The Platoon Advantage

Jim Bowden Is Every General Manager

2012-01-27T11:30:00.017-06:00

Obligatory Bowden-on-a-Nats-Segway photo!
AP Photos / The Washington Times, Peter Lockley

By Bill

I've done my fair share of ripping GM-turned-internet-and-radio-baseball-expert Jim Bowden, particularly on Twitter. More in the last few weeks than previously, I'd say, but I did quite a bit of it before that, too. He makes it pretty easy.

Near the beginning of the offseason, Bowden wrote a piece that seemed like one of the most ridiculous things he'd ever come up with, called "Pricing the free agents" (Insider only). In it, Bowden listed what he saw as the top 50 free agents, and attempted to predict the contract they would receive, or, in his words, an "estimate of what I would pay the top 50 free agents if I were a GM of a club that had the budget and need for that kind of player."

Very nearly every prediction seemed absurdly high to me, and to many others. I admit, I mocked it quite a bit (I can't take the time to scroll back and find examples because it was too long ago, but they're there if you want to look). Four years for Madson? $30 million for Cuddyer? Please.

But as the chips started to fall and players signed, it became clear that he was probably not as far off as many of us assumed. As we went further along, it became clear that he wasn't off at all. The bloom might be coming off the rose a bit as some holdovers end up going at bargain prices, but still, almost all of Bowden's picks have been close enough to be considered right on.

Here's a chart of the top 25 players on Bowden's list who have signed big-league free agent contracts (some have accepted arbitration, like David Ortiz, and a couple haven't signed yet, like Roy Oswalt). The first two columns are Bowden's predictions for contract length and average annual value (AAV), the next two are the actual length and AAV at which the player signed, and the final two are the amount by which Bowden missed (in either direction) on those two numbers:

	JB Yrs	JB AAV	Act. Yrs	Act. AAV	Diff Yrs	Diff AAV
Albert Pujols	9	$27.0	10	$25.4	1	$1.6
Prince Fielder	8	$24.0	9	$23.8	1	$0.2
Jose Reyes	6	$18.0	6	$18.5	0	$0.5
Mark Buehrle	4	$16.0	4	$14.5	0	$1.5
C.J. Wilson	5	$15.0	5	$15.5	0	$0.5
Carlos Beltran	3	$15.0	2	$13.0	1	$2.0
Aramis Ramirez	3	$14.0	3	$11.7	0	$2.3
Jonathan Papelbon	4	$13.0	4	$12.5	0	$0.5
Jimmy Rollins	3	$13.0	3	$12.7	0	$0.3
Hiroki Kuroda	1	$12.0	1	$10.0	0	$2.0
Ryan Madson	4	$10.0	1	$8.3	3	$1.8
Heath Bell	3	$10.0	3	$9.0	0	$1.0
Michael Cuddyer	3	$10.0	3	$10.5	0	$0.5
Carlos Pena	2	$8.5	1	$7.3	1	$1.3
Francisco Cordero	1	$8.5	1	$4.5	0	$4.0
Joe Nathan	1	$7.5	2	$7.4	1	$0.1
Josh Willingham	2	$7.0	3	$7.0	1	$0.0
Aaron Harang	2	$7.0	2	$6.0	0	$1.0
Paul Maholm	2	$7.0	1	$4.8	1	$2.2
Bruce Chen	2	$6.5	2	$4.5	0	$2.0
Coco Crisp	2	$6.0	2	$7.0	0	$1.0
Rafael Furcal	2	$7.0	2	$6.0	0	$1.0
Jason Kubel	2	$5.0	2	$7.5	0	$2.5
Grady Sizemore	1	$5.0	1	$5.0	0	$0.0
Aaron Hill	2	$4.5	2	$5.5	0	$1.0
Total	77	$276.5	75	$257.9	10	$29.8
Average	3	$11.0	3	$10.3	0	$1.2

(Yes, it's a weird way to do it. His average prediction was $0.7 million of AAV higher than the actual average, but he missed by an average of more than that. It's because I'm not differentiating between high misses and low misses.)

Pretty impressive, right? Madson throws off much of it, and he had a deal in place that was reportedly almost exactly what Bowden predicted, but then the Phillies backed out, and Madson had to sign a much smaller deal with the Reds. There are a few others that just didn't have a team that was a good fit, so they ended up taking considerably less than what Bowden thought they "should." Francisco Cordero looks to me like the one flat-out, hard-to-excuse miss. Otherwise, Bowden is almost right on the money with almost every player. In particular, he was eerily, crazily accurate on Fielder, Reyes, Wilson, Papelbon, Rollins, Bell, Cuddyer, Nathan, Crisp, Furcal, Sizemore and Hill. Some of those seemed way off when he named them (Fielder, Papelbon and Cuddyer stick out especially), but they happened, almost exactly as Bowden said they would. You have to give it to the guy; he really knew what he was doing here.

One thing: as I noted above, Bowden says the numbers in this list represent an "estimate of what I would pay ... if I were a GM of a club that had the budget and need." You could argue that that's what made Bowden kind of a poor GM. The contract a player ultimately signs will very often be an "overpay" in at least one sense, because of that winner's curse; that winning GM necessarily paid more than any of the 29 other GMs were willing to pay. In particular, many people have argued that Fielder's, Cuddyer's, Papelbon's, and Harang's contracts were pricier than they should have had to be, yet Bowden is right there on each of them (and even over on Harang). Besides that, overall, his estimates are higher than where the actual value came in -- 16 of the 25 Bowden guesses pictured here were higher than the actual AAV, with three more right on, and six lower. I also charitably skipped Joel Pineiro, who Bowden had at 1 year and $5 million but who actually signed a minor league deal. I think one could argue, if one was so inclined, that his success here exposes the reasons for his failures as GM. Making an exception for Kevin Towers -- who paid Kubel 50% more than even Bowden would have -- an alternate title for this post could be "Jim Bowden is Every General Manager's Worst Mistake."

But he's not a GM anymore, he's a writer and radio host, and at least in this specific area, he's done a damn good job of it. An amazingly, stunningly, kind of creepily good job.

To Brad Radke! - A 2012 Minnesota Twins Commercial

2012-01-27T09:00:00.005-06:00

By The Common Man

The Common Man is very much in a Twinkies kind of mood at the moment, with TwinsFest happening this weekend, and Spring Training getting ever closer. Plus, Brad Radke promises to be at TwinsFest for the first time (we think) since he retired.

Radke's career grows to mythic proportions when TCM and Bill discuss it. He was a good pitcher for a very long time that suffered through a lot of bad teams to ultimately emerge as the stallwart member of the first competitive Minnesota clubs in the 21st Century. He took the ball almost every turn, and was the pitching version of running back LeRoy Hoard. If you needed your starter to go 7 innings and give up 3 runs, to win, Brad Radke would go 7 innings and give up three runs. If you needed your starter to go 7 innings and give up 1 run to win, Brad Radke would go 7 innings and give up 3 runs. He became the archetype to which every single Twins pitcher since has been compared and evaluated. And by the time his career ended in 2006, his shoulder was completely shredded (he had pitched 21 starts through immense pain) and he couldn't brush his hair anymore without help.

So it's only fair we commemorate him with his own commercial to celebrate his TwinsFest return, and to celebrate the fact that he could still probably outpitch 3/5 of the Twins rotation. Here's The Common Man's suggestion:

Twins Commercial 2012 - "Brad Radke"
Scene: Exterior, Little League Field

(Zoom in on Carl Pavano, Scott Baker, and Jason Marquis in full uniforms on metal bleachers, eating fried chicken and large goblets of beer.)

Carl Pavano: Brad Radke is a son of a bitch.

Scott Baker: Best damn pitcher in the starting rotation.

Jason Marquis: To Brad Radke!

Everyone: BRAD RADKE!

Pavano: An 8-foot, 2-ton monster who can palm a medicine ball. That’s what he is!

Ben Revere (leaning in from out of frame): Excuse me, a lot of us have come here to watch our children. Will you please just stop drinking and yelling?

Pavano: You got a nice caboose on you, honey.

Revere: You are horrible men, and marginal pitchers at best. Except for you, Scotty.

Baker: You know Bradke went through puberty in one night?

Pavano: That’s right; he howled like a werewolf for 10 hours, and in the morning he had a beard.

Marquis: He sweats Gatorade.

Baker: The Pope told him it was ok to have a mistress.

Pavano: He once inhaled a seagull!

Baker: To Brad Radke!

Everyone: BRAD RADKE!

Pavano: Did I ever tell you about the time Bradke bought a pet cobra and walked it through the park on a leash? Bradke would put on a white tie and tails and would walk the cobra through the park on a leash. He named the cobra Beverly and he taught it how to play fetch and dial a phone. But then one day it bit the maid. So with tears in his eyes, Bradke had to shoot the maid.

Baker: Bradke would use his thigh as an anvil!

Marquis: You know, it was the sight of Bradke’s naked body that drove Brian Wilson insane.

Baker: He showers in grain alcohol!

Pavano: He uses the Shroud of Turin as a golf towel!

Baker: He killed Wolfman Jack with a Trident!

Marquis: He drives and ice cream truck covered in human skulls.

Pavano: His first name is Brad…. I’m drunk.

Baker: He makes every woman that sleeps with him refer to him as Bear Bryant.

Pavano: He once ate the Bible while water skiing!

Marquis: Did I ever tell you he once had sex with a cigarette machine? And every kid on this field was fathered by Brad Radke!

Pavano: Every one of them!

Francisco Liriano (leans in from out of frame): Amigos, ustedes hablan de Brad Radke?

Marquis: We sure are!

Liriano: Yo conozco Brad Radke!

Pavano: I want to be your dear friend!

Pull back to crane shot of Brad Radke towering over the four pitchers.

Brad Radke: HEY EVERYBODY, THIS GAME IS CALLED ON ACCOUNT OF SCOTCH, BECAUSE BRAD RADKE WANTS A DRINK!

Everyone: BRAD RADKE!

(Note: The preceding is a parody of the Saturday Night Live sketch "Bill Brasky," starring ~~Jim Breuer~~ Mark McKinney, Will Ferrell, and John Goodman, original video here)

Question about Win Curves and Value

2012-01-26T13:00:00.000-06:00

Watching Miguel Cabrera and Prince Fielder hit back-to-back for thenext few years is going to be awesome. Despite the fact that it may not look sogood 6 or so years from now, it willbe awesome for a little while. That money, though, gives many pause as theybegin to look at his contract, but as Mike Rogers pointedout, the value of adding wins isn’t constant. All of the research points toa win being worth around $4.5-5 million, but that isn’t true for each team. Forteams in the 70-73 win range, it doesn’t make much sense to pay that much for awin when it won’t help. For teams in the 87-89 win range, the value ofadditional wins goes up because adding a win or two might be the difference betweenmaking the playoffs (thus having the opportunity to win the World Series andmake tons of extra money) and not. The Tigers are that type of team, so payinga little extra for him makes sense. The question, however, becomes how much.Mike and I started talking on Twitter, and we discussed who exactly gets creditfor those “additional wins”.

