his 31 years he's not getting faster either.

Brad Wilkerson. On a one year, 3.9 million deal in Texas. No idea how ZiPS put him on 6.9 RC/27 as his career best is 6.5 in Montreal in 2004 and he's got a career 5.7. Strikes out a lot and his 32 homers in 2004 stick out with a great big 'fluke' sign. His fielding's also way below league average.

Jorge Piedra. Earning 317,000 in Colorado this year. Tricky one. Hasn't had a full major league season yet and his stats are influenced by Colorado air.

Jason Bay. The only one of the five who's contract is not running out after this season. He's on 3.25m in 2007, 5.75 in 2008 and 7.5m in 2009. Only to be used as a leftfielder. His power and speed are very good and he's still young enough to even improve on those numbers. Thing is, how are the Cards going to get him away from the Pirates? As he's for leftfield, it would likely involve re-signing Taguchi for centerfield and letting Bigbie walk. Which is fine by me.

My personal favourite clearly is Bay with Cabrera second. Unfortunately the Pirates would be made if they'd trade him. Their depth chart does not list a backup leftfielder, so they'd require something there and their second base doesn't look brilliant either. Bigbie, Spivey and say Marquis? It would weaken the rotation, but strengthen the batting order. I wouldn't be against it.

All directions

2006-03-13T16:22:00.000+01:00

Awaiting the end of the working day here, as you'll soon will be able to tell.

Only once in Major League history all directions were playing in the same season!

It happened in 1911. Clyde Southwick was playing for the St.Louis Browns, Hub Northen for the Brooklyn Dodgers and Ted Easterly and Hi West were both playing for the Cleveland Naps.

No idea whether they actually played on the same day, but I thought I'd share this product of my warped mind ;)

Post Interrupted

2006-03-13T08:42:00.000+01:00

I've been working on the following through most of last week... and then I read the steroids excerpt from Baseball between the numbers. Ah well, here's what I came up with anyway. Steroids crossed my mind, but I explicitly did not want to start out thinking that way.

---

I was having a look at Defense-Independent ERA after reading about it at Fungoes, digging up the formula at BTF. Messed around with it for a few players and then decided to have a look at the number per pitching staff from 1955 onwards. 1955 because that's the first season Lahman has IBB available.

I quickly noticed that when you compare dERA with ERA, it used to be about equal but in recent years ERA has gotten significantly higher. A closer look shows pretty much a trendbreak in 1993. With the odd exception the difference had been about .20 maximum. In 1993 it was .57 and after that it was around .80 with peaks above .90 in 1996, 2000 and 2001. During this time the dERA stayed pretty much the same, but the ERA went up. At first I thought interleague play might be a factor, but that only started in 1997. Then it hit me : the expansion! But would the arrival of Florida and especially Colorado have that much of an influence?

The difference between Colorado's dERA and ERA was a massive 1.56 (3.88 vs 5.44), but that only makes .03 difference on the total. What an expansion does do is add a number of players and as it doesn't add any better players, the average quality of the players will drop. The 1993 expansion increased the number of teams from 26 to 28, which is a 7.7% increase.

So lets look at the change of all the stats that make up the dERA over the 1992-2005 period.

Stat Change ExpAdj Effect
BFP  +16.0%
HR   +65.1% +42.3% +.16
BB   +11.2% - 4.2% -.02
IBB  - 7.6% -20.4% +.05
SO   +30.2% +12.2% -.13
HBP  +83.4% +58.0% +.04

Batters faced increase is obviously due to 2 expansions. If we take that out of the equation, we're left with a huge increase in homeruns and hit batters to raise the dERA and a drop in walks and increase in strikeouts to lower it. While especially the homeruns and strikouts on their own make quite an impact to the dERA, the effects cancel each other out, making sure dERA stays at approximately the same level.

The ERA is where the change occured. It went from 3.75 in 1992 to 4.19 in 1993 and 4.51 in 1994. In 1992 the Braves had the league's lowest ERA with 3.14, while the highest was 4.61 for the Tigers. Two years later the ERAs were between 3.57 (Expos, Braves) and 5.69 (Twins).

Between 1992 and 1994 four new ballparks appeared in the majors. The Rockies and Marlins were added as teams, while the Rangers and Indians moved into new stadiums. If we exclude those 4 parks from the equation, as well as the 2 old parks for 1992, it explains only a small part of the change. Taking out the old parks of 1992 keeps the dERA at 3.56 while it lowers the ERA by .02 to 3.73. Taking out the new parks of 1994 lowers the dERA by .03 to 3.64 and the ERA by .07 to 4.44.

A look at the correlation between homers, strikeouts and walks (all per 9 innings) on one side and ERA on the other side shows that over the 1955-2005 period homeruns relate most to ERA. For HR/9 the correlation (r squared, per Excel) turned out to be 80.4%, while for K/9 it was only 28.5% and for BB/9 it was 50.4%. This makes sense as a homerun is pretty much at least 1 ER guaranteed. A strikout lowers the ERA as a third of an inning is added, while a walk gives a chance to score and earned runs, but with no certainty.

So homeruns is the thing to look for. If we compare the number of homeruns per at bat, the big contributors are the Indians (+1.89%), Dodgers (+1.60%), Red Sox (+1.51%) and Angels (+1.40%).

Indians:
Jim Thome became of age : from 2 HR in 117 AB to 20 HR in 321 AB.
Addition of Eddie Murray added 17/433.
Manny Ramirez' first full season gave 17/290.
Carlos Baerga increased is homerrate : 20/657 to 19/442.
The only real producer they lost was Glenallen Hill.

---

At this point I read the excerpt and figured it said where I would have ended up after many more paragraphs of muttering to myself :)

Back to back 100 wins : no October guarantee

2006-03-07T11:30:00.000+01:00

Having back to back 100 wins season is not good. OK, that sounds like a paradox, right? Let me explain. I was looking at who accomplished this feat throughout major league history and spotted something interesting. Of the 47 seasons that were part of a back to back 100 win cycle, only 19 resulted in World Series victory! On 6 occasions the World Series were not won because another 100+ wins team won it that year, but it still leaves over half of the cases where a 100- team beat a 100+ team.

St.Louis Cardinals    2004-2005 2 0
New York Yankees      2002-2004 3 0
Atlanta Braves        2002-2003 2 0
Oakland Athletics     2001-2002 2 1
Atlanta Braves        1997-1999 3 0
Baltimore Orioles     1979-1980 2 0
New York Yankees      1977-1978 2 2
Philadelphia Phillies 1976-1977 2 0
Cincinnati Reds       1975-1976 2 2
Baltimore Orioles     1969-1971 3 1
St.Louis Cardinals    1942-1944 3 2
New York Yankees      1941-1942 2 1
Brooklyn Dodgers      1941-1942 2 0
New York Yankees      1936-1937 2 2
Philadephia Athletics 1929-1931 3 2
New York Yankees      1927-1928 2 2
New York Giants       1912-1913 2 0
Philadephia Athletics 1910-1911 2 2
Chicago Cubs          1909-1910 2 0
Chicago Cubs          1906-1907 2 1
New York Giants       1904-1905 2 1
                               47 19

The Athletics have the best record with 5 out of 7 series won, followed by the Yankees with 7 out of 11. The Cardinals this year can become the sixth team in history to win 100 games in 3 consecutive seasons and the first team to do it twice.

Izzy worth it?

2006-03-07T08:18:00.000+01:00

As it's been requested, here's a breakdown of Izzy's stats. Izzy worth the 7 million?

To find that out, it's necessary to determine what value a closer is expected to deliver for the money he's paid. As the save is the stat closers are judged by, that's a good starting point.

However, the save is only the end result. More than any other type of pitcher, the closer relies on strikeouts to get the job done. Of the 21 pitchers in 2005 with more than 30 save opportunities, 14 have 2 or more strikouts per walk. There's three pitchers who have converted more than 90% of their save opportunities with a k/bb ratio of less than 2 : Bob Wickman, Jason Isringhausen and Ryan Dempster. So in that respect Izzy's different than your average closer.

So how does he do it then? A breakdown per month shows a rather consistent pattern with perhaps a bit of a weaker June month, but nothing particularly striking.

Month    G   IP   SO  BB   W-L-S-H-B  ERA
April    10  8.1   6   6   0-0-7-1-0  1.08
May       9  9.0   6   5   0-0-8-0-0  0.00
June     10  9.0   9   4   0-1-7-0-2  5.00
July     11 11.0  11   5   0-0-7-0-1  0.82
August   11  9.2   8   2   0-0-5-0-0  1.86
Sept/Oct 12 12.0  11   5   1-1-5-0-1  3.75

If we split things between positive (win, save, hold), negative (loss, blown save) and neutral, it becomes clear that when Izzy sucks, he sucks bad. What's interesting is that his strikout rate when doing badly isn't any worse than when doing well.

type     G  IP    SO  BB    ERA
W/S/H    41 37.1  38  14    0.24
L/B       5  5.0   5   5   14.40
Other    17 16.2   8   8    2.70
Non-L/B  58 54.0  46  22    1.00

When looking at the blown saves and losses it's only the June 2 outing in Colorado that really sticks out as bad. Against the heart of the Rockies order Izzy gave up 3 hits and 2 walks without making an out. Other than that it's largely bad luck. On June 26 it was a solo homer that did the job, on July 15 one hit followed by 2 sacrifices, on September 2 2 solo homers in 2 innings and finally on September 28 it was a single and a double that lost it for Izzy. So that's 3 of the 4 homers during blown save opportunities.

