This is...uh...interesting...

Barry Codell developed Base-Out Percentage, which was essentially the first of the many bases/something ratios, and the first bases/outs ratio. While I have written about this proliferation before, one certainly cannot blame Mr. Codell, as he was the pioneer. While I have my issues (explained in the link) with these metrics, there is no doubt that outs are crucial, and Codell was one of the first to take them into account, and may well have been the first to explicitly make them the denominator in an overall offensive measure. So I'm not here to criticize Mr. Codell or bash BOP.

However, the creator of this new website, BarryCode.com (which features Codell's statistics and some of his articles), is just a tad over the top in his devotion: *Compiled by IBAR: Individual for Baseball’s Absolute Recounting. Barry was the first; we "Barry Coders" are naturally next. Not to be confused with SABR, IBAR seeks not to join the group, but to be "a one"! - see S. Kierrkegaard "Maieutic Baseball". Codell's recounting inspires us to tell a different tale, a baseball history, itself uncovering missed mystery, with "something new to say about every player who did ever play..."

I'll leave the question of how much of it is cheeky and how much of it is serious up to you. I'm sticking with "...uh, interesting..."

Meanderings

* Steve Phillips took a lot of hits on the internet (and rightfully so) for his petty and relentless attack on Carlos Beltran during the May 17 Sunday night game on ESPN between the Mets and Giants, and rightfully so. However, I personally felt that his comments on May 24 during the Brewers/Twins game were even more absurd.

ESPN had a graphic showing the number of major leaguers who were in the Armed Forces during World War I and World War II. Instead of simply thanking those men for their service, or praising the "Greatest Generation" or something else that most normal people might do when discussing World War veterans, Phillips used this as a soapbox to savage today's generation of players for steroid use. No joke.

I have no idea how long his monologue went on; it might have just been the one brief comment. I was watching the Cavs game anyway and was just flipping to baseball during the commercials. I immediately flipped back to hoops, even if that meant enduring another Cialis commercial.

Phillips said something to the effect of "A few generations ago we had all these players serving their country, and now we have players using steroids. What has happened to our game?" Gee Steve, I don't know. Your graphic showed the large number of players who were in the service during World War I as well. And less than one year after World War I ended, a group of eight players threw the World Series. What on earth happened to our game in the eleven months between the Armistice and the 1919 World Series, Steve?

* Steve Phillips has given me a new-found appreciation for Joe Morgan. I apologize for all of the complaints I've ever lodged about Morgan's announcing, his misunderstanding of who authored Moneyball, everything. Please let us have the two-man booth back.

More broadly, though, I really think that color commentators need to be put out to pasture after ten or fifteen years. Even the best eventually become little more than caricatures of themselves (I always enjoyed listening to John Madden, but I always had a nagging suspicion that if I as serious a NFL fan as I am of MLB, I would have considered him in the same class as an aforementioned commentator with the initials JM).

Since most color commentators are former players, they cannot immediately devolve into "good old days syndrome". If only five years have passed since your retirement, it's hard to complain too much about "today's players" since you played against most of them. Give it another five or ten years and the only players left are the rookies from when you were a grizzled veteran, and that you probably shook your head at even then. Now it's a lot easier to wax poetic about how great baseball was when you played. Give it another decade and, well, you get the idea.

Now of course not all color commentators are insufferable worshipers of yesteryear, and I'm not REALLY suggesting a mandatory retirement age. But I definitely feel that in general it is better to have a younger man in the booth.

* It's only fair to balance out criticism of TV commentators I don't like with praise of those I do. One in particular is John Hart on the MLB Network. It does seem a little odd that he's still a consultant to the Rangers (just a slight conflict of interest), and as a Cleveland fan I have mixed feelings about Hart (love the building part of his tenure, hate the attempting to sustain part). But he is very good for a TV commentator, and hurray for MLBN for hiring a GM who actually had success rather than one who was largely a failure as ESPN did.

MLBN has its share of obnoxious folks, of course--Dan Plesac is unbearable, Harold Reynolds is still himself, Mitch Williams is really annoying, while Jon Heyman and Joe Magrane rub me the wrong way. But Al Leiter and Barry Larkin are both excellent, relatively speaking, and I can tolerate Bill Ripken, Sean Casey, Dave Valle, and Tom Verducci. Among the anchors, Matt Vasgersian is okay although he tries to be too clever, Greg Amsinger is enthusiastic if nothing else, and Victor Rojas is solid. All told, MLBN's team is light years better than ESPN's. The only Baseball Tonight personality I'd really like to see on MLBN is Peter Gammons.

