Comments on Baseball Prospectus 2009

I don’t want to bill this as a "book review", because that implies a level of formality that is lacking here. And many of my opinions have already been voiced by others around the net--a particular problem when one comes in to comment on a book over two months after it has been published.

Quite frankly, this is the worst edition of Baseball Prospectus I've read, and I’ve read each edition since 1998. Don’t take this too far--I'm still glad I purchased the book, as it remains the best source for a quick, intelligent outlook on just about every relevant player in organized baseball. But even that function was diminished in this edition by the lack of an index. In fairness to BP, they quickly released an index online and apologized profusely for the oversight.

From an editing standpoint, though, it's pretty inexcusable to leave the index out. Shoddy editing also showed in the Padres chapter, which read as if it was written as the last minute as the author waited to learn whether Jake Peavy would be retained or traded. While I can certainly sympathize with the plight of attempting to publish a relevant and updated book while dealing with a deadline, I'd like to believe that the result could be a bit more polished.

I think it continues to be a mistake on the part of BP to not reveal who the authors are for each portion of the book (I'm referring to the team and player comments, not the essays which list the author, as always). Speaking with one voice may be good for marketing ("Baseball Prospectus says…" sounds a bit more impressive than "Author X of Baseball Prospectus says") and apparent continuity (BP has a fairly high level of author turnover which would be all the more apparent if each article were bylined), but I don't believe that it does the reader any favors. As a reader, I like to know who I am reading, and I can then use my past impressions of their work to inform my view of the new material. It also would explain the contradictions in statistical measures cited, which otherwise appear to be purely schizophrenic.

Some writers use EqA when they want a catch-all rate measure of offensive performance. Others use MLVr. Still others use OPS+. Player comments blatantly contradict the fielding metric results in the corresponding statistical data, often without an acknowledgment of the disconnect.

The most blatant example of this failure to define terms/establish a standard for statistical measures comes in the use of Pythagenport to estimate team wins. The BP annual refers to Pythagenport, while the glossary on their website claims that they use Pythagenpat (which, in full disclosure, I am sometimes credited for co-inventing with David Smyth). It's not so much that I'm bothered that they may be using Pythagenpat without attribution, but that it makes it incredibly confusing to understand how their estimates are calculated. Another Pythagenport problem is on display in the Phillies chapter, in which the "Phillies in a Box" data lists the team with a 93-69 estimated record. However, the author of the chapter writes "by their Pythagorean projections, they were…an 87-win team in 2008". Huh?

In fact, there is an explanation. If you go to the BP website and look at the adjusted standings for 2008, you will find that the Phillies' "third-order record"--that is, a Pythagenport record fueled by EqR and EqR allowed and adjusted for strength of schedule--is 87-75. The average reader is never going to think to think that up as the explanation for the seeming contradiction of same-page data. And that opens the door for three different sets of records to be considered Pythagenport--the first, second, and third order records. Really, though, only the first-order record should be referred to as "Pythagenport" with no further explanation.

If I had to present a unified theory as to why multiple statistics are used for the same purpose, statistics are called by incorrect or misleading names, etc. it would be the drain of their top statistical talent. Clay Davenport is really the only hard-core sabermetrician still acting as a major part of their team. Nate Silver has largely moved on to political analysis, while Dan Fox and Keith Woolner were hired away by the Pirates and Indians respectively. Outside of Davenport, it is an open question as to how many BP writers could explain the intricacies and nuances of all of the statistics they publish in one form or the other.

This brain drain also explains the disappointing crop of essays in the 2009 edition. Traditionally (although I believe 2003 was an exception, and it's possible that another year or two was as well), at least one essay has been a serious sabermetric study of one sort or the other (exemplified by articles on replacement level, win expectancy, catcher's ERA, and other topics down through the years). The only essay that is even remotely sabermetric in the 2009 book is Davenport's explanation of the changes to BP's fielding and WARP methodology.

Of course, this dearth of sabermetric material shouldn't really come as a surprise, even if one ignored the absence of Fox, Silver, and Woolner. After all, Gary Huckaby (in-)famously informed us that "sabermetrics is dead" a few years ago--an arrogant proclamation at the moment it was made which looks downright asinine in retrospect as new frontiers of analysis like PitchF/x have opened up.

Now, about the Davenport article. I will let the fielding portion of it go without comment and leave that for the experts in that area. Upfront, I applaud Clay for making the changes he made despite his own lingering personal reservations about the methodology. In doing so, he has made BP's WARP figures much more useful to the sabermetric community at large. I also should make it clear that although I have written somewhat negative critiques of Equivalent Runs/Average before, I respect Davenport's work and want to exclude him from my broader criticism of the post-Woolner/Fox/Silver BP.

Commencing with the review of his new methodology, he uses an offensive position adjustment approach to calculate runs above average. Apparently these are variable throughout history, although only the modern era position averages are shown. Davenport explains that these adjustments are not based solely on the average EqA for the various positions--he tweaks them based on the defensive responsibilities of the position.

The following table gives the average EqA used at each position, along with its equivalent in terms of Adjusted RG (*) (in other words, runs/out relative to the league average), and the offense-based position-adjustment that I use. The juxtaposition of my values (which are nothing more than the major league averages for 1992-2001) and Davenport's is not in anyway intended to imply that the ones I use are correct and that Davenport's must be evaluated in relation to them.



I don't really have a problem with any of this; my only criticism is that Davenport does not even mention defense-based position adjustments as an option. It seems as if the presentation is between two choices: an offense-based position adjustment or Davenport's old approach of separate offensive and defensive replacement levels. That's really on the level of a nitpick, though.

Then Davenport uses Jose Reyes and Johan Santana as examples of how to calculate WARP under the new methodology. It seems as if there is an error in his example, as he alternates between saying that Jose Reyes made 507 and 499 outs last year. I'm sure this is nothing more than a typo, but it does make his example a little harder to follow.

The key detail to understand is that he uses a replacement level of -22.11 offensive runs per season, which is equivalent to using a .230 EqA, which is equivalent to using a .350 OW% as myself and many others do.

Another thing to keep in mind about his example is that the calculations are based on translated stats, so all of the various context differences (league, park, etc.) have already been accounted for.

There is one assumption made by Davenport that I think is unjustified, and it appears to cause pitcher's WARP to be overstated. For pitchers, Davenport still assumes that their replacement will be -22 runs over a full season, and prorates this over the number of outs the pitcher actually makes at the plate. But just as replacement-level position players tend to be average (or close to it), replacement-level pitchers should be average hitters relative to their peers.

So Johan Santana, with a pitiful .047 EqA (remember, Clay uses .125 as the positional average, so Johan had a bad showing at the plate even by pitcher standards) gets a little credit for his offense; he was -1.7 runs versus the average pitcher in his 69 outs, while the replacement costs his team 3.1 runs. Santana gets .3 more WARP by figuring it Davenport's way than he would if you assumed that a replacement pitcher would have no effect on the team's runs scored. All pitchers in non-DH will be likewise overvalued.

All in all, though, the changes to WARP are welcome and sensible if a little bit overdue. Reading Davenport's piece, it seems as if he still considers WARP to be a work in progress, and so I anticipate that we will see some further refinements down the line.

(*) The conversion of EqA to R/O is R/O = 5*EqA^2.5. The average EqA is .260, which is .172 R/O, and so the equivalent ARG figure is just 5*EqA^2.5/.172.

Derby Pick--Friesan Fire

Disclaimer: This post displays next to zero intellectual rigor. It is not intended as serious analysis. Predictions are always at least 75% BS, and even more so when the predictor makes no claim of having any special knowledge about the subject at hand. I am by no means a thoroughbred racing analyst.

