The Power of HooDoo

Man, Haven't Done One Of These In A While

2010-02-16T23:45:00.001-08:00

Maybe now that I'm unemployed, I'll have more time for sabermetrics. Or not, whatever.

Just a day away from Mets pitchers and catchers reporting. Finding it hard to get excited for the team this year. Even with the addition of Jason Bay, it looks like approximately an 84-win team. And that assumes that Reyes, Beltran et al will come back and be healthy for most/all of the year. Honestly, I'd bet the under.

Epic Fail

2009-08-15T22:48:00.000-07:00

Jesus, can't the Mets do anything right? I mean, this entire season has been a double serving of fail. But the one remaining major league-caliber position player on the team gets beaned in the head, and you can't even retaliate properly? FAIL.

Santana, your heart was in the right place, you just couldn't get it done. Just like the Mets always can't get it done.

God, this reminds me of another time a team spectacularly failed to protect their star player after a concussive beaning. Thankfully the Mets don't have any shameful incidents like that in their past, the memory of which I would have to kill with cheap bourbon. Yes, thank God that never happened.

PS -- Matt Cain, I'm sure it was an accident. But tipping your hat to the crowd afterward was not.

Fuck You, Omar Minaya

2009-07-10T20:43:00.000-07:00

Are you shitting me? For real? You go to hell. You go to hell and you die!

Rageohol

2009-01-22T18:24:00.001-08:00

Today I am filled with rageohol. It's like alcohol, except your body produces it naturally.

Not Baseball, But Awesome

2008-10-19T20:49:00.000-07:00

I could watch this clip every day and twice on Sundays.

Also, congratulations to the Rays on making the world series. Your continued existence depends on how quickly you are able to eviscerate the Phillies. That is all.

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I Don't Know If Anybody Else Remembers . . .

2008-09-30T22:29:00.000-07:00

. . . this, but it's obvious what the choice should have been. Hey hey hey.

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Beast King GoMets!!

2008-09-25T20:42:00.000-07:00

Man, this is awesome. I wish I'd thought of it first. Also, I am totally stealing this image for my fantasy team next year.

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Sorry I Have Not Been Posting

2008-09-19T12:22:00.000-07:00

Ten! (In A Row)

2008-07-17T19:56:00.000-07:00

Tied with the Phillies! Down is up, black is white; we are through the looking glass here, people. Despite the poor start by Santana, I was weirdly confident the Mets were going to win this one. I don't know what kind of deal Fernando Tatis signed with the devil, but apparently it was a good one.

Holy Crap

2008-07-15T22:27:00.000-07:00

Thanks, Uggla. Can an All-Star nod be rescinded? Jesus.

That Was A Close Shave

2008-07-07T19:57:00.000-07:00

Hooray! The Mets are back over .500! Although, this game ended up way more interesting than it should have. I didn't get to see the first six innings -- how was Pedro?

He's still got a terrible ERA, but I'd like to take a look at his peripherals and see if Pedro is as done as everyone's been saying. Later, maybe. I looked at all of the spreadsheets I can for today. Yes, it does occasionally happen.

Ugh

2008-06-24T17:57:00.000-07:00

Well that sucked, and no two ways about it. Dropping back under .500, coupled with this loss tonight, has already made my first point here inaccurate, but the playoffs are still possible. Not likely, certainly not the way the Mets have been playing, but possible.

God, there's nothing like letting the worst team in baseball get on a winning streak.

On the plus side, at least somebody seemed pissed off about it. Sure, too little, too late; but it's better than nothing, I guess.

The Mets Can't Do Anything Right

2008-06-17T08:58:00.001-07:00

Well, this is probably the right decision, but god this was handled badly. Really, if you're going to fire Willie Randolph, you should have done it like three weeks ago, rather than letting him squirm for almost a month and then dragging his ass out to California.

Really, if you're going to fire him, you should have done it last October. Glargh.

How Many More Times Will I Have To Post This?

2008-06-10T21:05:00.000-07:00

No more than 99, at any rate.

Science! It Works, Bitches!

2008-05-31T22:53:00.000-07:00

Or at any rate, Billy Wagner does. Wow. I honestly can't remember the last time I saw a closer brutalize three hitters like that. I'll be going to the game on Sunday night, so I hope the Mets can get go 3-1 on the Dodgers. Man, that'd put them a whole game over .500! Holy crap!

Happy Birthday

2008-05-31T22:43:00.000-07:00

Yay.

Mets Creep Back Towards Mediocrity

2008-05-28T21:15:00.001-07:00

Well, my pledge to not watch the Mets for a week lasted all of one day. Gar. Anyway, Mets win a series against the division leaders, so I guess I should be happy. Of course, if you have to rely on home runs from Endy Chavez and Luis Castillo, you're not going to win too many games.

But screw it; a win is a win.

Got a new article up at MetsGeek about Willie Randolph's atrocious bullpen management, too. Apparently judging the impact of managers is all the sabermetric rage (Thanks, John).

Also, the 'Geeks jokingly switched the site to RaysGeek, so we could finally follow a winner. Funny. The Mets have since won two in a row, so I assume that it'll stay RaysGeek until the Mets lose. A player on a streak has to respect the streak.

I'm Fucking Done

2008-05-23T22:27:00.000-07:00

That's it. Fuck it. I'm not watching any baseball for a week. I'll check back in after Willie is fired. Which should be sometime early next week. Tuesday, I'm guessing.

What's amazing about this team is that they're finding brand new fucking ways to lose each night. Sometimes it's the bullpen . . . sometimes they can't score any runs . . . sometimes it's crummy base running, or defensive errors, or Mike Pelfrey starts. Fuck.

That's It

2008-05-22T19:02:00.000-07:00

This team stinks.

It Is Time To Face Facts

2008-05-20T21:34:00.000-07:00

The Mets are not going to make the playoffs. Especially not with season-thus-far MVP Ryan Church getting another concussion. I can't wait to see more of Marlon and Endy.

Coincidentally, the pic above also accurately depicts how I feel right now.

Jeez, I Haven't Posted Over Here In A Long Time

2008-05-08T11:34:00.000-07:00

So, if you're one of the three dudes who read this thing regularly, I've had a couple of new things up over at MetsGeek: one on Nelson Figueroa, and a new one on Mike Pelfrey.

The one on Pelfrey I actually really like. I got to look into some of the Pitch-F/X data that Josh Kalk's been putting up; I think that shit is fascinating. One of the things I didn't get to go into was the pitch/count information, especially when combined with the results from Pelfrey's splits on B-Ref. Like, nobody this year has swung at a 3-0 pitch from Pelfrey. Nobody. Or, on 3-1 pitches Pelfrey is allowing a 2.650 OPS. Glarg.

Anyway, I think that kind of stuff is really interesting. On the other hand, I also fill out spreadsheets for fun.

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Gas On The Flames

2008-04-21T20:55:00.000-07:00

That sucked ass.

More Pelfrey! Also, The Oxymoron At MetsGeek

2008-04-15T21:20:00.000-07:00

Well done again, Mike. What was most encouraging about tonight game for Pelfrey, just like last time, was the ratio of ground balls to fly balls: 12-4. If Big Pelf can maintain that kind of ratio he's going to have a great year. I can't remember the exact numbers for the various types of balls-in-play, but something like 80% of fly balls become outs; around 70% of ground balls turn into outs, while line drives only become outs around 25% of the time. So why are ground balls good, if they're less likely to turn into an out than a fly ball? Because fly balls that don't turn into outs are much more likely to turn into extra-base hits. You can't hit a home run on a ground ball.

Well I mean you can (inside-the-park job) but it's extremely unlikely.

Anyway, I also got something up again over at MetsGeek, this time on the oxymoron Angel Pagan, who went 1-3 with a walk tonight. Man, I am starting to get really thirsty.

Pelfrey: The Worm Is Turning

2008-04-09T23:28:00.000-07:00

Nice to see Mike Pelfrey get some run support tonight. I know he didn't pitch especially well last season, but if memory serves he was either awful or OK. He only had one that one start in ATL where he pitched really, really well. Like, he had a bunch of starts where he pitched well enough to have a 50-50 shot at winning, but he couldn't win a single one.

Anyway, bad luck for Boudreaux, in this case, is good luck for Blank. El Duque is going to be wearing a protective boot for at least a couple more weeks; which means that Pelfrey, for three or four starts at least, is no longer auditioning for a job. Maybe he can relax a bit and just pitch.

Opening Day!!

2008-03-31T21:52:00.000-07:00

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-ah!!!

Also, Johan Santana: just as good as advertised.

Jose Reyes And The Stolen Base

2008-03-12T21:58:00.000-07:00

I got another one up at the 'Geek, this one on Jose Reyes and his stolen bases last year. I started looking at his attempts per month data with the expectation that there would be no pattern, and that therefore Jose's slump in September was just a coincidence, bad timing. I was kinda surprised to find out that there was an interesting pattern to his base running. Turns out, in the month before his slump, Reyes doubled the rate at which the attempted to steal bases. And for a month, he was successful. But I think that the bill came due in September, and this led directly to his crappy finish.

Also, one minor correction: Reyes was closing in on the Mets single-season stolen base record, previously held by ol' Stone Hands himself. God, I hated that guy. Anyway, my bad.

Nothing Can Withstand The Withering Might Of My MetsGeek Posting!

2008-03-08T00:20:00.000-08:00

Hung out with my old high-school pal Chopper the other night, who apparently reads this blog occasionally. Anyway, here's the link to my latest MetsGeek post; about Joe Smith, who throws from down under, which I'm sure you can appreciate.

Pedro Offers You His Protection

2008-02-26T21:32:00.000-08:00

(from Metsblog)

Pedro's saying all the right things here about relinquishing the #1 spot to Santana, and to a certain extent he probably means it. It's not like Pedro has anything left to prove. Of course, in his own mind Pedro still is, and always has been, King Shit of Fuck Mountain. And from where I'm sitting, until his arm completely falls off or he somehow proves otherwise, he still is.

MetsGeek, and Steroids

2008-02-20T20:59:00.000-08:00

I got another instant classic up over at the MetsGeek. There hasn't been a whole lot of action since the Santana signing, and I was kinda stuck for an idea. I ended up writing something about Jim Bouton's baseball memoir Ball Four. It's a great book, not just a great baseball book. Anyway, it's been up for a day or two now and I got no comments, so either my analysis was so very, very insightful that no further comment was necessary; or else the 'Geek audience thought it was boring. Oh well. They can't all be winners.

Anyway, one thought about the current Roger Clemens kerfuffle. Roger seems to be digging himself a deeper and deeper hole with each increasingly implausible denial, but refuses to admit what 95% of us believe already -- that he took steroids*. His problem, and Barry's too, is that Roger is so used to winning that he can't concede that he's losing this battle, both in Congress and in the fans' hearts. Someone so far out at the end of the talent curve -- and make no mistake, steroids or no, Roger Clemens was ridiculously talented -- is almost by definition crazy.

Less talented players, like Pettitte or Knoblauch might find it easier to admit when they're beat because their expectations for their own success are more realistic.

Anyway, if you read this, throw me some love in the comments over at MetsGeek, even if it's just to tell me how much I suck. It makes me feel like somebody out there gives a shit.

*Steroids here meaning any and all illegal PEDs.

Another Post, You Handsome Devil

2008-02-15T14:46:00.001-08:00

I had a new one up over at the 'Geek almost two weeks ago. I've kinda gotten off of my regular Thursday schedule. Not sure if this one's got the magic. There should be a new one up any day, too. Blargh.

Johan Santanadana

2008-01-30T18:32:00.000-08:00

This is a really good trade for the Mets. I mean, assuming the contract gets signed and blah blah blah. Santana apparently really wanted to come to the Mets -- which is nice, for a change. Some folks think that this might indicate that players now regard the Mets as a first-class organization, and Queens as a desireable place to play; but really, I don't think so.

The truth is that there were limited teams who would be able to afford to pay Santana the amount of money in an extension in order for him to waive his no-trade clause; realistically only the Red Sox, Yanks, and Mets. And the Sox and Yankees were more more interested in preventing their AL East rivals from securing Santana than in actually getting him themselves. Once that became apparent to Bill Smith (Twinks GM) he didn't really have anybody else to trade with except the Mets. Which is why they were able to get him for four Grade B prospects.

Still, it worked out great for us.

Also, Philly? HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!

I Need A New Job

2008-01-28T11:33:00.001-08:00

Seriously. Anybody need a number-puncher or a data wrangler? I can't take this shit any more.

Back In Town

2008-01-21T17:44:00.000-08:00

I'm back in the borough on MLK Day (or Lee/Jackson/King Day, as they called it in VA when I grew up -- and you wonder why there are still race problems in this country). Anyway, another drop of pure gold is up for you all over at the 'Geek. This one about Carl of Gado.

Yet Another Classic Over At The 'Geek

2008-01-03T21:45:00.000-08:00

This one's on the value of catcher defense, specifically if Brian Schneider's defense is good enough to make up for his crummy bat. Uncle Pants, you should be happy. Much smarter men than I concluded that catcher defense is statistically insignificant. Plus graphs!

This Is A Sad Day

2007-12-20T14:01:00.000-08:00

I can't tell you the number of hours I spent at this magnificent little shithole. Between 1996 and 2000, I lived in a tiny studio right across the street. I was working as a bartender myself at various places in the neighborhood at the time, and I would always come here after I closed up my bar for a post-closing time shift drink. This was the first bar I went to with my old high school pal Eddie after discovering that we lived only a block apart. So many, many good times.

After I got to be friends with Shane and Alex, the bartender & barback, they would close up the bar and kick everybody else out at 4:00 and we -- along with a couple of other stalwarts -- would play pool or cards until the sun came up, drinking as much as we wanted for a $20 tip. I'd never felt so cool, and at this stage of my life I probably won't ever again. I watched this guy lose $200 in a game of 25-cent ante poker, with as much aplomb as a guy who probably made $23,000 a year possibly could. That fucker ate ramen noodles for a month.

Fuck you, East Village. You're dead to me.

Matt Wise

2007-12-19T21:45:00.000-08:00

I got a new article up over at the 'Geek, this time about Matt Wise, the right-handed relief pitcher the Mets picked up this week. I'm not sure how I feel about this one, but I've been busy as fuck organizing M4K, and it's done and handed in on time, at any rate.

Speaking of Mustaches for Kids, this year's charity Mustache is almost gone. Technically speaking, the month-long growing period is over -- our 'Stache Bash was last Saturday. But if you haven't sent in your pledges yet (and you know who you are) it isn't too late -- you can donate here or here. Or just gimme a paper check made out to DonorsChoose.org. It's a really good cause.

By the way, regarding Matt Wise: the Mets traded Guillermo Mota to the Brewers for Johnny Estrada, then signed Brian Schneider and dumped Estrada. Then, after the Brewers had to non-tender Matt Wise because they signed Riske and Gagne (oh my!) the Mets picked Wise up for about $2 million less than Mota is going to cost in 2008. For those of you playing at home, the Mets effectively traded Guillermo Mota for Matt Wise, straight up, saving themselves $2 mil and probably getting a better pitcher in the bargain. Sweet.

My Articles Thus Far

2007-12-09T22:24:00.000-08:00

Here's where you can find all of the MetsGeek articles I've written so far. I did one on how badly the Mets would miss having Tom Glavine (some, but not as much as you might think); one on whether or not Livan Hernandez was any good (no, no damn good); and one on whether Carlos Silva was any good (yes, with some reservations).

HJ, I hope you can understand these, and that they aren't too boring

I Am Now A Geek

2007-12-05T22:31:00.000-08:00

A MetsGeek, that is. The analysis of the Mets late-season collapse you can read below earned me a spot as a staff writer at my favorite sabermetrically-inclined Mets site. Finally, I receive the recognition which I so richly deserve. Anyway, I'll continue to post over here, but I'll be writing over at the 'Geek every other Thursday. My latest article is up right now -- you should read it.

Surely Some Revelation Is At Hand

2007-11-28T12:03:00.000-08:00

Tommy Glavine put the finishing touches* on the Mets historic collapse in the last game of 2007 with one of the most spectacularly bad starts of his long career, giving up seven earned runs in only a third of an inning. In a way, I can almost respect that. I mean, if you’re going to blow a seven-game lead with only 17 games left to play, you may as well finish it in the most magnificently horrible way possible.

But that begs the question, how did the Mets even end up in the position of having their entire season depend on the sulky Glavine? An easy (and popular) answer is that Guillermo Mota did it. And granted, Mota was terrible all year. But really, perpetrating a baseball crime this heinous is too great a task for any one man, no matter how hittable his fastball.

Some of the guys over at Baseball Prospectus who are way smarter than I am have a simulation that they used to estimate each team’s chances of making the playoffs based on current standings, the expected win percentage over the remaining games, and . . . I don’t know, logarithms and shit. The actual method isn’t important. Anyway, they figured that, at their highest, the Mets had a 99.8% chance to make the playoffs, behind only the 1995 Angels as the team most likely to make the playoffs but which ultimately failed to do so.

Those are 500-to-1 odds against. In order to miss out on the playoffs, the Mets would need to run into a perfect storm of bad luck, poor performance, and hot competition in order to complete the choke. Of course, that’s why they call ‘em the Amazin’s.

The Starters

On Monday, September 17th, the Mets woke up with a 3.5 game lead and an estimated 99% chance of making the playoffs, despite having just been swept by the Phillies . . . again.** Over the remaining two weeks of the season, the Mets would get just three quality starts, and only manage to win two of those, going 5-9 overall. For the last 14 games of the season, the Mets averaged less than five innings per start. That’s terrible. But it just completed a disturbing trend that’d been developing all year. Take a look at this:

In the NL this year, starting pitchers accounted for 64% of batters faced, or a little less than two thirds (I will admit to using BFP, or Batters Faced by Pitcher, rather than Innings Pitched, simply because it was easier for me to find a month-by-month breakdown, and I am a very lazy man). Translate that into a game, and that’s six innings for the starter, and three innings for the bullpen. As the season went on, though, the Mets bullpen was being asked to carry a progressively heavier and heavier load; culminating in a two-week period where they averaged four innings per game, and as many as five, five and a third, or ultimately eight and two-thirds innings a game. That’s too much.

The more innings that have to be pitched by the bullpen, the more a manager has to rely on the Guillermo Motas and Aaron Seles of the world; and Mota and Sele are terrible. This sets up a vicious cycle where relievers may have to come into a game early and without sufficient rest, then pitch badly because they are tired, only to be replaced by an even worse reliever who pitches badly because he is also overworked, and so on, and so on; until Billy Wagner openly complains about how badly you manage your bullpen and you just wish Flanders was dead.

It looks like a small difference, but during this stretch the Mets bullpen was pitching 20% more than NL average.

Bad Luck

Some commenter here on MetsGeek (I wish I could remember who) wrote during this bleak two-week stretch that it looked to him like the Mets were the victims of an unusually high number of bleeders, dying quails, dinks and dunks; and wondered what the Mets BABIP was (Batting Average on Balls In Play). Well, here you go:

The average BABIP in the NL for 2007 was .304 for starting pitchers, and .298 for relievers. Anything much different than about .300 is probably the result of luck. It looks like a lot of the starting pitchers’ woes were due to just that – bad luck. The Mets starters actually had pretty good peripherals during this time, too: 9.5 K/9, 3.4 BB/9, and 1.2 HR/9. So you wouldn’t expect them to have gotten as shellacked as they did. Sadly, this was just a regression to the mean from the ridiculously good BABIP the Mets posted in the first half.

The Schedule

This is also a bit of bad luck. The Mets were scheduled to play 16 games over the final 17 days of the season. A rescheduled rainout from June 28th against the Cardinals meant that the Mets would have to play 17 straight, without a single day off. Where’s Crash when you need him? The lack of a day off, combined with starters who couldn’t go past the fifth inning and Billy Wagner’s back spasms, meant that by the time the Mets got to the last week, the bullpen was reeling. Many people (me included) criticized Willie Randolph for using sub-par relievers like Mota and Schoeneweis in important game situations, but the truth is that he had to run somebody out there. L’il Pedro and Heilman couldn’t pitch every inning. Now, would a single day off have turned these Mets back into a 97-win team? Probably not. But it might have made the difference in a game or two, and two games would have given the Mets the division.

The Competition

Finally, for this historical collapse to be complete, three other teams all had to play well. Obviously the Phillies kept the pressure on by going 9-4 in the final two weeks of the season, and hats off to them (jerks). They played well when it counted. But they were still only one game better than the Mets. If they had played out their final 13 games closer to their established winning percentage of .540, the Mets could still have taken the division. Likewise, if either the Rockies or the Padres had played only a little bit worse, then the Mets could have ended up in the playoffs as the Wildcard. If the Rockies had “only,” won 11 of their last 14, instead of 13-of-14, the Mets would have played the Diamondbacks in the first round of the playoffs. If you look at three teams over a given period you can usually expect at least one of them to be less than awesome.

The End

There was a reason why the Mets still had an estimated 99% chance to make the playoffs with only two weeks to play – so many highly unlikely things would all have to happen for the Mets to miss out on the playoffs entirely. Not only would the Mets have to play badly (and unluckily) over 129 innings in just 14 days, but the Phillies would have to play well, the Rockies would have to play ridiculously well, and the Padres would have to bend but not break. What are the odds that all of those things would happen? One in a hundred? Well, there you go. I don’t think that the 2007 Mets were a deeply flawed team, or one that had a single, glaring weakness. If any one of these things had gone just a little bit differently, the Mets could still have made the postseason. Rather, it was the accumulation of small, unlikely events that combined to kill the Mets season. It was like being nibbled to death by mice.

At work the following Monday morning on October 1st, my friend Tom from Philadelphia came by my office to gloat/tempt me to kick him in the throat, and I’ll close with what I told him then. Yes, the Phillies won the division; and yes, the Mets missed out on the playoffs by collapsing in historic fashion to the jeers of the nation. But it’s not like the Phillies were such a shit-hot team – they won 89 games. Really, it isn’t so much that the Phillies won the division, as that the Mets lost it. Like, if I drop $20 on the ground and Tom picks it up, it’s not like he has a new job. He didn’t earn that 20 bucks; I just got careless. Next time, hopefully, maybe I won’t be so careless.

Thanks to Baseball Prospectus, David Pinto’s Baseball Musings, and Baseball-Reference.com for making my inaccurate and uninformative ramblings possible.

*This nightmare of a game represented the last of the partial season tickets I got with some buddies. As we were splitting up games after the All-Star break, I remember thinking that the Mets would have the division sewn up by then and would be resting guys for the playoffs, so it’d be a meaningless game; probably played by minor leaguers. Man, those were good times.

** I was at this game, too. Clearly, I need to go to fewer games.

Congratulations, David

2007-11-08T19:10:00.000-08:00

Well, good job, David. Uh . . . and Beltran, too. Of course, Beltran winning a Gold Glove comes as no surpise. I think Wright is a pretty good defender, but Gold Glove? Of course, in the NL, who else is there at third? Rolen I guess, but he only played in 112 games this year, so . . . Zimmerman? Ramirez? Probably either one of those guys would be a better choice, but neither one of them had the year at the plate that Wright did.

My Very First Normal Distribution

2007-10-30T13:46:00.000-07:00

Look, it's a normal distribution curve!!

Sweet. See, here's the distribution of player heights on the Mets 40-man roster (plus 4 guys on the DL). Notice that it's a classic bell curve. This is important because random stuff, like the number of people in the room of various heights, tend to follow the bell curve. Meaning, most people will be clustered around the middle, with few at the extremes.

Non-random stuff, like the distribution of talent in MLB, tends not to.

World Series Odds

2007-10-24T14:52:00.000-07:00

Here they are, updated:

Wow, it really looked like Boston was cooked there, didn't it? Also, what happened, on a day that nobody played, that caused Boston and Colorado's chances to flip-flop like that? Answer: the Red Sox dropped Wakefield from the postseason roster and replaced him with LHP Jon Lester. Apparently the Rockies are vulnerable vulnerable to lefties.

Playoff Odds

2007-10-15T14:51:00.000-07:00

I've talked before about how fascinated I am by this, but that magnificent bastard Clay Davenport's done it again, this time for the playoffs. Here are Clay's estimated chances for each team to win the World Series.

Wow. God's own Rockies, the current favorite to win the World Series. Who'da thunk it? Of course, these odds don't really mean anything. These playoff odds are all log5's and math and stuff, not baseball. If you don't buy into any of that, these odds may as well be pulled straight out of Davenport's ass -- you may recall a certain NL East leader who had a 99.8% chance of making the playoffs, but somehow managed to blow it.

You can't really tell from this graph, but the combined chances of the two NL teams only add up to 48.9%. The two AL teams combine for 51.1% (they add up to 100% -- I checked!) which means I guess that we think the AL representatives are stronger than the NL reps. Which I guess shouldn't come as a surprise, given what we know about the relative strengths of the leagues.

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank both the Rockies and the Phillies. Phillies, your shoddy play in the NLDS helped us all forget about the Mets historical collapse. Thank you. And Rockies, your amazing 20-of-the-last-21 run is doing the same. Good work. Remember, nothing in September ever happened. Shhhh.

Two More Like That, Please

2007-10-04T09:27:00.000-07:00

Yes, Chase. I like your hat very much. See if you can get another just like it today.

One third of the way to closing the door on the NL East. Keep it up, Rockies. Also, my Spanish is terrible.

Go Rockies!

2007-10-03T11:21:00.000-07:00

While the past three weeks for the Mets were a gag-job of the highest order (well, second highest), we're only going to hear about it for the rest of our god damn lives if the Phillies make some noise in the playoffs. Specifically, I will never hear the end of this if the Phillies end up playing in -- not even necessarily winning, but even just playing in -- the World Series.

If the Phillies get beat by the Rockies, the collapse of the 2007 Mets will be one of those "hey, remember when this happened?" interest stories, but we won't need to hear about it every fucking year. But if the Phillies make it past the Kid Rocks, and win the NLCS to play in the World Series, the Mets won't live it down for 50 years.

See, the most famous collapse of all time culminated in Bobby Thompson's "Shot Hear 'Round the World," when the Giants came back from a 13.5 game defecit to beat the Dodgers for the NL pennant. What most people forget is that the Giants went on to lose the World Series to the Yankees in six games. This was back in the day when there weren't three rounds of playoffs; the team with the best record in each league went straight to the World Series.

What makes it famous, and why people still talk about it 56 years later is that there was a lot on the line -- a trip to the Series. Mathematically a greater collapse (greatest of all time, according to these guys) was the Angels in 1995. But nobody ever talks about it because the two teams to whom the Angels lost a potential playoff spot, the Yanks* and Mariners, ended up losing in the playoffs before they could get to the Series.

So, go Rockies! The sooner the Phillies are out of the playoffs, the sooner we can all start to pretend the last three weeks never happened.**

*1995 Wildcard

**Just like the 2002 AFC Championship Game, which never fucking happened. You get me, chief?

Postseason Odds = 0%

2007-09-30T19:57:00.001-07:00

Postseason Odds Report

2007-09-28T13:45:00.000-07:00

I love this god damn thing. I've been torturing myself by consulting the Mets plummeting odds of making the playoffs every day for the last few weeks. Anyway, here's the Mets season, graphically presented, since April 10th.

On the off chance that you read this and you don't know what I'm talking about (hi honey), this clever chap over at Baseball Prospectus has looked at the current standings each day, and then calculated the odds of each team making the postseason by simulating all of the remaining games for each team a million times, and recording the number of times out of that million each team would make the playoffs, either by winning their division or the Wild Card.

Since peaking at a 99.8% chance of making the playoffs on September 14th -- that's right, just two weeks ago -- the Mets chances of making the postseason have taken a nose dive. On the other hand, they do still have almost a 60% chance of getting making it. It's 50-50 at this point whether the Mets or Phillies will win the NL East, but there's a small -- around 9% -- chance that the Mets could lose the division to the Phillies but still take the Wild Card.

Little Help Here, Guys

2007-09-28T08:32:00.000-07:00

Go Nats!

Go Brewers!

And LETS GO, METS!!

I Hate You, Kenny.

2007-09-27T18:54:00.000-07:00

Here's the thing: I'm a dork. I like Axis & Allies. I read the first four books of George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire earlier this summer, and I liked it so much I re-read the whole thing a month later. I've got a Dungeon Master's Guide; I've got a twelve-sided die. And I love me some sabermetrics -- I once calculated the VORP for every player on my co-ed, corporate softball team. That's just how I roll, sucka. I don't believe that shit like grit and hustle and David Eckstein's heart growing three sizes that day enabled him to win that World Series MVP.

Which is why it pains me so much to say, the Mets tonight looked like their season is over. I mean, what happened in this game has absolutely no bearing on how the remaining three games are going to play out, right? Right? You can't tell when a team is done by the look in their eyes, or their hanging heads, can you? There's no stat for that! Except, you know . . . when you can.

I know, I know. Ya gotta believe!! Yes, well, I believe, Lord. Help my unbelief.

I've got Kitty Pride, and Nightcrawler, too. Waiting there for me, yes I do.

ps -- My blasphemies may indicate that I'm taking tonight's loss a bit too hard

Castillo vs Gotay 2

2007-09-25T13:29:00.000-07:00

I went over this when the Mets first got him, but here's how they've done so far. Obviously, this includes Castillo's numbers with Minny.

Schoeneweis: Is He As Bad As All That?

2007-09-25T11:57:00.000-07:00

Eh, yes and no. Two highly improbable saves from last week not withstanding, Schoeneweis is a LOOGY. He's been awful this year against righties. More awful, in fact, than his pretty awful career rates. On the other hand, he's also been very good against lefties. Take a look.

Holy crap, that's a huge platoon split. Of course, that doesn't give you any context, so look at Scotty compared to all other NL left-handers.

Huh. Compared to the average NL lefty, he's been as much worse against RHB, as he has been better against LHB. So I have to wonder, why does Schoeneweis ever pitch to a right-handed batter? Is his huge platoon differential in '07 a fluke, or does it accurately reflect his career numbers. Well, ask and ye shall receive.

I've added trend lines to show that it looks like Scott's platoon split is getting bigger. He's becoming more effective against lefties, but even less effective against righties. Why is that, I wonder? Has he dropped down to throw more sidearm? Stopped throwing some pitch, or started throwing another?

As always, I have no answers, just colorful graphs and more questions. Foremost, of course, is why has Schoeneweis been allowed to pitch to 151 right-handed batters this year?

Mets 7 at Florida 8

2007-09-20T20:26:00.000-07:00

Well, that sucked. What's up with Billy Wagner, I wonder? [Back spasms, apparently] If he's available, I think we win that game. Anyway, here's a distressing image.

So, Phillies . . . game and a half back, again. We gotta take three out of four from the Marlins, here. On the upside, at least, I figured this'd be the game we would lose anyway, 'cause Dontrelle has owned the Mets since he came in the league, so . . . ah, fuck, who am I kidding? That blew.

Hey, here's some fun -- compare the above chart with this one below.

You can sync up the reasons why the Mets' lead has been evaporating! Like, everybody was hot back in April and May, but then nobody could hit. Then the bullpen stunk. Then by August, everybody was hitting again, but the starters were getting lit up, and the bullpen too! Sweet.

I miss those heady days of April. Of course, I miss our 7-game lead over the Phillies, too.

Hat tip to the Hardball Times for the above/below .500 format. I find the division races there fascinating to look at, but terrifying in this particular case.

What's Wrong With Guillermo Mota?

2007-09-18T14:40:00.000-07:00

. . . apart from sucking, I mean.

I'm not going to talk about yesterday's horrorshow, especially not after having been present at Shea for Sunday's clusterfuck. Nor will I talk about tonight's latest embarassment. But what I can do is talk a little bit more about is Guillermo Mota. What's wrong with this guy? Jeez, I'm like a fat kid with a candy bar with this thing, I just won't let it go.

I'm going to ignore the fact that Mota got suspended for 'roids, first of all because I'm not sure that they can make a middle reliever go from "terrible," to "awesome," and back again. So, living in a magical fairy land where the fact that Mota is no longer taking steroids is discounted as a reason why he might not be pitching well, what have I got? Yes, Mota has been terrible in 2007, but how? Why is he so bad?

Below you'll find a chart of Mota's peripherals (K/9, HR rate, etc.) expressed as a percentage plus or minus league average. I've expressed the graph so that the "good," result is always up, i.e. Mota's career HR rate is about 10% lower than league average, so he's 10% "better." Obviously, higher K rates and K/BB ratios are better, while lower Walk and HR rates are desireable

Well there's your problem. Too many home runs. Mota is doing a better job of striking guys out, and a much better job of not walking them. He's just giving up too many home runs.

I don't know where to go with this, though. Anecdotally, it's seemed like Mota's gotten into a lot of 3-ball counts, where he's had to come in with a fastball. The problem with Mota's 96 mph gas, of course, is that it's as straight as a string, and if a halfway decent hitter is expecting it, that fastball can go a long way. In a way, I don't think he's walking enough batters. They can't hit a home run if they're walking to first; I think the term is "effectively wild."

And that's the second reason why I'm not sure "not being on 'roids," is the reason Mota is having a bad year. His velocity is good, and his strikeout rate is still good. I checked as many of his past HR/F rates as they've got over at the Hardball Times, and it doesn't seem like he's giving up an unusually high (for Mota) percentage of homers. In a year in which he's walked fewer people than he has in the past, his real problem is control; it's just that the results end up being home runs, instead of walks.

But really, I don't know. To quote Leo Mazzone, on Mark Wohlers: "If I knew what the fuck went wrong, I would have fixed it."

Even More Feliciano And Mota! Hooray!

2007-09-13T12:03:00.000-07:00

Looking into it further, and thinking about JK47's should-have-been-obvious "dumb luck BABIP" comment over at Metsgeek, I found this over at the Hardball Times:

Huh. So it looks like the difference between Pedro and Guillermo this season is just that, dumb luck. Based on peripherals like home run rate, K rate, etc., one would expect that Feliciano and Mota should have the same ERA (xFIP, or expected Fielding-Independent Pitching). Shocking. Seriously. Pedro has pitched, basically, twice as well as Mota. But I guess if their HR rates normalize back to around 11%, and we don't spot Pedro a 65-point advantage in BABIP, their results should be about the same. Wild.

You know, that's the thing about relievers. Pitching in such a small number of innings, luck can play a huge role in how well they do in any given year. I guess I could look up Feliciano and Mota's career BABIP rates, to see if one of them is getting historically lucky or unlucky, but . . . ah, I just don't care that much anymore.

Boy, did my eyes deceive me on this one.

Feliciano, Mota and Platoon Splits

2007-09-13T09:33:00.000-07:00

In the eighth inning of last night's game, after L'il Pedro walked Brian McCann to load the bases, Willie decided to take out Feliciano, who'd walked McCann on only five pitches, and go with the platoon righty-righty matchup of Mota vs. Francoeur. I actually said out loud "this is a bad idea," and sure enough, Frenchy got a base hit to tie up the game. Sweet.

Now Bill James said that "the platoon differential is real and virtually universal," but I wasn't sure about the wisdom of replacing a pitcher who's been lights out with a pitcher who's stunk up the joint all year, just because he's right-handed. So I decided to look into it and see who's been better against RHB this year, lefty Pedro or righty Mota. I seriously doubt the answer will surprise anyone.

Wow. One of these pitchers has been very effective against right-handed batters, and the other one is Guillermo Mota. Anyway, Willie has to know this, right? I mean, Pedro hadn’t pitched for a few days, so he wasn’t tired; and the Mets have a day off before taking on Philly, so you wouldn’t need to save his arm, either. I just don’t understand why Willie would let the worst pitcher in his bullpen come in to pitch in the most important situation in the game. Especially when he had a better reliever in there already.

Of course, the Mets score in the bottom half, so it all works out OK (unless you’re John Maine). Mota . . . not good. Congratulations on the W, though. But here’s something that actually was surprising.

In 2007, Mota has actually been pretty effective against left-handers. This year, anyway, Guillermo has a reverse-platoon split. There aren’t a lot of pitchers like this, but anecdotally, pitchers who are more effective against batters from the opposite side frequently have crappy fastballs but good fadeaway changeups/screwballs (Jamie Moyer, Jim Mecir, Fernando Valenzuela). That sounds like Guillermo Mota to me.*

Mota used to have a small but normal platoon differential (better against RH than LH), so maybe I shouldn’t get too excited about these 86 at bats (sample size alert!) But of course, for most of his career Guillermo used to be a good reliever, too.

As always, special thanks to David Pinto, whose Day by Day Database makes my dull and inaccurate analysis possible.

*I know he can throw it 96 mph, but Mota can’t locate his fastball for shit. