Useless Trivia of the Day

I don't have enough readers to turn this into a trivia game, although if you by chance happen to read this and want to take a stab at it, feel free to leave a comment.

Nolan Ryan pitched for four teams in his career: the Mets, the Angels, the Astros, and the Rangers. What do these four teams have in common?

Obviously I am thinking of something specific--there may be other common threads betweem the teams that you can think of. I will say that it has nothing to do with on-field performance, i.e. "None of them have ever won the World Series" or some such (yes, yes, I know the Mets and now the Angels have won the World Series).

Meandering Thoughts

The American League has beaten up the National League in interleague play this year, and of course has a string of recent success in the All-Star game, and has won seven of the last ten World Series, etc. But when you look at World Series history, it’s largely a story of the AL getting the better of the NL. AL teams lead the World Series 59-42. Some might object that the AL gets an unfair advantage from the Yankees and their 26 titles. That may be true to some extent, but if the strongest franchise in the history of the game is in your league, that’s a good feather in the cap to have. Besides, if you remove all series won by the Yankees, the AL only has 33, but to be fair you should remove all series won by the Cardinals, the most successful NL team in World Series play. If you do that, it’s even at 33. Furthermore, if you take out all series played by the Yankees, you take out 13 losses in addition to the 26 wins, so the AL record is 33-29.

What’s more remarkable to me is the way that the AL has put together streaks of consecutive WS wins while the NL has not. Only three times in the history of the game have NL teams won three straight world titles, and all three streaks lasted the minimum standard of three years: 1907-1909(Cubs, Cubs, Pirates); 1963-1965(Dodgers, Cardinals, Dodgers); 1980-1982(Phillies, Dodgers, Cardinals). The AL on the other hand has eight such streaks, three of them being three years: 1972-1974(A’s), 1991-1993(Twins, Blue Jays, Blue Jays), 1998-2000(Yankees). But the AL also has four four-year streaks: 1910-1913(A’s, A’s, Red Sox, A’s); 1915-1918(Red Sox, Red Sox, White Sox, Red Sox); 1927-1930(Yankees, Yankees, A’s, A’s). There is also a five-year streak, 1935-1939(Tigers, Yankees x 4), and a seven-year streak, 1947-1953(Yankees, Indians, Yankees x 5).

I guess I just never noticed this before. Given the penchant people have for silly facts, I’m surprised this isn’t more well known. Similarly, in horse racing, a historic streak ended this year when for the first time since 2000 no horse won two legs of the Triple Crown (Point Given in 2001, War Emblem in 2002, Funny Cide in 2003, Smarty Jones in 2004, and Afleet Alex in 2005 constituted the run). That was the longest such occurrence since 1939-1944 (Johnstown, Bimelech, Whirlaway, Shut Out, Count Fleet, Pensive). At least these useless facts are more relevant then the one I heard the other day about Ryan Howard. I can’t recall exactly what it was, but I think the gist of it was: “Ryan Howard set a record for the fewest games needed to reach 25 homers in a player’s second season in the majors”.

This is absurd on so many levels--first, 25 homers seems to be a cherry-picked milestone; the important homer milestones are usually considered to be 30, 40, 50, etc. Secondly, “a player’s second season in the majors” signifies much different things for different players. Howard is 27 this year, so his second season in the majors is not exactly on the same footing as that of Alex Rodriguez or Joe DiMaggio. This is one of the sillier “records” I can remember hearing about.

In a similar vein of poor record keeping, I have recently been re-reading one of my favorite baseball books from when I was a kid, Great Baseball Feats, Facts, and Firsts by David Nemec. Nemec is a great writer, a fellow Buckeye, and I consider his Great Encyclopedia of Nineteenth Century Major League Baseball to be one of the best baseball books ever published. So I’m not at all trying to put down on Nemec here. The aforementioned book lists various miscellaneous records and leaders in categories, and includes a list of firsts, like “so and so was the first to wear a batting helmet”, and other such things. It would probably contain something of interest to most baseball fans. However, as a kid, I loved that book, because I loved silly trivia facts and could recite the 500 home run club, and other such things (I no longer can do this, although I do know every World Series winner). Then I got into evaluating what the numbers mean instead of memorizing what the numbers are, and here I am.

That digression is to get to the point that in the book, Nemec breaks the game into five or six eras, and compiles records by each era, which is not at all a bad approach. But in each era section, he lists the World Series results for each team, and the list is ordered by the percentage of series won. I have seen this sorting method used in other books, and yet I am still befuddled by it. If one was to make a post-strike era list of WS winners by this criteria, the Marlins would top the list at 2-0, followed by the Diamondbacks, Angels, Red Sox, and White Sox at 1-0. Then, at sixth place, one would finally get to the Yankees and their lowly 4-2 mark, and then the 1-2 Braves.

Is that not the most insane way to make a list you’ve ever heard? Sure, if the list is “WS W%”, that’s what you have to do. But the list is not stated as being that; since no explanation is given, I am left to assume that it is a list of teams ordered by WS success. It seems obvious to me that the proper way to do this would be to rank teams first in order of WS titles, and then, to break ties, go back and put the team with MORE WS losses on top. The Braves going 1-2 in the World Series is clearly an indicator of a more accomplished team over that period then the 1-0 Diamondbacks.

Oh well, rant over. A final complaint is that in the Indians/Cardinals game last night, Mike Hegan referred to Albert Pujols numerous times as Luis Pujols. I can understand getting a solid player, say Ronnie Belliard, mixed up with a marginal player, like Rafael Belliard. And I can certainly understand saying Cal Ripken when you meant Billy Ripken. It’s natural to associate the name Ripken with Cal without too much thought. But if somebody calls Alex Rodriguez “Aurelio”, or calls Albert Pujols “Luis”, that’s befuddling.

A Review of "The Mind of Bill James"

The Mind of Bill James by Scott Gray, subtitled "How a Complete Outsider Changed Baseball", is a book that cannot decide exactly what it wants to be. Is it a biography of Bill James? Or a summary of his work? Or an attempt to describe what a day in the life of Bill James is like? Or a chronicle of how his work has affected the baseball world? It tries(or at least ends up as) to be all of those things, and therefore does not do a great job of any of them.