Disclaimer aside, though, the economic foundation of horse racing is largely based on the desire of people with no particular insight to demonstrate how smart they are by placing wagers on races. This is true in horse racing to an extent unrivaled by any other major American spectator sports, and so to let mere obstacles like ignorance stop one from giving an opinion on the Kentucky Derby would be bad form.

Unfortunately, the horse I and the rest of the world considered the favorite, Quality Road, was forced out with a quarter crack. Quality Road has been my Derby horse since his second-to-last start in the Fountain of Youth, and so I am left scrambling to find a new favorite.

This strikes me as an odd year--there are five colts that really stand out, and the rest of the field doesn't feature much to get me excited. The usual pattern is that there are two or three horses I really like, and then a group of about ten that I can easily see winning if things break their way.

TOSS (7)
Flying Private (50-1)
Nowhere to Hide (50-1)
Summer Bird (50-1)
Atomic Rain (50-1)
Join in the Dance (50-1)
Mine that Bird (50-1)
Advice (30-1)

DON'T LIKE (4)
West Side Bernie (30-1)
Mr. Hot Stuff (30-1)
Chocolate Candy (20-1)
Hold Me Back (15-1)

MODERATELY LIKE (4)
Regal Ransom (30-1)
Musket Man (20-1)
Papa Clem (20-1)
General Quarters (20-1)

LIKE A LOT (5)
Desert Party (15-1)
Friesan Fire (5-1)
Dunkirk (4-1)
Pioneerof the Nile (4-1)
I Want Revenge (3-1)

As you can see, I'm in general agreement with the morning line odds, and those odds back up what I said a field with several elite horses and everyone else.

Some longer comments on the big five:
Desert Party--had this horse prepped anywhere other than Dubai, he'd be getting a lot more attention. If I was going to place a win bet, he'd be my horse due to the price.

Friesan Fire--my pick to win. He is coming off a long layoff, but Larry Jones has had the second-place runner in each of the last two Derbys (Hard Spun and the late Eight Belles) and knows what he's doing. Looked great in the slop in the Louisiana Derby, and it looks as if it may be rainy in Louisville on Saturday.

Dunkirk--this year's Curlin or Big Brown; brilliant, but without a lot of seasoning. He was impressive in the Florida Derby; as he made his move on the turn, I really thought he was going to pull away for the win, but Quality Road fended him off. Quality Road isn't here, and thus I would pick Dunkirk as the most talented colt in this field
.
Pioneerof the Nile--I like this horse a lot; he would be my pick except for two things. One is that he has been forced to make the pace against slower horses in his last two preps; he is extremely unlikely to win the Derby in that manner. He also will be making his first start on dirt after running on synthetics in California.

Neither of those things really bothers me; he shouldn’t have any problem coming from off the pace as that seems to be his natural style, and not prepping on dirt could well develop into one of those silly "rules" that people live by (not racing at two, winning the Breeder's Cup Juvenile, etc.). Trivial matters that are transformed into hard and fast rules, until a Barbaro or a Street Sense comes along and blows them all away. That being said, though, it is more comforting to have seen the horse succeed on the dirt, and if it's a close call, I'll certainly use it as a tiebreaker. And that's about what it is for me between Friesan Fire and Pioneerof the Nile.

Also, if one wants to see a Triple Crown winner, those two would appear to be the best bet, as they are both sons of Belmont winners (AP Indy and Empire Maker, respectively). As an aside, I have always wondered why media coverage doesn't emphasize the sire of the horses more. Horses have short careers, and it's hard for a casual fan who may watch only the Triple Crown and the Breeder's Cup to grow attached to any horse as a rooting interest. I think that getting people interested in the offspring of an old favorite would be a good way to build an emotional connection. All things being equal, I certainly prefer to root for a son of Tiznow or Thunder Gulch or another horse that I really enjoyed watching during their careers.

I Want Revenge--the favorite is certainly a very impressive colt, but he had to work hard to win in the Wood. I'm agnostic on the matter of "bouncing", but if any of the top horses are going to bounce, he's the best bet.

Great Moments in Yahoo! Box Scores

The occasionally unreliable and hilarious, impossible statistical lines sometimes seen in Yahoo! box scores have been a recurring feature throughout this blog's history, and here is the 2009 debut. This is not the only box score in which I have noticed this tonight.

Why do I use Yahoo for box scores if there are occasional lapses? I don't have the world's fastest internet connection and Yahoo offers a relatively clean, low bandwidth presentation. The day after the game, though, I use Baseball-Reference.

Keeping Score With Henry Chadwick

One of the many old books available for full download on Google Books is/was Henry Chadwick’s 1874 Chadwick’s Base Ball Manual. (Since I wrote this piece and downloaded the book, the full-text PDF version of the book appears to have disappeared from Google Books, or at least I cannot find it.). The specific edition I have linked was published in London by George Routledge and Sons. As Chadwick explains in the introduction, “The advent of the American base ball players in England bids fair to bring about the introduction of a new game into the extended circle of British sports and pastimes, and one, too, well calculated to achieve a popularity second only to that of the English national game of cricket; and this new field sport is the American game of BASE BALL. Though of English origin, this game is fully entitled to the name of American, and it is a sport just suited to the peculiar temperament of the people of that great republic, as it is full of excitement, occupies but little time, and can be engaged in with equal zest by the youngest schoolboys or by trained professional ball players, to the latter of whom it affords full scope for the exercise of those mental as well as physical attributes which mark the intelligent and cultured athlete.”

In typical Chadwick fashion, these two sentences encompass 149 words. Anyway, the takeaway is that this particular edition of the book was prepared for an English audience in the hopes that baseball would emerge as a major sport in that country. Of course, as we all know, Chadwick’s optimism was unfounded, and baseball has never taken off across the pond, although there devoted British fans certainly do exist.

The portion of the book that I am going to focus on here doesn’t do justice to the work as a whole, but I’ll let you explore that on your own if you are so inclined. Here is a little tease from page 27 as Chadwick describes the role of the “short fielders”:

In the present position of the game there is but one “short-stop”, and he stands to the left of the infield between the second and third base positions. Ultimately, however, a “right-short” will be introduced, which will make the field one of ten men instead of nine, as now.

It is unfair to Mr. Chadwick that I have quoted two passages in which he is 0-2 at predicting on the future of the game (although in this case, ten men and ten innings was something of a personal crusade, and perhaps he hoped that writing a forecast with such confidence would encourage the spread of the ten-man game). My point is not to mock his errors in prognostication, but rather to illustrate what an interesting period piece this is, and what a great window it is into the mind of one of the most influential men in baseball history.

What I want to focus on here is Chadwick’s scoring system. As the premier early baseball writer, Chadwick’s influence was felt far and wide, and so his early system of scorekeeping influenced those that came later, and still influences the standard scorekeeping of today.

Pages 33-43 of the book discuss Chadwick’s scoring system, and if you are interested I’d encourage you to read them for yourself. I am just going to give a brief summary and reproduce the sample scoresheet that Chadwick includes. This sheet is for the batting of the Unions in their game against the Eckfords of Brooklyn on June 6, 1866:


The most striking similarity to modern scorekeeping is in the general layout of the grid, which for the standard method of scoring has scarcely changed. Nine rows for the batting order, and nine columns for each of the innings in which their performance is recorded. Chadwick reproduces the opposing fielders as well on the far side of the page. While some modern scoresheets (particularly those used by announcers) include the opponents’ fielders for reference purposes, it was pretty much a necessity to have that information at hand if scoring by Chadwick’s system, as we shall see.