When I’ve seen some things on Jonathan Papelbon or Fielder’s contracts,people point out their respective team’s place on the win curve. As I’vealready said, teams in the 90-win range can justify spending a little extra forwins, but when it comes up, it almost seems as though those players are given all the credit for those additionalwins. For instance, the Tigers are a (spitballing) 87-win team for 2012, but byadding Fielder, they are now a 91-92 win team. Thus, the Tigers should be okayspending a little extra for each win because Fielder is responsible for uppingthe win total. The thing is that I’m not sure that makes sense.

The team was constructed as an 87-win team before Fielder signed, so itseems like he is responsible for wins 88-92. But is that true? It’s not as ifFielder sits the bench until those wins are needed and then comes on tosingle-handedly win those four games. His value is spread throughout the seasonjust like everyone else’s. Can you really give him credit for those wins?

And how would you react if you make multiple signings? What if you’rean 82-win team that adds two four-win players? Does the first player signed notget the added bonus because he was first? Does the second player get all of itbecause he was the last to sign? It doesn’t make sense to give both of them thebonus. The first one only put you into the mid-80s and shouldn’t get the bonusif you use the above line of reasoning. If you planned to sign both of theplayers but not necessarily the order, do you spread it evenly?

And how many years of the contract do you give him a bonus? If youthink your window is 2 years but the contract is for 5, do you give him thebonus for all five years, knowing that he might not sign now if you don’t?

And say you sign a guy the year before to put you into the 90-winrange, and you give him that bonus for the however many years of his contract.This off-season, you lost a four-win player, and you’re now going to signanother one (or the same one to a new contract). The player you must sign thisoff-season will technically now put you in the 90-win range. Does he get thebonus, too, even though you’ve already paid for those wins? And if he does andyou did this again, just how many wins are you paying for, especially when youhave that other guy who will be a free-agent next year?

Now let’s say you don’t pay for full wins. Instead, you pay by a ratioof wins added. Let’s say you predict (which is all you can do when you make thedeal) to win 90 games and the player should add 4. That’s 4/(90-48=52) to get7.6 or 8% of the possible bonus. You pay a little extra, but you won’t use itall. You can’t really split it evenly because you’ll still end up in asituation where you’re paying too much for wins as the contracts pile up (splitit 2 ways this year but that won’t work next season).

I suppose this really just a on-the-fringes question, but it doespuzzle me a bit. I understand the logic behind paying more for certain wins,but I’m not sure how much sense it really makes as you look at it further. Youcould argue that you just live with it because you’re just continually in thatspot and that it only matters for free-agents, but you’ve decided on a numberfor those wins and continue to pay it to multiple people, though you only meantit for one. I’m entirely sure how to rectify it other than to say that this isthe difference between theory and reality. In a one-year perspective, it makessense, or at least more, but as you continue further out, it makes less andless sense as you move out further and further. Teams are responding to theirsituation, economic forces, market pressures, their placement on the win curve,and the need to win now and damn the future. It’s just a question. I have noofficial conclusion. It’s just something that’s been on my mind.

12 Simple Rules for Surviving TwinsFest 2012

2012-01-26T11:00:00.003-06:00

By The Common Man

This weekend, as you might already know, is TwinsFest, the annual autograph party/baseball card show/memorabilia auction/other stuff put on by the local Minnesota nine. Last year, due to the actual collapse of the Metrodome, the Twins were forced to relocate their celebration to a venue that was excessively crowded, confusing, and generally unpleasant for everyone involved. This year, though, with the Teflon baggie back up, the Twins and their fans are for once glad to be headed back to the team’s former home.

The Common Man and Bill will be there on both Saturday and Sunday, with special guest and fan of experiences Carson Cistulli, of FanGraphs and NotGraphs fame. He is pictured, sans his new, unwieldy mustache, to your right. If you see a really tall guy walking around with a really short guy, that’s probably Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito reliving their glory days in Twins. But if you see a marginally tall guy with a marginally short guy arguing about something or cracking themselves up, while the skinny guy pictured to the right looks on bewildered, that’s us. Say hi. (Or conversely, shoot us an email or a message over Twitter, and we’d love to meet you.)

Anyway, a couple years back, The Common Man wrote up his TwinsFest experience, and included a list of rules to help the uninitiated get the most out of their TwinsFest experience. As a public service, TCM thought it was time to update the list to reflect some changes in the rules for the event, and to account for the fact that TCM is a much better writer now. Anyway, here are a dozen simple rules for having a blast at TwinsFest:

1) Don’t show up early on Saturday.

You would think that getting to the Dome long before the doors open will increase your chances of getting the early autographs you want. However, the lines at the door quickly turn into mosh pits as a desperate group of souvenir dealers, unentitled d-bags, housewives, young blondes in tight clothes, and small unhappy children with over-zealous fathers crowd the doors so they can race to get in front of Joe Mauer. You will just be cold, cranky, and trampled by the time you get inside the gate and weasels who showed up as the orderly line devolved into chaos will get in before you. The Common Man doesn’t recommend following the examples of these weasels, as he doesn’t advocate acting like an ass, but just be aware.

2) Choreograph your day ahead of time.

It is so important to think ahead to what autographs you want, and to understand that you might not get all of them in one day. The demand for guys like Mauer and Morneau is incredible,* and you need to consider how much time you’ll need to stand in line. Don’t spend a lot of time during the day making decisions, as that leads to confusion and you’ll miss out on something you really want to do. If you have a plan ahead of time, you’ll be much quicker, more efficient and ultimately happier. Also, be realistic. To get in to see Joe or Justin, you need to be there early and be willing to sacrifice other autographs you could be getting in the meantime.

*Note: the Twins have changed the rules somewhat for this TwinsFest, dumbing down their rules to allow idiots who can’t plan in advance the chance to get Mauer and Morneau’s autograph through some kind of strange system involving wristbands and random drawings. It will be incredibly disappointing if this means that the lowest common denominator, who can’t be bothered to plan ahead, end up with the advantage over smart fans who understand the system as it was set up.

3) Always go with an agreeable buddy.

Bill and The Common Man spent a lot of time in line together, allowing us to conduct two fantasy drafts Twins alumni (25 man rosters, one squad based on value while a Twin, the other based on overall career value), quiz each other about previous Cy Young and MVP winners, and snidely mock some of the more creatively-dressed fans walking by. Also, if you get in the Justin Morneau line at 9:00, and he doesn’t start signing until 11:00, each of you will have time to slip away and get Denard Span’s autograph in the meantime. Use the buddy system to your advantage.

4) Do not expect to get a lot of face time with your favorite players.

The lines need to be kept moving (because trampling could occur if Mauer’s not signing at a steady clip). Also, you can’t ask players to pose in pictures with you. Get them while they’re signing your stuff, or signing someone else’s (no one will ever know). You may be able to double your time with a guy if you’re working in tandem with a less talkative partner (sorry about that, Bill), but you’ll still have 15-20 seconds, tops. So enjoy them while you can, and don’t hold up the line like a jerk. Unless, of course, you can convince Bert Blyleven to call your 95 year old grandmother on your cell. Because that is totally worth it.

5) Mustard has perfected jeans-seeking technology.

We are losing the arms race. Avoid it, unless you aren’t terribly concerned about your appearance.

6) Bring money. Lots of money.

You can do TwinsFest on the cheap, if you really want to. It’s only $9 to get in, if you buy your tickets in advance. If you want autographs, however, TwinsFest can quickly become expensive. Minor leaguers are free, but current and former Twins can run from $10/panel to $35 for a Hall of Famers (Carew, Molitor, Blyleven, etc.), and Mauer and Morneau. Keep in mind that you may need to buy baseballs and other souvenirs for players to sign. An official MLB ball may cost $11-15 at the event. If you’re getting an unofficial ball, make sure it is made with real leather and not glossy. You can find these for around $5. If you have no intention of ever selling your autographs (The Common Man plans to pass his along to The Boy), this is a good strategy to keep the overall price down.

7) Bring decoys.

No matter how much you love the Twins, it’s tough to get excited for getting autographs from Frank Quilici, Jeff Gray, Rick Stelmaszek, Scott Diamond, Drew Butera, and Brian Raabe, amongst others. But it’s not cool to pull back stuff and say you don’t want them to sign it. That’s just rude. That’s why you need to bring random “memorabilia” that you don’t mind wasting on the autographs you don’t really want, but are too polite to refuse. TCM has a shirt with all the Twins minor league club logos on it that he uses to get the autographs of minor leaguers who he’s not terribly interested in. TCM also has a couple of junk baseballs he fills with these other signatures.

8) Hold onto your program.

As you go into the Metrodome, you’re going to be handed a program that contains the day’s autograph schedule. Keep it. The Common Man knows this is hard to believe, but some players’ signatures are hard to read. Particularly if you plan to get the autographs of minor leaguers, it’s good to have the program so you can remember whose autographs you’re getting (or got last year) and can follow their career during the season.

9) Think carefully about bringing your small child to TwinsFest.

Babies who can ride in backpacks or Bjorns are probably fine. Kids between 1-2 years old are ideal. They are cute, but relatively agreeable and quiet. And The Common Man says this next part as the father of a five-year old: your 3-5 year old is not equipped to stand in line for 3 hours to get Joe Mauer’s autograph. There is a lot to do at the Dome, but it is not aimed at really young kids. Six years old is about when TwinsFest starts to get viable, so long as your kid has built up a healthy hero worship, but avoid longer lines (get the free autographs of the minor leaguers, or some of the current/former Twins down on the playing field). Also, please don’t put your kid on a leash; that’s just uncomfortable for all of us.

10) Do not drink at TwinsFest.

This is a personal opinion, but The Common Man just thinks it’s unnecessary. There are a ton of people, it’s the morning or early afternoon, you’re going to get jostled, and your beer comes in a plastic cup. Either you or the Metrodome floor is going to get covered in Miller Genuine Draft. And nobody wants that. Stick with soda and save your liver until after you leave.

11) Coats are a pain in the ass. Leave them in the car, if possible.

The Twins have previously missed a golden opportunity by not working out some kind of coat check system. It’s January, so everyone is wearing their heavy jackets, particularly when they show up at 8:00 and the gates open at 9:00. But then you have to carry your jacket around with you the whole freaking day. The Common Man would have gladly pay $3-5 to have someone else mind his jacket while he walked around the stadium in comfort. As all the proceeds for TwinsFest go to charity, nobody should complain about this added expense. This is a great money-making proposition that The Common Man cannot believe has gone unaddressed.

12) If you enjoy people-watching, TwinsFest is a must.

In addition to grown men wearing jerseys with their nicknames written across the back (such as the 45 year old guy with a grey goatee, sweat pants, and a beer gut with “Iron Horse” on his shirsy), you get to see the latest in Baseball Annie-wear (tight shirsy tied above the midriff, a lot of layering with lacy fringed tops, unrealistically long blonde extensions, Bump-Its, high heels (you do know you’re standing in line all day, right?), and charcoal-dark eyeshadow that cakes the eye-socket). My God, it’s like they’re a 16 year old Twilight fan auditioning for American Idol. Also, you get to enjoy the cuteness of little kids decked out to the nines in Twins-related gear, invariably wearing face paint.