As a biography, it probably does about as good of a job as you would want, because while I don’t mean any offense to Mr. James, his life probably would not make for a stirring biography anymore of that of an anonymous scientist at some university--it is their work that is the most interesting thing about them, not biographical minutiae. Personally, I would say the same thing about Thomas Jefferson or other such figures, but somebody apparently likes them. Even so, I don’t think that Bill James would be on the top of the wish lists of biography fans.

As a summary of his work, it is woefully incomplete, as it would probably take a book of this size solely devoted to just that goal in order to be adequate. Gray does include an appendix which summarizes some of his work, but focuses on concepts(e.g. Defensive Spectrum, Law of Competitive Balance, Johsnon Effect) rather then specific applications/formulas(e.g. Runs Created, Win Shares, Component ERA). Of course, to someone who has read most of James’ work, like myself, this is not something that is necessary, and to me the appendix dragged on more then much of the book.

As far as describing how James’ insights have been adopted in baseball, the book discusses his role with the Red Sox, and refers to Moneyball a few times, but again, is not at all close to comprehensive on this front.

One aspect of the book you may or may not find interesting is that Gray reprints some emails and conversations between him and James about non-baseball topics, such as politics and criminality. On one hand, it is interesting to see how James approaches these other topics. On the other hand, I can think Bill James is the greatest baseball mind ever born but think his position on NAFTA is silly. Now the fact that I disagree with his position on NAFTA makes me think no less of his baseball work. But I’m sure there is somebody out there who will be affected in that way, which is why I don’t talk about politics and other such things here (in addition to the fact that I am mildly surprised that anybody cares what I have to say about baseball, and would be truly stunned if anybody cared what I thought about anything else).

I don’t mean to criticize the book too strongly, because I did find it an enjoyable read, with no glaring factual errors or misrepresentations. I have two standards of recommendation for a book--one is that it is great and you will want to read it again and again and you will refer back to it frequently. The second is that you should probably read it as you might find it enjoyable and somewhat informative, but it is not a part of an essential sabermetric library. Under the first standard, this book falls short, but under the second, The Mind of Bill James is a read I would recommend.

"Statistical Analysis" v. "Sabermetrics"

In the last week, there was a lively discussion on the mailing list of the SABR Statistical Analysis Committee on a proposal to change the name of the committee to the Sabermetric Committee or something similar. Some of the debate has been based on how the term “sabermetrics” is viewed by other members of the organization, and other internal organizational politics-type stuff. I know little about SABR politics and care little about SABR politics, so I will ignore that element of it.

As to which is the better name for the committee, though, I believe 100% that it is “sabermetrics”. One objection has been that there is no readily agreed upon definition of sabermetrics, and that the definitions often employed, especially by those who are not themselves sabermetricians, are essentially equivalent to “statistical analysis.” This is true, although I don’t believe that a misunderstanding of what sabermetrics is by the uninformed should change the way the term is used by those who understand it.

Bill James had two explicitly stated definitions for sabermetrics that he published in the Abstracts. The first was “the mathematical and statistical analysis of baseball records”. Oops. But Bill quickly realized that this was not adequate, so he used “the search for objective knowledge about baseball”.

That definition is too broad in my opinion, as there are many things that are objectively knowable that do not really fall under the purview of sabermetrics. For example, a list of owners of the Red Sox is objective knowledge about baseball, but under this broad definition practically all baseball research is sabermetrics.

Personally, I think that the best single definition of sabermetrics was that presented by Craig Wright in his forward to the 1985 Abstract, which was “the scientific research of the available evidence, to identify, study, and measure forces in professional baseball.” My only quibble here is that I believe the “professional” qualifier is unnecessary. I especially like the use of the word “measure”--James' word, if not his definition, already captured this by using the suffix “-metrics”. It measurement that sets a list of Red Sox owners, or Cal McLish’s full name, and other such things outside of the realm of sabermetrics and into the other categories of baseball research.

I also believe that the “objective knowledge” part of the James definition is best left by the wayside. Much of the statistical data that we work with is not purely objective. Take the distinction between a hit and an error, between a wild pitch and a passed ball, etc. These are subjectively determined, although there is an established framework by which one is supposed to make the distinction. However, scouting reports could also be incorporated in some way into evaluation, if the biases and error ranges are considered--just as we should for our statistical methods. That is not to say that all information is equally valid or equally useful, but we should not throw it all out the window right off the bat.

Wright also included some clarifications about the properties of sabermetrics which are very instructive in this particular debate: “A sabermetrician is not a statistician. Sabermetricians do not study baseball statistics. Sabermetricians are actually involved in research, scientific study, and the object is baseball.” (emphasis in original)

Statistical analysis and sabermetrics are not synonymous. Much of the statistical analysis that is done can certainly be put under the umbrella of sabermetrics--but it is a subset of sabermetrics, not the definition of it. I have always been uncomfortable with the term “statistical analysis” for other reasons--it implies a rigorousness and an approach that is not inherent to sabermetrics.

Statistics is a science unto itself, with its’ own principles and its’ own approach to questions. If a statistician is presented with the problem of estimating team runs from component statistics, his first move is not going to be to sit down and try to build a theoretical model of how runs are scored. He will likely look at correlations between the events, run regressions, etc. I am not here to say that those approaches are bad, just that sabermetrics encompasses more then that. Statistical tools are not going to allow you to create a method like Base Runs. If you created the model though, they will help you validate it.

At the risk of repeating myself, statistical analysis is certainly an important part of sabermetrics, but it is a poor choice of term to describe everything that sabermetricians do. And therefore, I don’t see why the committee should carry that name.