Also refreshing is Saturday Night Baseball, using local telecasts and actually (gasp) sometimes choosing games that feature west coast teams playing at home.

* It's time for All-Star voting again, which means we will be subjected to a number of columns about how so-and-so got snubbed. As with so many things, I think that Bill James cut to the heart of the matter when he asked whether the purpose of the All-Star Game was to honor the players or to entertain the fans. If it is the latter, then the hand-wringing is completely unnecessary. The fans will vote for whichever players they want to see. Does that mean that the voting system is perfect (or even anything more than a gigantic mess)? No. But it means that you can quit with the phony outrage about players getting snubbed.

What's funny about the yearly phony outrage from columnists is that it is usually focused on the fans for making picks that don't mesh with the first-half stats, rather than having questionable preferences in players over the long haul. If, say, Raul Ibanez is not voted in, there will be columns pointing out that he's leading the league in home runs and RBI. There is comparatively little phony outrage directed at consistently voting in an Alfonso Soriano over more deserving players, and other similar cases that demonstrate an odd notion of player value (Of course, since it is a popularity contest, there are other elements in play than simple value, but popularity and ability are certainly positively correlated.)

Left unstated is the premise that the purpose of all-star selection is not just to honor the players, but to honor the players for their first half performance. If this is the point of view you want to take, that's fine, but you need to recognize that there is no prescribed definition of what an all-star should be. There's nothing stopping another fan from believing that the all-star game should be to honor the "best" players (and the myriad of different corresponding definitions of "best" muddies things even more), another from believing that it is to honor the players who have had the best careers, and another from believing that it should be a celebration of the Houston Astros.

The phony outrage is even worse in the all-star case than it is in the interminable MVP discussions at the end of the year, because at least the MVP is defined by some nebulous criteria. Even with those guidelines in place, there are folks who demand that all others accept their own personal, narrowly-defined definition of MVP.

Granting for the sake of discussion the position that the all-stars should be the players with the best year-to-date performances, one must remember that the voting begins in May. How does a fan voting on May 6 predict who will have the best statistics come July 1? The best answer is to take the results to date and add in a heavy amount of regression...which in the end is much the same as just voting for whichever player you feel has established himself as the best.

But it all provides a nice fodder for columnists. And to be fair, I suppose it also provides fodder for bloggers to shake their heads at the fans and mainstream media.

* I suppose that in order to maintain my credibility as an Indian fan I should comment on their dismal start, specifically whether or not Eric Wedge should be fired.

The short answer is "I don't care". I generally don't feel that most managers are fairly interchangeable, and I don't think there's any reason to believe that the team's fortunes would be significantly altered were Joel Skinner or Torey Lovullo in charge.

Here are some of my disjointed thoughts on various aspects of Wedge's record:

1. Bullpen management

This is not so much a complaint about the Indians' horrific bullpen in 2009. If anyone can be blamed for that, it is the front office. While I thought the bullpen would be average-ish when looking at it on paper (and I still think it would be if all of the pieces were healthy and Rafael Perez hadn't fallen off a cliff), it is clear now that there is a lack of organizational depth. Thus, when unexpected things happened, Cleveland was forced to patch things up with people like Vinny Chulk, Matt Herges, Luis Vizcaino, and Greg Aquino. But that's not Wedge's fault.

I do think, however, that Wedge is a below-average bullpen manager. He is one to fixate on a couple of horses and ride them for all they are worth. I'm not saying he overworks them and causes subsequent declines in effectiveness--that's possible, but I'm not willing to assert it. What it does, though, is prevent an effective second-line of relievers from being developed.

Once Wedge loses confidence in a reliever, he has a hard time sending him out to the mound in any game which is still within a +/- 3-4 run deficit. An example was Craig Breslow, who sat unutilized in the pen for the first month and a half last year before the team finally had to cut bait (of course, his recent release by Minnesota suggests that Wedge is hardly the only manager that doesn't trust him). If you're not in the back four, you might as well not even show up to the ballpark if you expect a close game.

2. Player relationships. This falls squarely under the category of BSing, since I can't possibly know what goes on behind closed doors, and I am very skeptical of reports of what does because there really is no such thing as an objective source. Anyone who tries to tell you about what goes on in a baseball clubhouse has some angle of their own.

So I think this can easily be overblown. His critics like to bring this up, primarily focusing on the cases of Milton Bradley and Brandon Phillips. While at the time I thought Wedge's spring-training blowup with Bradley was a bit excessive, Milton has now become persona non grata with enough organizations to make it pretty clear that Wedge was not uniquely wired to snap at him. Perhaps a bit quick, but that's impossible to judge.