What is most strikingly different about Chadwick’s scoring method? The fact that there is no record of how a batter reached base, or how he advanced around the bases takes the cake. As you can verify by checking the runs tally for each inning at the bottom of the page, the solid dots indicate that the player scored a run. For any player that didn’t score a run, there is notation to record how they were retired, or where on the bases they were stranded.

The numbers placed on the extreme left of each scorebox indicate the out number in the course of the inning. So in the first, the “1” in Smith’s box indicates he was the first out; the “2” in Abrams’ that he was the second; and the “3” in Pabor’s that he was the third.

The “k” in Smith’s box indicates that he was a strikeout victim, just as it would today. As Chadwick explains, the letter K [indicates] how [the batter was] put out, K being the last letter of the word “struck.” The letter K is used in this instance as being easier to remember in connection with the word struck than S, the first letter, would be.

This guiding principle in establishing letter codes is further illustrated by Chadwick’s use of “L” for a foul ball (also used undoubtedly because “F” is already reserved for a fly) and “D” for a catch on the bound (in early baseball, catches made on the first bound were fair, and even once the NL had been established there was a period of times in which outs could be recorded on a foul caught on the first bounce). The other important letter codes are “A” for a runner retired at first, “B” for a runner retired at second, “C” for a runner retired at third, “H” for a runner retired at home, “T” for a foul tip, and “R” for a runner put out between bases. Various combinations could be formed form these.

Thus, in the first inning we can see that Abrams was retired at first and that Pabor was retired “T D”--a tip caught on the bound, combining those two codes. But what does the “4” that precedes A indicate in Abrams’ box, and the “5” that preceded T D in Pabor’s?

It means that the fielder who bats fourth in the opposing order made the play on Abrams, and now we see why it was imperative that the opponents’ batting order be reproduced on the page--Chadwick identified fielders by their lineup slot, not by the position numbers we use today. Thus it makes sense that Pabor’s “5” reflects on the catcher of the Eckfords, who we would obviously expect to make the play on a foul tip.

As seen later in the sheet, assisted putouts are recorded in a similar fashion as we still do today. In the fourth, Ketchum was out at first “8-4”, which a glance at the Eckford lineup reveals to be a routine 6-3 in today’s shorthand.

The scoring for runners left on base is straight forward--the “3d” in Martin’s first inning box (or Abrams’ third or Martin’s eighth) simply indicates that he was stranded on third. Likewise, Akin was stranded on first in the seventh, and no Union runner was stranded on second in this contest.

Of note is an oddity that could not be seen in modern baseball, which is that in the third, the Unions’ last batter was Pabor, and he completed his plate appearance by fouling to the catcher (at least as far as I can tell; I’m not exactly sure what the “1” or lower case “l” is supposed to signify). The third out was made by Martin, who apparently was already on base.

Under the rules of the time, it was the man in the lineup who followed the last man retired who would lead off the next inning, not the man in the lineup who followed the last man to complete a plate appearance, and so Pabor led off the fourth…and again fouled to the catcher, although this time the notation clearly indicates it was a foul fly.

While this is all very interesting in its own right for a scorekeeping aficionado like myself, I am now going to launch into a digression about the relationship between Chadwick’s scoring and early statistics. As those of you that have read works like The Hidden Game of Baseball (John Thorn and Pete Palmer) or The Numbers Game (Alan Schwarz) already know, early box scores didn’t contain very much in the way of offensive data. The earliest included just runs and hits, and often contained much more detail on fielding (specifically putouts, assists, and errors).

If one’s only objective in scoring a game was to record runs and outs along with detailed fielding statistics, than the system used in this example by Chadwick makes perfect sense. Why bother recording how a runner reached base, or how many bases his hit was worth, if that information was not going to be recorded for posterity? (However, in the Manual cited here, Chadwick does explain a system for recording that type of information. Interestingly, though, he describes it as a “reporting” system, necessary for “reporting a game for a detailed description in a journal.” In other words, he would include these types of details in his account of the game, but not in the accompanying box score).

The decision to record just runs and outs was not as misguided in its own time as it would be today. It was a different game, then, one in which extra base hits and walks were not terribly common, there was a large number of errors, and a high percentage of batters who reached base wound up scoring (In the case of the Unions for whom Chadwick reproduced a scoresheet, 15 runs were scored with just three stranded. I’m not claiming that was representative of a typical game at the time, but it certainly can serve as a singular data point in that discussion). Knowing just the number of outs a player made and the number of runs he scored told you much more about his real value than such data would today.

Of course, more detailed data was collected in short order, and batting average overtook runs as the most important individual offensive category. In one sense this was obviously a positive development, as it attempted to remove from the batter’s record the influence of his teammates (in another, of course, it was negative as it would enshrine batting average as the number one offensive indicator for a century to come, even when further developments in the game made BA’s alleged superiority even more questionable) . But one thing that was largely lost in the shuffle was the importance of outs as the proper (*) context in which to view offensive performance.

I wonder if or how the development of conventional statistical wisdom would have been altered had the box score column remained “outs” instead of “at bats”. The move to at bats obscured the fact that at bats = outs + hits. By hiding the outs in the broader category of “at bats”, which are easily dismissed as simply a playing time measure, they were hidden from the view of casual fans.

Of course, unless you also consider walks, the result might be the same; valuing hits in relationship to outs is ultimately the same as valuing them in relationship to at bats. But if a hits/outs ratio was used rather than a hits/at bats ratio, there would be many more people who would inherently accept that outs are the proper denominator for an overall offensive rate stat. One of the big steps in converting a lot of people to a sabermetric outlook is to convince them that using outs and not just total opportunities (AB or PA) results in the best model of true offensive value.

People have no trouble accepting innings pitched as the denominator for many pitching statistics, as of course everyone understands that is how ERA is calculated. But mainstream views on pitching statistics also benefit from the fact that innings are thought of as the measure of playing time, despite the fact that batters faced makes more sense from that narrow standpoint.

The average fan thinks about a batter’s playing time in terms of AB or PA, and a pitcher’s in terms of innings. Then when he wants to state the batter’s productivity, he thinks of it terms of AB or PA, while accepting innings for pitchers. My claim is that these two are connected, as those not of a sabermetric bent generally don’t spend much time thinking about these things.

In fairness to casual fans, there is reason to think that the denominator of an overall productivity measure should be different for pitchers and hitters--since the pitcher stands alone, it is obvious to put him in team (outs) context, while a batter is just one of nine. But again, I doubt that many non-sabermetricians have thought too deeply along those lines.

To tie this digression back to Chadwick, I wonder what the conventional wisdom would be today had outs remained prominent in the box score rather than been pushed aside by at bats, and had the relationship between runs and outs remained at the center of batting statistics.

(*) At least close enough. I know as well as anybody that there are other approaches like RAA/PA and R+/PA and R+/O+ and the list goes on, so don’t leave any anonymous comments on this point.

Snowflakes

As I write this in February, I look out my window and see snow covering the ground. I cannot off the top of my head recall the last time I looked outside and did not see a blanket of snow on the ground. Snow is characteristic of winter, which is the one season in which baseball has no place, at least not too far north of the Tropic of Cancer. And snow is a form of precipitation, and precipitation, regardless of the season or which form it takes, is the natural enemy of baseball.

So why on earth am I writing a piece entitled “snowflakes” on a baseball blog? Good question, lame answer forthcoming. It’s a metaphor (or is it a simile?(*)), and it’s not even my own.