So apart from the odd miss, Izzy's a damn fine closer. But the question was whether he's worth the money. That question is a bit complicated. Well, the question isn't, but answering it is. See, you could argue that Izzy delivered 39 saves for 7 million, while Chad Cordero delivered 47 for less than four grand, but it's obviously not as simple as that. You'd have to look at the closer qualities at the time when the contract was signed and see how the guy did since then. Return on investment type stuff.

According to Col's it looks like this:
2005 7m
2006 8.75m
2007 8.75m
2008 8m club option /w 1.25m buyout

Interesting is that it was an extension on a 2002-05 contract with an option for 2006 which actually gave Izzy less money for 2005.

Over his period with the Cardinals prior to this extension, 2002-2004, Isringhausen recorded 101 saves, the seventh highest in the majors over that period of time. If we look at the 2005 salaries of the guys with 100+ saves in 2002-2004, they average 7.1 million and of those guys only Gagne and Benitez are younger than Izzy.

Player             Saves Sal. Age  2005sv ip   sv/ip
Eric Gagne         152   8.0m  29       8 13.1  .600
John Smoltz        144   9.0m  38  starter
Mariano Rivera     121  10.5m  35      43 78.1  .549
Jose Mesa          112   2.0m  39      27 56.2  .476
Eddie Guardado     104   6.0m  34      36 56.1  .639
Armando Benitez    101   5.0m  32      19 30.0  .633
Jason Isringhausen 101   7.0m  32      39 59.0  .661
Billy Wagner       100   9.0m  33      38 77.2  .489

While injury is all part of the game, saves per inning pitched gives a bit of an insight in the player's net productivity. Among the known big guns, Izzy proved by far the most effective with .661 saves per inning. So considering similar types in the market when he extended his contract, the 7 million look to be worth the money. You have to consider that the 39 saves were made while missing 3 weeks of the season.

The young generation guys like Chad Cordero might give more value for money right now, but that will change rapidly when their current contracts run out. Brad Lidge, after a season and a half as Astros closer, signed a 1 year extension at almost 4 million for example. 7 million seems to be about marketvalue for an experienced and dependable closer without too much injury worries.

Baseball : The Talented Mr.Kazmir & the unearned Cardinal runs

2006-03-02T10:19:00.000+01:00

A remarkable performance last year was that of Devilrays pitcher Scott Kazmir. With a team ERA of 5.39, Kazmir managed a comparatively stunning 3.77 in his first full season in the majors. So what made him different from the rest of the Tampa Bay staff?

My first thought : he walked a lot of batters. I know, that doesn't sound like something positive, but think about it. A batter who walks, has no chance to hit a double, triple or homer. If you look how far baserunners got off the pitcher ((TB+BB+HBP)/(H+BB+HBP) to keep it simple), Kazmir lets them go 1.309 bases. In comparison, 20 game winner Roy Oswalt has 1.395, Roger Clemens 1.301, Andy Pettite 1.414, the entire Cardinals staff, ERA leaders of 2005, 1.404 and the Devil Rays staff minus Kazmir 1.453. Add to that Kazmir's excellent strikeout rate of 8.42 per 9 innings, not giving runners on base the chance to progress, and it looks explainable.

Unfortunately for Kazmir he plays in Tampa Bay. 12 unearned runs and a lack of run support turned his performance into a 10-9 record. 12 unearned runs on Kazmir's stats mean 15.4% on top of his earned runs against a Major League average of 8.8% unearned runs. That's almost double! It's also interesting to note that Tampa Bay on average added 10.0% unearned runs.

Now lets see where Kazmir's stats would have gotten him with decent fielding and batting. Assuming the Devil Rays offense wasn't particularly better or worse than usual when Kazmir was on the mound and go with their production of 4.63 runs per game. With Kazmir's 3.77 earned runs per 9 innings (lets call that a game for similicity's sake) + 15.4% unearned runs that gives him a pythagorian winning percentage of .535 or 10.2 games on 19 decisions, which is what he achieved.

A 3.77 ERA would have scored best in Boston where the 5.62 runs per game offense and the league's 5th lowest unearned runs percentage would have resulted in 12.3 wins on Kazmir's 19 decisions. The worst would have been Washington. Despite the 7th lowest unearned runs percentage in the Majors, the total lack of production (3.98 r/g) would have resulted in 9.3 wins only.

Oh yeah, might be interesting to note than 3 of the 12 unearned runs came in the game vs Cleveland on August 25. They were unearned because of an error by...Scott Kazmir. Unearned, yet guilty. How stats can work in strange ways :)

A final interesting thing is Kazmir's no decisions. In 32 games he got only 19 decisions. In the remaining 13 he left the game in a losing position twice and 6 times with a tie. Which means that no less than 5 times he had a win but saw his bullpen take it away from him.

---------------------------

While looking into the above I noticed the major league high unearned runs percentage was for....the Cardinals! With an average of 13.2% the Cards are 2.7% worse off than the number 29 Oakland.

Splitting the number per starter shows Carpenter at 7.9%, Mulder at 8.4%, Morris at 14.8%, Marquis at 15.8% and Suppan at a mind boggling 20.8%. So lets unboggle Suppan's number. He had unearned runs in 7 games, 4 of which yielded more than 1. The big one? May 22 at Kansas City. It's all down to one inning. Here's how it went:

Berroa singles
DeJesus reaches on an Eckstein error, Berroa to second
Sweeney out
Stairs out, Berroa to third, DeJesus to second
Brown doubles, Berroa/DeJesus score
Teahen doubles, Brown scores
Diaz reaches on an Eckstein error, Teahen scores
Buck homers, Diaz scores
Gotay out

So the first error causes six unearned runs as without it Brown, Teahen, Diaz, Buck and Gotay would never have hit. Not sure whether that's entirely fair as the consecutive doubles would have scored a run in any case as would the homer, but there you go, rules are rules. This inning made 8% difference in Suppan's total and 1.1% on the Cardinals' total. Another three unearned runs came in the August 21 game vs San Francisco when Scott Seabol made a two out throwing error followed by a single, double and another single.

For Marquis the damage was done in June. He allowed 7 unearned runs in two games, three on the fourth in Houston and four on the 21st in Cincinnati. That's four errors for 16 unearned runs. Take those out and the Cardinals' rate comes within the realm of Oakland, Baltimore and Cleveland. It does show that even a few heavy impact errors don't matter when everything else works.

Eckstein by the numbers

2006-02-26T12:00:00.000+01:00

As said before, I'm going into David Eckstein's stats a bit deeper.

Year    Team        League  Level   Org  RR     OP      OBP     ORO
1997    Lowell      NYPL    A       Bos  0.375  0.137   0.386   2.264
1998    Sarasota    FSL     A       Bos  0.403  0.134   0.411   2.382
1999    Trenton     East    AA      Bos  0.440  0.135   0.422   2.499
2000    Pawtucket   IL      AAA     Bos  0.466  0.099   0.364   2.305
2000    Edmonton    PCL     AAA     Ana  0.583  0.189   0.485   3.159
2001    Anaheim     ML      MLB     Ana  0.380  0.110   0.355   2.117
2002    Anaheim     ML      MLB     Ana  0.460  0.111   0.363   2.326
2003    Anaheim     ML      MLB     Ana  0.381  0.099   0.325   2.010
2004    Anaheim     ML      MLB     Ana  0.459  0.099   0.339   2.228
2005    St.Louis    ML      MLB     Stl  0.349  0.113   0.363   2.069

Apart from the low A levels, Eckstein's OP has never been exceptional. His stats in Edmonton should be taken with a pinch of salt as they're only over 50 at bats. ORO's been taken against Rickey Henderson's all star levels again, just like in the previous lead off post.

What's interesting is that Eckstein seems to go up and down. In order to find a reason, I have dissected his 2003 season per month. The drop off after July is rather obvious. Halfway through August Eckstein went on the DL with a back injury which kept him out of action for a month.

Month(s)        RR     OP      OBP    ORO    AB
March/April     0.395  0.103   0.34   2.090  108
May             0.419  0.102   0.316  2.086  100
June            0.526  0.080   0.274  2.168  76
July            0.286  0.116   0.373  1.953  76
August          0.294  0.093   0.321  1.774  50
September       0.357  0.098   0.304  1.897  42

June was a strange month. His OBP was downright horrible, but his RR was phenomenal. Early on in the month Eckstein wasn't used much, but managed to score each of the 5 times he got on base against the Expos. After that he badly bruised his hand and missed a week. The roadtrip to Seattle and LA really dented his numbers big time. Eckstein went 1 for 28 as the Angels slumped.

Dates (opp)             RR     OP     OBP    ORO    AB
1-12 (at MON, PHI)      1.000  0.074  0.294  3.317  16
13-15 (NYM)             0.400  0.115  0.384  2.251  11
16-24 (at SEA,at LA)    0.500  0.009  0.100  1.455  28
25-30 (at SEA,LA,TEX)   0.286  0.159  0.391  2.133  21

If you look at Eckstein's line before trouble hit (.443/.101/.332/2.179) it's much more like his 2002 and 2004 performances.