The Phillips situation on the other hand does look bad, but it's just one case. There are a lot of managers perceived as good, like Tony LaRussa, who has had just as many problems getting along with his players. This may be a weakness of Wedge, but I'm far from convinced that it is a crippling one.

3. I believe, generally, that Wedge does not overreact to small sample sizes to excess. Key words: "generally" and "excess". I know that there will be a large number of Indian observers who disagree with me completely on this count, and I understand that. This season has seen some silly tinkering out of desperation, but I think that's the outlier in Wedge's behavior. He will occasionally try to ride a hot hand in lineup position (like batting Ben Francisco third in the first half last year), but I don't get the impression that he really buys it. And lineup tinkering is a great way to appease the "Do SOMETHING!" crowd without actually doing anything drastic.

People like to complain that he kept running David Dellucci and Jason Michaels out to left field, but that's another issue for which the primary blame must fall on the front office--they seem to regard corner outfield spots as unimportant (although I am a Shin-Soo Choo fan). Cleveland fans may have had an unrealistically rosy assessment of Ben Francisco's talents, but I think now they are seeing that he is a fourth outfielder and nothing more. Unfortunately, he's also embarked on a hot streak that will probably secure his place in the lineup (although with the injury to Sizemore, there's not really a better center field option).

This year he dropped Grady Sizemore to second in the lineup after his slow start, which I don't think was necessary but also is not a disastrous move. If it any way caused Sizemore to press less (please note, I'm not saying it did or will), then it would have been justifiable. (In fact, batting your best hitter #2 is not such a bad idea anyway. I am NOT saying that Wedge is a subscriber to that school of thought.) There have been isolated oddities like Mark DeRosa at first base with Ryan Garko in left, and the decision to juggle the infield after a month is reminiscent of the Tigers' flailings last year (although I would argue that in both cases the key moves were the right ones). Again, though, I think that the front office bears a great deal of responsibility on this score. I never understood why DeRosa was acquired to play third rather than second in the first place, and why Luis Valbeuna has been deemed ready to be the starting second baseman. It is safe to assume that Wedge had input on those decisions, but he hardly has the authority to make them on his own.

4. He's not a terrible strategic manager, IMO. He does like to bunt a lot when the offense is sputtering (and in fairly predictable patterns), but he's not over-the-top crazy about the intentional walk or pitchouts or pinch-hitting (unless he has a clearly defined left-right platoon). I hesitate to say anything more specific than "not terrible", because it would imply a systematic comparison of all thirty managers, and I obviously have not undertaken such a survey. So I'm sticking with "not terrible", and probably about average, standard boilerplate managing.

5. Wedge is sometimes criticized for the Indians' underplaying of their Pythagorean record, but I don't think this is a particularly sound complaint. There is no study that I know of that has indicated any significant relationship between Pythag underachievement and manager. We do know that teams with strong bullpens have a tendency to "overachieve", and that has certainly been a factor in play for Cleveland during Wedge's tenure. In other words, it could be a symptom of the bullpen management problem, not an independent flaw. The notion that Pythag +/- is a managerial measurement appears to have been started by Palmer and Thorn including it in the manager register of Total Baseball, which was probably done in an attempt to include something other than just win-loss record and place in standings. I have never seen a satisfactory explanation of how a manager would be able to impact Pythag +/- other than, again, effective bullpen deployment.

In short, even given a conclusion that the Indians' differential is something other than random variation, it is not safe to conclude that it can be laid at the feet of the manager

6. People also complain about the Indians' slow starts under Wedge, but I don't find that particularly compelling either. It's true that the Indians under Wedge (excluding 2009) have a March/April record of 65-82 (.442) versus a rest of season record of 431-394 (.522). However, if Wedge's first year (which was also his first experience as a major league manager, and with a team that was not expected to do anything at all) is removed, the split drops to .483/.514. In two of six seasons the team has had a better record in March/April, and these are two of the three most recent seasons (2006 and 2007).

If "getting out to a fast start" is something you value in a manager, then you could certainly consider Wedge's track record on this count to be a weakness. But I just don't see it. In the end, all the games count the same. A bad start can certainly bury a team, but so can bad middles and ends to the season.

2008 can better be described as a bad middle. In mid-May, the Indians were in first place, although by a narrow margin and with a record just above .500. Still, the season was far from a disaster at that point. The bottom fell out in late May and June.

If there was a team that went 41-53 in the first half, then made a managerial change and went 40-28 in the second half, I'd imagine that there would be a good number of people praising the new manager and bashing the previous one. Well, there was such a team, except without the managerial change--the 2008 Indians.