Let me quote Stew Thornley from his article “In the Braves’ Clubhouse”, part of SABR’s The Fenway Project:

"To me, a completed scoresheet is a work of art. It’s not the person entering the hieroglyphics who is the artist; rather it is the players on the field, creating the events that are then recorded. At the end of the game, the scorer has a unique piece of art, as individual as a snowflake or a fingerprint, no two games ever being the same."

Thornley is of course correct that no two games are the same, and is also correct that it is the players on the field and not the scorekeeper that truly matter. However, it is also true that each individual scorer's system is unique. There are no two people who keep score EXACTLY the same way (with one potential exception which I’ll discuss below). Even if two individuals use the exact same scoring codes and symbols, there will be some individuality in the scoresheet. Perhaps you record the attendance, or who performed the national anthem, or jot down a note in the margin that a given pitch was a curveball.

The snowflake metaphor also works in the sense that most scoresheets are easily recognizable as such from afar, but truly reveal their uniqueness up close. Most scoring systems have a lot in common; most people use the standard 1-9 numbers to identify fielders, for instance. More esoteric systems can generally be cracked without much trouble assuming you know what events the symbols and codes must be representing.

The potential exception to the rule of uniqueness I alluded to above is that of formulaic systems like Project Scoresheet that have a code for just about everything. A distinction must be drawn between the Project Scoresheet style of scoring and the complete system itself. There is very little room for individuality in a system in which just about every event imaginable has been accounted for. On the other hand, one can use the PS-style of three lines to describe the action of each PA while retaining their own personal approach.

I don’t mean this as a criticism of the Project Scoresheet system. For the efficient entry of game accounts into computer systems, standardization is a wonderful thing. Certainly a lot of thought (from a lot of very smart people, including Craig Wright) went into the development of that system, and to the extent that you could objectively measure the efficiency of a scoring method, it would likely score very well. On the other hand, if you want to read back a game without the aid of a computer, it would score poorly, as I’ve discussed before.

Of course, Project Scoresheet was designed by people with eyes on detailed data collection, and thus is sensible even if a little excessive. What if you had a system developed by bureaucrats from an international sports governing body, obsessed not only with standardization but also with mind-numbing uniformity, a dash of political correctness, and more concern with just being able to produce a box score from the finished product than its usefulness in developing a play-by-play log? Well, you’d probably end up with the monstrosity that is the International Baseball Federation (IBAF) scoring manual (available for download from the website of the Great Britain Baseball Scorers Association here).

125 pages of details on minutiae, reminders that "Any reference in this IBAF Scoring Rules to 'he', 'him' or 'his' shall be deemed to be a reference to 'she',
'her' or 'hers' as the case may be when the person is a female", instructions for perforating and attaching a new scoresheet in the case of insufficient space (no joke--see page 21), repetitive notations of substitutions, and a very run-of-the-mill "trace the diamond" approach are the highlights of this earth-shattering treatise on scorekeeping. This is a case where you really have to see it to believe it.

Strict adherence to someone else’s system of scoring may be a necessity in some cases, but it can suck the life out of the activity. With the easy access to data through scoreboards and internet game trackers and the like, the only good reason for anyone to keep score in a non-official capacity today is because the individual finds it enjoyable. And as is the case with so many things in life, it is much more likely that what you find enjoyable will be what comes naturally to you or what you develop yourself over time, rather than a bunch of rules, regulations, and procedures handed to you by an "expert".

If you don’t keep score and would like to try, don’t feel compelled to adopt any particular approach. Learn a little bit about a number of different approaches and figure out which elements of each appeal to you. Figure out through trial and error what works for you and what doesn’t, and always try to record the details that you really feel are important.

Don’t make your scoresheet another flake in the big pile I’m looking at right now. Make it a unique snowflake that your five year-old self might have caught on his glove and admired.

(*) I really should look up the distinction between the two, but I'm lazy about things like that. I seem to recall being told that metaphors were of the form "A is B" and similes were "A is like B". And then there is the category of analogies, which just muddies things up a bit more. All of this serves to illustrate why I always liked math class better than English. As does the first and last paragraphs of the body of the post.

2009 Predictions

I write a predictions post every year; it is one of my favorite posts to write and simultaneously one of my least favorite to write. I like it because it is offered completely in the spirit of fun, and there is no need to take any pains to make sure I have the proper coefficient on triples; I dislike it because sometimes it’s impossible to convince people to take an activity of this type in that spirit.

I guide my predictions with a freely available set of projections (usually Marcel) and some very simple assumptions about which players each team will run out on the field, and equally simple assumptions about how to project the outs and innings that are not used up by the regulars. In other words, it’s not completely from the seat of my pants, but it’s not particularly involved. So is there any reason why you should care about what I say? No, none whatsoever, especially since I only use those estimates as a guide.

The other thing I always like to point out is that the team I pick to win is not necessarily one I expect to win. I have picked the Indians to win the AL Central, but if I had to make an even money bet on whether they would make the playoffs or not, I’d take "no". But if you feel the Indians have a 35% chance to win, the Tigers 25%, the Twins 20%, the White Sox 15%, and the Royals 5% (numbers for illustration only), who are you going to pick to win if you can only pick one? The one with a 35% chance, of course, even though that means there’s a 65% they won’t win the division.

"No plan ever survives the first encounter with the enemy", right? Same is true for team predictions. Teams ditch a deadweight you expected them to carry (or do the opposite), key players get hurt, a few individuals on a team manage to have career years, a team makes a huge deadline trade, and all of a sudden you look smart when maybe you shouldn’t have (like when I picked the Dodgers in the NL West last year), or dumb when you couldn’t have known a whole lot better (me and just about everyone else on the face of the earth picked the Yankees to make the playoffs, although by picking them to win it all perhaps I went a bit too far). You’ll also notice that I tend to be fairly conservative in my predictions, sticking largely with teams that had success last year; some of that is due to being guided by a conservative projection system, but some of it is just my nature.

When I get down to predictions for the awards, and who will win the pennant, that’s even more of a crapshoot. So if you want my one sentence opinions on each big league team, and promise not to get upset at what you see, read on. If you don’t, or can’t agree to the second part, please read someone else’s predictions. There are hundreds of sources for much more serious examinations than this.

AL EAST

1. Boston
2. New York (wildcard)
3. Tampa Bay
4. Toronto
5. Baltimore

Just as was the case last year, I have the Yankees and Red Sox almost exactly equal on paper. Last year I claimed that I believed the Red Sox had better depth in case of injuries, then proceeded to pick New York to win it anyway. I won’t make that mistake this year (and thus the Yanks will probably win). The Rays are going to disappoint a lot of people this year, I’m afraid. It’s usually a mistake to believe that a team that already won 90+ games has a strong chance to improve even if they are young, and it’s a common mistake. Could the Rays make the playoffs again? Of course; I think they should contend, but my guess would be they fall short. My quick and dirty numbers peg Tampa as the third best team in the AL, but unfortunately the other two are right here as well. The Blue Jays missed a golden opportunity last year as they got brilliant pitching and a Bronx crackup, but their offense was not up to the challenge. They’ve not done much to address it, and now that pitching staff looks like a shadow of itself. The Orioles should be better, and they’re actually starting to collect some interesting talent, but this division is not forgiving.

AL CENTRAL

1. Cleveland
2. Detroit
3. Chicago
4. Minnesota
5. Kansas City

My track record at picking the AL Central is dreadful. The easiest explanation is that it has been a very volatile division, with three winners in three years, plus a very strong wildcard in 2006. Only the Royals have come into the last few seasons without any believers on their side. The other possible explanation is that since my team is in this division, try as I might to analyze it objectively and downplay my fandom, it throws me off.

That may be the case this year as I think the Indians are the strongest team in the division. As I’ve discussed already, I’m not crazy about this team, and I feel they are a weak favorite, but they are my choice. I really don’t see a lot of room between Cleveland and Detroit, and really not a whole lot between the Tribe and Twinkies either. The Tigers are a team that I expect to be overlooked. After all, 2008 was supposed to be their year, with many picking them to win the pennant, and some people tend to get gunshy when they get burned by a prediction. However, I think their pitching is bound to improve and their offense is still a threat. The White Sox are the team I love to hate in MLB at the moment (*), and I have to admit that was the determining factor in a coin flip between them and the Twins. The team I’ve picked to finish fourth in the AL Central has a remarkable tendency to end up winning it. But really, they have taken a step backwards this offseason. I haven’t checked formally, but it sure seems like the Twins might have been the most inactive team in the game. I think this is a big mistake (from a win-now perspective, at least) as they scored many more runs in 2008 than their components indicated they should have. If they’re banking on that again, good luck to ‘em. The Royals went out and added key pieces like Mike Jacobs, Kyle Farnsworth, and Willie Bloomquist, so expect me to look like a fool come October. Seriously, though, some are touting them as "this year’s Rays", and I just don’t see it. For one thing, it’s silly to look for "this year’s Rays", as turnarounds like that are quite rare, which is why they are such a big deal when they occur. And while those aforementioned acquisitions (well, mostly Jacobs and Coco Crisp) are being cited by some as a key factor in the expected surge, I don’t think that much of them. If this team is going to take a great leap forward, a lot of it will need to come from their holdovers. Billy Butler and Alex Gordon could very well take big steps, but I still don’t think it would be enough to win the division as weak as it may look on paper.

(*) I have no inherent dislike for any major league team, with the sometime exceptions of the Tigers depending on how many UM hats I see in the crowd when they are on TV. I happen to be unable to stomach Ozzie Guillen (for a litany of reasons which I’ll spare you), and the treatment of Nick Swisher last year only intensified my disdain for the man. It’s sort of chic among a certain element of the stathead crowd to bash Kenny Williams too despite the ChiSox’ recent success; not wanting to appear petty, I simply blame him for agreeing to work with Ozzie. In the early part of the decade, I used to pull for the White Sox in the annual White Sox/Twins pseudo-playoff race. Honest.

AL WEST

1. Los Angeles
2. Oakland
3. Seattle
4. Texas

The Angels are in a place where I almost feel compelled to pick against them, even if I do think they have the best shot at the division, just to be a contrarian. But none of the other three teams are particularly inspiring either, and LA gets brownie points from me for acquiring a player I really like (Bobby Abreu) in place of one I have disliked for many years (Garrett Anderson, and nothing personal). Apparently Billy Beane thinks the A’s have a shot (or just felt Matt Holliday was being offered for a song), and far be it from me to tell him he’s nuts. It’s not that hard to construct a scenario in which Oakland contends--Eric Chavez is reasonably healthy and productive, Trevor Cahill and/or Brett Anderson step in as rotation pieces, Brad Ziegler remains dominant--but I can’t justify picking them over the Halos. Seattle has always been a team I loved to hate, but my early impressions of the Zduriencik regime are positive, and if you openly hire Tom Tango as a consultant, you can’t be all bad, right? The Rangers are my pick for worst AL team. They lost Milton Bradley, I’m still not completely sold on Josh Hamilton and Ian Kinsler at their 2008 levels, and their pitching is the same as it ever was.

NL EAST

1. New York
2. Atlanta (wildcard)
3. Philadelphia
4. Florida
5. Washington

The National League offseason mystified me. Maybe this is a sign that I am stupid, and should quit attempting to figure this stuff out, and stick to writing about esoteric sabermetric topics. For the sake of making this interesting, I’ll take the tack that it truly was mystifying. Omar Minaya acted like a post-game radio caller who only remembers the last thing he saw, working on upgrading the bullpen while letting a rotation stay fairly thin and apparently ignoring offense in the corner outfield spots. That aside, the Mets’ core of stars (Beltran, Reyes, Santana, Wright) is the most impressive in all of baseball (yes, I’d take them over Jeter-Rodriguez-Sabathia-Teixiera, although who wouldn’t love to have either), and having Francisco Rodriguez and JJ Putz is not a bad thing. Atlanta used to be the team I picked against just because, but last year I picked them to win and they collapsed. Frank Wren addressed their rotation weakness adequately in the offseason, and if they could ever stay healthy, Gonzalez and Soriano would be a scary left-right bullpen punch. Unfortunately, the Braves have apparently concluded that outfield offense is not important, or that they are content to wait for Jones, Heyward, and Schaefer. Continuing the theme of NL head-scratchers, the Phillies somehow decided it was a good idea to give up a first-round draft pick to downgrade in left field, at a higher price and longer contract to an older player than their incumbent got, while adding yet another left-handed bat to the lineup. My numbers say the Phillies are still the logical wildcard pick, but if you want to go by the numbers, go see what PECOTA or CHONE or the like have to say--they're starting from a better base anyway. I really don’t want to pick the Marlins fourth, but they’ve made me look dumb before, and they have some intriguing young talent. The Nationals are finally free from Jim Bowden, and while climbing soapboxes isn’t really my thing, I find the associated scandals more distasteful many times over than any steroid revelations.

NL CENTRAL

1. Chicago
2. St. Louis
3. Milwaukee
4. Cincinnati
5. Houston
6. Pittsburgh

I hate this division. No, not the teams, but the inherent unfairness of having to beat five teams instead of three or four. This is what happens when you switch to three divisions with expansion on the horizon. Maybe you should have thought about that, Bud and co.? What would be so bad about having two divisions with two wildcards? Or, gasp, no divisions and four playoff qualifiers? In fairness, the long-term trend in all pro sports is for more divisions, not less, but that doesn’t make it any dumber.

Rant aside (although I have a longer version already written up for a dry spell of post ideas--with probabilities!), the Cubs join the NL "What were they thinking?" list. What was the point of trading Mark DeRosa and the last year of his contract to install Aaron Miles at second? Why Mr. Hendry did you make Jake Peavy your white whale? What on earth did you gain by trading Ronny Cedeno and Garret Olson for Aaron Heilman? Petty quibbles aside, the Cubs are clearly the best team in this division on paper, and I think they rival the Mets for league-wide honors. Last year I was way too pessimistic about the Cardinals; this may be overcompensation, and their pitching still scares me, but the other clubs have taken a step back. The Brewers could stay in the mix, if Gallardo and Parra can step up, as their offense remains solid if unspectacular. The Reds are squandering some decent talent on the notion (not solely, but it paints the picture) that a group consisting of Willy Taveras, Chris Dickerson, Jacque Jones, Norris Hopper, Jonny Gomes, and Laynce Nix is capable of filling one outfield spot, let alone two. If everything goes right the Astros could be a fringy contender type again, but those odds aren’t good. With the Steelers’ Super Bowl win, I’ve seen a little of the meme that the Steelers and Pirates illustrate the difference between the NFL and MLB vis-à-vis small market competitiveness. Sure. Let the Steelers draft like the Bengals for fifteen years and see how many Super Bowls they win.