The odd thing in 2005 was his drop in RR. Once again, lets look at the splits per month. Does July stick out like a sore thumb or what? While his RR sucked pre-all star game (.083 vs .400 after), his OBP was the other way around (.325 before, .225 after, so both pretty bad). As far as OP goes, I really have no idea. In August he showed he actually can do it, but maybe it's got to do with knowing there's guys behind him who will help him along the bases.

Month(s)           RR     OP     OBP    ORO    AB
March/April        0.267  0.098  0.367  1.838  77
May                0.354  0.125  0.386  2.176  116
June               0.462  0.104  0.368  2.319  98
July               0.259  0.084  0.266  1.529  101
August             0.356  0.141  0.377  2.206  127
September/October  0.348  0.113  0.402  2.162  111

Looking at the times Eckstein got on base pre-all star July and thus actually could do something about his RR, we see that he didn't actually get many chances to progress. He stranded because of a double play 4 times. 7 times an out for Pujols played part in stranding Eckstein, but over the period Pujols wasn't exactly hitting bad overall (.323), despite a mini slump between 6 and 10 July in which he went 2 for 14.

Eliminating July from the equation leaves a .361/.118/.381/2.157 line which at least shows promise. His OBP last season was a career high and if he can get his RR back to 2004 levels, he can be a serious lead off threath. One only has to wonder what the new number two hitter will do for Eckstein in 2006.

Starting on the mound and in the field

2006-02-24T16:02:00.000+01:00

Here's a freak thought. If Rick Ankiel returns to the Cards starting line-up, he'll be the first to start games as a pitcher and as a fielder since Bobby Darwin did the same on 8 July 1971. If he starts twice, he'll be the first one with multiple pitching and multiple fielding starts since Willie Smith on 16 June 1964.

Speaking of freakish things. While looking for the above I ran into the Twins vs Athletics game of 22 September 1968. Cesar Tovar started the game pitching, his first and only start, and then proceeded to play every position on the field within the same game! Here's how he went :

1st : pitching
2nd : catcher
3rd : first
4th : second
5th : short
6th : third
7th : leftfield
8th : centerfield
9th : rightfield

In the game Tovar pitched 1 strikeout, 1 walk, 1 balk and as a batter he got a single, a walk, a stolen base and scored a run. He was the second player to pull this stunt after Bert Campaneris had done it 3 years earlier. To make everything complete, Campaneris was the first batter to face Tovar. The difference between the two occasions is that Campaneris didn't start the game as a pitcher. Incidently Campaneris was injured in the ninth when he was catching and Angels outfielder Ed Kirkpatrick tried to steal home. Campaneris left the game which went into extra innings.

Leading off

2006-02-23T13:25:00.000+01:00

By popular demand, we're going to have a look at Rickey Henderson and the lead off hitters. What made Henderson such an incredible lead off hitter?

The first question is : what do you expect from a lead off hitter? That's pretty simple to answer. You expect him to get on base first and foremost and then score. Getting on base is more important than anything as the lead off is the one who has the heart of the order to bring him across the plate. Looking at Henderson's stats in his All Star years (1980, 1982-1988, 1990-1991), you see that his OBP is right up there. All seasons except 1986 his OBP was between .393 and .439 for an average of .406 in all his All Star years. Of the 2005 lead off hitters only Oakland's Mark Ellis managed to get above this benchmark, reaching a staggering .453 in 125 plate appearances. As Ellis switched to lead off at the end of the season, that's a great promise for Oakland's future for sure. Actually Ellis beat the average Henderson All Star in just about every category. The only question is whether he can keep it up for a full season.

The next quality a lead off requires is the ability to run well. For this I looked at how well a runner progresses once he's on base. As homeruns hardly require running, these get taken out of the equation, leaving (R-HR)/(H+BB-HR). I will call this run rate (RR). This figure was pretty much all over the place for Henderson, between .354 in 1987 and .490 in 1985. While the figure is influenced by whatever the following hitters do, it has to be noted Henderson suffered a hamstring injury in 1987. In fact, before his injury and after it he was running respectively .413 and .409. What's interesting is that another great lead off hitter of the era, Vince Coleman, was well above Henderson's running rate most of the time. In 1993 Coleman even topped Henderson's 1985 top mark by getting .500

A third point, albeit less important, is the rate at which the lead off hitter can propel himself along the bases without the need for teammates. Doing this well limits his dependency and give his teammates a runner in better position to score. What I used for this is (TB+BB+SB-CS)/(4*(AB+BB)). In other words the number of bases hit or stolen against the total number of bases he could have possible ran. I'll call this OP or own production. All Star Henderson achieved .161 on average. Randy Winn (Seattle, .176 in 208) and Mark Ellis (.164 in 114) are the only ones to surpased Henderson's level in 2005. Closest over a full season was Baltimore's Brian Roberts with .147, which is in fact just below Henderson's worst figure in his all star years.

If we combine the three stats (OBP,RR and half of OP), levelling them on Henderson's overall all star performance (i.e. divide OBP by .406, RR by .423 and OP by .161), we run into the same names again : Mark Ellis with 2.686 and Grady Sizemore with 2.360 are the only ones to beat Henderson's worst all star performance. Here's the top ten for 2005.

Player          Tm  OBP   RR    OP    ORO   AB
Mark Ellis      Oak 0.453 0.449 0.164 2.686
Grady Sizemore  Cle 0.353 0.451 0.137 2.360 534
Johnny Damon    Bos 0.367 0.439 0.127 2.338 621
Ryan Freel      Cin 0.371 0.432 0.126 2.325 349
Reed Johnson    Tor 0.366 0.437 0.124 2.318 205
Angel Berroa    KC  0.298 0.542 0.096 2.312 168
David Dellucci  Tex 0.346 0.434 0.138 2.308 372
Chone Figgins   LAA 0.356 0.436 0.127 2.302 529
Derek Jeter     NYY 0.391 0.394 0.131 2.299 638
Jimmy Rollins   Phi 0.337 0.452 0.128 2.295 669

The missing big lead off hitter here is Ichiro Suzuki. After four consecutive starts as the American League lead off hitter in the all star game, Johnny Damon took over his role in the 2005 game and while Ichiro still made the all star team, is ORO was indeed below his usual par. Over five years the Mariners player managed 2.252 while his 2005 number was 2.209.

Now for the promised focus on St.Louis lead off men. Lets start with the raw numbers. Here are the numbers for the last 10 years as well as the times in the last 30 years the Cardinals won their division.

Year  OBP   RR    OP    ORO
1987    0.360    0.476    0.135    2.431
1982    0.353    0.478    0.117    2.362
1985    0.325    0.492    0.125    2.352
2000    0.377    0.427    0.118    2.307
1967    0.329    0.429    0.136    2.245
2001    0.357    0.407    0.117    2.203
2003    0.311    0.460    0.102    2.171
1997    0.332    0.397    0.126    2.148
1999    0.349    0.374    0.128    2.140
2004    0.335    0.409    0.110    2.135
2005    0.368    0.363    0.116    2.126
1968    0.319    0.386    0.128    2.095
1998    0.293    0.442    0.102    2.084
1996    0.331    0.389    0.112    2.082
2002    0.331    0.366    0.098    1.987

Very much ups and downs and it does show the team's not super reliant on their lead off hitter. Obviously nowadays they can afford to with Pujols' amazing talent carrying them, but it's already a lot better than the dramatic 2002 situation when Fernando Vina was downright nasty.

The top figure obviously is Vince Coleman, who was a good match for Henderson in his best years. In fact in 1987 Coleman's ORO was better than Henderson's (2.452 vs 2.406). Considering Coleman's less than brilliant OBP, that says a lot about his running qualities. Over his years with the Cardinals Coleman reached a .445 RR against Henderson's .423 in his all star years.

The 1982 number is surprisingly high, considering the fact that Lonnie Smith and Tom Herr shared the lead off role.

What surprises is 2003. With the second lowest OBP of all the years, the high RR more than makes up for it. This was largely due to rookie Bo Hart, who achieved a .500 RR in his 256 at bats as lead off. So why didn't Bo stuck around? The general theory seems to be that he struck out too much for a lead off hitter. Indeed his 67 Ks in 309 major league at bats are high for a guy who's most important assett should be to get on base in the first place. After two more years in triple A, posting numbers below his 2003 season, Hart wasn't offered a new contract and a few weeks ago signed a minor league deal with the Rockies.

1967 and 1968 were the number two base stealer of all time, Lou Brock. The main difference between Brock and Henderson is that Brock, while having both decent power and tremendous speed, didn't combine the two in a single season. Additionally, Henderson was walked a lot more than Brock, which had a lot to do with the lack of homerun power in the Cardinals line-up.

What's interesting from a Cardinals perspective is Aaron Miles' 123 at bats as lead off hitter last season. Not that he makes a good lead off hitter with a .280 OBP and a .098 OP. However, his RR is excellent at .471. Could be a very good pinchrunner if you ask me.