Had those splits been reversed, all sorts of ire would have come down on Wedge's head. The average fan is going to be much more exercised by a slow finish than a slow start, and thus I tend to think that people who cite slow starts are actively searching for reasons to complain about the manager. In the end, all the games really do count the same, and while it's possible to dig a whole so deep all hope is lost (as the Indians did last year), it's also possible to recover from a bad April.

As for the organization as a whole, it seems as if the draft has not yielded sufficient talent. Much of the organization's talent has been acquired through shrewd trades, but there has been an apparent deficiency in the team's own development. This helps contribute to the lack of second-line bullpen arms, and while it hasn't seriously hurt the major league lineup, it certainly is an item for concern long-term.

I have seen the complaint that the team never loads up to take a shot in any particular season, but I think this is a sound policy. If I were GM of a team without a lot of money to buy talent on the free agent market, my goal would be to put a consistently competitive team on the field and hope to catch lightning in a bottle one year(as any number of teams have done in recent years. The 2003 Marlins, 2005 White Sox, 2007 Rockies, were not really teams designed to take one shot). I would prioritize consistent playoff contention over the long odds of winning a World Series. Selling out for one year is an extraordinarily risky strategy that is unlikely to pay off even if executed perfectly, due to the nature of the post-season itself.

If this reads as something less than a strong endorsement, that's because it is. I know I sound like a broken record, but I think managers for the most part are fungible, and therefore I don't really care whether Wedge stays or goes.

That being said, I am pulling for him. Not just because I want the team to succeed, but because I find the scapegoat mentality of so many fans to be off-putting. People who want the manager to yell and scream or bench a star player to "send a message" are those that I generally avoid making common cause with. Add in a high covariance between that crowd and the all too common Cleveland "woe is us" attitude, and it gets even easier to be a contrarian.

Today in Yahoo! Box Scores

At least this time it's something other than things not adding up.

This new format is obviously an attempt to appeal more to fantasy players by including HR, SB, and season WHIP in the lines itself. Personally, I think it's a too cluttered.

The best balance between providing the ancillary categories and keeping things clean and readable is (unsurprisingly) Baseball-Reference's format of including the ancillary details in notes next to the player's regular line. If I was designing Yahoo!'s box scores, I'd worry more about their reliability. I guess we'll have to wait and see if the oddities continue, or if these changes addressed those issues as well.

Fanthink Follies

NOTE: This post was written about three weeks ago, spurred by a blog post that was written a month ago. Since then Grady Sizemore has gone into a major slump, but I think you'll agree that's really not the point.

Recently, a blogger on the Plain Dealer website named Jon Sladek wrote a post based on the thesis that Cleveland fans have a tendency to overrate their players (he called this the "Bernie factor" after former Browns quarterback Bernie Kosar), and that Grady Sizemore was benefiting from this phenomenon.

I call balderdash on that--despite a slow start in 2009, Grady Sizemore is a terrific player who in my opinion may well have been the best position player in the AL last season and has been a top 10 AL player in each of the last three seasons. The column does very little to support its claim that Sizemore is overrated by Cleveland fans, as it never defines how he should be rated. Pointing out that Sizemore has many female admirers (um, Jon, I don't know how exactly to say this without being accused of chauvinism, but I think that might have something to do with non-baseball factors...I have this feeling that there are a number of men who don't have much of an opinion of Maria Sharapova's tennis abilities but are fans nonetheless) doesn't indicate he's overrated. Pointing out that he's not the best player in the history of the franchise doesn't either--who has said that he is? Must only the very greatest players be praised?

Of course, a lot of his Sizemore angst is the result of silly thinking...he strikes out too much, he's not clutch, treating batting average as an important metric, and the like. And his shots at CC Sabathia indicate that he is extremely difficult to please; it seems as if any Indian short of Tris Speaker would fall short of his standards. That's really not the point here, though...I'll leave that stuff to the successors of Fire Joe Morgan, whoever they may be, or better yet let it stand without comment.

So this got me to thinking a little bit about the various ways that fans over/under rate their players, and how one could draw up some loose categories of this phenomenon. In doing so, I am trying to avoid discussing statistical reasons, which are certainly among the most prominent. But I don't want these to be along the lines of "players with strong secondary contributions tend to be underrated, while players with strong batting averages tend to be overrated" or "players who stand out in one specific aspect of the game tend to be overrated while those with a wide range of skills tend to be underrated" or...well, you get the idea.