NL WEST

1. Los Angeles
2. Arizona
3. San Francisco
4. Colorado
5. San Diego

The Dodgers finally let their young guys play last year (except Andy LaRoche, who I still hold out some hope for but also can’t blame LA for pushing aside), and it paid off. They still weren’t any sort of juggernaut, and I do believe this division has improved, but I give them a slight edge. I bit my tongue last year when the Diamondbacks started hot and were hailed as baseball’s best team, which means I can’t gloat too much about what ended up happening. A lot of people came up with a lot of reasons as to why the Pythagorean record was wrong, but to the extent that the next season’s results can reflect (which admittedly is not as great as it is sometimes made out to be), it wasn’t. Yet they have too much young-ish talent to be written off, and I was tempted to pick them to edge out LA. I love how Eric Byrnes’ awful contract led to the awful, but reasonable under the circumstances decision to not offer arbitration to Adam Dunn. The Giants have assembled a pretty impressive rotation, yet they insist on bringing a popgun to the shootout. The Rockies are retreating back to "most boring team in baseball" status, but the 2007 pennant will preclude that from being official for at least a couple more years. I think the Orioles have inherited the mantle; maybe the Royals or Pirates, but they are a little too inept at times to qualify. There aren’t a whole lot of good things to say about the 2009 edition of the Padres, but I respect the organization a great deal so I’ll refrain from snark. And I don’t think they’re as bad as the mainstream consensus seems to think they are.

WORLD SERIES

Boston over New York (N)

In ’07 I picked the BoSox in the East and as world champs (the one time in my life I was actually correct); in ’08 I switched to the Yankees, and the alternating years plan will continue here.

AL Rookie of the Year: C Matt Wieters, BAL
Yes, I know he’s starting in AAA. See Longoria, Evan.
AL Cy Young: Daisuke Matsuzaka, BOS
I think I may have picked him last year. Cut the walk rate, please.
AL MVP: CF Grady Sizemore, CLE
I was going to pick ARod just as an "In your face, drug warriors!" pick, but the injury takes that possibility from infinitesimal to zero. Eventually Grady will luck into a .300 average and the rest of the world will realize that he’s a tremendous ballplayer.
NL Rookie of the Year: OF Colby Rasmus, STL
NL Cy Young: Ubaldo Jimenez, COL
It’s boring to pick Sabathia and Santana and company all the time. My Cy Young picks mostly just reflect my skepticism of the "WBC ruins pitchers!" heme.
NY MVP: 3B David Wright, NYN
He should have one already; I’m going to keep picking him until he gets it.

First manager fired: Dave Trembley, BAL
Best pennant race: AL East if you like good teams, AL Central if you prefer trainwrecks
Worst pennant race: NL Central
Worst teams in each league: Texas, Pittsburgh
Most likely to go .500 in each league: Oakland, Milwaukee
Teams most likely to disappoint (mainstream consensus*): Minnesota, Florida
Teams most likely to surprise (mainstream consensus): Detroit, Atlanta
Best free agent value (among big names): Bobby Abreu, LAA
Worst free agent value (among big names): Raul Ibanez, PHI
Will the Neanderthal League finally win the All-Star game?: flip a coin
Will Neanderthal League partisans extol the moral purity of pitchers hitting?: Not THAT much--only on every last day of interleague play
Will Jake Peavy be traded?: No
Most obnoxious stories of the year: anything involving ARod or steroids will lap the field as usual; complaints about slow starts by WBC participants will also be in contention
Over/under on in-season blog posts: 20--I've managed to build up a decent backlog of posts that aren’t time sensitive, so most weeks should see something posted in this space

(*) I used the predictions from three preview magazines (Lindy’s, Athlon Sports, and The Sporting News) to define maninstream consensus. Those publications all pick Minnesota to win the AL Central; pick Florida second (wildcard), third, and fourth respectively; pick Detroit third, fifth, and fifth respectively; and pick Atlanta fourth, fourth, and third respectively.

In Lieu of Clever Title, Indians Preview

After winning the AL Central in 2007 and falling just one game short of the pennant, the 2008 Indians were expected to once again contend for the division crown. After a couple of high-profile off-season additions, once again the Tigers were expected to be their top rivals.

A funny thing happened on the way to the Tigers/Indians pennant race. Detroit faltered out of the gate, dropping their first seven games. Meanwhile, the Indians puttered around the .500 mark, going into the game of Saturday May 17 in Cincinnati at 22-20 with a 1/2 game division lead.

I am hesitant to bestow great significance upon single games, but if you insist on finding a turning point in the season, the May 17 loss to the Reds is my nomination. The Indians had entered the series with their downstate rivals off a three-game sweep of the A’s in which they scored just ten runs, but allowed just two. In fact, over the Indians’ last seven games they were 5-2 with a runs tally of 29-4. It was obvious that the pitching could not continue to dominate so thoroughly, but the hope was that the offense would come around soon.

On Friday night, the Reds beat the Tribe 4-3. On Saturday, Cleveland nursed a 2-1 lead into the ninth inning with temporary nominal closer Masa Kobayashi on the hill. He had gotten the third out in the eighth, but would not retire a batter in the ninth. When Adam Dunn’s three-run blast landed in the right-field seats, the Indians had fallen into a tie for first and a .500 record; it would be the last time all year they would go into a game with either.

The two games in Cincy were the start of a seven-game slide, and things didn’t get much better from that point forward. In early July, in the midst of what would be a ten-game losing streak, the Indians dealt free agent to be CC Sabathia to Milwaukee with Casey Blake being shipped out to the Dodgers a short time later. Meanwhile, on the field the nadir came on July 9 with the Indians’ tenth straight loss, which put them at 37-53 and 15.5 games behind the White Sox.

The Indians managed to catch fire for the rest of the campaign, ending with a 44-28 spurt that left them at breakeven in the final standings, and just seven games behind Chicago.

The season was a disaster for several high-profile players:

* Victor Martinez hit .278/.338/.365 in just 73 games
* Travis Hafner was awful, hitting .197/.293/.323 in 57 games
* Fausto Carmona’s control collapsed and he regressed from a Cy Young candidate to a replacement-level performer
* Jake Westbrook went down with an elbow injury requiring Tommy John surgery
* Rafael Betancourt went from one of the AL’s top relievers to a replacement-level performance
* Joe Borowski’s high-wire act unsurprisingly failed to play as well the second time around.

On the flip side, there were at least a few pleasant surprises:

* Cliff Lee went from AAA demotion in 2007 to Cy Young winner with one of the best winning percentages in light of team W-L record in baseball history
* Shin-Soo Choo shone when handed the right field job after his return from Tommy John surgery, hitting .309/.393/.549 in 361 PA
* Kelly Shoppach, pressed into starting duty behind the dish when Martinez went down, belted 21 homers and helped the Cleveland catching unit rank second among its AL peers in RG

In the offseason, the Indians’ key moves were signing Kerry Wood to attempt to plug the closer role, which has been a perpetual weak link; trading for Mark DeRosa to fill the black hole at third base; signing Carl Pavano as a bullpen flyer; and trading Franklin Gutierrez to the Mariners as part of a three-way deal with Mets’ sidearmer Joe Smith as the key return for 2009.

Behind the plate, Victor Martinez will look to bounce back from his poor 2008 campaign. I am pretty optimistic about his chances. Martinez was lacking any sort of power in the early portion of the campaign, but in his 76 PA after returning from the DL he managed an ISO of .176, just above his career average of .164. While the potential for further injury, his heavy workload, and his advancing age (30) raise concerns, I think that assuming he’ll be one of the more productive catchers in the league when on the field is warranted.

He may get to play a little more at first base this season, as Kelly Shoppach emerged last year as more than just an adequate backup. I hope the Indians recognize that last year may well have been a career year, however; many of the fans seem to be oblivious to the possibility. Shoppach is not young (29), managed an excellent BABIP last year (.359, albeit with a career average of .355), and saw a high percentage of his outfield flies wind up as home runs (23% compared to an average of 11%). I suspect that the average Tribe fan will consider Shoppach a big disappointment in 2009.