Plus, you get to enjoy the following categories of Twins-fan:

The guy who just came off the ice because he caught his limit for the day and might as well come because he doesn’t have anything else going today

The woman whose t-shirt is not quite covering her belly (in a bad way)

The guy who is just trying to get out of the cold by finding a quiet corner of the Dome to hibernate for the winter

The loud woman who complains constantly about how the autograph system works and can’t wait to get down to Florida in three weeks because it’s way too cold

The sad man-child hero-worshipper

The cynical souvenir-hunter, dragging two suitcases stuffed with shit, including several bats sticking out of the top, who is looking forward to selling everything on Ebay tomorrow

The beleaguered dad who didn’t take TCM’s advice at #9

The beleaguered mom who can’t believe the beleaguered dad didn’t take TCM’s advice at #9 even though she told him she didn’t think this would be a good idea, and now he still refuses to leave, even though everyone is miserable.

And, of course, The Whaaaaaaa? (Completely indescribable, but it usually involves a triple take, a lot of pointing and whispering, and wondering about what could make a person decide to leave the house like that. Will try to come back with photographic evidence of this elusive creature.)

Anyway, The Common Man hopes this will be helpful as you plan your TwinsFest (or really, any fan fest) this year. We’ll have our emails and Twitters open and active, so if you are going to be there on Saturday or Sunday, drop us a line. We’d love to say hi. And above all, relax and have fun. Spring Training is on the way.

And Now, a Great Story About Orlando Cepeda, Which TCM Will Proceed to Ruin

2012-01-26T09:00:00.003-06:00

The lecture The Common Man recounted yesterday was followed by a brief question and answer session, where Dr. Samuel Regalado, of the California State University, Stanislaus, told a story to illustrate how issues language and competitiveness became entwined in both the Latino and Asian-American games.

According to Regaldo, the Giants and the Reds were playing, with Orlando Cepeda on second base, Matty Alou hitting, and Joey Jay on the mound for the Reds. As Alou came up to bat, and in between pitches, Cepeda starts yelling advice at Alou in Spanish. Jay turned and yelled “Hey, don’t you speak any English?” At which point, Cepeda yelled back, “Sure! I think you’re a cocksucker! How’s that?”

That is a great story. Unfortunately, it’s not true. Or at least not as Dr. Regalado told it last night. Because in all the games that Joey Jay pitched for the Reds against the Giants between 1961 (Jay’s first year in Cincinnati) and 1965 (Alou’s last year in San Francisco), there was never a game where Cepeda was standing on second base and Matty Alou was hitting. That doesn’t mean it’s a total bust, however. There are a lot of ways the story could still have elements of truth in it, especially when we’re looking back through 50 years of fuzzy memories.

Joey Jay and Orlando Cepeda seem to be pretty solid elements of this story, so let’s work on the assumption that they were a part of whatever went down. Here are some possible variables:

He might have the wrong Alou.

There were three Alou brothers who all played for the Giants in this era, Matty, Jesus, and Felipe. Of the three, Matty got the least playing time. However, Felipe regularly batted immediately after Cepeda in the lineup, which seems promising.

Regalado also could have juxtaposed Cepeda and Matty Alou.

Alou tended to bat high in the lineup for the Giants, and could have been on 2B while Cepeda was the one at bat.

Cepeda or Alou might not have been on second base.

It’s possible that Cepeda or Alou could have been yelling from either 1B or 3B.

Jay might not have been with Cincinnati at the time.

Jay also pitched for the Braves from 1953-1955, from 1957-1960, and in 1966. Cepeda debuted in 1958, which gives us an additional four years to look through for Cepeda/Jay encounters.

OK, so based on that, The Common Man looked back through all of Joey Jay’s game logs on Baseball Reference, against the Giants from 1958-1966. Here are the nine situations, from seven separate games between Jay and the Giants that fit our scenario:

Date	Situation
5/2/59	Cepeda doubles in the 3rd, Felipe Alou grounds out.
8/11/60	Cepeda singles in the 5th, Felipe Alou doubles.
8/11/60	Cepeda singles in the 6th, Felipe Alou Ks.
9/24/61	Matty Alou singles and takes 2nd in the 1st inning, Cepeda Ks.
4/22/62	Cepeda doubles in Kuenn in the 6th, Felipe Alou flies out.
6/14/62	Cepeda singles in the 5th, Felipe Alou GIDP 6-4-3.
6/26/62	Matty Alou singles in the 1st, makes it to 3B, Cepeda fouls out.
6/26/62	Matty Alou walks in the 7th, Cepeda Ks.
9/12/62	Felipe Alou gets on via FC, goes to 2B on a McCovey single, Cepeda reaches on error.

If TCM had to guess, he’d put his money on the 1962 game where Cepeda doubled in Kuenn to bring up Felipe. It’s easy to mix up all those Alous, and that certainly seems like a situation where a frustrated Jay would erupt, and a triumphant Cepeda respond. It’s interesting that, except in one instance, Jay recovered to escape the inning without further damage. It would be great to get Regalado’s source to narrow down the actual game with more accuracy, because the story is too specific to be completely apocryphal, and too good to forget.

JoeD and Teddy Ballgame: Appropriately Rated.

2012-01-25T13:00:00.004-06:00

By Bill

So I hope you're aware by now of the High Heat Stats blog, which is basically what the Baseball Reference blog used to be, but is no longer hosted at BB-Ref.

They've done a fun couple posts lately, attempting to list the 50 most overrated and then most underrated hitters in baseball history (today, they're starting on the pitchers). Being specifically a stats blog, of course, they were pretty limited in the ways they could come up with to arrive at lists like that. I think the one they devised (with the help of the excellent Sky Kalkman) was pretty brilliant.

Basically: use the player's career rWAR as a proxy for his true worth/value/talent/etc. Then take BB-Ref's EloRater -- a system which gauges where the thousands of BB-Ref users rate each player -- as a measure of how the fans view the player. Then, figure out an expected WAR (eWAR), representing the career rWAR we'd assume a player would have if his production merited the rating he gets on the EloRater, based on the players surrounding him in the EloRater rankings. So, the players with the highest eWAR-rWAR are your most overrated players, and the ones with the highest rWAR-eWAR are your underrateds.

Ingenious...but not necessarily perfectly attuned to tell you what the headlines promise (which they happily recognize, and I'm not sure any stat or collection of stats could do that). Some of the guys who show up on the "overrated" list spent time in the Negro Leagues, or were otherwise prevented from putting up a career rWAR that accurately reflects their worth; most of the underrated list ends up being nineteenth-century guys, whose "replacement level" was likely much, much lower than the current ones. They're interesting lists, but they don't necessarily reflect the most under- and overrated players in baseball history.

I want to focus on two names in particular, though, from the overrated list: Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio.

Williams shows up as the #2 all-time position player by the EloRater system, which yields an eWAR of 163.4. His real-life rWAR, though, was "only" 125.3. High Heat's system thus concludes that he was "overrated" by 38.1 WAR -- 30% of his actual career WAR, or one full Moises Alou.

DiMaggio ranks #15 (he's actually 16th as I look at it now, but must've been 15 a few days ago), in the neighborhood of Alex Rodriguez, Mike Schmidt and Frank Robinson. His eWAR is thus 108.3, but his actual rWAR just 83.6, so he's "overrated" by 24.7 WAR -- also 30% of his total, or one complete-to-date Dustin Pedroia.

The spanner in the works, as you may already have worked out, is that both these guys served in World War II during what would have been the primes of their careers, and Williams threw in Korean War service, too, just for kicks. If what we're actually doing is giving a guy credit back for time he spent in active military service, I don't think it would be accurate to say that constitutes "overrating" that guy (and I have no doubt the High Heat guys would agree).

So here's what I did. I took the average rWAR of the six years surrounding the years DiMaggio and Williams missed most or all of due to war service -- 1940-42 and 1946-48 for both players, then a second average using 1949-51 and 1954-56 for Ted -- and made that their seasonal rWAR for each year that was missed. So, the average of DiMaggio's 1940-42 and his 1946-48 was 6.9 rWAR per season, so he gets credit for 6.9 in each of 1943, 1944 and 1945. Add that to their career totals (removing the WAR Williams actually earned in his very partial years in 1952 and '53) to get what we'll call xWAR (x just because I feel like all the other letters are pretty well taken at this point), the total we might have expected them to end up with in a peaceful world. Here's what I came up with:

	rWAR	eWAR	xWAR	Difference
DiMaggio	83.6	108.3	104.3	-4.0
Williams	125.3	163.4	165.7	+2.3

So by this (kind of arbitrary, but reasonable) method, both end up being "rated" within 4% of their actual career value -- close enough, essentially, to be considered exactly right. And considering it was arrived at by a system that involves users comparing against one another endless pairings of (not quite) random players, and that we're talking about players who were just plain absent for a total of eight prime seasons, that's pretty astounding accuracy. Probably something of a fluke, but a pretty impressive one, at least. Go humanity!

The Prince Fielder Logjam

2012-01-25T11:30:00.008-06:00

by Jason Wojciechowski

More badonk!
Photo by Steve Paluch

Prince Fielder came out of more or less nowhere, to the extent that any man his size can ever come out of nowhere, to sign a nine-year, $214 million deal with the Tigers. I haven't seen yet how the dollars break down year-by-year, and the Jose Reyes and Albert Pujols deals have proved that we can't assume the classic slight rise through the course of the contract these days. Teams and players appear willing to be creative in structuring their deals.

What this means as an initial matter is that if you're a fan of looking at total deal value in present day dollars, examining team payroll situations, adding up the WARs, or other analysis of that type, you're S.O.L. at the moment and you should probably hold your horses on deciding just how good or bad the deal is.
This doesn't mean there aren't interesting questions to examine, though. Like, for instance, what this means for Miguel Cabrera. Sadly for the speculatarati, that's been decided: Cabrera is moving to third base. (Hilariously, he calls that his "natural position." FRAA, which has, over the past four years, rated him as something like a -5 to -10 run defender at first base, might disagree, but hey, we all have our blind spots.)

Fortunately for Cabrera and the Tigers, their rotation appears to be entirely right-handed and only Rick Porcello of the likely five starters (Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer, Doug Fister, Porcello, and Jacob Turner) appears to rely heavily on the ground-ball out for his success. In the absence of Victor Martinez, which presumably leaves the DH spot to Ryan Raburn, a perfectly nice player who the Tigers shouldn't feel guilty about benching sometimes, Detroit might benefit from a defensive platoon that sees Cabrera starting at DH on days when Porcello pitches, leaving third for defensive wunderkind Brandon Inge.

Defensive performance isn't the only consideration in moving players around to new positions. Will Carroll has claimed to see a dramatic increase in injuries for position-switchers. One might wonder about certain kinds of switches, or certain kinds of positions -- first and third are sort of similar, for instance, in the types of activities that one engages in, at least compared to putting Cabrera in left field, which I've seen floated on Twitter. For a man of Cabrera's size, the idea of him lumbering after a ball into the alley or the corner on wet grass after years of relatively sedentary defensive play might give Tigers fans fits, and probably with some justice.