As for Eckstein, it appears he needs to improve his RR quite a bit. I'll dedicate another post to dissect his numbers a bit more, as this post is getting quite long already ;)

Baseball : Vorp for Money

2006-02-20T09:15:00.000+01:00

While reading about Rickey Henderson's possible retirement, I pondered about his value. I picked a random trade and tried to see whether I could figure out whether he was worth his money. The trade I chose was the one from the Yankees to the A's in 1989. In return for Henderson the Yankees received Greg Cadaret, Eric Plunk and Luis Polonia. Their stints at the Yankees ended respectively by being purchased by Cincinnati, released and traded for Claudell Washington (who in turn got released) and Rich Monteleone (who left the Yankees as a FA). I had a look at salary vs VORP. The collective players the Yankees acquired as a result of the Henderson trade cost them $48,365 per VORP. Henderson in turn cost his teams a staggering $68,198 per VORP in the remainder of his Major League career.

It is rather obvious that high profile players cost more per VORP as they do more than actually play. They're the ones who bring the people to the ballparks and they're the ones who could genuinly make a difference. Henderson was one who did make a difference. If you take out his VORP from the team runs total and apply a pythagorean formula to estimate the difference to the actual pythagorean team record and in turn set that off against the actual win-loss record, lets see what wouldn't have happened. The A's wouldn't have gotten the division title in 1990, the Padres wouldn't have gotten the division title in 1996 (still made the playoffs, though) and the Mets wouldn't have made the playoffs in 1999. Plus the division in 1992 could have been a tie between the A's and Twins, but with the A's winning their series 8-5 it technically didn't make a difference.

On the other hand, if the Yankees hadn't made that deal and continued playing with Henderson through 1989-1993, it wouldn't have made a difference. Even Henderson's 93.8 VORP in 1990 wouldn't have done much for the 67 wins Yankees that year (especially as Polonia, Plunk and Cadaret combined for 47.6 VORP that year).

Next thought I had was how ridiculously overpaid Alex Rodriguez is in relation to his VORP. Yes, his 99.7 VORP in 2005 helped the Yankees and in fact, according to my calculation method helped the Yankees into the playoffs! Still, 26 million is more than any player's worth in my book. Oh and for those interested in the calculation :

Yankees actual record : 95-67
Yankees pythagorean record : 90-72
Yankees minus ARod pythagorean record : (886-99.7)^1.83/((886-99.7)^1.83+789^1.83)*162 = 81-81
95-(90-81) : 86-76 for 2nd in AL East and 3rd in AL wildcard

------------------------------

On a household note : I've added a commentfeed over on the right at the little 'rss commentfeed' button. Hardly useful with the massive amounts of comments I'm getting, but I like to experiment a bit :p

Fly balls vs ground balls

2006-02-16T11:42:00.000+01:00

A lot of talk with regards to pitcher effectiveness is about keeping the ball on the ground. The following selection of pitchers from the 2004 season is by no means random. Taking 100 fly ball at bats as benchmark, I've looked at the pitchers with over 50% fly balls and those with less than 25%. I've also added those with the worst fly ball OBA (Fossum in addition to Lowe and Webb), best fly ball OBA (Jason Johnson in addition to Ishii and Randolph), best ground ball OBA (Ponson and in addition to Hudson) and worst ground ball OBA (Jason Jennings and John Lieber in addition to Brandon Webb). Finally I've added 20 game winners Curt Schilling, Johan Santana and Roy Oswalt.

While a high fly ball ratio seems to give varied results, it's pretty obvious that a very low fly ball ratio is likely to give good results unless pitching in Arizona. Looking at Ponson and Rueter it's also clear that being good with ground balls isn't the only key. If you suck at fly balls, you're screwed.

                      FOBA  FAB GOBA  GAB  F/G   W-L   ERA   WHIP
Steve Randolph (ari)  .176  102 .224   80 56.0%  2-5   5.51  1.82 *
Lance Carter (tbd)    .204  108 .219   91 54.3%  3-3   3.47  1.25 *
Jorge Sosa (tbd)      .234  111 .236  101 52.4%  4-7   5.53  1.55
Eric Milton (phi)     .319  213 .260  199 51.7% 14-6   4.75  1.35
Cliff Lee (cle)       .294  201 .304  189 51.5% 14-8   5.43  1.50
Kazuhisa Ishii (lad)  .182  198 .206  188 51.3% 13-8   4.71  1.47
Darrell May (kcr)     .289  232 .243  230 50.2%  9-19  5.61  1.55
Claudio Vargas (mon)  .219  128 .295  128 50.0%  5-5   5.25  1.56 *
-----------------------------------------------
Ryan Drese (tex)      .256  133 .225  403 24.8% 14-10  4.20  1.40
Derek Lowe (bos)      .395  124 .221  416 23.0% 14-12  5.42  1.62
Jake Westbrook (cle)  .333  135 .206  455 22.9% 14-9   3.38  1.25
Tim Hudson (oak)      .265  102 .283  379 21.2% 12-6   3.53  1.26
Brandon Webb (ari)    .373  110 .333  420 20.8%  7-16  3.59  1.51
-----------------------------------------------
Casey Fossum (ari)    .374  123 .242  205 37.5%  4-15  4.44  1.65
-----------------------------------------------
Jason Johnson (det)   .179  162 .280  340 32.3%  8-15  5.13  1.43
-----------------------------------------------
Sidney Ponson (bal)   .283  184 .156  395 31.8% 11-15  5.30  1.55
Kirk Rueter (sfg)     .313  160 .187  374 30.0%  9-12  4.73  1.53
-----------------------------------------------
Jason Jennings (col)  .283  166 .341  331 33.4% 11-12  5.51  1.70
John Lieber (nyy)     .289  173 .298  313 35.6% 14-8   4.33  1.33
-----------------------------------------------
Roy Oswalt (hou)      .299  164 .204  316 34.2% 20-10  3.49  1.25
Curt Schilling (bos)  .256  211 .221  270 43.9% 21-6   3.26  1.06
Johan Santana (min)   .302  202 .217  230 46.8% 20-6   2.61   .92

* : no starter

The last line is rather thought provoking. Santana has a relatively high percentage of fly balls and on top of that a high OBA for those fly balls. Yet he won 20 games! The 61 fly ball hits are divided into 25 singles, 12 doubles, 2 triples and 22 homers. Of the 22 home runs 6 came in 2 games.

On 16 April Santana was bailed out by his offense for a no decision. 3 home runs by the Royals meant Santana ended his game after 6.1 innings with 6 hits and 6 earned runs and a 7-7 score. The Twins scored 2 in the bottom of the seventh to take the victory.

On 7 May his game lasted only 4 innings. With another 3 home runs, this time by the A's, and a total of 7 hits and 5 earned runs Santana left the game 3-5 down. Once again the Twins offense bailed him out and tied the game before losing it in 13 innings.

Another game with multiple homers was against Boston on 1 August. Both Orlando Cabrera and Manny Ramirez hit solo homers, in both cases giving Boston the lead. However, Santana pitched one hell of a game. In 8 innings, those were the only 2 hits he allowed, while striking out 12 and walking 1.

At another occasion where he encountered multiple fly ball hits, on 27 April vs Toronto, it was once again the Twins offense who came back and yielded a no decision for Santana.

On 7 August he even managed a win against four fly ball hits. Santana fell apart in the seventh, but was pulled out with a 4-3 lead after having allowed 3 runs in a third of an inning.

If we split Santana's numbers between wins, losses and no decisions, the picture becomes a bit clearer. The OBA on fly balls is significantly lower when winning, while it's extremely high on non decisions. It appears that he was saved from a number of losses by being pulled off the mound and the Twins making a comeback after that. Santana's overall run support per 9 innings was 5.49, while it was 5.02 in the games where he performed worse than his 2.61 ERA.

   FOBA  FAB GOBA  GAB  F/G  
W  .254  114 .216  134  46.0%
L  .289   45 .289   38  54.2%
N  .442   43 .172   58  42.6%

Now back to the general principle. The difference between fly ball vs ground ball for winning vs losing pitchers isn't actually that big. Losing pitchers have only about 3% higher fly ball ratio. The difference is in the number of balls that actually get hit. While their ground ball OBA is 43% worse than for winners, their fly ball OBA is 81% higher!

   FOBA  FAB GOBA   GAB   F/G  
W  .202 9763 .194 17177  36.2%
L  .366 9907 .278 15535  39.2%

If we look at the pitchers above and see who have the most losses, Jason Johnson is the odd one out. Low fly ball rate, very low OBA on fly balls. So what made him lose?

   FOBA  FAB GOBA  GAB  F/G  
W  .024   42 .244   86  32.8%
L  .292   72 .291  151  32.3%
N  .145   48 .301  103  31.8%

Incredible! When he was on fire, every fly ball went out. Scott Spiezio was the only one to take a fly ball hit again a winning Johnson, when he hit a two run homer on 22 May in Seattle. It wasn't home ballpark related either, as he won 4 at home and 4 on the road. Obviously that leaves a lot worse numbers for when he didn't win.

The other way around Eric Milton is a bit strange. With over 50% fly balls and a .319 OBA on those, he still managed a 14-6 record.