Today is Opening Day...Maybe

It is always cruel when you look forward to something and then it does not come to pass. Today should be opening day between the Indians and White Sox, but apparently a monsoon is about to hit Chicago and derail that. This will be one of those disjointed random junk entries which there is absolutely no reason to read. I can see that some people may be interested in Win Shares or R+/PA or RPW converters, but I would be surprised to know that anyone cares to read a column that will mention Lost.

First, a little thing about fantasy baseball. I am in a 5x5, 18 team league on Yahoo which had its draft yesterday. My second round pick was Jose Reyes. This is kind of bothersome to me, because I wouldn’t pick the guy with a .304 OBA for my real team. But he figures to hit .280, play every day, and get a bunch of steals, so he is a fine pick for the situation...he was the top-rated guy left on my draft list at the time, and believe me, I was trying to justify ways to myself not to pick him. I realize that there are other more realistic scoring methods for fantasy baseball then 5x5 or the other standards, but I am not so much complaining about them as lamenting the fact that sometimes you have to populate your team with guys you wouldn’t in real life.

Then we have the ongoing steroids crap. I am truly uninterested in who was using or not using steroids, so I hate to even address this, but there is one thing that has been bothering me. I have seen some people talk about how it is the “biggest threat to the game since the Black Sox scandal” and even using it to drum up sympathy for the admitted baseball bettor Pete Rose, i.e. “What Rose did is not nearly as bad as what [Bonds, Palmeiro, etc.] did”. First, on the Black Sox thing, I think that canceling the WORLD SERIES is just a tad bit more of a threat to the game of baseball then some guy injecting himself in the butt.

But on the issue of the integrity of the game, and Pete Rose, let me ask a question: Why would a baseball player take steroids? There is only one answer: He would take steroids because he thinks they will enhance his performance. Now whether his motivation for this is because he wants to make more money, or be more famous, or help his team win, or break a record, is irrelevant. Because no matter what the motivation is, he is doing it because he thinks it will make him a better player, and therefore, even if it is not the prize he has in sight, help his team win more games.

Gambling on baseball is so abhorrent because it opens the door to taking actions which are not in the best interest of your team, and in fact could help your team lose. Steroid use may in fact be detrimental to your team, if it causes more injuries or takes away from other parts of your game, but the intention is always to do good. The fact that steroid use may be detrimental to your team, is sort of like the fact that eating lots of food may be detrimental to your team. David Wells did not get fat thinking “How can I screw over the Red Sox”, and a steroid user did not take steroids thinking that either. But somebody who is betting on baseball may well have a stake in sabotage.

Now none of this is to say that steroids should be encouraged because they are taken with the intentions of improving your performance. If you want to continue to be outraged about it, go ahead, although I will ignore you. But don’t try to pass off the tripe about Pete Rose. It doesn’t fly with me, and it doesn’t fly logically.

I picked up the preview issue of Sports Weekly this week, and have a few gripes. I am bitter about the erstwhile Baseball Weekly as is. When they switched to providing NFL coverage, they informed us that they would not cut back on their baseball coverage in anyway. Then they dropped the box scores and had NFL crap on the cover half of the time during the baseball playoffs. So I never renewed my subscription, and usually only pick up the Spring Training and Season preview editions. Now I see that they have added NASCAR coverage, which only further dilutes the baseball content that they promised us would not be cut back on.

Anyway, they could also stand to hire some proof-readers, because I didn’t realize that Alex Fernandez had made a comeback, as a shortstop for the Red Sox no less! The cover story is “Who Will Shock the World?”, with the implication being that the last five World Series winners were all surprises, and so who will it be this year? (They pick the Phillies as the team with the best chance to be a surprise). I have never understood the need to stretch the truth to make your point, when you already have a good point to begin with. I will readily admit to being surprised by the World Series victories of the Diamondbacks, Angels, Marlins, and White Sox. To try to convince me the Red Sox championship was a surprise is a stretch. How can a team be a surprise after coming almost as close as you can come to making the World Series without actually doing it the year before? It would be like saying the Indians would be a big surprise if they won the Central this year (incidentally, their survey of baseball people picks the Indians as the third-most likely surprise team, which means that the people they surveyed must be surprised any time the same eight teams don’t qualify for the playoffs in consecutive years).

Finally, we come to an article in the Palm Beach Post entitled “Statistical Significance”. It has little profiles of a few sabermetricians (including Bill James, Studes of The Hardball Times and Baseball Graphs, and Marc Normandin of Beyond the Box Score), and sort of tries to show that they aren’t just geeks, they are somewhat normal people. You will not learn anything you did not know from reading this piece, but it is what it is and it’s cool to see these guys get mentioned in the mainstream media.

However, this article refers to them as “stat masters”. This may be the singular worst euphemism ever developed for “stat-drunk computer nerd”, and I am very grateful that no one has ever referred to me as a “stat master”. I good-naturedly complained about being called a “baseball wonk” by Studes in the Hardball Times Annual. I hereby take back those complaints, as that is an infinitely preferable term to “stat master”.

This article also tells you that Studes likes to watch Lost and 24. Good tv taste, there. Maybe they should next do a piece about the “Lost masters” who are currently dissecting the map on the door. I’d like to know who the Others are and where Walt is too, but what I really want to know is, what happened to Montan’s frickin arm?

I don’t have the book in front of me, so I can’t really do a full review, but if you are at all interested in the strategic side of the game, you should read The Book by Tango, Mickey Lichtman, and Andy Dolphin. It is by far the most comprehensive analysis of the sacrifice, the stolen base, the intentional walk, etc. ever published. I will also tell you what it is not: it is not The Hidden Game of Baseball. It is not a sabermetric primer, it is applied sabermetrics. There are introductions to Linear Weights, Run Expectancy, etc., because these are the key tools used throughout the book. But there is no discussion about league adjustments, replacement levels, park factors, etc. It is not a book you read to get introduced to sabermetrics, it is a book you read to learn about how sabermetrics can evaluate strategy (which can also be read by someone not familiar with sabermetrics, if they are willing and able to get the basics of the methods down).