So why third base this year, with the aforementioned Victor Martinez injury clearing out DH for the whole year, letting Jim Leyland use either Fielder or Cabrera (or both!) at DH as much as he likes? I'd assume it's because Detroit needs to find out what it has now. If it has a third baseman who can do a Chipper Jones impression (i.e. poor at third, but not so poor that you feel like you have to move him off the position in order to win baseball games), then next year, they can run out a lineup that has Alex Avila at catcher, Martinez at DH, Fielder at first, and Cabrera at third. (And presumably go 115-47.) If instead they have a guy who got moved off the position in July of 2012, either because he hurt himself or he's truly horrendous, then at least they know that and they can trade Cabrera (ouch), Martinez (quite possibly at the bottom of his value), or Avila (a young, cheap catcher who can mash -- leaving Martinez to head back to the position he might not be able to handle anymore, especially post-knee surgery) to make the pieces fit. If they aim for defensive optimization this year, then they leave themselves with an information gap.

Of course, this isn't just a two-year problem. Victor Martinez is under contract through 2014. Miguel Cabrera will be 31 at that point, and Martinez, if you were holding out any hope at all that he might come back and play in the field, will be 35. Joke all you want about Oakland's Chris Carter-Daric Barton-Brandon Allen-Kila Ka'aihue logjam, but any of those guys can be sent to AAA, Barton's a plus defender when his shoulder is right, and Allen has at least theoretical athleticism that could see him in the outfield. No, this, folks, this right here in Detroit is a logjam. But I dare you to find a group of logs that can hit like these here logs.

The Beer Is On Bud

2012-01-25T09:53:00.001-06:00

By The Common Man

The Common Man learned several important facts last night, but perhaps the most important was that Commissioner Bud Selig knows how to throw a party. OK, a lecture. About Japanese-Americans. But it was about their relationship to baseball, primarily from 1900-1945. And was followed by a reception. And there were excellent old photos. This was the 2nd annual Selig Distinguished Lecture in Sport and Society at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and it was terrific fun. TCM went with Carson Cistulli, of the hated FanGraphs and NotGraphs, and the impossibly young Jackie Moore, of Disciples of Uecker, FanGraphs, and too many other places to name.

Samuel O. Regalado, a professor of history at California State University, Stanislaus, had to start his talk, One Base at a Time, a little late, as the Commissioner was busy engaging with undergraduate history majors in another part of the building. When he arrived, the Commissioner made his way confidently to the front of the room, in the way only a man with iron-clad job security can.

Dr. Regalado, an expert on Latino-American and Asian-American baseball cultures, spent the next 45 minutes discussing the origins of the Japanese-American attachment to the game in the late 19th and the early 20th centuries, and how “baseball [was] part fo the chemistry that nourished the heartbeat of their world.” According to Dr. Regaldo, baseball became an important tool for Nikkei (Japanese-Americans born in the United States) to not only assert their own community solidarity, but to express their patriotism and demonstrate a willingness to assimilate into the American melting pot. According to one player in the 1931 Pacific Northwest Baseball Tournament, “putting my uniform on was like putting on the American flag.”

The original league was centered around San Francisco, but when the 1906 earthquake scattered the surviving Japanese across the Pacific-Northwest, the game spread to other Asian-American communities as well. In Seattle, Frank Fokuda began arranging trips to Japan for teams of Nikkei players, who would play against local Japanese teams, forming a “cultural bridge between Asian and American culture.” Fokuda chose players who were well-mannered and scholarly, and arranged for visits to prominent landmarks and significant attractions for his young men, hoping this would make them “better suited for civic leadership.” In a way, as Dr. Regalado pointed out, these trips were a forerunner for the World Baseball Classic, and for the Babe Ruth-led trip to Japan in 1934.

Photo from last night's program

These early Nikkei teams were sponsored by local businesses and businessmen, churches, and Japanese-American citizens’ leagues, and competed both against one another in leagues and tournaments, and against whites in exhibitions. This included a series against Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig’s barnstorming teams, the Bustin’ Babes and the Laruping Lous, after the 1927 season. They also attempted to form a solid political base from which Japanese-Americans could influence politics in and around their communities, particularly in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, these efforts mostly failed, as Nikkei baseball was essentially invisible to whites, their patriotism ignored and unwitnessed. This, of course, made the decision to intern Japanese-Americans during World War II much easier.

While imprisoned by their government, Japanese-Americans carved out baseball fields from the limited space they had available, playing regular games with hundreds of spectators, most of whom would have to stand the entire time. After the war, however, Japanese-Americans scattered back across the West Coast, and were unable to renew their previous networks of ball teams, very similar to the way that semi-pro baseball leagues and teams gradually faded out of the American consciousness.

Dr. Regalado, however, was quick to point out the few examples of Japanese-Americans succeeding in American baseball, including Ryan Kurosaki, Lenn Sakada, Kurt Suzuki, and Don Wakamatsu. However, as he pointed out, these players and managers very much represent an exception to the overall truth that Japanese-Americans have not played much of a role in Major League history at all, even though such a thought would have been unfathomable based on their enthusiasm for the game 75 years ago.

After the lecture and the Q&A, there was a reception generously provided by Commissioner Selig, who pays for this entire lecture, by the way. There wasn’t much time to talk with the Commish, who was hobnobbing with History Department big wigs. However, a quick handshake, and an acknowledgement of how much The Common Man enjoys the World Baseball Classic was plenty for this encounter. Frankly, while TCM doesn’t often see eye-to-eye with Commissioner Selig (in fact, almost never), there is no denying the generosity and good will that events like this engender. It was not highly publicized in advance, but it was a tremendous opportunity to learn about the history of baseball outside of the traditional “heroic” narratives we get from the sports pages, as our hosts pointed out, and the photos were tremendous.

Many thanks to the Commissioner for the opportunity (and also for my two Lake Louie Scotch Ales and assorted food at the reception) and for his time. Thanks to Dr. Regalado for sharing his engaging research. And thanks to the UW-Madison History Department for hosting the event. Good times all around. If you’re in the Madison area next year when this presentation rolls around, The Common Man cannot recommend the experience enough.

A New Beginning...

2012-01-25T08:00:00.001-06:00

We promised to let you guys know soon about any changes going on at The Platoon Advantage. Today is one such day, though there will be others to follow soon. We're excited to announce that, beginning this morning, you can find our work on Baseball Prospectus once a week for the rest of 2012, and, if we don't burn the place down, hopefully more often after that. We all have been reading BPro for years, love the strong writing and analysis that they do, and were incredibly flattered when they asked us to come on board.

Today Bill starts us off by writing about allowing baseball fandom to trump numbers, and allowing those numbers to complement baseball fandom. A fitting introduction to our general philosophy here on TPA.

As for TPA, it's not going away. Our work is going to continue to appear here regularly, and will coninue to be the strong mix of history, stats, and current events, covered with the passion and irreverence that you've come to expect. And we'll keep reveling in the minutia that makes the game we love so special. Thanks to all of you for reading.

Factual Statements About Dallas McPherson

2012-01-24T11:00:00.000-06:00

by Jason Wojciechowski

Badonk!
Photo by Brule Laker

Dallas McPherson signed a minor-league contract with the White Sox today. In his honor, then, and because failed prospects fascinate me, here are 20 facts¹ about Dallas McPherson.

In 2005-2006, McPherson hit .250/.296/.459 for the Angels in 341 plate appearances as a 24-25-year-old.
This was more or less, accounting for park, a league-average performance overall, despite being quite light on avoiding making outs.

McPherson is listed at 6'4" and 230, or 1.05 x A.J. Pierzynski.
McPherson attempted six steals in 2005 despite getting on base like ten times and further despite being 1.05 x A.J. Pierzynski in size.
McPherson attended The Citadel.
Because McPherson attended The Citadel, his teammates and coaches are required to address him at all times as "Lieutenant McPherson" or "sir" or "Ell Tee."
McPherson's injury history on Baseball Prospectus reads like Lindsay Lohan's rap-sheet.
The reason for this is because McPherson is a criminal.
The real reason is because he has a back problem.
In 2009, during training camp, McPherson strained his trunk.
Nobody uses trunks anymore. It's all wheely suitcases and backpacks.
Lame.
Dallas McPherson was rated by Baseball America as the #12 prospect in all of baseball before 2005 after he spent 2003-2004 completely destroying the baseball, putting up full-year slugging percentages of .596 and .670.
In retrospect, those 169 strikeouts in 586 plate appearances at AA and AAA are pretty alarming.
Also in retrospect, Salt Lake was an insane place to hit. Adam Riggs slugged .633 in a full season there in 2004.
I've never heard of Adam Riggs.
Neither have you.
Dallas McPherson pitched at The Citadel and is in their Hall of Fame despite having shot many many fewer people than Old Hoss Radbourn.
McPherson has only shot three people. If you'd been to Rancho Cucamonga in 2003, you'd know why.
Dallas McPherson, if he plays what he calls a full season (80-110 games), will crack 800 minor-league games, 3000 minor-league at-bats, 200 minor-league doubles, 200 minor-league homers, 900 minor-league hits, 700 minor-league RBI.

Bonus fact: I will be rooting for McPherson to hit all these milestones (ok, "milestones") and more this year.

Neither I nor any other T.P.A. writer stands by these facts as true and factual. Rely on them at your risk.² ↩
Some of these facts are actually true. Many of them, in fact. I just like embellishing. ↩

On plans and prejudice

2012-01-23T11:00:00.000-06:00

by Jason Wojciechowski

A man, a plan ...
DN-0006156, Chicago Daily News negatives collection,
Chicago History Museum.

You know that parable about the elephant and the blind men? Baseball fans might could think about it sometimes.

Now, don't fret. I'm not here to repeat myself. This is a different point than what I've written elsewhere about acknowledging uncertainty, though it's perhaps a kissing cousin. What I want to zero in on in particular is premature judgment of a plan or the ongoing execution thereof.

The issue arises in particular in the off-season. In the cold months (ok, I'm in Los Angeles: relatively cold months) of winter, front offices begin making changes, and they're operating on multiple horizons. They're preparing for the Rule 5 draft, the early part of the season, the dog days, the stretch run, the next off-season, the next three seasons, and, for some owners, at least, the next decade over which they'll develop their fan-base and revenue streams, build a stadium, get out of the business and back into hotels, or what have you.

This should be daunting. It doesn't mean we can't do analysis, but it does mean that we should be careful about prejudging a team's plan, in particular because of the risk that an early-formed idea of that plan may prejudice our analysis of later moves that don't seem to fit that plan. Ideally, we would incorporate each new piece of information into an ongoing idea of the team's larger goals, but I'm not convinced that we do that very well.