At first base, Ryan Garko is a pretty average performer. He has been working at playing LF and even RF a little bit in spring training games, but I find it difficult to imagine him actually being thrown into the outfield in a regular season game. I do however like the fact that the Indians are looking to creatively deploy their players.

Second base will apparently belong to Asdrubal Cabrera, with newly acquired Mark DeRosa at third and Jhonny Peralta at short. Many people (myself included) assumed that the acquisition of DeRosa would pave the way for Peralta to move to third and Cabrera to slide to short, his natural position and one which by all indications he could handle. That does not seem to be the case, however, as it appears DeRosa will be a one year stopgap at third as Cleveland hopes Luis Valbuena (acquired in the three-way trade from the Mariners) will claim second in 2010.

Cabrera struggled mightily in the first half (529 OPS) and was demoted to Buffalo, but had an 892 OPS in the second half. As long as Cabrera can match his overall 2008 offensive output, his defense should make him an average performer at second for the Tribe, with his age and strong second half offering hope for a little more. Peralta’s fielding may be poor, but he’s a fine offensive performer and at worst an average all-around package. While DeRosa cannot be expected to hit 21 homers again, he should be an upgrade over what the Indians got out of Casey Blake, Jamey Carroll, and Andy Marte in 2008.

The one sure thing in the outfield is the brilliant yet still underappreciated Grady Sizemore in center field. One of these years, Sizemore is going to luck his way into batting .290 or .300, and the rest of the world will recognize what serious observers already know--he is one of the best players in the game. He will be flanked at least off the bat by Ben Francisco in left and Shin-Soo Choo in right.

Francisco has been built up by many casual Tribe fans to be something he’s not, and it didn’t help matters when he was hitting third for much of May and June. Francisco is 28, and in what now is around the equivalent of a full season has hit .267/.329/.446 in his major league career. He would be an asset as a fourth outfielder who can play a passable center, but as a starter in a corner he leaves much to be desired. The team is likely hoping that top prospect Matt LaPorta can overtake him by mid-season.

Choo on the other hand may not be a bad bet to exceed his 946 OPS of a year ago, but he should be an adequate performer and is in his age 27 season in his first full season back from Tommy John surgery.

DH Travis Hafner, one of the best hitters in the game just two years ago, is now a major question mark. In 2007 he signed a multi-year extension and slipped to a .266/.385/.451 line. In 2008, plagued by lingering shoulder weakness, he plummeted to 225 PA of .197/.305/.323 output. Without a clear diagnosis as to what went wrong, it is impossible to project with confidence any sort of rebound, unlike the case of fellow heart-of-the-order stalwart Martinez. Right now, his contract looks as if it may reach albatross level; he is untradeable and has nowhere to play but DH.

Shoppach will be the backup catcher, with Jamey Carroll returning as utility infielder and David Dellucci playing out his contract as reserve outfielder. Erstwhile second baseman Josh Barfield will fill out the bench as a utility man.

The starting rotation has two sure things (membership, not performance wise) in Cliff Lee and Fausto Carmona. Lee will not go 23-2 again, but 2007 now stands as the aberration in a career that marks him as a solid mid-rotation lefty. If he can retain some of the progress displayed last year, he should be one of the top fifteen pitchers in the AL.

Carmona is an enigma; he lost all semblance of control last year and was shelved with a hip injury. He has always garnered less strikeouts than his stuff might suggest, relying on his heavy sinker to generate groundballs. I’m inclined to think that last year was an aberration and that he will proceed with an adequate Chien-Ming Wang impersonation in 2009.

Behind them are two pitchers who will be in the rotation if healthy: Carl Pavano and Anthony Reyes. Pavano was signed as a low-risk free agent flyer, and Reyes pitched well after coming over from the Cardinals but was shut down in September.

The fifth starter will be Scott Lewis, who has impressive minor league numbers and pitched solidly in three September starts last year. The downside is that his stuff is middling, but he is left-handed and best of all he is an OSU alum. He beat out fellow lefties Aaron Laffey and Jeremy Sowers for the spot, and they would be the first call-ups in case of the inevitable Carl Pavano injury.

Overall, the rotation appears to be Cleveland’s biggest question mark and weakness. Even with healthy performances from Pavano and Reyes and an adequate fifth starter, it is difficult to predict that it will be a positive for the team.

The bullpen, which struggled in 2008, should be much better this season. Kerry Wood, when healthy, will be the closer, and at least will give the Indians a true power arm out of that spot instead of the soft-tossers (namely Bob Wickman and Joe Borowski) they’ve run out in the ninth over the past several years. I would not have signed him for $10 million annually over two seasons with a vesting option for a third, but it’s not my money.

His top setup men will be Rafael Betancourt from the right side and Rafael Perez from the left, although Perez is capable of pitching multiple innings and is far from a LOOGY. Betancourt scuffled in 2008 after a brilliant 2007, but retained some solid peripherals (64 K/25 W in 71 IP). His biggest problem was a large number of homers given up (1.4 per 9 innings), unfortunately without an abnormal HR/OF rate. However, I’m willing to be bet on an adequate performance from Betancourt, although one a far cry from his dominance of 2007.

Jensen Lewis and Joe Smith will be the key middle relievers; Lewis recorded 13 saves as the end-of-year closer in ’08, but his 5.04 eRA gives cause for concern. Smith, with his sidearm delivery, has been a righty-killer for the Mets in his two-year career (643 OPS), but must be handled with extreme caution against lefties (881 OPS).

Masa Kobayashi will be in the pen due to his contract more than any merit; he was pounded last season (5.04 eRA, 5.03 dRA) and has not pitched well to this point in the spring. He will be mopping up in low leverage spots until he can demonstrate his effectiveness.

The final bullpen spot is down to lefty Zach Jackson, veteran righty Vinny Chulk, and righty Edward Mujica, if for no reason other than that he is out of options. Chulk has pitched better this spring, but Jackson is appealing because of his southpaw status (only one of the other six relievers shares it) and with a background as a starter could serve as the long man.

The Indians have the good fortune of playing in a weak division, and my expectation is that they will have an above average offense, an average defense, and thus a slightly above .500 record that may well be good enough to beat out their division foes. I legitimately believe that they are the best team in the division on paper, but by too thin a margin to predict a playoff berth. Cleveland may be the most likely winner of the AL Central, but I don’t think this team has much better than a 40% chance of playing in October.

Uncle Sam's Funeral

The US was eliminated from the World Baseball Classic last night, beaten by a worthy team from Japan. Unfortunately, the metaphorical death of Uncle Sam was not marked with simply the appropriate (if one supports the US team, of course; if one roots for Japan, the appropriate response would be something else entirely) mixture of disappointment and kudos for Japan. Instead, a parade of wannabe Fred Phelpses from the mainstream media have descended to grind their axes and attempt to outsnark each other (and now I've given you my own ridiculous metaphor).

I usually try to avoid just taking someone else’s column and ripping it a new one:

1) It’s lazy
2) It grants credibility to opinions that should just be ignored and allowed to gently fade from memory
3) Other people can do it a lot better than I can--much better in fact

Nonetheless, sometimes it just feels good to get it all off your chest. So please excuse the rant I’m about to go on, and if you don’t want to read that sort of thing, by all means, stop now.