The point of that is to say that this is unlike any other book in your sabermetric library. The most interesting thing, I thought, was the application of game theory to strategic decisions. For instance, even if bunting is a bad play in general, you still should do it occasionally because otherwise, the defense will respond, and they will thereby lower the expected gain you get from not bunting. The introduction of game theory invalidates to some extent the traditional sabermetric techniques of strategy evaluation. This is an area that I think could be looked into further (I am not saying that their coverage is poor, just that you could probably write a whole book just about that), and I anticipate that somebody somewhere will do some good work in this area in the future. Perhaps even the authors of The Book themselves.

Near the Banks of the Cuyahoga

Since I follow the Indians more closely then any other team, I will give do a little team-specific preview for them. This is hardly stuff that you can’t get elsewhere, but oh well. Since the OSU preview was titled “Near the Banks of the Olentangy”, it only was natural to name this one as I did. I suppose at this point I could digress into rating these two dirty looking rivers--(Cuyahoga has caught on fire, -5 pts; Olentangy is dirty mostly just because it is shallow and muddy, +3 pts; my parents’ property runs right up to the Cuyahoga, +3 pts; the Olentangy runs outside Ohio Stadium, Value City Arena, etc., contest over), but instead I will try to briefly recap the season and off-season that was, run down the roster, and refer you back to my last entry to see how I think it will shake out in the standings.

The story of the Indians’ 2005 season has been told many times, and is not a particular pleasant one, but the team started slowly but caught fire over the summer, charging back from a seemingly insurmountable deficit to the White Sox in the division to give them a September scare, as well as establishing a lead on the wildcard heading into the final week. Then it all fell apart, losing five of six at home to the Devil Rays and White Sox to finish six back in the division and two back in the wildcard.

The Indians’ offense scored 806 park-adjusted runs, good for fourth in the American League. Ranked by RAR at each positions, the Indians had the best catcher, sixth-best second baseman, fourth-best shortstop, fifth-best left fielder, best center-fielder, and second-best DH. Unfortunately, the team struggled to get production out of the three remaining corner positions, as their first baseman was tenth, third baseman dead last, and right fielder fourteenth.

Surprisingly, though, it was the Indians’ defense that carried the team. They allowed 655 park-adjusted runs, trailing only the White Sox (although in a virtual dead heat tie with Minnesota and Los Angeles). The starters were solid, as Kevin Millwood led the league in ERA and was fifth with +53 RAR; Cliff Lee was +41 RAR; CC Sabathia was +36; and while Scott Elarton and Jake Westbrook were both below average, they ate up innings and were both around +15 RAR. The rotation also stayed healthy almost all year, as the five combined to start 158 games, and the other four were all taken by Jason Davis.

The bullpen was a huge strength, as the key contributers were Bobby Howry with a 2.36 RRA; David Riske, 3.22; Bob Wickman, 2.78; Rafael Betancourt, 3.51; Scott Sauerbeck, 2.88; and Arthur Rhodes, 3.46. Those six not only pitched brilliantly, but combined to work 352 of the approximately 460 innings logged by the bullpen. Matt Miller was injured and missed most of the second half, but pitched 29 innings with a 1.82 ERA, and then youngster Fernando Cabrera came up and pitched 30 innings with a 1.47 ERA. That totals to around 412 innings all thrown by pitchers with RRAs of 3.50 and lower.

While the team finished with a record of 93-69 and a .574 W%, the Expected W% based on runs scored and runs allowed was .598, best in the AL and second only to St. Louis. The Predicted W% based on RC and RC Allowed was .617, the highest in baseball. So, in the sense that sabermetricians often mean it, the Indians were “unlucky” last year. Please note that I, at least, do not mean this to imply that they somehow deserved to win but did not. The team that has the highest W% is the champion, and that was the White Sox. However, these type of indicators are often (or appear to be) better correlated with future performance then the actual winning percentage.

The off-season was relatively uneventful until January. Prior to that, the Indians let Kevin Millwood leave for free agency, as he received a massive and IMO foolish contract from the Rangers. Given Millwood’s injury history and peripherals, it seems unlikely that he will be able to duplicate his excellent pitching of 2005. Millwood still projects as a solid starter, but probably not a good investment at the price the Rangers paid. Scott Elarton was also allowed to leave to sign with Kansas City, as was Bobby Howry with the Cubs.

Their[Millwood and Elarton] replacements will be Paul Byrd and Jason Johnson, both signed as free agents. While it would be silly to expect them as a pair match what Millwood and Elarton did LAST year, it is not unreasonable to think that they could match what Millwood and Elarton will do THIS year.

Then in January, the Indians sent Coco Crisp, David Riske, and backup catcher Josh Bard to the Red Sox for top third base prospect Andy Marte, reliever Guillermo Mota, and catcher Kelly Shoppach. They also flipped Arthur Rhodes to Philadelphia for Jason Michaels to help fill Crisp’s spot in the lineup. I have written about this trade in a previous post, so I won’t belabor it here, but if I had to call this trade, I would say that the Indians will benefit in the long run, but it probably does weaken their position this year, especially since Marte will start the season in Buffalo.

So, after all of this, what will the team look like in 2006? Offensively, exactly the same with the exception of Crisp. Victor Martinez has established himself as the premier catcher in the AL, if not all of baseball, and at 28 would appear to be in the prime of his career. He will be backed up by Kelly Shoppach, who hit 253/352/507 at AAA for Boston last year. He hit poorly in the spring, but one the backup job over the shockingly still employable Einar Diaz, who has not hit since he was traded by the Indians, with Ryan Drese for…Travis Hafner, who apparently will play some more first base this year. If Hafner can play some games in the field, hopefully Martinez can DH and save himself from catching, as Shoppach would appear to not be an offensive sinkhole as Josh Bard was last year. Whether he plays the field or not, Hafner has established himself as one of the best hitters in baseball--his 8.44 RG trailed only A-Rod in the junior circuit. Ben Broussard, who hit just 258/306/468 last year will be the primary first baseman. His career averages are 258/327/459, so it would be silly to expect him to perform much differently this year.

Broussard will be spelled some at first base, at least against lefties, by Eduardo Perez, signed as a free agent from Tampa Bay. Last year this role was served by Jose Hernandez, who did not hit whether the pitcher was left-handed, right-handed, or was an octopus. Perez tagged lefties for a 259/371/526 line last year in around 155 PAs, so hopefully he will add some runs in this role. At second base, Ronnie Belliard returns and should provide average hitting and his unusual deep defensive positioning. At third base, Aaron Boone will try to recover to be his mediocre self after an atrocious 245/294/381 comeback season. This year, though, with the Indians expecting to contend from day one, he will need to hit or else Mr. Marte, who seemingly has nothing left to prove in the minors, could dislodge him. Jhonny Peralta was tremendous in his first full season at shortstop, and while it might be wishful thinking to believe he will create 6.6 runs per game again, he appears to be one of the brighter young players in the league. Ramon Vazquez will hopefully be the little seen and little needed utility infielder he was last year after the trade of Alex Cora.

The outfield will be anchored by Grady Sizemore in center, who had a tremendous 106 RC season last year. While he may be due for some regression/sophomore slum/whatever, he should be one of the league’s better centerfielders. Jason Michaels is a bit of a question mark in left as it will be his first time handed a full-time job (although he could platoon with fourth outfielder Todd Hollandsworth). He has showed good on-base skills in Philly, and provides a nice backup for center. Casey Blake had a horrible year(243/301/442) in right, but the Indians lack a clear alternative. Like Broussard, his career 255/324/439 line does not give a lot of reassurance that he will do any better. Jason Dubois had a strong spring, but was sent back to Buffalo and seems to have fallen out of favor with the brass after striking out in half of his 50 PA with the Indians last year. He may be an emergency option if Blake struggles, as could prospect Brad Snyder.

The rotation will be anchored by CC Sabathia, who seems to have been around forever despite being just 26 this year. As each year passes, it seems less likely that he will break out, but last year he did match 2004 for his best control, and 7.4 was his best strikeout rate since his rookie year. I picked him as a dark horse Cy Young candidate, because he is young enough to put it all together and become a great pitcher, although I’m not betting on it. He is a solid starter either way. Cliff Lee will follow him, and while not as good as his 18 wins a year ago may lead some to think, he is a solid pitcher with a 4.26 eRA last year. He combines with Sabathia to give the Tribe one of the better left-handed pitching combos around, with the exception of Minnesota, where Johan Santana and his aunt would be the best duo, let alone the fact that they have the top left-handed pitching prospect in baseball.

Paul Byrd has been brought back after a long time away to fill the role of #3 starter. Byrd was solid last year as well, with a 4.42 eRA. He is 36 and does not have a really impressive strikeout rate, so he’s the kind of guy you worry about losing it. But for the short-term, it would seem best to expect more of the same. He is followed by Jake Westbrook, who struggled to a 5.29 RA last year, although his 4.40 eRA is much more in line with his very good 2004 season in which he was at 4.09. Again, I think it is prudent to expect more of the same. Jason Johnson will be the #5 starter, at least until Fausto Carmona or Jeremy Sowers are deemed ready to take over. He is a slightly below average pitcher who can toss 200 innings, which is not a bad thing to have in a fifth starter. Given his extra durability, lower price, and similar performance, I am glad the Indians signed him rather then retaining Scott Elarton.

The bullpen, a true force last year, is much more of a question mark this year. Bob Wickman got a bunch of saves last year with a 2.52 RA, but his 4.26 eRA and 5.30 GRA give you an indication of why Cleveland’s retailers could not stock enough Tums during the season. With his, erm, impressive physique, advanced age, and low strikeout rate, you can relataively low K rate(6.0), you can forgive me if I predict that somebody else will be handling the closer’s role by July.

But who will that someone be? Well, the Indians have three righties to set-up, led by Fernando Cabrera, who dominated the AL at age 24 in 30 inning debut. He will not record another 1.47 ERA, but there is a reason why Baseball Prospectus included him in their top 50 prospects, rare for a reliever. Then there is Guillermo Mota, who suffered through an injury-plagued year in Florida last year. Given his age and lingering concerns about injury, there is legitimate cause for pessimism, but on the other hand, it was just two years ago that he was one of the top ten relievers in the NL. Finally, Rafael Betancourt has been the underrated member of the Cleveland pen for a couple years now, as he consistently eats middle innings with sub-3.5 RAs and excellent strikeout rates. Early reports had him being included in the Crisp trade; if true, the Indians wisely substituted David Riske instead, whose rising homer and falling strikeout rates spell trouble.

The Indians have just one lefty after sending Arthur Rhodes to the Phillies, and that will be Scott Sauerbeck. Sauerbeck was great at stranding inherited runners a year ago (+7 runs over an average reliever), but his run averages were all in the mid-4s. He fits the LOOGY role, as over the last three years lefties have a 620 OPS against him v. 846 for righties. For perspective, that’s about the same as Omar Infante(626) and Rondell White(843). The sixth spot in the pen falls to Matt Miller, whose sidearming motion automatically endears him to me, let alone the fact that in 89 career innings he has struck out 83 batters with a 2.62 ERA. At 35 and having missed most of the second half last year, there are definite concerns but he looks to be a useful piece.

The last guy in the bullpen, or at least the buy I hope Eric Wedge will treat as the last guy in the bullpen, is Danny Graves. Why the Indians think they can fix Graves, I do not know, as even in his best seasons he was not that great, but looked good cause he got the saves. Graves beat out Steve Karsay, another hopeless ex-Indian reclamation project, Jason Davis, and Andrew Brown for the spot. Brown had intriguing numbers in the minors last year and will probably be the first option if anyone gets hurt, or Graves or Wickman spontaneously combust. Davis is apparently now moving to the pen full-time, which hopefully will kick start his career, because as it stands now, he’s going nowhere fast. That will leave Carmona as the first backup for the rotation.

To summarize, the Indians have an above-average lineup that will put some runs on the board, they have a solid starting staff that will not dominate anyone but will eat some innings and let the offense work, and a bullpen that does not profile to be spectacular as it was a year ago, but still looks above-average to me. I think that’s a 90 win team right there, and a team that can win this division. It’s also a team that could finish third and not really surprise me. But it should be a good race, and while 1995-2001 may have spoiled Cleveland fans, that’s really all you should ask for.

2006 Predictions

Predictions like this are, as always, offered up as “fun” item and not as serious analysis. Last year I made a point about predictions that I think is worth recapping. When you say “I pick the Yankees to win the AL East”, you usually do not mean that you think it is a sure thing that the Yankees will win the AL East. What you mean is that you think that they have the best chance. This chance might be very high, say 80%, or it may be much lower, say 40%. Of course, at any chance under 50%, what you actually think is that the odds are that the Yankees will NOT win the AL East. But since you gauge them as having the highest chance, you predict that they will win.

This problem gets even worse as you move up to higher and higher championships. It would be silly to suggest that any of the thirty teams is an even money to choice to win the World Series. But yet I will go ahead and pick a World Series winner, even though I think it more likely then not that team will not win it all.

Of course, most people inherently recognize this I think, and don’t feel the need to explicitly state it when they make their predictions. Maybe I am particularly gun shy because to be honest, my predictions usually suck. I have been doing this for many years now, and just going from memory, have not gotten an impressive percentage right. Last year’s happen to be preserved on this blog, so reviewing them, I successfully predicted the AL West(LAA), the NL East(ATL), and the NL Central(STL). I had the Red Sox and Yankees in the playoffs, but reversed the order (actually, since they finished in a mathematical tie, I guess you could consider these two predictions correct). I thought the Twins would repeat in the AL Central, and had the White Sox in fourth, which is not slick at all. I picked the Phillies to win the NL Wildcard, which they contended for until the last day of the season. I had the NL champs from Houston in fourth in their division as well. So if you are a Tigers or Astros fan, take heart. I picked the Dodgers in the NL West, and embarrassingly predicted a Red Sox WS repeat over them.

I also predicted the three major awards, and got ARod as MVP, although that is a really absurd thing to predict, because ARod could have easily won the AL MVP five times now, and you just get lucky in the years he actually wins. How much courage would it take to predict Pujols to win the NL MVP this year? So I will try to make my award picks at least a little daring. The other predictions at the bottom are meant to be taken somewhat TIC.

AL EAST
1. New York
2. Toronto
3. Boston
4. Baltimore
5. Tampa Bay
The Yankees remain a ticking time bomb in my mind, but I don’t expect it to explode this year. Although the pitching staff could wind up the same way it did last year, as the Yankees are now expecting last year’s patches like Wang and Chacon to be key guys. I’m not crazy about Toronto’s moves, but they could provide enough oomph to overtake a Red Sox team that has its own issues. Baseball Prospectus made a very good point in their book this year about the Jays that should temper some of the enthusiasm; while they had something like a .545 EW% last year, based on RC and RC Allowed(or what I call PW%), it was more like .490, which is how they actually played. So while it may appear that they only need to improve their standing against Boston or New York by three or four games based on Pythagorean record, the actual gap is probably a lot larger. Baltimore is not a bad team, and could surprise if Mazzone can work his magic there; they already have a farily solid group of pitchers to work with in Benson, Cabrera, Bedard, and Chen. I remain skeptical on Mazzone’s magical abilities, and so will pick the Orioles in fourth. The Devil Rays should not change their name, at least not to “Rays”.

AL CENTRAL
1. Cleveland
2. Minnesota
3. Chicago
4. Detroit
5. Kansas City
I intend to write a little more in-depth thing on the Indians before Opening Day on Sunday, but I think they can win this, with the caveat that I think the top three are all essentially equals and would be surprised not one bit if the order was reversed. The Indians’ bullpen will likely be far short of where it was last year, and there won’t be a repeat ERA leader in the starting rotation. And the offense has a number of players who could be due for some regression, particularly Sizemore and Peralta. But the team had the highest PW% in the game last year(.617), so I think they could lose a lot of ground and still win here. The Twins would be a lot more interesting if they could hit, but they still have Mr. Santana and I would take Francisco Liriano over any rookie pitcher in the game. The White Sox are widely hailed as favorites, which I can’t help but think is shortsighted. Their W% was around seven games better then their EW%, which in turn was about four games better then their PW%, which indicates they should have won 87 games last year. Yes, adding Jim Thome and Javier Vazquez seems to improve the team on paper, but I don’t think you can expect their starters to repeat their performances of a year ago. The Tigers are making progress, but remain a year or two away from contending. The Royals signings of veteran flotsam may make them better, but I’m not sure of it. They will likely improve a bit just because nobody’s really that bad.

AL WEST
1. Oakland
2. Los Angeles (wildcard)
3. Texas
4. Seattle
The A’s look really, really good to me. The biggest concern to me is that the young pitching will not repeat their performances, but I think the offense could improve, as Crosby ideally will stay healthy and Frank Thomas, even for 300 PA, is a big bat. Plus they have Nick Swisher, the only Buckeye in the major leagues at this moment. That has to count for something. The Angels are still a solid team, though. I’m not terribly excited about the Rangers adding solid pitchers to their rotation, although they could be better, and they weren’t that far out of this thing to begin with. There are three teams in each AL division that really wouldn’t surprise me if they were to be playing come October. The Mariners have King Felix, so he should keep them contented for another poor year at least. I realize that most people are older then the ballplayers they watch, and so I don’t expect a lot of sympathy, but it is kind of odd to now be watching some guys younger then myself. Felix Hernandez is the first player to have a star-caliber performance in the majors who is younger then me, so I guess my window of opportunity at being a professional baseball player is closing rapidly, as if my lack of talent hadn’t slammed it shut years ago.