   FOBA  FAB GOBA  GAB  F/G  
W  .297   91 .253   83  52.3%
L  .279   43 .235   34  55.8%
N  .367   79 .280   82  49.1%

That looks rather strange. His losing numbers actually look better than his winning numbers. Amazingly, he got away with a win on 4 occasions when he yielded 4 or more earned runs! First one was 8 May at Arizona (4 ER in 5 innings, opp. starter Brandon Webb). Then 9 June at the Cubs (6 ER in 5 IP with Garland on 10 ER in 4 IP). 29 June it was home against Montreal where he earned 7 runs in 5 innings against Hill's 8 in 2.2 and finally on 4 August Milton won as both he and Estes pitched to 5 ER in 5 innings, with 2 unearned runs for Estes giving Milton the win. So that's more a case of being very lucky throughout the year in running into pitchers having a worse day than himself.

All in all there's no 100% clarity, obviously. However, it seems to be working best to not give up too many fly balls.

And to give credit where due in relation to the play by play data:
The information used here was obtained free of
charge from and is copyrighted by Retrosheet. Interested
parties may contact Retrosheet at 20 Sunset Rd.,
Newark, DE 19711.

Top prospect not quite making it

2006-02-06T23:53:00.000+01:00

While playing around with some stats I ran into Steve Soderstrom. First round, sixth pick by the Giants in the 1993 amateur draft. His Major League career lasted all of 3 starts in 10 days in 1996. What the hell happened?

His first start on 17 September saw the Padres shell him. After 2 outs he was taken off the mound already with 5 runs against him of which 2 earned, thanks to a Ken Caminiti homer. He faced 9 batters, 3 got hits off him, 1 was struck out, 2 were walked, he hit one and another reached on error. This second start, against Colorado 5 days later, was a lot better. First inning was against dodgy with 3 earned runs, but after that he regained himself and threw six shutout innings for his first win. Another five days later came his final start. Again 3 earned runs and only the Giants' 7 runs in the seventh, effectively after Soderstrom's final pitch, gave him the win. With that the end of the season arrived as well as the end of Soderstrom's Major League career after 13.2 innings, striking out 9, walking 6 and accumulating a 5.27 ERA.

The 1997 spring training stats might give a clue as to why he never made it back. Soderstrom relieved in 2 games for 6 earned runs in 3.1 innings of play. Ouch! In 1998 he was again invited to spring training, pitching 5 innings in 3 games for a 7.20 ERA. In 1999 he got his first spring training starts, posting a 0-2 record in 3 starts. With only four pitchers starting more for the Giants that spring, it looked as if he could make the rotation. However, an injury report on CNN tells us an elbow problem made him questionable for the season.

On 14 February 2000 Soderstrom was released by the Giants. Ten days later the Reds signed him to a minor league contract. However, he didn't make the spring training roster and never made it out of the minors again. Looks like the elbow injury in early 1999 ruined what could have been a good comeback.

Baseball : Mariners 2004 meltdown

2006-02-06T13:10:00.000+01:00

After 2003 the Mariners collapsed big time. From 93-69 to 63-99 with the same manager and with 'only' a 5 million drop on the payroll, but still a massive 81.5 million payroll despite that.
The first striking thing is that they went from 65 errors in 2003 to 103 in 2004. That's a massive increase!

    2003  2004
C      5     4
1B     4    11
2B     8    15
SS    21    21
3B    11    25
LF     4     5
CF     4     5
RF     2     3

Kind of obvious where the key problem areas are, isn't it?

On first base John Olerud remained the first choice and in fact did better in 2004 than he did in 2003. Only problem was that his offense didn't match his defense and he got released in July. With Scott Spiezio and others taking over at first, an increase in errors were the result.
At second it was Brett Boone's defense crumbling down. From 268 putouts, 426 assists, 7 errors and 107 double plays to 280/350/14/90. This no doubt had something to do with the problematic infield around him.

At third base the problem was the biggest with both the number one (Jeff Cirillo) and number two (Carlos Guillen) being traded in the off-season, the Mariners played Scott Spiezio on third, while he's a first baseman by nature. In 66 games he made as many errors as Cirillo and Guillen did in 117 games the year before. When Olerud was released and Spiezio moved back to first, the problem at third became even bigger. Justin Leone managed 8 errors in 28 games, while Jolbert Cabrera at least maintained a similar level as Spiezio.

As Shortstop things could have been better, as Rich Aurilia was doing very well, but a trade with the Padres meant that he was out the door come July and Jose Lopez took over with 10 errors in 57 games to return the fielding on that position to normal as well.

Add to that the 27 June trade of Freddy Garcia to the White Sox and an already hurt team falls on its knees.

While the offensive numbers largely stayed the same, the pitching was hurt pretty bad as a result of the defensive failures. The team ERA rose from 3.93 in 2003 to 5.08 in 2004.

If they want to become a serious contender again, the Mariners will have to get some serious glove. So far it doesn't look like they will, opting for veteran pitchers and a DH instead.

Who's the second Cardinal?

2006-02-02T21:12:00.000+01:00

The big discussion in Cardinal land is how David Eckstein will fare with a different number two batter in the line-up. I've had a look at who drives in the lead off batter most by looking at all of 2004, courtesy of retrosheet.org play by play data.

Position  % of LO runs
1         14.2
2         22.7
3         33.8
4         20.6
5          7.4
6          1.2

Technically batters seven through nine can't score the lead off hitter due to the presence of only 3 bases and 2 out for any runner to be in before he has to either cross homeplate or get out.

Batter    % of RBI
2         29.8
3         32.6
4         19.1
5          7.6
6          1.4

So 22.7% of the time, the lead off scores with the number two at bat, whereas 29.8% of the runs scored with the number two at bat are the lead off hitter. The number two is more important in bringing the runner across the bases, while the number three is key in driving him in.

Additionally, here's from where the lead off usually scores. That's travelling to third over half the time on Major League average.

From   Total  Pct     By 2   By 3   By 4   By 5  By 6
1      438    15.7%  76.7%  18.9%   4.3%     -     -
2      957    34.2%  26.4%  46.7%  21.3%   5.5%    -
3      1403   50.1%  10.8%  40.9%  31.9%  13.5%  2.9%

Now lets apply this to Eckstein and the Cardinals.

Over 2005 Eckstein scored 90 runs. His hits were distributed 144 singles, 26 doubles, 7 triples, 8 homers and he got hit by a pitch 13 times and got walked 58 times. He had 11 steals. That's the part he did all by himself. For the rest he needed hitters to allow him to advance. With 8 times getting caught stealing, that leaves 240 times on base from
which he scored 82 times for a .342 rate.

His 2006 ZiPS projection says 85 runs, 135 singles, 25 doubles, 5 triples, 6 homers, 11 times hit by pitch, 54 walks, 11 steals, 7 times caught stealing. That's 223 times on base (excluding homers) for a .354 rate. So ZiPS actually excepts him to be helped along the basepaths some 3.5% better than last year, which is rather surprising.

Last season the Cards number two batter with over 100 at bats there (Taguchi, Edmonds, Walker, Nunez) drove in a combined 68 runs, including 17 homeruns. About 30% of 68, means that they roughly brough Eckstein over homeplate about 23 times.

Eckstein homered 8 times last year which is 8.9% of his runs being batted in by himself, which is below average. 23 from 90 is 25.6%, which is a bit higher than average, but overall Eckstein's roughly depending on himself and the number two 34.5%, while the (2004) average was 36.9%.

With most of Eckstein's production numbers expected to take a drop, he'll need more help behind him. With Pujols batting third, that part is covered. However, even Pujols can get hurt, so you can't only rely on him.

Looking at the current depth charts, I see two possible line-ups:

Eckstein        Eckstein
Spivey          Edmonds
Pujols          Pujols
Edmonds         Rolen
Rolen           Encarnacion
Encarnacion     Spivey
Bigbie          Bigbie
Molina          Molina

Edmonds is obviously the more beneficial option for Eckstein with his power, but is it the best for the team as well? Edmonds in second concentrates his power on Molina, the pitcher and Eckstein, while otherwise he influences Eckstein, Spivey and Pujols. Whether Edmonds bats second or fourth on average doesn't make any difference on the
number of runs Eckstein scores off him, looking at the table at the top. Overall I'd say it would be better to have Edmonds in the four spot, despite that Edmonds would probably reach more runs with two powerhitters behind him. Spivey in the two hole probably hurts Eckstein a bit, but will not waste precious power on the nine spot.

Ponson can do it!

2006-02-01T19:53:00.000+01:00

Over at Viva El Birdos I argued that Sidney Ponson's numbers should improve seeing as he's getting better backing both in defense and run support. So lets have a look at pitchers who moved to top teams in recent years. As criteria I chose from less than .500 to a team with over 90 wins in both the season before the pitcher joined and after. Also looked at only the pitchers with at least 15 starts in order to have a representative part of the season.


                   |-------- new team -------|-------- old team ------|
Year Pitcher        W-L   GS IP    ERA  WHIP  W-L   GS IP    ERA  WHIP  New Old
2005 Randy Johnson 17-8   34 225.2 3.79 1.13 16-14  35 245.2 2.60 0.90  NYY ARI
2004 John Thomson  14-8   33 198.1 3.72 1.32 13-14  35 217.0 4.85 1.30  ATL TEX
2003 Kenny Rogers  13-8   31 193.1 4.56 1.42 13-8   33 210.2 3.84 1.34  MIN TEX
2003 Mike Hampton  14-8   31 190.0 3.84 1.39  7-15  30 178.2 6.15 1.79  ATL COL
                  58-32 129 807.1 3.97 1.31 49-51 133 852.0 4.23 1.30

Colorado as a home ground didn't actually hurt Hampton that much. Of his 30 starts, 19 were on the road. In those 19 he collected a 3-12 record over 109 innings with a 6.44 ERA and 1.88 WHIP. Looks like the thin Colorado air actually helped clear his mind!