Moves can be evaluated when they happen, to the best of our understanding of how they fit the plan, because some moves are bad risks and some moves are good risks. The Houston Astros signed Jack Cust for $600,000 and a team option. We can look at his defensive numbers and scouting reports, the decline of his bat, the Astros' other options, the tiny amount of money they're paying him, the fact that they don't have any top outfield prospects in the high minors, and the low likelihood of being competitive in the NL Central in 2012 and say that it's a nice little upside move, a chance to see if Cust can rehabilitate his value and be flipped or give the fans someone to cheer for besides Carlos Lee and Jose Altuve.

by Keith Allison

Some moves, we should wait and see. A clean, simple example is the Red Sox trade of Marco Scutaro to the Rockies for nothing much at all. The speculation (and it may be more than that, but I haven't done extensive research on this) is that this will free room for the Sox to pursue Roy Oswalt while they live with some combination of Mike Aviles, Nick Punto, and maybe Jose Iglesias's glove at shortstop. Judging this move on its own would be foolish. It is certainly possible that the Red Sox went through with this trade without complete certainty that their free agent target (if indeed there is one) will sign, and it is thus possible that someone else will swoop in and steal said player, thus leaving the Red Sox millions richer in the pocketbook and a few wins (?) poorer on the field. It's possible that they'll get exactly what they want.

Most moves don't telegraph the existence of a simple "this and then this" plan quite so obviously, mainly because baseball GMing involves so many moving parts and so much uncertainty -- they can't know for sure whether a rival GM will raise a free-agent offer, back out of a nearly done trade, suddenly retire, etc. This just means that as things change, we should be willing to re-evaluate our earlier ideas.

Some of this re-evaluation is about actual outcomes -- if a team drafts a player that I think is a terrible pick, but that player turns out quite well, then perhaps the team knew something I didn't. Then again, maybe they didn't, and they just got lucky. To an extent, then, we should be willing to re-evaluate from the perspective of the time, but putting ourselves in the shoes of the front office with the knowledge that we have gained since then of what that front office had up its sleeve. That is, I'm only a little interested in "this worked out" or "that didn't work out" because if we or GMs knew what would or wouldn't work out, the whole enterprise would be dull and the Yankees would win every year. What's interesting is the question of how a given signing or trade made in November looks like once we see how the team's overall budget shook out, what kind of contracts other players signed (if we can attribute some knowledge of the prices of other players to the GM at the time, anyway), what direction the divisional rivals were moving in, and so forth.

None of this, I should note, should be taken as arguing that we shouldn't evaluate the plans themselves (as best we can). Take, for instance, the way the A's traded Carlos Gonzalez and Huston Street for Matt Holliday a few years ago. The plan there was clearly to compete in that year, as Beane thought he saw a window of opportunity. This plan is open for criticism -- maybe we argue that he overestimated the rest of his team, or that he underestimated the Angels. The execution is also open for critique -- maybe Beane shouldn't have given away Carlos Gonzalez so easily, or should have insisted on including a lesser secondary asset than Street. (We ought to be sure, incidentally, that we're clear, both in our minds and in our writing, which of these aspects of a front office's work we're examining at a given moment.)

Cust and Lee and pray for grounders

2012-01-19T11:30:00.000-06:00

by Jason Wojciechowski

The Astros signed Jack Cust. This makes me sad, on the one hand, because I still have a dream that Cust will hit a Game 7 9th inning homer to propel the A's to their first World Series win since 1989. He's a folk hero in my house, see, the subject of my only "shirsey" (a Christmas gift from my wife, and arguably the best thing she's ever given me ... uh, aside from her hand in marriage, of course). I love his patience, I love his ridiculous upper-cut swing (so Stairsian, another player who stars on a t-shirt I own), I love his rotundity. Most of all, though, I love his defense.

I promise I'm not being contrary for the sake of it. It was a genuine delight for me to watch him try so hard in the outfield, stumbling around, making throws like he really meant it, just doing his damndest to look like an athlete when the whole world knew that he wasn't -- he's a hitter, dammit, and the DH position was invented for him. It was adorable, frankly.

Over 1725 innings in the outfield in his career (context: 162 * 9 = 1458), Total Zone (at Baseball-Reference) says that Cust was worth 29 runs below average. Pro-rating that to a season gets you -20 runs. Negative twenty! That's a lot!

But you know who else is on the Astros? And who, if the team shakes out the way I'd love it to, with Brett Wallace at first base and no DH in this, the Astros' final year (until Bud Selig changes his mind) in the National League? Carlos Lee, of course. Carlos Lee whose Total Zone figures in left field from 2006 to present day look like this: -28, -4, -9 (truncated season), -14, -20, +13 (half season). Let's throw out that +13, because what? And because it's not very funny to consider a Cust-Lee outfield if Lee is a +20 defender. And because c'mon.

So based on my selective sampling and picking and choosing and using a stat basically because it's on a site that's really easy to use and doing all sorts of things you're just not supposed to do, let's say that Cust is -20 over the course of the season in right and Lee, who's been forced into left by Brett Wallace's 15-homer spring training bomb show, is also -20. Even if this isn't their true talent, it's probably the case that we can easily believe that both could put up a -20 season by Total Zone if given the full opportunity.

Going by hand through the Baseball-Reference database, since apparently fielding isn't part of the Play Index stuff (yet?), here are all the outfields in the last 30 years with two -15 defenders in them (relaxing the standards for reasons that will become apparent):

2007 Pittsburgh Pirates, Xavier Nady -18, Jason Bay -18
2007 St. Louis Cardinals, Chris Duncan -17, Juan Encarnacion -16 (in just a half season each!)
2005 Boston Red Sox, Johnny Damon -23, Manny Ramirez -18 (Boston caveat?)
2003 New York Yankees, Bernie Williams -15, Hideki Matsui -19
2000 Cleveland Indians, Manny Ramirez -18, Wil Cordero -17 (but Cordero was traded to Cleveland mid-year; the -17 is his total for the season)
1999 Oakland Athletics, Ben Grieve -19, Matt Stairs -25
1999 Colorado Rockies, Dante Bichette -34 (!), Brian McRae -24 (McRae didn't play the full year with the Rockies)
1999 New York Mets, Rickey Henderson -15, Brian McRae -24 (McRae didn't play the full year with the Mets -- awesome)
1998 Minnesota Twins, Marty Cordova -15, Otis Nixon -20
1998 San Diego Padres, Steve Finley -17, Tony Gwynn -17
1997 San Diego Padres, Steve Finley -18, Tony Gwynn -15
1997 Oakland Athletics, Matt Stairs -15, Geronimo Berroa -18 (Berroa didn't play the full year with Oakland)
1997 Pittsburgh Pirates, Jermaine Allensworth -18, Jose Guillen -28
1995 San Diego Padres, Steve Finley -20, Tony Gwynn -18
1993 Minnesota Twins, Pedro Munoz -16, Kirby Puckett -29
1991 New York Yankees, Hensley Meulens -15, Mel Hall -21
1990 Chicago Cubs, Andre Dawson -17, Jerome Walton -18
1989 San Diego Padres, Marvell Wynne -20, Chris James -21, Tony Gwynn -23 (Wynne went from the Padres at the end of August; James came to the team at the beginning of June) ((holy cow))

Lessons? Here's a lesson: either Total Zone hates San Diego or San Diego really couldn't give two flying figs about outfield defense in the Tony Gwynn heyday.

Actually, one of things that strikes me is how many center-fielders are on the list. The only seasons with two corner outfielders are the Bay/Nady Pirates, the Encarnacion/Duncan Cardinals, the Cordero/Manny Indians, the Grieve/Stairs A's, the Stairs/Berroa A's, and the Meulens/Hall Yankees. Having a guy who'd be fine in a corner miscast in center strikes me as a whole different ballgame than playing two actual poor defensive players (since that's what it takes to be this bad in a corner) on the field at the same time.

Anyway, of that reduced list of two-corner teams, the closest to a true -20/-20 corner outfield situation was the 1999 A's, with Matt Stairs motoring around right as fast as his little hamster legs could carry him, Ben Grieve playing the part of the sculpted piece of marble in left, and a pitching staff that wisely featured guys like Omar Olivares, Kenny Rogers, Tim Hudson, and Gil Heredia.

None of this is analysis, and Total Zone relies on batted-ball-type data at its peril, but still, there's a real opportunity for Houston here: they could field a historically bad defensive outfield if they let Brett Wallace and Jack Cust play over J.D. Martinez and Brian Bogusevic. Who wouldn't want to see this happen?

Jamie Moyer: Four Degrees of Babe Ruth

2012-01-19T09:00:00.037-06:00

By Bill

As you may have heard, Jamie Moyer, who will turn fifty years old a few weeks after the upcoming season's World Series, finalized a minor-league contract with the Colorado Rockies last night. It seems like just about the worst possible place for Moyer to play, but hey, all he's got to do is make an appearance in the majors (far from a sure thing at this point) to be one of the stories of the year.

Inspired by Diane's great collection of Moyer facts (including the first one below) over at VORG, here's a quick chain of players who show up in the same box scores as one another:

On June 16, 1986, Moyer made his Major League debut for the Cubs against the Phillies. His opponent that day was Steve Carlton, aged 41, who took the mound looking for his ~~289th~~ 319th win. He wouldn't get it; Moyer didn't pitch very well, but he and the Cubs came away with a 7-5 win, Lee Smith picking up the save.
Carlton made his debut in 1965, at age 20, serving primarily as a reliever. On October 1 of that year, Carlton threw a hitless, one-strikeout inning in a losing effort against the Astros. Houston's starting pitcher in that game (who had been pulled the inning before Carlton entered) was future Hall of Famer Robin Roberts, then 38 and in his second-to-last year. Roberts threw a solid seven innings (albeit with just one strikeout, kind of an Astrodome special), picking up career win number 280.

Roberts' own Major League debut came on June 19, 1948, with a start for the Phillies against the Pirates. Roberts put in a strong eight innings (5 H, 2 BB, 2 K, 2 ER), but the Pirates won, 2-0. Roberts was relieved by journeyman and WWII-years-star Ed Heusser, then 39, who sat Pittsburgh down 1-2-3 in the ninth.

As a 26-year-old Cardinal rookie, Heusser's fifth career game (and first start) came against the Boston Braves on May 17, 1935. That would be the thirteenth-to-last game of Babe Ruth's career. Ruth managed a single in four trips (hit number 2,867 of 2,873), as the miserable Braves picked up a rare win, 7-1.

You can keep going from there, of course, and it's just a couple more steps back to baseball's primordial ooze: Ruth almost certainly pitched to Bobby Wallace, who definitely shared the same field many times with Cap Anson, whose career predates the National League. But we don't have game logs for those, and I feel like four steps back to the game's greatest folktale is good enough. Ruth started in 1914, so that's four players linked together whose combined careers span very nearly an entire century.

As if you needed another reason to root for Moyer, imagine how cool it will be 20-25 years from now if, in 2012, Moyer got to pitch to Starlin Castro, Jason Heyward or Mike Stanton. Or if he squares off against Houston pitcher Jordan Lyles, born a month before Moyer's 28th birthday. It'd make my day, anyway.

[Morning-after edit: Moyer actually already has pitched to Heyward, but needs to face a few more youngsters to increase the odds of carrying it forward another 20 years or so.]

[Afternoon-after edit: Or, ideally, as Diane noted in her piece, Moyer could face the Nationals' Bryce Harper late this season. He'll be in his age-19 year, almost exactly 30 years younger than Moyer.]

Jack Morris is going to be a Hall of Famer, and that's OK.

