I just got out of the Nationals - Brewers Memorial Day special at Nationals Ballpark, where I watched yet another extra inning game (although this one didn’t end happily for the home team). Unfortunately, this game left me thinking about the symptoms of struggling teams that are approaching the one-third mark of the season with a sense of inevitable cellar-hood. No, happily this is not perennial bottom feeders like the Marlins (currently 9 games over .500), the Rays (10 games over), or the Astros (6 games over). Instead, below the surprise disappointments (Mets, Tigers), we see the usual faces of the Nationals at the bottom of their division. Yes, they have been attacked by the injury bug like some of their peers, and they are recovering from an era of slash and burn drafting that has left their fields fallow of inside talent. However, neither of those circumstances warrants a manager doing anything less than the utmost to win ballgames.

Today’s game featured Manny Acta keeping a reliever in to throw 11 straight balls and load the bases in the 11th inning of a 1-run game. That pitcher was Saul Rivera, and he had already pitched a scoreless 10th and given up the go-ahead run in the 11th to the eighth batter he faced. Naturally, Manny Acta kept him in to face 3 more batters, walking two and going to 3-0 on Rickie Weeks before getting a couple called strikes and escaping the frame.

In the bottom of the inning, Manny spoke with his bats. In a game that saw a Nats starting nine including Willie Harris, Aaron (Effin’) Boone and Rob Mackowiak batting 1st, 3rd and 6th (respectively), it would seem reasonable to expect some pop off the bench in extra innings. Instead, Acta marched out Boone and pinch hitter WIL NIEVES to end the Nationals’ hopes for holiday cheer. Yes, folks, instead of aiming high with the resting and restive Ryan Zimmerman or the potentially willful and walloping Wily Mo Peña, Manny called upon the catcher who began the season fourth on the depth chart. (For those of you new to the game, back-up back-up back-up catchers are not known for the punch they pack at the plate.)

Perhaps Manny was excited by the 30-year old’s success bashing his first career home run in April of this year, or maybe he had an eye toward Wil’s 51 career home runs launched in 1005 minor league games. Most likely, Manny was enamored of Nieves’ .327/.389/.429 line on 56 plate appearances this season. Just another example of a sense of futility permeating a team through managerial ennui.

“Marcus Thames did exactly what you should do as a pinch hitter: on the first good pitch you see, jump all over it.” — Rod Allen, FSN-Detroit color announcer, May 5, 2008

Cliché: “The best pinch-hitters are very aggressive fastball hitters.”
Verdict: False
Why: The idea that a pinch hitter should swing early stems from the false understanding of the pinch hitter as a man who comes up in a key situation with one job: to drive in a baserunner. This is a flawed conception because of the very status of the pinch hitter himself. If he is relegated to first-man-off-the-bench duties, he must necessarily be worse than any other options at his position. Furthermore, although we can safely assume he is situationally better than the batter he replaces (not a foregone conclusion, however), he is likely to be worse than the starting position player who is on deck. Therefore, why strive for an all-or-nothing plate approach when there is likely to be a better batter waiting in the wings in the event of a mere base on balls?

Jeff Pentland, hitting coach for the Seattle Mariners, expresses one flawed justification for this fallacy perfectly:

“When you come off the bench, the pitcher thinks you[’re] cold. That’s why they’ll see a lot of fastballs. Your best pinch-hitters are very aggressive fastball hitters. Generally speaking, the best pinch-hitters don’t let the first one go. They’re able to make good contact early. That’s a big key, so you don’t get into breaking ball counts.”

Locked up in this explanation are a few assumptions. First, the assumption that a pitcher is fresh and is throwing fastballs for strikes. Second, the assumption that batters who are “very aggressive fastball hitters” don’t get as cold or have as much trouble catching up to fastballs immediately off the bench. Third, the assumption is present that pitchers (and managers) don’t realize this, and therefore won’t adjust their strategies according to the approach of the hitter entering the game. Ultimately, the last part of this comment belies the absurdity of holding up one-dimensional fastball hitters as the epitome of pinch hitting. If any batter off the bench were talented enough to hit a big league breaking ball, who would choose Marcus Thames over him? Furthermore, if Edgar Renteria is on deck with two outs, who would send up a Thames to hack away at the first pitch he sees, rather than employing the best option to try to work a walk and give the superior hitter an opportunity?

In reality, the definition of the ideal pinch hitter as an aggressive, dead red hacker is an inversion of causes. Due to their limited ability, aggressive mistake-hitters are often relegated to pinch hitting duties, where they sometimes experience modest success. To say that their limited style is therefore more desirable than the ability to wait for a pitch to hit or draw a walk strikes me as an exercise in placating the sensitive egos of the Thames, Monroes and Dobbs‘ of the world, rather than a legitimate search for baseball truth.

I have been thinking about some of the traditional nuggets of baseball wisdom and trying to put them to the test. I am not savvy enough to do this in a statistically rigorous way, but I think we can look critically at some adages and see if they stand the test of time.

Cliché: “Good pitching beats good hitting.”
Verdict: True
Why: If you think about it, a truly good (starting) pitcher has the ability to get through the lineup multiple times without allowing many baserunners or runs. If a pitcher is incapable of retiring the best hitters (say, 1 or 2 through 5 in an order), he will inevitably run into problem innings. It is difficult to regularly produce quality starts while getting hit hard a few innings per game. Thus, a good pitcher is expected to be able to retire all but the most potent of hitters (e.g. Barry Bonds ca. 2004).
As for hitters, even the best are not expected to be able to turn on a nasty pitcher’s nastiest stuff. It is satisfactory (and often even preferable) for a hitter to leave his mark in the later innings, when the starter begins to fatigue or the (presumably less nasty) bullpen pitchers make their appearances. Nobody would point to a top flight batter and complain that his production is low in the third or fourth inning, when an ace is likely to have already settled into his groove.

With the headline news earlier today of Derrick Turnbow’s designation for assignment, the Brewers have officially commenced the disassembly of one of the more absurdly constructed bullpens of recent memory. Yes, folks, Doug Melvin spent this past offseason building a veritable junk heap of formerly famous one-inning guys. The Brewers compiled Frankenstein’s bullpen nearly entirely out of the discarded parts of one-time closers’ dead bodies. Melvin bet nearly $25 million of someone else’s money that pitching coach Mike Maddux, one of the great bullpen journeymen of the modern era, could sew the parts together into a lead-protecting and damage-minimizing short relief machine.

Needless to say, even the best laid plans go awry with alarming regularity. (more…)

Please allow me to direct you to a piece in this week’s New Yorker that paints a portrait of a manically successful, middle-aged Lenny Dykstra who acknowledges the post-career breakdown of an athlete’s toughness by answering the phone, “Thumbtacks.” The occasion for the article is the development of Dykstra’s new business venture, a magazine called The Players Club, that is designed to educate athletes on how to “Keep Living the Dream” (that’s the slogan) after their playing days are over — an important cause if today’s heros are to avoid the fates of yesterday’s stars. The magazine will be distributed to athletes in all the major professional sports leagues, and its column will be written by many former pros. Dykstra, perhaps one of the most notoriously addictive personalities in baseball of the 1980s-90s, seems like a strange success story to emulate. The piece gives insight, however, into how a nearly psychotic love for status symbols and capitalism (in the form of quite successful day trading) has replaced some of his more self-destructive tendencies. Dykstra has grown into a self-proclaimed “robes-and-room-service kind of guy,” and he proposes a way to get the next generation to successfully extended their lifestyles of stardom into the middle age years that start immediately upon retirement. He seems to be thoroughly insane, but, strangely, it undeniably seems to be working for him.

Much virtual ink has been spilled over the managerial acrobatics that will be required to work in all the young talent the Dodgers have developed in the outfield (Matt Kemp, Andre Ethier) and infield (James Loney, the now-injured Andy LaRoche). A less common topic for soapbox rants is the future of the Dodgers’ young pitchers. Lefty phenom Clayton Kershaw is a consensus top 10, can’t miss prospect (contingent on health, of course). Hefty set-up man Jonathan Broxton will continue to mow down hitters in eighth innings as a close approximation to his future closer roll (when Takashi Saito finally starts acting his age). And finally, right-handed starter Chad Billingsley is coming off an extremely productive age-22 season in which he posted a 3.31 ERA and 141 strikeouts in 147 innings split between the bullpen and the rotation. Rightfully impressed by this performance, the Dodgers will be leaning heavily on Billingsley as their number three starter in front of a back end that includes question marks in Japanese import Hiroki Kuroda and reclamation projects like Esteban Loaiza and Jason Schmidt. Do they have anything to worry about?

Baseball Prospectus’ Kevin Goldstein calls Billingsley the best talent under 25 in the Dodgers system. He goes on to gush, “if you are looking for 2008 breakout candidates from a pitching perspective, don’t be surprised if Billingsley finishes in the top five of next year’s NL Cy Young Award voting.” Those are bold words that show us that KG foresees a similar follow-up performance from the big righty. But whither PECOTA, BP’s favorite, “deadly accurate” predictive tool? PECOTA expects Billingsley to wither a bit in his first full year in the rotation. It pegs his Collapse Rate at a nasty 59%, while limiting his chance of improvement to a mere 14%. While it seems reasonable to temper expectations of improvement on Billingsley’s 130 career ERA+, the sky high Collapse Rate should give fantasy owners, Dodgers fans, and Ned Colletti some anxiety. (more…)

Curtis Granderson is such a useful player. Last year he was a little prepackaged ball of productivity, with all the accouterments to appeal to traditionalists and statisticians alike.

You dig defense? Curtis takes excellent routes in center field, exploiting his athleticism without relying on lightning speed. Like bat speed? He knocks line drives at a healthy (and sustainable) rate of 21.8% of balls in play, which should temper the sobering threat of dramatic regression to the mean by continuing to generate a high batting average on balls in play in 2008. Considering that his swing created 84(!) extra base hits in 2007, I would say that he does not lack pop. Worried about plate discipline? His high strikeout rate will always be a concern, but a closer look at his 2007 splits shows that he shaved off a few percentage points in the second half last year. While we can’t expect the 27 year-old to go all Jose Reyes and completely change his approach, we can hope that he manages to play toward his patient streak (4+ career pitches seen per PA) and avoid flailing too much.

Believe it’s the ever-intangible work ethic (”make-up”) that makes or breaks a budding star? After spending his off-season engaged in outreach and goodwill appearances, Granderson reported early to spring training to get back in the groove and aim for a more consistent season in 2008. He idolizes fellow rising star Grady Sizemore.

Maybe you dream of speed on the basepaths. Granderson doesn’t light the world on fire in the 40-yard dash, but he has explosive acceleration and excellent instincts. He dominated the basepaths, going 26 for 27 in stolen base attempts (yes, that’s a 96% success rate). Out of the box, only 4 other players were less likely than Granderson to ground into a double play in a given plate appearance. Want smarts in addition to savvy? Curtis holds two business degrees and blogs regularly and eloquently for ESPN.

Ultimately, Curtis Granderson’s future as a star or a mere regular lies in his ability to hit against lefties. Last year, while he personified Hank Greenberg in 543 plate appearances against the more common breed of pitchers (AVG/OBP/SLG: .337/.393/.621), he “hit” his lefty brethren to a beyond-anemic tune of .160/.225/.269, while striking out in 30% of his 133 plate appearances. Honestly, the fact that Curtis only reached base 27 more times than I would against southpaws is a sign that there is still room for improvement in his already dynamic game. I say, let’s see it happen, and you can leave your mark in more than the obscure statistic area of baseball’s collective memory.

Just wanted to throw some observations out there, even if they are all about NYC and Boston. Some bullet points:

After compiling the prospect ranking data into a big list and mushing it into various shapes, I would like to present some observations. First off, whom should we trust? While the rankings are fairly comparable at the top, each writer has a few soft spots and blind spots that we are happy to identify and gripe about. Of the four lists presented, I find the most frustrating to be that of MiLB.com. The list seems to be unwilling to recognize new top talent and less likely to punish formerly high-ranked players for disappointing performance. It is typical of this list, for example, that toolsy outfielder Andrew McCutchen rose from 15th last year to 8th overall in ‘08 despite his underwhelming statistical performance at AA. Does MiLB.com see his prospect status increase as he gets ostensibly closer to the bigs, even if there is no evidence that his talent is crystallizing? Or are we led to believe that the quality of this year’s prospect crop has declined to the point where a guy who is this far away from realizing his talent is in the top 10? For reference, the other lists have him 12th, 24th and 38th. Perhaps more disconcerting is MiLB.com’s complete omission of otherwise consensus Top 50 prospects like Jordan Schafer, Daric Barton, Matt LaPorta, Chin-Lung Hu, Geovany Soto, Manny Parra, and Jose Tabata in favor of guys like Tyler Colvin (#44), Alcides Escobar (#42), Radhames Liz (#45), Chris Volstad (#39) and Luke Hochevar (#40), who barely and rarely appear in any of the other experts’ top 100, let alone among the top 50.

My nitpicking, however, does not stop at MiLB.com. (more…)

In the midst of steroid drama, statistical butting of heads, poorly run franchises, and desperate hopes and fears for the upcoming season, maybe we all need to detach ourselves a bit and remember why baseball is so sweet. Here is a blog presenting 792 reasons why baseball captured us as kids and never let us go. One of the only other reasons I can think of is Joe Castiglione. Enjoy your stroll through the Runnin’ 80s.