Now Ponson's stats over the last two years weren't very convincing, but it changes when we take out the worst 4 starts of each season.

2004     IP    H  ER  BB  W-L    ERA  WHIP
Worst  19.1   41  28   8  0-4  13.03  2.53 (April 25, April 30, May 27, June 1)
Total 215.2  265 127  69 11-15  5.30  1.55
     196.1  224  99  61 11-11  4.54  1.45

2005
Worst  11.0   31  29   9  0-3  23.73  3.64 (April 14, May 17, July 3, August 2)
Total 130.1  177  90  48  7-11  6.21  1.73
     119.1  146  61  39  7-8   4.60  1.55

For both years the line's not dissimilar to John Thomson's year with the Rangers before moving to Atlanta. As long as Ponson masters Demon Alcohol, I think he can put up the numbers next season.

Baseball : running the bases

2006-01-31T11:55:00.000+01:00

Was just playing with the 1986 stats some more, since I have the play by play data (courtesy of retrosheet.org) available here. Decided to have a look at basepath efficiency. Took the number of runs a player scored versus times on base, discounting homers. Here's the top ten with more than 50 TOB-HR.

pos player           team       pct   tob-hr
1.  Ed Romero        Red Sox    .542  72
2.  Pat Sheridan     Tigers     .438  80
3.  Joe Orsulak      Pirates    .423  137
4.  Barry Larkin     Reds       .421  57
5.  Julio Cruz       White Sox  .418  91
6.  Oddibe McDowell  Rangers    .414  210
7.  Rickey Henderson Yankees    .413  247
8.  Mike Felder      Brewers    .411  56
9.  Eric Davis       Reds       .409  171
10. Vince Coleman    Cardinals  .405  232

While both Larkin and Felder are only in there borderline, these are actually the only ten to top .400 Quite surprisingly, neither Romero nor Sheridan were lead off hitters. Which makes Joe Orsulak the most effectively baserunning lead off hitter of 1986. That really says something as Pittsburgh's number two and three bats both had a slugging percentage under .400.

If we look at the other end of the spectrum we find the hopelessly ineffective ones. Six players managed to arrive at the home plate less than 15% of the times the reached first base : Alan Ashby (Astros, .145 in 117), Mike Diaz (Pirates, .145 in 69), Floyd Rayford (Orioles, .140 in 50), Mike Lavalliere (Cardinals, .130 in 115), Gary Roenicke (Yankees, .125 in 64) and the winner, Mike Bailey (Astros, .089 in 56). That's both Astros catchers! I know catchers aren't reknown for their baserunning qualities, but this borders on the ridiculous. Houston's third catcher, John Mizerock, managed .200 from 40 times on base, which is a bit more normal.

It sort of proves that a winning team doesn't need to have stars in all positions. The Astros won their division with a 96-66 record, falling to the Mets in the classic NLCS.

The 86 A's continued : C City Tour gone bad

2006-01-30T13:00:00.000+01:00

Looking deeper into the 1986 Oakland A's, it's the June record that sticks out like a sore thumb : 7-22! If we look at the Phytagorean W-L record for that period it shows 11-18, which indicates a big difference. The road trip to Chicago and Cleveland appears to be pivotal in this. The A's were swept in both series for a 7 game losing streak. Only 2 of those games were lost by more than 3 runs.

Oakland started the series at Chicago with a 5-9 loss. I have to note that the A's scored all of their runs in the ninth, so that seems to have been a bit of a late wake-up call.

The second game was closer at 4-6, but again : most runs in late innings, one in the eight and two in the ninth. In this game Joaquin Andujar injured his hamstring after one out in the first, meaning Mark Langford had to step in early for the second time in three days. However, while Langford was credited with the loss, it was really the fielding where Oakland gave this one away. With two errors from shortstop Griffin and one from third baseman Phillips, only 2 of the 6 runs were earned.

Game three in the series was the only where pitcher Codiroli was shelled. With seven earned runs in 4.1 innings no offence would have won that game. Same for the final game of the series, where Young outbid Codiroli with 8 earned runs in 4 innings. The offence gave it their best shot with 5 runs and giving nothing away after the fourth, but it still turned out a 5-8 loss.

The first game in Cleveland was the first game of the roadtrip where Oakland was in the game the whole time. The Indians scored the winner with 2 outs in the bottom of the ninth when Brett Butler singled home Andy Allanson from second. Key in this loss was the bottom of the sixth when Cleveland scored 5 to come back from 4-0 down and the top of the seventh when Oakland neglected to take the game back by a 2 out bases loaded fly out for Davis.

The next game was even closer. Cleveland snatched this one away with two runs in the bottom of the ninth for an 8-7 victory. The final game of the roadtrip then was a 4-7 loss in which Cleveland took out Langford for four runs in the fifth with two homers, a triple and a single. This gave Cleveland a 4-3 lead after which they never looked back.

So all in all this roadtrip was the result of bad starts, errors and one big missed opportunity.

Baseball : impact of one change in the rotation of the 86 A's

2006-01-25T12:58:00.000+01:00

Sticking with the A's and LaRussa, lets have a look at the amazing turnaround he achieved when he went to work in July 1986. The situation was grim when LaRussa joined. The record was 31-52 and the A's were dead last in the AL West, 14 games behind Texas. While hardly making changes to the roster, LaRussa recorded a 45-34 record to have the A's finish with 76-86 tied for 3rd in the AL West.

Three days after LaRussa joined the A's, free agents Ozzie Canseco and Mike Bordick were signed and during the rest of July Rick Langford and Rick Peters were released. Those were the only transactions in LaRussa's first part season. Langford had made it 1-10 in 11 starts. Peters was an occasional backup outfielder, while Canseco and Bordick didn't make their debuts until years later. So effectively it was eliminating one bad starter.

What LaRussa did was promote Dave Stewart from the bullpen to the rotation. Stewart had been a starter with the Dodgers in 1982 and the Rangers in 1984, but in both cases had ended up as a closer. However, LaRussa thought otherwise and in fact made Stewart the starter his first day on the job. Stewart won the game against the until then sheer unbeatable Roger Clemens (14-1). Stewart went on to a 9-5 record, which obviously makes a huge difference from Langford's 1-8 record as a starter. Lets see what would possibly have been the effect of keeping Langford as a starter. Langford's winning percentage projected on Stewart's number of decisions would give him another 2-12 on top of the 1-8 he had for a 3-20 season. That would make the A's record 69-93 and second to last in the AL West.

The other way around, projecting Stewart's winning percentage on Langford's 9 decisions would have made that 6-3 instead of 1-8 for 81-81. Obviously there's no guarantee Langford wouldn't have come out of his slump or Stewart would have been the same over a full season, but it's clear that it made some difference. The 92 wins of the Angels were out of reach either way. Or were they? Langford's first 2 starts were against the Angels and on both occasions he got trashed. After that second game the Angels were leading the AL West with a 9-6 record against Oakland's 8-6 and the game broke a 4 game winning streak for the A's. Who knows, it could have been a psychological backbreaker! Langford probably would have continued with a half decent season and should Andujar and Haas have stayed healthy, Oakland might never have seen the LaRussa era.

Baseball : the 1993 downfall of the A's

2006-01-23T13:03:00.000+01:00

After 1992, the Oakland A's fell apart. From 5 winning seasons, 4 pennants and a World Series victory under Tony LaRussa, it all of a sudden went pearshaped. The drop from 96-66 in 1992 to 68-94 in 1993 was painful to put it mildly.

The main difference is the rotation. Dave Stewart and Mike Moore were lost to free agency, while Joe Slusarski suffered an arm injury that kept him sidelined for much of 1993 and the entire 1994 season. Bobby Witt, who'd been acquired in the Canseco trade in August 1992, was the only replacement starter who managed the whole season. Young gun Todd van Poppel stepped into the line-up in July, but other than that it was bits and pieces. Shawn Hillegas, Kelly Downs, Mike Mohler, Storm Davis and Steve Karsay all did bits of starting, while Curt Young also stepped up for 3 games in July and August.

That immediately highlights the big problem. The three starters who went over 150 IP each, Bobby Witt, Ron Darling and Bob Welch, combined for a 28-33 record in 90 starts.

Starter             GS   W-L
Todd van Poppel     16   6-6
Shawn Hillegas      11   2-5
Kelly Downs         12   0-6
Mike Mohler          9   0-5
Storm Davis          8   1-4
Steve Karsay         8   3-3
Miguel Jimenez       4   1-0
Curt Young           3   1-1
Joe Slusarski        1   0-0
                    ---------
                    72  14-30

That's 42-63 from the starters, leaving 26-31 for the bullpen. So that's .459 for the 3 all season starters, .318 for the other starters and .456 for the bullpen. Clear where the problem is, right?