The groups I am going to offer below are in no way mutually exclusive nor comprehensive. I have attempted to name them after Cleveland or Cincinnati players since those are the two fan bases to which I have the most exposure, but I don't in anyway mean to imply that these feelings are exclusive to fans of those teams.

Also, I am going to use the term "overrate" and "underrate" here, even though I share a general aversion to these terms with many of you. Since there is no single standard by which to rate players (from metric of choice to career/peak value to any number of other criteria), and no single source which rates players, the terms don't have a lot of meaning. They are in the popular sports vernacular, though, and this is an attempt to loosely describe patterns of thought on display among sports fans at large. I am also going to speak about "Cleveland fans" and other fan bases as if they are monolithic and of course I am not claiming that at all. When I use that language, it simply reflects what my perception of the majority viewpoint amongst that group is. My perception of such is certainly fallible.

* Overrating a player because of his geographic origin, or his alma mater, his ethnicity, etc. (the Bernie Kosar factor)

This is the true "Bernie factor"--Cleveland fans don't have any general tendency to overrate players, at least not with respect to other fan bases, certainly not when Sabathia and Sizemore are being belittled. Cleveland fans loved Bernie Kosar primarily because he was from the Northeast Ohio area (there was another major factor, discussed further below)..

There is nothing wrong with this, of course, although the flip side has some not-so-pleasant possible manifestations. "Local boy makes good" is a good story, and it only follows that fans will identify more with an athlete who is "one of them". I tend to think of myself as fairly objective and immune to the various phenomena I will list (and yes, this may well be undue self-congratulation)--with the exception of the Bernie factor. I'm all in for this one--on the basis of alma mater. Braylon Edwards could catch twenty touchdown passes next season and I will still hate his guts, while Brian Robiskie could be a complete flop as a pro and he will always be my favorite Brown.

* Scapegoating a good player for the failures of his team (the Carlos Beltran factor)

I almost slapped the "Adam Dunn" label here, but it could go so many other places--it could be used to describe underrating a player because of his skill set not matching traditional thinking, underrating a player because he is seen as "un-clutch", underrating a player because he is perceived as not getting the most out of his talent, or underrating a player because of relentless pounding from the codger who does the play-by-play. The anti-Dunn sentiment amongst Reds fans is the most widely-held and irrational case of this factor that I have personally encountered.

You can see the Adam Dunn factor on display in New York, as David Wright, Jose Reyes, and Carlos Beltran have all taken their turns as Met whipping boy, despite the fact that they are one of the very best position player trios in MLB. Why fans would choose to blame the best player rather than the lesser players is something that I really have never understood at all.

I have seen Reds fans crow about the Nationals' poor record, despite the fact that Dunn had a great April, still blaming him for the failure of the lousy team around him. And celebrating the fact their offense has not shown much of a decline despite Dunn's absence, as if dropping dead weight like Corey Patterson had no effect. It's hopeless.

* Overvaluing a player because of the success of his team (the Derek Jeter factor)

This could also be called the "basketball mentality"--it places too much of the credit on one player, to an extent that might be appropriate on the hardwood but is absurd in baseball. It is true that most great basketball dynasties are really built around one or two great players, and that these guys take their team from good to great single-handedly--the Jordans, the Magics, the Shaqs, the Mikans, etc. I'm not a basketball analyst, so if I'm overstating the case feel free to let me know, but I don't think anyone will disagree with the premise that a single basketball player can make a much greater contribution to team success than a single baseball player.

Nonetheless, some people want to attribute the success of a winning baseball team disproportionately to one man. Certainly Derek Jeter has been a valuable player for a long-time, and will be ushered right into the Hall of Fame, and I don't want to argue that.

But one man did not do it alone, and the fact that the Yankees strung together four titles in five years does not mean that they had to have a superstar of equal value to those on similarly dominant teams of the past.

Of course, what's worse than crediting a Jeter is when the credit gets given to a Scott Brosius or even in extreme cases a Luis Sojo. But I think most people see through that; it is much more tempting when there is a legitimately great player to whom the championships can be credited.

Incidentally, I would have liked to pick a Cleveland or Cincinnati athlete here, but it's been almost two decades since either city won a championship. Bernie Kosar certainly benefited a bit from this though--the quarterback for the best Browns teams of the Super Bowl era is going to receive a significant amount of accolades from the fans.

* Overrating a bench warmer or minor leaguer because he must be better than the bum who is in there now (the Charlie Frye factor, or more generally, the backup QB factor)

The old saw is that the backup quarterback is always the most popular player on a football team, and there's a lot of truth in it. The Charlie Frye case was a little convoluted because he also was a local guy, and Trent Dilfer really did stink and had no chance of being a long-term answer. Unfortunately, Frye was worse.