2012-01-17T13:00:00.054-06:00

By Bill

I've been about as critical of Jack Morris -- or, more accurately, of his Hall of Fame case -- as anyone traversing this here information superhighway ever has been. I'm not ashamed. One post in particular was probably one of my two or three favorites among all the baseball things I've ever written, comparing Bert Blyleven to Morris + Mariano Rivera.

But that's enough, now. More than enough. By now, every single person in a position to care -- and that includes every single BBWAA voter, or close enough to it -- has heard all the arguments. They know he wasn't really the best pitcher of the 1980s, that his career stats don't stand out in any meaningful way from those of Frank Tanana or Dennis Martinez, that his ERA was only a touch better than average, and would be the highest of any pitcher in the Hall. They even know -- or have heard, at least, if they won't allow themselves to be convinced -- that he didn't actually "pitch to the score." There's nothing new under the Jack Morris world's intense angry red mustachioed sun.

Oh, there might be new ways to say things to keep it interesting and worth saying -- I'd humbly suggest that the post above might have qualified, and this one last week, by BPro's Jonathan Bernhardt, certainly did -- and every now and then you might just need to lash out against something that's obviously, objectively wrong and happens to be about Morris ... but just spitting out stats and comps and telling people he's not qualified, whether on Twitter or your blog or anywhere else, doesn't cut it anymore. It's browbeating, and it's counterproductive at this point.

Here's the thing: he's going in. There's absolutely nothing you, or I, or all of us together can do about that. And that's okay.

Well, it's not quite a sure thing he's going in. Chris Jaffe, who is normally very good at these things, doesn't think it's likely. Rany Jazayerli credited David Schoenfield (can't find the original source) with the observation that after picking up 68% of the vote in 1998, Tony Perez fell to 61% in '99, with the debuts of George Brett, Robin Yount, Nolan Ryan and Carlton Fisk on the ballot.

I'm not buying any of that, though. For one thing, 1999 was Perez's eighth year on the ballot; he made it in (for some reason) on his ninth try, with six to spare, when there were no other compelling candidates aside from the holdover Fisk on the 2000 ballot. This is Morris' second-to-last try, by contrast, and definitely his last realistic shot.

For a second thing: it's getting to be a cliche by now, but it's absolutely true that 2013 is going to be completely unlike any ballot that has come before. Jaffe's reasoning is that "Morris probably won’t move up enough because it is such a strong batch of new guys." I don't think so. There are certainly a lot of should-be slam dunks coming in, but the only new guy who figures to finish particularly strong in the voting is Craig Biggio, and he's far from a first-ballot lock. By and large, the guys interested in voting for Morris aren't the same ones who might be tempted to bump Morris off because they're voting for Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens and Biggio, and/or some combination of deserving first-timers or holdovers like Mike Piazza, Sammy Sosa, Curt Schilling, Kenny Lofton, Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro and Edgar Martinez. If anything, the vast majority of them will bump any of those guys off (even Bonds or Clemens, maybe especially Bonds or Clemens) in favor of the presumptively "clean" Morris, who won't have the fourteen shots left most of these guys will (assuming they get 5% of the vote, which I think will be a problem for Lofton and possibly Palmeiro).

Rather, the real 1999-like year, in terms of players the voters are actually likely to want to enshrine, is the following year, 2014: Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and Frank Thomas are all pretty close to first-ballot shoo-ins. You might as well think of 2013 as Morris' last year on the ballot, because he's not going in with those dudes.

So, that's why I think Morris goes in next year. As amazing as the talent on the 2013 ballot is, it's not going to pull many votes off of Morris, thanks to the "PE"D questions and because it'll be viewed as his last realistic shot. It's 2013 or nothing...and for 75%-plus of the voters, it's going to be 2013. He's going in. Might as well get used to it.

And that's fine. I haven't come to terms with it the same way TCM did last year, where he determined that it's justified because Morris gets extra credit for Game 7 and that that somehow, nebulously, makes him kind of deserving. It's not that okay. I remain confident that voting for Morris is a silly decision and impossible to coherently defend, unless you're in an alternate-universe 2000 where nobody else is going to vote for him and you want to toss him a pity vote (his doppelganger Tanana got 0 votes in his one year, after all).

But I'm okay with his going in, itself. It's the wrong decision, but 67% have already made that decision, and realistically, it's very likely that between the announcement of the results and now, at least another 8% already have made the same decision for next year. There's no point in discussing it any further.

And, really: what's it to you (or me)? Morris gets in, and the BBWAA puts an undeserving player in the Hall. It's not the first time, it's unlikely to be the last, and he's far from the least deserving they've ever enshrined. What else happens? As I said, it's not a decision between Morris and somebody else for most of these voters, especially not between Morris and a deserving steroid-era guy like Bagwell or a controversial-for-some-reason candidate like Raines. He's not keeping someone else out, not at this point. All that happens is that one guy, who doesn't quite meet the standard, gets in. There are no other real-world consequences.

I like what Dave Cameron said about this a bit over a week ago:

To me, an inclusive hall is a better hall, and one I’d be more interested in visiting. I won’t begrudge someone who holds a small hall perspective, but I would ask them to perhaps consider to what end they’re in favor of exclusivity. What is the benefit of fewer people remembering how great Tim Raines really was?

Slightly different issue, since Raines does meet almost any standard you might put out there, but in a similar vein, what's the harm of putting Morris in? He'll get a plaque hanging in the same gallery of others which, yes, mostly represent much greater players, but some of which represent Freddie Lindstrom, and Jesse Haines, and Herb Pennock. And that's all. You can go to the Hall and walk right past him. It's no skin off your...whatever analogigal place on you an irritant might take skin off of. The world keeps turning.

At this point, if you're inclined to rant and rave about the Hall of Fame and the voting therefor (and lord knows I am), it just seems to me your time is better spent arguing for guys who really do belong and risk being unfairly forgotten -- your Trammells and Raineses and Edgars and Bagwells -- than against a guy like Morris who doesn't.

Transparency in Hall of Fame Voting

2012-01-17T09:00:00.001-06:00

By Mark Smith

I think there was a “groupthink” Hall of Fame ballot among“sabermetricians”. It involved voting for Tim Raines, Jeff Bagwell, BarryLarkin, and Alan Trammel, but it was perfectly fine to add Edgar Martinez, MarkMcGwire, Rafael Palmeiro, and/or Larry Walker. If you are a “big Hall” guy, youwere allowed to bring in Fred McGriff and/or Dale Murphy, but those ten areabout where the line was drawn. I say “groupthink” because anyone outside ofthose 10 were routinely criticized and even McGriff or Murphy would havebrought you a decent amount of criticism and at least a demand for a goodreason. The quotation marks were added because I think those 8-10 players werethe result of solid research and comparison, but it was so common to see thenames that it was almost expected. The voting surrounding the actual voters,however, was much more scattered.

Because of the variance in the voting among the electorate this year and in past years, there havebeen calls for anendto the secret ballot. The idea is pretty simple. The BBWAA is voting on afairly important part of the game, and because the votes seem scattered and inno way consistent, fans want the votes revealed in order to make sure thevoters are doing enough research and using consistency in their thinking. It’sa call for accountability.

The whole thing seems akin to Congress. Congress votes on legislationthat will affect the future of the country, and because of the importance ofthe voting and to avoid corruption (haha),the voting is open to the public record. The lack of a secret ballot helpsvoters know who they should vote in to office and who actually reflects thedistrict’s beliefs. The problem is that the type of voting isn’t exactlysimilar. Congress is making country-altering decisions. BBWAA voters aren’teven making baseball-altering decisions (itdoesn’t really matter to baseball itself who is voted in and not). Perhapsif the BBWAA voted on instant replay or the like, they should be heldaccountable, but their votes are more akin to the Congress being asked to voteon the best politicians in American history for a private museum. We need the Congressional Record to beopen. We want the Hall of Fame ballotto be open.

As a result of the lack of actual need, the revelation of ballots needsto be negotiated, either formally or informally. In order to get the voters toreveal the ballots, you have to give the writers something in return. Why?Let’s pretend to be in the BBWAA for a moment. Why would you reveal your vote?One answer could be the attention, but the one we’re focused on isaccountability. You want your readers to know you are accountable, responsible,for your vote. I hate to break it to you, but that isn’t exactly a greatmotivating factor. Quite a few voters may feel the need to be accountable, butfor the most part, accountability doesn’t pay the bills or keep their HoF vote.It’s theirs for life, so you’re going to have to work harder. The best resultis garnering praise, but the most likely result is having to constantly defendyour vote to smart and uninformed arguers alike. When the most likely result of your revelation is basically being annoyed and probably still having your intelligence questioned, I'm not surprised that most of the writers don't reveal their votes (though I'd like to note that I don't think the writers who did not reveal their votes are afraid of accountability; there are other reasons they may not have written something to that effect).

To be honest, the strategy isn’t to add something (you could try money or something, but I doubt that would work) butto subtract something - your attention and readership. I don’t see thathappening, however, so we’re back to square one. We’re caught. We’re unhappywith the way things are (it should benoted that I would like writers to reveal and defend their votes; I agreetheoretically), but we don’t really have any leverage to change thesituation. The situation is more like players using steroids. They finallyagreed to testing, but that was only because they believed that the credibilityof their profession was on the precipice of collapse. I don’t think thatmainstream journalism’s credibility is in the same jeopardy.

Listen, I would love for writers to be held accountable for theirvotes. It’s the best way to get them to vote in an educated and responsiblemanner. But we’re caught. The BBWAA and Hall of Fame rules don’t force them toreveal their votes, and there’s no compelling reason to make them change.

30 teams, 30 reasons to hate

2012-01-12T13:00:00.002-06:00

by Jason Wojciechowski
Following up on my last post, here is one thing for each team (almost each team) that I hold against that team's fans. I hate all of you.

Yankees -- Jeffrey Maier. I don't care how long ago it was. Jeffrey Maier
Red Sox -- pink hats, dogg. Pink hats.
Rays -- your very existence confounds me. If you're a Floridian who was desperate for a baseball team of your own, how did you not end up with the Marlins? I mean, be a fan of who you want, I don't care. I just don't get it.
Blue Jays -- if your country didn't exist, hockey probably wouldn't either. I don't know if you invented it (you probably didn't), but you are surely perpetuating it.
Orioles -- Earl Weaver is still alive, ain't he? Why have you not stormed the Orioles' offices and demanded that he be made manager?
White Sox -- you should be a Cubs fan. Why aren't you a Cubs fan? Are you bearist? You literally root for laundry. Go be a Cubs fan.
Twins -- Look, I'm not trying to get fired. I know what's good for me
Tigers -- your great grandparents probably rooted for Ty Cobb, didn't they?
Royals -- I went to Arthur Bryant's once and they threw sauce all over my shirt and pants. My favorite shirt and pants. Those were Royals fans who did that.
Indians -- Chief Wahoo
A's -- you're a Raiders fan too, aren't you? Yeah.
Mariners -- you've got the most awesome lookalike in the entire league, a flat dead ringer for Ichiro, and he discredits you all by leaning over the rail and touching a live ball! You must take responsibility for teaching your lookalikes better
Rangers -- GWB
Angels -- Arte Moreno tried to claim Los Angeles for himself and y'all just go along with it? Have some pride in your county, Orange
Astros -- one of your own, by managing to successfully run on the field, has only emboldened an entire generation of loser copy-cats who will take away from the product we've all paid to see
Brewers -- stop glorifying sausage!
Cardinals -- I am not in favor of booing, but it is incumbent on you to boo your manager when he changes pitchers three times in one inning. Your failure to do so reflects poorly on you
Cubs -- put a shirt on!
Reds -- I've had your chili, man, and that ain't food
Pirates -- I've got something on everybody but I've got nothing on Pittsburgh or its fans. I like Michael Chabon, "yinz" is kind of charming, I'm Polish, and I still feel bad for you about Pat Meares. I'm sorry
Mets -- I was in an un-air-conditioned 7 train car to a game once. I'm putting this on the entire city.
Phillies -- J.D. Drew and Santa Claus? (I know that was the Eagles, but it counts)
Marlins -- you're just letting this fish tank behind home plate happen? This calls for Occupation
Braves -- the tomahawk chop. (Most of this post is just fun, but I'm kind of serious about this one.)
Nationals -- you stole the Expos and you don't even care
Giants -- you're not A's fans
Dodgers -- the Dodger Dog isn't even a thing. It's just a hot dog. Stop it
Padres -- Tony Gwynn is in the Hall of Fame but Tim Raines isn't. I don't know why this is your fault, but it is
Diamondbacks -- get your children out of that damn pool
Rockies -- Rocky Mountain Oysters. Look, just ... don't even start with me

(Having learned that some people don't realize when things aren't entirely serious, let me just note that I'm kidding. I love all of you.)
((Most of you.))

Happy Birthday...

2012-01-12T09:00:00.024-06:00

Randy Jones!

The National League gave out ten Cy Young Awards in the decade of the 1970s, as you'd probably expect. Eight of them went to players who were now in the Hall of Fame: two to Tom Seaver, two to Steve Carlton, and one each to Bob Gibson, Fergie Jenkins, Gaylord Perry, and Bruce Sutter.

One of the other two was Mike Marshall, the rubber-armed reliever turned kind of crazy kinesiologist doing scary things with young pitchers' arms, who appeared in a record 106 games in relief in 1974 -- 13 in a row, at one point -- and pitched 208.1 innings, all in relief, gathering 15 wins (with 12 losses) and a league-leading 21 saves.

The tenth one, you've probably guessed, was Randy Jones.

Jones, who for whatever it's worth is the first player I've ever come across who has a nickname listed on Wikipedia ("Junk Man," which definitely fits) but not Baseball-Reference, was drafted by the Padres with the first pick of the fifth round of the 1972 draft, out of the relatively nearby Chapman College, and was in the Majors by the middle of the following season.

Both of his first two Padres teams went 60-102; Jones had a promising half-season with the first, but the second was a disaster. On a team with a young Dave Winfield and an old Willie McCovey and what one assumes would be a terrible defense (they get a -91 by Total Zone, with three different players in negative double digits), Jones went 8-22, leading the league in losses, with a 4.45 ERA (80 ERA+). Nowadays, though, he'd be touted as a breakout candidate as soon as the Padres got a defense; his FIP was just 3.58, roughly the same as it had been in '73.

And sure enough, in 1975, the Padres improved by eleven games, improved their defense per Total Zone by nearly fifty runs (though it's not clear how; they were basically the same team), and Jones put up what was almost certainly his best year, with a 20-12 record and league-leading 2.24 ERA (and an also-league-leading 156 ERA+) in 285 innings. His strikeouts actually fell by more than two per nine from the year before (to an unheard-of-these-days 3.25), but his walk rate fell almost as much (to 1.77), and he gave up about a home run for every two full games. He finished a distant second to Seaver -- who put up a slightly worse ERA and ERA+ in slightly fewer innings, but got two more "wins" and three fewer "losses" -- in the Cy Young race. Jones did win the "Comeback Player of the Year" award, somehow, even though it was his first good season and he was still only 24.

1976 was Jones' Cy Young year, but 1975 was almost certainly better. By rWAR, Jones went from 7.7 to 5.1 and by WARP, 8.0 to 5.6, although by fWAR, he actually improved, 4.3 to 4.6, with similar ratios in 30 more innings. But while his innings went up to 315 and he led the league in starts (40), complete games (25!) and, most importantly for the voters, wins (22), his ERA went up by a full half run, the ERA+ dropping to 120. His strikeouts took another dip, to a perfectly ludicrous 2.65 (which, while crazy, isn't as rare as I'd assumed: here's a list of the best seasons, by rWAR, of pitchers to have put up less than 3.0 K/9 since 1950). There were fewer strikeouts overall then, of course, but that's still barely half of the league's average for starters that year (4.82).

So how does a guy nicknamed "Junk Man," who struck out essentially zero people, succeed to the point of a Cy Young runner-up and win (and a pair of 10th-place MVP finishes, interestingly) in consecutive years? Jones had a "fastball" that only rarely broke 80 miles an hour, which in itself (plus his being a lefty) tempts comparisons to Jamie Moyer. Those fall short, though, because Jones' secret was not a changeup, but his sinker, which tended to actually travel a bit faster than his "fastball." His sinker has to have been devastatingly effective; it'd be great if we had the data to show his ground-ball percentages from those two years.

Jones has said that the fastball and sinker were essentially his only pitches, but two sources in The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers -- his catcher Fred Kendall and a nemesis, Keith Hernandez -- disagree, citing his slider as another reason for his success. Here's what Hernandez had to say, taken by Neyer and James from Pure Baseball by Hernandez and Mike Bryan:

Perhaps more common than the hard sinker ballers are pitchers like the former Padre Randy Jones, a left-hander with a sinker that traveled in the low eighties--not hard at all, really, but that pitch broke late and sharply and killed the league. Right-handed batters lost patience, chased after it, and missed it every time. Finally some manager had the bright idea of going against the book by stacking his lineup with left-handed hitters to go against the left-hander Jones. Unheard of! But the sinker broke into their favorite hitting zone. Jones retaliated against left-handed batters with a good, sharp slider that he could break over the outside corner.

So what Jones did, he did with what must have been an incredible ability to induce ground balls, and almost equally incredible control, with a walk rate in 1976 (1.43) considerably less than half of the league's average. He was the modern Twins' idea of the perfect pitcher, essentially.

So that was Randy Jones at the end of 1976: not yet 27, coming off one 20-loss and then two 20-win seasons, posting a 2.50 ERA in almost exactly 600 innings over the latter two, with a Cy Young win and a runner-up. Sadly, on his last start of the 1976 season, Jones injured his arm in a way that required surgery. He went back out for the start of the '77 season, but he was ineffective, and had to miss about six weeks with another injury from mid-June through all of July. That was a wasted year, and he could justifiably have won the Comeback award in '78 (13-14, 2.88, 115 ERA+ in 253 innings), but he just wasn't the same pitcher after the 1976 season, getting by on luck and guile when he got by at all. He put up below-average years with the Padres through 1980 and then with the Mets, as a part-timer, in 1981 and '82, and then he was out of baseball after that, at age 32. He finished with a sub-.500 won-lost record at 105-123, making Jones (per Wikipedia and my perfunctory Wikipedia-confirming review) the only Cy Young Award-winning starting pitcher in history to finish his career with more losses than wins.

Since his retirement upon being released by the Pirates in Spring Training 1983, Jones has served as a coach, and owns a catering business. His number was retired by the Padres in 1997, an honor he now shares with Steve Garvey, Tony Gwynn, Dave Winfield, and Trevor Hoffman. He's just fourth among all Padres pitchers in rWAR, falling behind Hoffman, Jake Peavy and Andy Ashby. But, you know, fourth in line for a team that's now 43 years old isn't too bad.

Jones turns 62 today. Happy birthday, Randy!

Peter Abraham Is Not a Plagiarist, But He Is An Insufferable Douchebag

2012-01-11T13:49:00.001-06:00

By The Common Man

Douchebag

One last navel-gazing post this week, before we get back to business here on The Platoon Advantage. Some of you have asked who the writer is who, through his threats and general complaints, got us removed from the SweetSpot Network, despite the fact that seemingly everyone (including several writers at ESPN) thought our Bagwell and “plagiarism” series was excellent. As Bill said earlier, we don't want to personally attack writers for their baseball opinions. But when a writer reveals himself to be a jackass through his words and actions, we feel somewhat differently about the whole thing.

So, at the urging of at least one national writer, who referred to our culprit as “a complete asshole” and revealed that “even people who work with him/by him…loathe him,” we’re happy to announce that, when you see us all driving shiny new Camaros over the next few months (our swift departure from ESPN has revealed a great deal of interest in our services and our blog, as it turns out), you have The Boston Globe’s Peter Abraham to thank for it.

You’ll remember Peter Abraham as the writer who, in our initial Bagwell-related piece in December, we ultimately decided not to suspect of plagiarism, because (ironically) there was not enough evidence. Later, we learned that Abraham did not vote for Bagwell last year because he was influenced by the steroid suspicions for which there’s no evidence. This year, however, he publicly reconsidered that stance, and voted for Bagwell. We celebrated that decision. The Common Man even made the point of telling him so on Twitter, saying:

https://twitter.com/#!/commnman/status/152063680941539328 via kwout

Abraham, understandably curious, wondered,

The Common Man continued on, saying:

and also...

https://twitter.com/#!/commnman/status/152088318367113216 via kwout

At this point, Mr. Abraham switched to sending The Common Man Direct Messages through Twitter. Those direct messages have since disappeared, and The Common Man was too stupid to get a screen shot of them at the time. He did, however, record them all in an email he sent to David Schoenfield on December 28. Here’s the sum total of our conversation, along with The Common Man’s MST3K-esque commentary:

Peter: Are you insane? Throwing that word around is career threatening and I have never been accused of anything remotely like that.

(And he still hasn’t, as we didn’t accuse anyone of anything. Nor was he even considered suspect.)

Peter: for you even to associate me with that is irresponsible, unethical and reckless

(Reckless? Well, there were some ramifications that The Common Man didn’t consider. Like, for instance, that a crazed writer would get this bent out of shape and get us run off of ESPN. As for unethical, given TCM’s article was clearly satirical in nature, he’s confident he did nothing wrong here. And even if it were not satirical, it’s certainly no less ethical than publicly airing suspicions that someone used illegal substances without proof.)

Peter: and you don’t have the guts to put your name on it? What the hell is wrong with you?

(Doctors everywhere wonder that, actually. Lots, probably. But TCM is pretty clear about the reasons behind his decision to use his pseudonym, and it’s about to become clear why those reasons are valid.)

TCM: I’m sorry you feel that way. My intent was satirical, pointing out the unfair double standard to which some HOF voters were suspecting…

TCM: Bagwell. I think it’s clear, if anyone were to read the article, that there’s no actual intent to accuse anyone of anything.

(Nor does anyone actually ever get accused of anything, let alone Mr. Abraham, who was never even suspected.)

Peter: Really, tell that to my boss who just called me and asked me about this.

TCM: I would be happy to, if he or she would like to contact me. And I’m working right now to amend the post to reflect your change in stance.

(Nobody ever contacted The Common Man from The Boston Globe to discuss it. If they did, TCM would tell them that they would have had to be incredibly thick…as thick as Peter Abraham, in fact…not to see the satire inherent in the piece.)

TCM: But I stand by the position that writers who publicly air unfounded suspicions re: PED use have an equal responsibility to defend themselves.

Now Peter gets really mad:

Peter: I want your name and who you work for at ESPN. Thanks.

(We all want things, Peter.)

TCM: Feel free to contact David Schoenfield of the SweetSpot blog. I’m sure he can put you in contact with whomever is most appropriate…

Peter: I want his e-mail and I want your name. You’re so ethical, stand up for yourself.

(TCM has been standing up for himself. And for Jeff Bagwell. It’s not a particularly brave stance, mind you, to rant and rave against the injustice done to a baseball player. The Common Man isn’t this guy, for instance, who stood up for himself and was never identified. But the point is that it’s possible to be an ethical actor, and to critique power, without revealing your name.)

TCM: My apologies, I thought David’s email address was publicly available. Here it is [there’s no way I’m going to give you people David’s email address; nice try, though].

Peter: come on, give me your name and where you work, just to be clever I want to endanger your career. seems fair.

Look, say what you want about TCM’s series on Bagwell and “plagiarism,” but you can’t seriously believe at any time that anyone’s career was threatened over it. Peter Abraham was not disciplined. Bob Brookover wasn’t fired. Nobody is calling for Danny Knobler’s head. And yet, here is a mainstream writer literally threatening the career of someone who doesn’t write about baseball for a living. He’s probably being sarcastic, and The Common Man was never really worried. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a dick move.

Anyway, Peter did contact David, who put him in contact with the editors and ESPN’s legal department. As you would expect, no one thought this passed the litigation smell test. They also, and TCM is grateful for this, refused to release The Common Man’s name. Good on them for respecting intellectual freedom. The bad news, of course, is that ESPN’s editorial leadership decided that The Platoon Advantage wasn’t worth the trouble of keeping around. Indeed, TCM wants to be clear: aside from the ultimate decision to let us go, ESPN was terrific throughout this entire situation. And, frankly, we can see, from their perspective, why letting us go was a valid decision. We wish they had made a different one, but we respect the decision they made. And hey, it's going to work out fine anyway. So if you want to bash ESPN, do it for some other reason. Not for this one.

The bad actor in all of this, for The Common Man’s money, is Abraham. As was only fair, The Common Man updated his original post to reflect Abraham’s change in position and even wrote a separate post regarding his change of heart titled In Which We Joyously Celebrate Peter Abraham, Who Is NOT a Plagiarist. Again, that seemed fair. Abraham was not a plagiarist (so far as we know), so it seemed only fair to shout that from the rooftops. The Common Man did not apologize for the original post then, nor does he now. In fact, we all stand behind it here at TPA. Apparently, that wasn’t enough for Peter. C’est la vie.

So, since there’s little else to say, the story is told, and we are no longer under any obligation to censor our thoughts as regards to other writers or profanity, we all just want to say that this bitter, angry, thin-skinned, bullying, insecure bag of dicks can take a flying fuck at a rolling donut. No wonder everyone thinks he’s an asshole.

One quick thought on SaberBoy

2012-01-11T09:00:00.040-06:00

By Bill

I was going to make a whole "manifesto" out of this: the key principles of SaberBoy's view on the baseball world. But I wasn't making it funny enough to come off as intended, and I don't take myself nearly seriously enough to do it straight. So I'll just stick to the one most important point.

By now, if you're reading this, odds are you've already gotten a glimpse (at least) of the whole "SaberBoy" thing. If not, the internet has you covered: it's wrapped up pretty well by Stuart Jones here, by Steve Gardner of USA Today here, and by Craig Calcaterra at NBC Sports here, and our very own Mark has a profile of the new hero right here. Sarah Wiener designed the logo to the right, and has T-shirts and other stuff for sale. Craziness, all of it. Certainly not what I was expecting to come out of a Monday that started with us announcing our departure from ESPN. In the span of 24 hours, thanks pretty much entirely to the new name and avatar, I picked up something over 250 new Twitter followers. That was a lot of fun.

There's a pretty obvious danger in a superhero character named SaberBoy, though, and I think it's fairly well outlined (as I read it, at least) in a comment by one of my favorite tweeters and casual baseball-related acquaintances:

Indeed, most of the torrent of initial jokes centered around the new superhero making the world safe for [tired statgeek cliches] against his arch-nemeses [traditional mainstream sportswriter] and [Jack Morris or Jim Rice or Tim McCarver]. Lots of the lines were really funny. Mark had a few right here. There's a line in my Twitter bio that gives a similar impression -- a crusader to battle the BBWAA and bring them into line.

But that's not what it was about, though. In fact, I think it's kind of the opposite of what it's about.

The reason I got such a kick out of Miller's comment -- and I'd like to think it's the reason most other people did -- was that right now, in 2012, it's absolutely absurd to use a made-up slur like "Saberboy." Most mainstream writers now are also bloggers. Most are at least aware of most of the key sabermetric concepts and many of the stats, and a great many even put them to use, to varying degrees. I'd argue that the stat geek side has, by and large, taken similar, if smaller, steps toward the middle, recognizing that we don't always know everything, for starters, and acknowledging the importance of things like scouting.

In the context of that world, the idea that one particular writer (an NHL writer, it's worth noting, who keeps himself intentionally and kind of proudly ignorant about baseball and what the Hall actually is -- a far different animal from someone like Jon Heyman, a smart baseball guy who just happens to be kind of poor at analysis) thinks that "Saberboy" is a good idea is just funny, made even funnier by the fact that it's not wOBA or WARP or SIERA that draws the "SaberBoy" label, but rather OBP (hence the emblem on SaberBoy's chest), and the idea -- now pretty uncontroversial -- that it's a better stat than batting average.

SaberBoy, the superhero, is a parody of the us-vs.-them, good-vs.-evil world of 2002 (per Kevin; I'd go as late as 2007, but whatever) in which Miller apparently thinks we still live. Which is why all those lines about SaberBoy and his arch enemies Heyman and Chass were jokes. Heyman is not my enemy, certainly, and neither is Miller, or any of the suspected plagiarists (well, one is, but that's a totally different issue).

To the extent SaberBoy stands for anything at all (and he probably doesn't), it's about acquiring knowledge, acknowledging uncertainty, and challenging traditional ideas. But that's giving the whole idea way too much credit; it's mostly just about being kind of funny. Which involves a little making fun of silly thinking, of course (like this beauty from early this morning), but not crusading against the people who espouse those traditional ideas and deepening the divide between "bloggers" and "journalists" or what-have-you. Rather, more than anything, it's about poking fun at that divide. Which I think is pretty much why it's funny.

Leave other fans aloooooooooooone

2012-01-10T12:21:00.000-06:00

by Jason Wojciechowski

As a blogger and inveterate Tweeter, I don't have a lot of moral authority to ask people not to make fun of something. We've all jabbed beat writers, said mean things about front offices, wished that TV announcers would lose their jobs (or even rejoiced when the latter actually happens). There is an area that I think we'd all be better off leaving alone, though: fans.

Asshole fans exist everywhere. Nice, sober guys don't get into fights in the stands at the game. Dicks and drunks do. Chill bros don't run on the field so they'll get tased. Attention whores living unfulfilled lives do. Committed fans don't jabber on their cell phones through the whole game, pausing only long enough to wave at a TV camera when it points their way. People with misplaced priorities do. (What on earth could be more important than the game on the field?)

It is possible that some fanbases contain more utter douches than others. God knows Philadelphia has been accused of this often enough. It's possible that some fanbases contain more apathetic scenesters. People complain about the bankers in the TV seats at Yankee playoff games. And it's possible that some fanbases foster more people who feel the need to get themselves involved in the action on the field. (I'm not sure what city has this reputation. Is there one? Certainly Houston has the most skilled of field-runners, but that's a different issue.)

Do we have any data on any of this, though? Any studies on the level of attention of front-row October Yankees fans vs. front-row October Cardinals diehards? Any collections of ballpark arrest data that control for police attentiveness, alcohol sold (the better the public transportation, the more drinking, probably?), weather, and team crumminess? I'd be happy to hear in the comments of any information you all have heard, but I don't have any.

So maybe, unless we do have some nice data to cite, let's lay off the fan stereotyping for a while. I'd like to think that we're too much adults for this. Besides, the joy of Twitter for me has been interacting with fans of all types and seeing that they're mostly just like me. Colin Wyers, as near as I can tell, is not frequently shirtless and drunk in the stands at Wrigley. Grant Brisbee is not a wine-drinking snob who looks down on A's fans from his penthouse suite. (If there were any justice in the world, he'd earn enough money from his writing to have a penthouse suite from whence he could look down on whomever he likes, but that's neither here nor there.) Bill Baer doesn't pelt batteries at the opposing team's right-fielder. Ben Kabak isn't a bandwagoner, can name a player besides Derek Jeter, and likely doesn't spend a lot of time dealing with talk radio. And our very own Bill here at TPA doesn't have a ridiculous midwestern accent.

You get the point. You don't have to look very hard to find intelligent, committed, decent human beings in every fanbase. Why focus on the doofuses and paint the entire crowd with that brush? It's divisive and pointless. I'm probably preaching to the choir a bit on this (TPA has, it seems to me, a very level-headed set of readers, not prone to the kind of unthinking unkindness I'm writing against), but just in case: let's all stop that.

(Yes, even as to Angels fans.)

Included in this, I want to note, should be cracks about attendance, size of the fanbase, and the general level of commitment allegedly signified by these numerical factors. You know why the Yankees have so many fans at their games? Because they've been winning a lot for like 15 years, developing and bringing in the best players in the game, cultivating a strong rivalry with a divisional competitor, and, oh yeah, playing in the biggest city and metro area in the country, in a very accessible stadium for people from many places in that area.

Tampa fans, by contrast, have a team that's only recently had success, only recently come into existence, and have to go to a crap stadium in what is by all accounts a very difficult location. There's not a huge population to draw on in the first place and that population has been hit quite hard by the recession.

I've picked two poles (sorta -- I probably could have picked the A's, but you're surely tired of hearing me talk about them), which isn't the most fair way to make a point, but I hope it illustrates the basic idea that there are a million factors other than committedness of the fanbase that determine attendance. Saying things like "what's A's fans" or "where are the Rays fans?" is silly. No team is immune to downswings (compared to the league average) in attendance because their fans are just that good. It's all relative, sure: when Yankees fans in the late '60s or from 1989 to 1996 didn't attend games in droves, they still drew at a basically league-average rate? The drop probably had a lot to do with team mediocrity, crime problems, and so forth, and the cushion under that drop can be attributed to the positive factors mentioned above -- long history of greatness, huge population, etc. etc.

So: just like we should be careful about attributing the actions of a small set of asshats to an entire group, we should avoid ascribing moral value to the decision whether or not to attend a baseball contest, a decision that is so obviously a result of weighing factors far beyond "how much do I love this team?" that I'd like to think this kind of razzing beneath our dignity.