Storm Davis was the intended starter, but didn't do too well. At the end of May he was sent to the bullpen and a little over a month later the season was fully over for him. In his eight starts, he reached six innings only half the time and giving up 7 runs in 3.2 innings against Toronto on May 30th was clearly enough for LaRussa. I'm not sure what the idea was with Davis as starter in the first place. He'd been great for the A's in 1988 and especially 1989, but after losing the starter spot in KC he'd clearly lost it.

Hillegas went pretty much the same way even when he lasted to June. Three consecutive games with 5+ ER within 6 innings saw him out of the rotation as well.

Clearly McGwire being injured for the majority of the year also had a lot of impact, but it was mainly the lack of putting a decent rotation together. Hell, in order to acquire a decent starter in Steve Karsay, the A's had to trade away legend Rickey Henderson.

Addition 19:03
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Looking at the weak points in fielding, one thing strikes me immediately : Kevin Seitzer making 7 errors on third within a week! Typically, the day after the seventh error Craig Paquette made his Major League debut. You could say that Carney Lansford's retirement really hurt on that front. He may not have been the world's greatest hitter, but he put the A's third base position well above league average in the field.

When looking at the batting order, there's several things that attract attention. First the lack of runs by numbers 2 and 3 and to a lesser extent 5. An OBP of .295 for the number 3 (almost always Ruben Sierra) is disasterous for this. Difference with the year before is about 20 walks, which explains the drop in OBP. Less walks means that pitchers were probably less frightened of putting runners on base for the big bats. While the number 4 reached a .359 OBP with 33 homers, the number 5 managed only a .302 OBP with 14 homers. This is the big difference with 1992, where the number 5 was .381 OBP with 32 homers and in fact the more dangerous bat of the 2.

Another thing that attracts attention is the huge increase in strikeouts all over the line-up. I suppose Sierra/Neel/Steinbach is just not as intimidating as Canseco/McGwire/Steinbach or Canseco/Baines/McGwire.

Cardinals : Why Braden Looper?

2006-01-20T13:39:00.000+01:00

Why Braden Looper?

Lets have a look at the Cardinals relievers last season. For simplicity's sake, I've picked those with 20+ innings.

Pitcher        W-L SV IP   G  IP/G GF
Isringhausen   1-2 39 59.0 63 0.93 52
King           4-4  0 40.0 77 0.52 18
Tavarez        2-3  4 65.2 74 0.89 16
Al Reyes       4-2  3 62.2 65 0.96 18
Flores         3-1  1 41.2 50 0.83  6
Thompson       4-0  1 55.0 40 1.38  8
Eldred         1-0  0 37.0 31 1.19 15

Now King's heading for Colorado, Reyes probably out for 2006, Eldred retired and Tavarez to Boston, that's a lot of bullpen innings lost.

With Looper they add a guy with a Cardinal past and one who can play 1.5 to 2 innings per game as well as having the ability to close. That means having a steady backup for Izzy, a guy who can cover the long relief the Cards lost through Eldred's retirement plus pick up bits and piece of what King and Tavarez did together with Rincon. With Thompson now in his second year, he might pick up more long relief work.

Looper's relatively bad winning percentage has a lot to do with having played for uncompetitive teams. What is a bit worrying is last years strikeouts vs walks ratio of 1.23. Looper's career ratio before last season was 1.79. It's not that he gives up more walks, it's the lack of strikeouts. He gave up 2 walks in only 3 games throughout the year. Looking at the individual games where he threw more balls than strikes, it's interesting to see that the majority of the problems were against strong opponents, specifically the Yankees. Only on one occasion his lack of finding the strikezone didn't have any implications and that was against the weaker Nationals.

May 21       NYY  22-11 1.0 2H, 1ER, 1 BB, 1 SO, no decision
June 24      @NYY 20-10 1.0 2H, 2ER, 1 BB, 0 SO, no decision
June 26      @NYY 18-8  0.0 2H, 2ER, 2 BB, 0 SO, loss/blown save
August 19    WAS  14-7  1.0 1H, 0ER, 0 BB, 1 SO, save
September 7  @ATL 43-21 1.0 3H, 3ER, 2 BB, 1 SO, loss/blown save
September 21 FLA  15-7  0.1 2H, 2ER, 1 BB, 0 SO, blown save

A weakness against strong opposition doesn't need to be a real worry at St.Louis, though. The Cardinals played only 55 games against teams with an above .500 record last season, the third lowest in the majors, behind the Padres (47) and Astros (52). With a record of 32-23 in those games, the Cards have the best record against +.500 opposition in the majors, together with the Red Sox.

Edit 18:22
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The importance of having a good backup closer can be seen when we look at last year's Phillies. Billy Wagner was basically on his own in the bullpen and that cost them dearly.

The principle closers in Wagner's absence were Urgueth Urbina and Ryan Madson. Both had 7 save opportunities and came home with respectively 2-3 plus a save and 2-2 plus no saves. In the games where Urbina or Madson had a save opportunity, the Phillies were 8-6. That's 6 wins lost. 6 more wins would have given Philly a 94-68 record and their first NL East pennant since 1993.

Also it would have given the Braves the wildcard and kicked the Astros out of the playoffs...but that's another story ;)

Edit 21st 17:15
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In addition to yesterday's post, here's a look at Cardinals save opportunities last season.

Pitcher             SVO SV  W-L T:W-L
Julian Tavarez      6   4   0-1   4-2   *
Al Reyes            3   3   0-0   3-0   *
Brad Thompson       1   1   0-0   1-0
Randy Flores        3   1   0-1   1-2
Ray King            6   0   0-1   3-3   *
Cal Eldred          1   0   0-0   1-0   *
Kevin Jarvis        1   0   0-1   0-1   *
Tyler Johnson       1   0   0-0   1-0
                    -----------------
                    22  9   0-4  14-8
Jason Isringhausen  43  39  0-1  40-3

While 14-8 on games with save opportunities for anyone other than Izzy is quite respectable, the addition of Looper could make that even better. Also note that pitchers who handled 16 of those 22 opportunities are out of the picture for 2006. With Rincon and Nelson there's a lot of experience in the bullpen to mix with the young guns and when necessary there's even a guy like Ricky Stone in triple A who can close a game.

Baseball : there's hitting the majors and there's Pujols

2006-01-19T08:29:00.000+01:00

Just having a look at Albert Pujols minor league stats. What inspired the Cardinals to bring him into the majors after only one year in the minors? According to Baseball Cube, Pujols played a total of 130 games in A and 3 in AAA! Looking at his time in Peoria single A, he had a .324 BA with a .565 slugging pct and more walks than strikeouts (38/37), batting in 84 and scoring 62 in 395 at bats. All good and well, but still only single A. I bet there's guys out there putting up similar numbers and barely reaching the big show. In his few games in AAA he earned the PCL MVP award, which is more of an indicated. If a guy can do that in the space of one play off series at a level he's never played at before, you're talking something special.

So apparently there was a need to bring him up that quickly. In his first season he played more games than any other Cardinal, almost equally distributed between third base, first base, leftfield and rightfield. He really was all over the place. I mean, he'd covered those four positions in the first 10 days of the season! Injuries for Mark McGwire (4/16-5/28), Bonny Bonilla (until 4/9), JD Drew (6/18-7/31) and the trade of Ray Lankford (8/10) played a part in giving Tony LaRussa the space he needed to play Pujols. In all four positions, the fielder with the most starts barely started half the season (McGwire on first 87 games, Polanco on third 93 games, Drew in rightfield 91 games) or not even half the season in the case of Lankford in leftfield (76 games). On all positions Pujols was the man with the second most starts.

While Pujols was initially with the team to cover for the injured Bonilla and to act as pinch hitter and occasional starter, his numbers in April convinced LaRussa to make more use of him. Pujols' first month in the majors saw 8 homers, 27 runs batted in and a .370 BA in 92 at bats. No wonder he was rarely left out of the starting line-up since!

Baseball : personal preferences

2006-01-18T13:13:00.000+01:00

After having written a few baseball posts, I suppose it's time to investigate my loyalties. However, this does not go without going into how I got into touch with MLB. In a time long ago, MLB wasn't much more than a dot on the radarscreen of sports in Europe. European baseball was basically Holland and Italy with a few other teams thrown in to make it look like a real European championship. Only twice since 1954 another country won (Spain in 1955, Belgium in 1967) while in the other 27 championships it was a Holland vs Italy final 20 times. It was about the mid 80s when the first US baseball magazines started to appear in the local shops, mainly Athlon and TSN season previews. TV coverage has always been extremely limited. Usually only playoff highlights of about 5 minutes per game or so and a few years where world series games were broadcasted live.

However, that didn't keep me from forming my opinions. Mind you, don't expect too much reason, it's mostly gutfeeling.

Al East:
1. Yankees : Yeah, sorry, I know almost everybody hates their guts. With the Yankees it's like with many albums : the first song you hear often ends up the one you love most. Back in the early 80s, the Yankees were the only team I'd heard of and thus I liked them. Plus I love the uniform.
2. Blue Jays : Like the blue/white, got into them when they became the first Canadian team in the World Series.
3. Orioles : Quite ambivalent to these birds. Love the stadium.
4. Red Sox : Used to hate everything that came from Boston. I think visiting the city changed that a bit.
5. Devil Rays : They're just....bleak.

Al Central:
1. White Sox : black/grey/white, it's just the colours. Plus I was a fan of Frank Thomas when he started.
2. Royals : More colours. Loved the baby blue :p
3. Indians : Just because they were soooo bad in the old days.
4. Tigers : Pretty ambivalent again, just dislike the Twins more.
5. Twins : No idea. Don't like them, don't like the dome, didn't like Kirby Puckett.

Al West:
1. Athletics : Henderson, Canseco, Eckersley, that era. Tony LaRussa Baseball, baby!
2. Rangers : Underdogs with power obsession.
3. Mariners : Underdogs too, with nothing.
4. Angels : Just don't like them.

NL East:
1. Mets : I like New York in general and their 80s line-up was classic.
2. Nationals : Underdogs and I liked the old Expos.
3. Marlins : DOn't like the way they win, dislike Philly and Atlanta more.
4. Phillies : Didn't like them when they played the WS against Toronto.
5. Braves : There's no team I hate more. No reason. Just because they win all the time I suppose.

NL Central:
1. Cardinals : Only since LaRussa, really.
2. Cubs : Yeah, I know it's odd after the Cards, but I don't have that local rivalry thing from this far away. Underdogs...again.
3. Reds : Errr...no idea...maybe the spelling of Cincinnati or something.
4. Pirates : Dislike them less than the others.
5. Brewers : Another invisible team.
6. Astros : No idea, but I just don't like them.

NL West:
1. Giants : Close division, but I just love San Francisco.
2. Dodgers : Classic team, love the colours.
3. Rockies : The complete opposite. Love the modern colours.
4. Padres : This happened last year when I happened to have Peavy and Eaton in my fantasy baseball team.
5. Diamondbacks : Arizona should be a place for springtraining only.

There you have it, all attack :p

Baseball : how McRae and Benzinger turned around the Royals

2006-01-17T00:01:00.000+01:00

In 1991 the Kansas City Royals were 16-22 when Hal McRae took over on 24 May. Now I don't know much about this particular season. I noticed it over on Viva El Birdos and thought I'd dive into the numbers and see whether there was a reason why McRae managed to give the Royals a winning season.

With a 4-2 first week playing at Minnesota and Seattle things went off to a good start. I suppose they played Minnesota at the right time there. The Twins were in a 4 game losing streak of which the last 2 were extra innings and the Royals had a day off before starting their series in Minnesota.

All in all there weren't many changes to give the team a performance boost in McRae's first months. Mainly unloading old players and adding free agents who never played but possible added the experience and atmosphere needed. There was only one trade and that was on 11 July : Carmelo Martinez to the Cincinnati Reds for Todd Benzinger.

That's straight first basemen traded. Benzinger's fielding percentage beats Martinez' clearly : .996 vs .991 for their games at Kansas City. Benzinger hit .294 in 293 at bats for the Royals in the remainder of 1991. If you see Martinez' lack of performance in Cincinnati, it's been a good trade for KC.

By the time of the Benzinger/Martinez trade, the Royals were 37-44, which is 21-22 under McRae. That means 45-36 after the trade. The Royals' run from 14 July until 14 August is remarkable. For a team that's been low all season to have a 23-6 run is highly unusual. This series turned the team around from 37-46 to 60-52, which obviously was hugely important mentally. From third worst AL team to 6th best in the space of a month! If we look at the starters in that period, Kevin Appier's the big man with 4 wins in 6 starts, while ace Brett Saberhagen only manages 2-2 in 5.

If we look at the offensive performance in this period, new man Todd Benzinger does play an important part! With his .281 average and 2 home runs, Benzinger drove in 20 runners, mostly hitting in the number 5 spot behind Danny Tartabull, who hit .300 with 4 homers himself. So what looks like an OK deal turns out to have possibly been of vital importance in turning around the ailing Royals!

An outside look at a baseball trade

2006-01-11T15:42:00.000+01:00

Some trades work, some don't. The deal the Braves got in which they received Otis Nixon worked superbly in their advantage for example.

Another interesting deal is the one that shipped Mark McGwire from Oakland to St.Louis back in 1997.

St.Louis sent TJ Mathews, Blake Stein and Eric Ludwick to Oakland in order to acquire McGwire.

First lets look at Ludwick. In the remainder of the season he started 5 games for the A's, posting a 1-4 record with a 8.25 ERA, facing 116 batters in 24 innings. Ouch! In December he was traded to Florida for Kurt Abbott. Not a big impact player either. .268 is a decent batting average and he did score 17 runs in 35 games, but halfway through the season he too was traded away from Oakland. He was traded for cash and minor leaguer Ara Petrosian, who never made it past Class A. So all in all Oakland didn't get much out of this part of the trade.

Blake Stein was a regular starter for the A's in 1998, posting a 5-9 record with 1 complete game shut out, but a less that brilliant 6.37 ERA. After one start in 1999, he became part of a trade that sent him, Jeff d'Amico and Brad Rigby to Kansas City for Kevin Appier. Appier went on to a successful season and a half in Oakland before leaving as a free agent. Both d'Amico and Rigby made little impact, so we could see this part of the deal as successful for Oakland.

Finally there's TJ Mathews. He turned out to be a good middle reliever in his almost four years with the A's with a 24-15 record and 8 saves.

What did the Cardinals get? 220 homers, 473 RBIS, 394 runs and between 500,000 and 800,000 extra attendance per year in exchange for about 40 million Dollar.

While none of the Oakland bound players' numbers match McGwire's, I suppose it was a good deal for the rebuilding A's anyway. After all, Mathews did well and Stein helped bring Appier to the Bay Area, while at the same time they unloaded McGwire's 7 million Dollar salary.

Baseball : the amazing Braves turnaround

2006-01-11T08:04:00.000+01:00

Time for a new sort of subject here. A bit of baseball talk. Now first of all I'm basing any baseball talk on numbers as I'm not in the position to watch games here in Europe. Out of the blue, today's subject is the amazing turnaround of the Atlanta Braves in 1991. Don't ask me why, I don't know. The Braves are one of the teams I dislike the most. Again, don't ask me why. I don't know that either.

Thing is that the Braves in 2005 had an above .500 record for the 15th straight season, winning their division in all but one of those seasons. The really odd thing is that they had over 90 losses in 5 of the 6 season directly preceding the current stretch. This team went from 65-97 in 1990 to 94-68 in 1991!

The obvious thing is of course manager Bobby Cox, who took during the 1990 season. In that first part season, Cox posted a 40-57 record against the 25-40 of his predecessor Russ Nixon. Not that much better, but that's likely due to having to work with a given situation. So what did Cox do when he took over after 21 June 1990? He did a lot, but this is what I see as his key aquisitions:
July 23, 1990 : Joe Boever to Phillies for Marvin Freeman.
December 3, 1990 : Signed Terry Pendleton as a free agent.
December 5, 1990 : Signed Sid Bream as a free agent.
December 18, 1990 : Signed Rafael Belliard as a free agent.
January 29, 1991 : Signed Juan Berenguer as a free agent.
April 1, 1991 Jimmy Kremers, Keith Morrison to Expos for Otis Nixon, Bio Rodriguez

Looking at the main starting lineups from 1990 and 1991, there's a lot of changes. The arrival of Sid Bream instigated David Justice's move to the outfield. Pendleton took over third from Jim Presley, who was released after the 1990 season. Belliard replaced Jeff Blauser as regular shortsthop and in the outfield Otis Nixon provided for solid backup in both left and right field.
On the pitching side the rotation remained intact, while the bullpen got a massive shake up. Juan Berenguer took the closer slot, which had been more or less vacated with Joe Boever was traded for Marvin Freeman midway through 1990.

Lookin at the batting side the major impacts were Pendleton (.319, 22 HR, 86 RBI, 10 SB vs Presley's .242, 19 HR, 72 RBI, 1 SB) and Nixon (a massive 72 steals). In fielding Lonnie Smith appeared to become more steady in leftfield with a reliable player to take over from him. Smith went from 12 errors in 1990 to 5 in the next season. Dave Justice's permanent arrival in the outfield especially lead to an increase in outfield assists of which he provided 9. Additionally, Bream was a better fielding first baseman than Justice, reducing errors on that position from 26 to 15. Finally, Pendleton's arrival at third base meant a good increase in assists there : from 318 to 387.

The main thing in pitching was that the main 4 pitchers stayed healthy, resulting in less strain on the (still not stellar) bullpen and a NL leading 18 complete games. The team's only all star Tom Glavine was responsible for half of them on his way to 20 wins. No doubt the increased fielding performance was the main catalyst in improving the pitching stats. After all, less runners on base means less runs against. What's more, less of the runners actually reached home plate. If we compare runs to hits against Atlanta pitchers, it's 53.8% in 1990 and 49.4% in 1991, which is a 10% drop. While the number of runs scored increased from 4.21 in 1990 to 4.62 in 1991, the difference in runs against is the thing that really made the difference : from 5.07 to 3.98! From worst in the NL to third best.

All of this points to smart acquisitions, looking further than just offensive qualities. They acquired good fielding with Pendleton and Bream, depth with Nixon and the start of a rebuild of the bullpen with Berenguer and Freeman. I suppose even Billy Cox didn't think it would lead to 14 pennants in 15 years, though.