Indians fans did their own version of this with Ben Francisco last year. Now Francisco is in the crosshairs himself on this score.

* Choosing a player as scrappy/hustler/clutch/plays-the-game-the-right-way and the like and overrating him (the Ryan Freel factor)

This is a universal phenomenon, but I've certainly never personally encountered it more starkly than with Reds fans. They just love the scrappy guy, the Ryan Freel or the Chris Sabo, and when one moves on they look desperately for someone to fill the void (Adam Rosales is the leader in the clubhouse).

My theory for the intensity of this point of view in Cincinnati is two-fold: one is the aforementioned codger on the radio. The other is a residual Pete Rose complex, forever imprinted in many because of a convergence of factors: the Bernie factor, the Derek Jeter factor, and his (perceived, by some sycophants) martyrdom. Rose's banishment never really allowed them to process these feelings in a healthy way, and so it has become a perpetual obsession (and that is as close to psychoanalysis that I will ever get on this blog, I promise).

* Underrating a player because he doesn't live up to expectations (the Adam Dunn factor)

Often a player, particularly a prospect, will get a fair amount of advance hype. Then said player will not live up to the expectations that were heaped on him. Even if this player winds up developing into a valuable asset, some fans still evaluate him against their hopes rather than reality.

This also applies to players who fans feel aren't getting as much out of their talent as possible...players like, oh, Adam Dunn. If a particular player truly is underachieving due to lack of effort or motivation or another correctable "personal flaw", that's legitimate ground for criticism. However, this type of sentiment is very often adopted without any particularly credible evidence that the target is deficient in those areas. And all too often, fans will brand purported underachievers with various shortcomings, all while ignoring the things they do well on the field. In other words, the fans focus solely on a player's weaknesses, ignoring his strengths.

A subset of this factor that applies to veterans rather than youngsters is setting expectations on the basis of salary, and underrating a player's contribution because he is seen to be overpaid. Of course, salary is a very important thing to consider when evaluating GM-level decision making. However, one should be careful not to let it bleed over into an evaluation of on-field value. Paying a player who's "really" worth $5 million a salary of $10 million does indeed make him overpaid and a bad investment. But he's no less of a ballplayer than someone worth $5 million getting paid the league minimum.

Obviously I have only scratched the surface here, but these are the most common non-statistical reasons that I can identify for fans' skewed evaluations of their players. Unfortunately, none explain why Grady Sizemore is overrated...because he's not.

Another Great Moment in Yahoo! Box Scores

Hail, Hail, the Gang's All Here

Yesterday afternoon, the OSU baseball team rallied from a 4-0 deficit to complete a series sweep of Iowa with an 8-6 win. Coupled with Penn State's win over Minnesota, the win gave the Buckeyes their sixteenth Big Ten title and first since 2001.

Under coach Bob Todd, Ohio has been a consistent contender--this is his eighth title in 22 seasons. However, recent teams have been more liable to run in the middle of the regular season pack, then spring up to win the tournament championship than to win the title. I can't say that I expected this season to be any different. On paper, OSU appeared to lack any star pitchers but rather seemed to have a stable of solid arms. The offense seemed to be constructed similarly to those of recent OSU teams--solid at getting on base, woefully inadequate in the power department.

What ended up happening was that OSU could only find five dependable pitchers: starters Alex Wimmers, Dean Wolosiansky, and Eric Best and relievers Jake Hale and Drew Rucinski. The rest of the staff was hampered by injuries and/or ineffective, and thus the team struggled mightily in mid-week games, which are usually an opportunity to fatten the overall win-loss record at the expense of smaller regional schools.

The offense, on the other hand, exceeded all expectations by emerging from the multi-year power outage by leading the conference in home runs and isolated power (as well as batting average and runs scored). The power surge was not centered on any one player but was top-to-bottom in the lineup, with the exception of the middle infielders (second baseman Cory Kovanda more than made up for hitting just one longball with a .430+ OBA).

This OSU team definitely benefited from the Big Ten's switch from four-game weekend series totaling 32 innings to a standard three-game series all comprised of nine inning games. Shaving five innings that would have been soaked up by second-line pitchers certainly was a blessing given the constitution of the team.

Unfortunately, the lack of pitching depth may well mean that this Buckeye team is not as dangerous in tournament play as recent, less-accomplished squads have been. Regardless of what happens from here on out though, this has been one of the most enjoyable seasons of my time as a fan. Particularly exciting has been the standout individual performances, of which I will mention three in particular.