NL EAST
1. New York
2. Philadelphia (wildcard)
3. Atlanta
4. Washington
5. Florida
The Mets are the kind of team I hate to love, but in this division, that can get you picked to win. They have made additions that could improve their team, although I don’t for the life of me understand the Seo and Benson trades, and Pedro’s health is a big concern. I have been picking the Phillies for years, and have always gotten burned--I think they have less potential then they’ve had in the past, but they’ve been underperforming for years, so maybe some day they’ll exceed expectations. The Braves did a remarkable job to win again last year, and you pick against them at your own risk, but what better time to take that risk then when Mazzone leaves and they do little to improve the club in the off-season? The Nationals are an embarrassment to baseball, and desperately need an owner and a plan of how to build their organization, and preferably not one that includes Jim Bowden. The Marlins should be just plain awful.

NL CENTRAL
1. St. Louis
2. Milwaukee
3. Chicago
4. Houston
5. Pittsburgh
6. Cincinnati
The Cardinals have the potential for implosion, but there’s nobody in this division who I see as ready to fill the void, even if the Cards drop to around 88 wins. I was on the Brewers’ train last year, picking them third, and I am downright bullish on their future prospects, but I don’t think it is their time yet. The Cubs could win if the stars align and Prior, Wood, and Zambrano all pitch a full season like they have the potential to (I realize Zambrano has a record of good health, but given the way pitchers go and fate’s seeming opposition to the Cubs, would anyone truly be surprised to see him break down with the other two having Cy Young-type seasons? I know I wouldn’t), but the odds of that aren’t that great and they sure won’t win because of their offense. You can’t expect Pettitte and Oswalt to be as spectacular as they were a year ago; then you take away Clemens, do nothing to improve a weak offense, and the Astros don’t look so hot. But keep in mind that I picked them in fourth last year as well. The Pirates are picked fifth only because the Reds are no good either. The trade of Pena, who while far from a sure thing has some decent major league success at a young age and seems to have worlds of talent, for a middling pitcher like Bronson Arroyo, makes me unenthusiastic about the Wayne Krivsky era being any better then that of Dan O’Brien.

NL WEST
1. San Diego
2. Los Angeles
3. San Francisco
4. Arizona
5. Colorado
I thought about this one a lot--are the superhuman powers of Barry Bonds enough to overcome the myriad of problems with the Giants? Are the Padres improved over last year (I’m inclined to think yes), but if so, does that mean they’ll win 85 games? Will the Dodgers, with many of the same players I picked to win the NL pennant last year, rebound? Can the Diamondbacks defy Pythagoras again? Can a division look this bad two years in a row? As an aside, I mentioned earlier that I was bullish on the Brewers’ future. I will disclose here, for the first time, that I was once bullish on the Rockies future. The fact that you do not need me to tell you when exactly I thought that to know that I was colossally wrong says a lot about the Rockies’ organization, and why I consider them the most boring team in baseball.

WORLD SERIES
Oakland over St. Louis
Although you could spin the bottle for the NL pennant if you wanted to.

AL ROY: Craig Hansen, BOS
The theory here is that Hansen is thrown in as the closer and gets thirty saves and gets tons of pub. You may not buy it; I’m not sure I do.
AL CY: C.C. Sabathia, CLE
Sabathia has never emerged as the ace the Indians and their fans have hoped for, but he is still just 26 and had a 4.02 eRA last year; improve a bit, get some run support, win 20 games, team wins the division, win the Cy? Unlikely, but possible.
AL MVP: Eric Chavez, OAK
Chavez bounces back, A’s look like best team in league, he gets MVP. Again, I’m trying to avoid the real obvious picks here.
NL ROY: Ryan Zimmerman, WAS
Would Jeremy Hermida get ignored because he plays for the league’s worst team, or get sympathy votes because of it?
NL CY: Jake Peavy, SD
Not an out on a limb pick at all, but he’s good and he hasn’t won it yet, so why not?
NL MVP: Albert Pujols, STL
Despite what I said above, he’s too good and too consistent not to go with the obvious pick.
Most annoying story of the year: Barry Bonds, home run record, BALCO, steroids, Bud Selig, Fay Vincent, etc.
Funniest story of the year: Alfonso Soriano, Jim Bowden, Jose Vidro, left field, second base, etc.
Most predictable headlines of the year: “Rockies remain mired in mediocrity”; “Rays name change met with yawns”; “Pujols records 120th RBI”; “Guillen’s comments spark controversy”; “Selig to remain commissioner for an additional two years”; “World Baseball Classic blamed for [fill in the blank]”
First manager fired: Buck Showalter, TEX
Over/under on number of games NL West winner wins: 87
Over/under on number of Bonds homers: 28
Over/under on number of Marlins losses: 100
Over/under on number of posts on this blog between now and offseason: 15

Review of "Baseball Prospectus 2006"

I assume that most of the readers of this blog are familiar with the Baseball Prospectus, and know whether it is something you want to read or not, and don’t really need somebody to tell you what they think. So this review will simply point out a few changes in the book and discuss some of the sabermetric articles in it.

They have cut back on the number of player comments this year ever so slightly, which is actually IMO a good thing. Personally, I got tired reading somebody try to come up with something insightful to say about another middling pseudo-prospect. Instead, they have added a little section at the end of each team’s chapter which lists a stat lines for several other batters and pitchers and a little sentence or two about each of them.

One slightly annoying thing is that they have cut back on the number of stat lines displayed for a player that only played with a team for a brief period, like a cup of coffee in AAA or the majors. It is kind of annoying to read a comment about some guy that says something like "He showed good command in a brief September call-up", and then look up and not see the numbers for yourself. Also, if a guy split time at a level between a couple of teams, it would make sense to combine the numbers if one of the stat lines falls below your stand-alone standard.

Also interesting to note is that EQA has reclaimed its position in the book, while MLVr is only shown in its non-translated form. I am not crazy about either of these metrics, as EQA distorts the scale and MLVr is based on the Basic RC model, but it is interesting how their fortunes in print at BP have varied over the years.

The articles in the back of the book are a mixed bag. The article on the off-field business aspects of the game in 2005, written by Andrew Bahrlias, is excellent. According to his bio in the back of the book, he is a former counsel to the Yankees, so he knows his stuff.

Then there is "Injury Accounting", by Thomas Gorman. This piece attempts to quantify the effects of injuries, but is quite dull for my money’s worth. It simply assumes that the player will be replaced by a replacement-level player while ignoring chaining, uses a combination of actual performance and PECOTA projection to estimate how the player would have performed if healthy, and uses days on the DL to estimate games missed due to injury. I am not saying that any of the stuff is bad or wrong, just that it is pretty straightforward and doesn’t break any new ground. Chaining is a difficult thing to quantify, and so I appreciate the fact that it was ignored for simplicity’s sake, but it is too big of a problem to ignore on the injury front I think. If they could have modeled chaining, even rudimentarily, then this would be a grand slam piece.

Keith Woolner has a piece on Win Expectancy, expanding upon his work from last year. This article is interesting, but WE is hardly an unexplored topic, so it is most interesting for some the results that are generated, like breakeven percentages for stolen bases in different leagues. Definitely a worthwhile article, but there is lots of other good work being done with WE by others as well.

The other "fungo" is Gary Huckabay’s article entitled "Where Does Statistical Analysis Fall Down? Reality and Perception". This piece did not sit well with me at all. To be fair, one must keep in mind that the main focus of it is the usefulness and implementation of "performance analysis" in Major League front offices. So some of the comments are directed towards the use of statistical/sabermetric/performance analysis in that context.

Still, the piece comes off as dismissive of much of the sabermetric community. For example, "First, throw the term ‘sabermetrics’ out the window. It’s slippery, doesn’t describe anything of substance, and trivializes the nature of serious analysis." Okay, then. Sabermetrics describes nothing of substance. Now perhaps it is true, a front office may not really care about the exact Pythagorean exponent that should be used, or some similar thing that sabermetricians like myself care about. I accept that, and quite frankly don’t care. Maybe another couple of quotes will help me explain further:

"The baseball analysis ‘community’ lacks standards; people self-publish their work and feel confident that they’re qualified to offer advice on multi-million dollar transactions."

Again, there is an element of truth to this, but is this not true of just about everything in life, not just "baseball analysis"? Aren’t there people who’ve never spent a day in the military who feel compelled to give military advice, people who’ve never taken an economics course who decry "price gouging" every time the gas price goes up by a nickel. Now there is no reason why one should heed the advice of many of these self-appointed experts, but such a dismissive attitude towards all commentary by non-experts insulates the industry in question from any criticism. Perhaps only soldiers should comment on the military, only gas station owners on gas prices, and only actors and professional movie critics on movies. This all sounds fine and dandy until you realize that nobody is an expert on everything, and you will be silencing yourself on some matter that interests you be it politics or military strategy or whether Ben Roethlisberger made it across the goal line in the Super Bowl.

Of course, the bit about self-publishing is sort of funny as well, because self-published outlets like Baseball Think Factory or blogs have more interaction and out in the open peer review then does the Baseball Prospectus. Who has ever been allowed to review PECOTA? Heck, in their Baseball Between the Numbers book, they don’t even give formulas for things as elementary as EQR and the Pythagenpat exponent! I understand the need to keep things proprietary, but if you’re going to do that, don’t turn around and lecture others who publish their results in the open and solicit rebuttals and debate as "lacking standards".

"There is excessive attention paid to the ‘academic’ race, refining a model to another 1% of precision, without regard to its utility for making decisions that will actually help a ballclub, or the enormous error bars inherent in the entire exercise."

This one could have been intended at me (note I am not suggesting that it is, because it's obviously not, and there are plenty of other people, some of whom people have actually heard of, who it could apply to; what I mean that it is aimed at people with sabermetric interests similar to mine). It presumes that the only purpose of doing sabermetric-type research would be to help a ballclub. I’ve never made any pretensions that RPG^.285 as a pyth exponent will have any tangible consequences on running a team then using "2", or similar things. Some things are worth knowing for extreme theoretical situations, to people who are interested in theoreticals. Knowing how many runs it will take to win a game in a 25 RPG context may not interest a major league team. But neither will knowing pi to one thousand digits interest someone who needs to know the area of a circle. Yes, that is an academic pursuit, but that is what academics do. Maybe I should pretentiously call myself an academic sabermetrician in order to avoid confusion and give the impression that I secretly want total control over the Rangers organization.

Now the point about error bars is one that I agree with, to a point--there will be sizeable error in all estimates, but that is no reason that those with the patience and interest should not endeavor to make the initial estimate as precise as is possible, and as well-reasoned as is possible, and as applicable across a wide range of contexts as is possible.

Of course, this is yet another funny criticism to be coming from Baseball Prospectus, since it is them who published an accuracy study showing EQR to be slightly more accurate since 1871 then BsR, XR, or other choices of run estimators. It is them who have a six page article in the very same book about optimizing PECOTA, their projection method, which is the most error-prone activity of all--trying to forecast future performance of individual human beings trying to hit a little white sphere going 90 miles an hour with a thirty-four ounce piece of wood. It is them who in the next article(the Woolner article on WE) print results of a regression slope to five places and the intercept to six places. I realize that Baseball Prospectus is made up of individuals and is not monolithic--however, there is no acknowledgement that some of these criticisms could easily be applied to members of his group and their work.

Some readers have always found the BP to be unduly arrogant. I have never really shared that opinion, but I think Gary Huckabay’s piece is. However, if you have read BP in the past and enjoyed it, you should not let that stop you from reading it this year.

In closing though, the book has a quote from an Esquire review on the cover calling it the "heir" to the Baseball Abstract. For many years, this may have been true, because since the BBBA went under in 2001 there has been no other sabermetric annuals published, so the title would fall to BP by default. But that is no longer the case. While not as true to the Abstract format as the BBBA was, there is no doubt in my mind that the Hardball Times Annual is the current book that best encapsulates the spirit of the Abstract. This is not an inherently good or bad thing; the books have different purposes and different target audiences. But if you’re looking for which is more like the Abstract, it’s not even close.