First up we have Tim Brown of Yahoo! Sports, in the dumbest column of them all:

The USA clearly has ideas about narrowing the gap. Just a little more pitching, an ounce more defense, maybe a tad more intuition from its field manager -- hey, these things take generations to build -- and the Americans might catch up. Perhaps by the next WBC. Or the one after that. Presumably, the U.S. team comported itself well enough to merit a return invitation.

And here you have exhibit A of snark. It’s not even clever; it’s heavy-handed and way over the top.

Alas, while the Americans have mastered the concepts of swinging hard, throwing hard and cashing large paychecks, they remain somewhat behind the world’s leading baseball federations in the game’s finer areas and for good reason, as USA designated hitter Jimmy Rollins pointed out. Japan’s players hit intelligently and situationally, and defend their positions with pride, and generally do not give an inch in any part of the game.

The accompanying quote from Jimmy Rollins certainly praises the Japanese team and their attention to detail. He also allows that the Japanese approach to the game is different than the American approach. But Brown has twisted it into a statement that American players don’t hit intelligently, don’t defend their positions with pride, and do “give an inch” (whatever the heck that even means) in some part of the game.

The Americans did not win, and for that they were unhappy. Yet, they might have understood deep down there was a greater good here. They perhaps set a path for another generation of American players, for the team that might very well stand with the great Japanese, the decorated Koreans. There is value in that. Someone had to be here first, for the next to follow, to hold open the door.

Perhaps on Monday night, were they to squint and tilt their heads just so, they could picture a team wearing red, white and blue uniforms, playing on that very field. Someday, maybe. Someday.

This level of snark should make the average poster at BTF blush.

Next up we have Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated:

Look at pregame practices. The Japanese run the baseball equivalent of a precise three-ring circus, with players taking groundballs and flyballs all over the yard at game speed. The Americans take a half-speed approach, and you'll almost never catch them taking pregame infield and outfield practice as a team.

There’s no doubt that the Japanese approach to practice is very much different than the American approach. This should not come as news to anyone. I’m sure there are things that Americans can take from Japanese baseball, and vice versa. But so much is being based on the result of two tournaments (more on this later).

Yes, baseball is the American pastime, but the United States once invented and popularized the automobile, too. Look at Detroit today and tell me it's still doing the car business better than Asia. Reputation alone is not a winning business model.

Verducci obviously went to the Obama School of History, where the car was invented by an American and not Europeans. And when pray tell is the last time Detroit had a better reputation than Japan for car manufacturing? Not in my lifetime. It’s just a ridiculous analogy on so many levels.

Then we have Mark Kriegle of Fox Sports:

The WBC -- an acronym shamelessly stolen from the equally shameless World Boxing Council

What a strange comment. As if three letter acronyms in which one of the words must be “baseball” and “world” is a strong contender for a second word must be individual, precious snowflakes.

If you're the country that claims baseball as its national pastime, it's [finishing third] an embarrassment.

This is reflective of the American arrogance about baseball. Baseball may be touted as our national pastime, but it would also have a strong claim to being the national pastime of Japan, let alone the Dominican Republic and Cuba and...If six countries claim baseball as their national pastime, are five of them automatically embarrassed anytime there is an international baseball competition?

The underachieving Dominicans, justly vanquished by the Netherlands, are shortchanging the fans, too. Where was Albert Pujols or Manny Ramirez?

I seem to recall Albert Pujols having an elbow injury of sorts, that might make him or his team cautious. But I’m just a blogger, not a columnist for a major national website, so my memory is probably off.

Judging from Sunday, however, you'd get a lot of argument [about whether MLB represents the world’s best baseball]. I know it's not football. I know one game is just one game, and that the best of baseball teams win but sixty percent of the time. Still, the Americans were embarrassed last night.

He blatantly contradicts his reasonable statement in the third sentence in his fourth, without any attempt to explain why this one game was so embarrassing. But the very next paragraph makes it even funnier:

Davey Johnson leaves Roy Oswalt in to get batted around as if it were spring training. Team USA committed three errors and allowed four unearned runs.

One contention made by many columnists that I do not dispute at all is that Davey Johnson and staff did not approach the games with the urgency that many other countries did. Depending on your view of how important the WBC is vis-à-vis the regular season, you may applaud or condemn this (I am somewhat ambivalent, myself). But Kreigle uses bad managerial decisions in the WBC as evidence that MLB is not the pinnacle of the sport. Huh?

For the record, the crowd of 43,630 was very respectable for Dodger Stadium on an unseasonably cold night in March. But don't expect an encore -- not until America's pastime means as much to Americans as it does to the rest of the world.

Game results don’t perfectly reflect passion (in fact, that would be an even more appropriate reminder had the United States won). And this silly provincialism about baseball as “America’s game” is simultaneously arrogant and ignorant. Yes, baseball as we know it was founded and largely developed in America. But it has now been adopted by many other people around the world. If the media of the United States is going to demand a victory in every tournament simply because the game as we know it originated here, then they will never be content.

The fact of the matter is that Japan has advanced to the WBC Final twice, and it is well-deserved. But taking that fact and using it to extrapolate wildly about the quality of and passion for baseball in the two countries, and the effectiveness of training techniques, is unjustified. It simply is too small of a sample size in too limited of an event to draw any sweeping conclusions.

If Japanese baseball was superior, then we would rightfully expect players from Japan to perform better in the US than they did in Japan, and American refugees to perform worse. But of course the opposite is true; the evidence suggests that the NPB is a strong league, yet clearly inferior to MLB. Yet so many want to chuck the many thousands of PAs and innings available for comparison in favor of a few games played over a three-year span.

If small sample size tournaments are your thing, though, how about the Olympics? The Japanese Olympic team was not as strong as the Japanese WBC team--it obviously featured no major league players, but every player was with an NPB organization and it included multiple players on the WBC team--including Yu Darvish, Toshiya Sugiuchi, Atsunori Inaba, Norichika Aoki, and Hiroyuki Nakajima. This team lost twice to the United States’ collection of minor leaguers and one college phenom, including once in the bronze medal game.

Does this prove that the Japanese big leaguers should be signing up for the Dexter Fowler School of Yakyu? No, of course not.

It might be uncouth to continue, lest it seem I am bitter about Japan’s victory over the US. Not in the slightest: Japan is a country with a deep and rich baseball history, with passionate fans and excellent players (as every American fan has seen for himself through the performance of Japanese major leaguers). They are clearly one of the top baseball nations in the world, and it is no surprise to me that their WBC team is consistently a top contender.

But the claim that Japan has run roughshod over teams of Western major leaguers is just not true. There are really only four WBC teams which feature major leaguers at just about every important position: the US, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, and Puerto Rico. There are also two teams with a high percentage of big leaguers at key positions: Canada and Mexico. The other Western teams have a limited number of major leaguers as in the case of Panama or none whatsoever (although in the case of Cuba, they certainly have players who could be major leaguers were it not for political conditions).

Given the way the WBC is structured, Japan has faced precious few teams comprised largely of major leaguers. In each WBC, Japan has opened up against Asian opponents. In the second round in 2006, they faced Korea again, plus Mexico and the United States. They beat Mexico but lost to the US. In the semifinals, they had a repeat engagement with Korea, then beat Cuba for the world title. So they faced just two Western teams with major leaguers and went 1-1.

Again in 2009, they advanced through the Asian pool. In the second round, they faced Cuba and Korea twice each. So in this WBC, Japan will play only one game against a Western team with any major leaguers whatsoever--last night’s game with the United States.

Whichever team wins the title tonight will deserve it, and it will be a great achievement for that baseball program and its players. Pointing out that they have not done it by steamrolling MLB all-star teams is not an attempt to rain on that parade; it is just an attempt to inject a little perspective into a media meltdown.