1. I had reservations about Jake Hale being moved back to the bullpen for his senior season (essentially, he has been on a yearly yo-yo; starter as a freshman and junior, reliever as a sophomore and senior) but he certainly has shined in the closer's role. Hale set the OSU single-season record with 15 saves and dominated with an ERA around 1.2 and over a strikeout an inning.

2. Sophomore catcher Dan Burkhart exploded after a modest freshman campaign to the tune of .362/.435/.611, the cleanup slot in the lineup, and a possible Big Ten Player of the Year nod

3. Most impressive has been sophomore righty Alex Wimmers' transformation from a high-strikeout, high-walk reliever to dominant staff ace. Wimmers seems to be the favorite Pitcher of the Year honors with a 9-1, 2.58, 122 strikeouts in 94 1/3 innings campaign. His season has featured one spectacular performance after another: a 15 K complete game against Pitt, a 14 K complete game against Indiana, 5 shutout innings on the road at Miami-FL in a win, a no-hit bid taken into the eighth against Michigan State that ended as an 11 K two-hitter, and most significantly, a 14 K no-hitter on May 2 against the servants of evil, just the second nine-inning no-hitter in school history (and to boot, the first no-hitter I've ever seen in its entirety at any level of the game).

Whatever comes next, the Big Ten championship is an end to itself and the program should be very proud of itself.

On Games Behind

The standings on Baseball-Reference include a column labeled "GBsum". According to the glossary, this idea was proposed by John Dewan and B-R now tracks it. There has always been something about this that bothered me, but I never really sat down and tried to figure out what it was. But it has now dawned on me, and I can actually put my finger on what why I've never taken it seriously.

Suppose you had a division in which three teams were tied for the lead with an identical record, with a fourth team three games behind them (must be early in the season unless it's the 2005 NL West on steroids). Let's say the three teams in the lead are New York, Florida, and Atlanta, and it is Philadelphia that is three back.

Philadelphia's "GBsum" will be 9, as they are three games behind three distinct opponents. But can you explain to me what this number means, in real baseball terms?

You certainly could for standard games behind, probably more elegantly than I am about to: if Philadelphia is three games behind Atlanta, it means that it would require three sets of Philadelphia wins coupled with Atlanta losses in order to even the two teams up. You know that if the Phillies sweep their three-game weekend series and the Braves are swept, the two clubs will be tied.

But what does the GBsum of 9 mean? What would have to happen so that the Phillies would be tied with the triumvirate, and does the figure of 9 reflect this?

In one sense, it does--it will take 9 pairs of Phillie wins coupled with opponent losses to but the Phillies in a first-place tie.

But let's look at a different imaginary division. Chicago leads Houston by nine games, with no clubs in between. Thus the Astros' "GBsum" is 9, same as the Phillies, and it will take 9 pairs of Astro wins + Cub losses to even things up.

So, if the GBsum figure is an improvement over the traditional games behind, one should conclude that the Phillies and Astros are equally far away from first place, right? Before you answer that, ask yourself if it makes common sense to you. If the baseball gods came to you and allowed you to plop your team down in the place of one of those two, which would you pick?

I think that most people would intuitively choose to place their teams in the division in which they are three games behind three teams, rather than nine games behind one team (ignoring for the moment the proximity of the teams below the Phillies and Astros in their divisions, which I have not defined). And I think they're right.

In order for the Phillies to pull into the lead, we need nine pairs of opposite outcomes:
3 PHI wins + 3 ATL losses
3 PHI wins + 3 NYN losses
3 PHI wins + 3 FLA losses

In order for the Astros to pull even, we need nine pairs of opposite outcomes:
9 HOU wins + 9 CHN losses

In the Phillies' case, though, any win that they manage to earn on their own cuts into all three deficits simultaneously. They don't need nine wins to achieve their goal provided their division opponents are losing--they need three. And thus there are really only twelve required game outcomes (in using the term "game outcomes", I am blithely ignoring head-to-head games, in which a PHI win is by definition a FLA loss if the two are playing; if the loose terminology bothers you, just assume that all of these teams are playing interleague series at the moment)
3 PHI wins + 3 ATL losses + 3 NYN losses + 3 FLA losses

In order for the Astros to pull even, they need eighteen:
9 HOU wins + 9 CHN losses

So I would argue that, even if you want to break away from traditional games behind the leader and consider distance behind non-leaders, the pertinent numbers are 12 and 18 in this case, not 9 and 9. The Phillies are in better position than the Astros.

In order to convert those figures to something resembling a traditional games behind format (they are half-games from the traditional GB perspective), simply divide by two. The "true GB" is six for the Phillies and nine for the Astros. Writing the procedure for calculating "true GB" formally:

"true GB" = games behind leader + (1/2)(games behind others)

So for the Phillies, this is 3 + (1/2)(3 + 3) = 6. I believe that this is a much better gauge of a team's position in the standings than is "GBsum".

Admittedly, "true GB" does have the drawback of being oft-expressed in confusing quarter-games. For example, Toronto leads Boston by one game and New York by 5.5, meaning New York is 4.5 behind Boston. New York could tie Toronto with 5 wins + 6 Blue Jay losses or 6 wins + 5 Blue Jay losses. The formula assumes the average of 5.5 wins, and so assuming they are achieved New York needs 4.5 Boston losses to pull even with the Red Sox. 5.5 wins + 5.5 losses + 4.5 losses = 15.5 game outcomes, which when divided by 2 gives an odd 7.75.

Another caveat is that you can't just interpret "true GB" in the same manner you do actual games behind. The Indians' "true GB" of 14.5 does not mean their situation is anywhere near as dire as a team that is 14.5 games behind. Our idea of the plight of a 14.5 GB team naturally includes other teams in front, since rarely is the second place team in a division that far back.

Please note I am not holding it up as anything essential that should be carried in the standings in your local newspaper. I just prefer it to the "GBsum" column. I'm not sure an alternative figure including the other teams is necessary, as each comparison is a pennant race in its own right (you can look at it from the perspective that the Phillies have to beat the Braves in a distinct race, and beat the Mets in a distinct race, and...), and anyone looking at the traditional standings can figure the margin between two teams themselves. And if one does want to get more involved in putting a number on the race, I'd rather go all the way and try to estimate probabilities like BP and other sites are already doing.

Here are the standings as of this moment, with all three flavors of GB on display (if you saw this post in the first few hours it was up, I mis-figured the NL West):


You can see that there is general agreement between GBsum and "true GB", and if you'd like to posit that as a demonstration "true GB"'s limited utility, I won't put up much of a fight. Unfortunately for me, any way you slice it except traditional games behind, the Indians are in the deepest hole in the American League.

As an aside, one often hears "games in the loss column" cited as being important, even more so than standard games behind. A 10-5 team is one game ahead of an opponent with a 9-6 record or an opponent with a 10-7 record, but this viewpoint would hold you'd rather be in the latter position as the leader.

This is correct, of course; if you have two teams equal in the standings, but with different win-loss records, the one with the advantage in the loss column has the better winning percentage...assuming that the teams are above .500.

If the teams were below .500, then the one with the advantage in the loss column would actually have a lower W%. This makes sense if you think about it. If you have a good team that has played one less game, it is likely to be a win. But for a bad team, the extra game is more likely to be a loss.

Now this "advantage" to being ahead in the win column rather than in the loss column never really comes into play in real MLB situations, since sub-.500 teams are generally not fighting each other for playoff spots (1994 AL West notwithstanding). Even if they were, the teams would likely be sufficiently close to .500 to make it a wash anyway (of course, it is "true" quality, not observed W%, that should be the basis for which column it is preferable to have the advantage in).

And in a race to the bottom, like who will get the #1 draft pick, the goal becomes to finish last, not first, and so the advantage flips back to the team "ahead" in the loss column--although in this case, being "ahead" means having more losses. Perhaps this principle could come into play in relegation for international soccer or something--it has to be a case in which true sub-.500 teams are competing for a the best record amongst themselves, something that rarely/never happens in MLB (for anything important, at least--fourth place in the NL Central isn't what I have in mind).

Here We Go Again

So another player gets suspended for violating the drug policy and we get another round of moralizing and hyperbole, and of course that ridiculous fool Jeff Passan at Yahoo gets to roll them both together, then ooze more smarminess than one thought humanly possible.

But outside of the lunatic fringe exemplified by Passan, what is the major topic of discussion? Manny's Hall of Fame fate, naturally. For all of the phony hand-wringing about the "sanctity and integrity of the game" and the like, all anyone really cares about is whether a guy does or doesn't get to join the ranks of Rick Ferrell and Rube Marquard (but not Bert Blyleven or Alan Trammell) in the blessed Hall of Fame. The parody almost writes itself--a visitor from a foreign country might draw the conclusion that Major League Baseball is played for the glory of the Hall of Fame.

Addendum: I am going to edit this post to add links to good, sane takes on this situation (anti-Passans, if you will) as I see them:

Craig Calcaterra at the Hardball Times

Russell Roberts at Cafe Hayek

John Stossel in his syndicated column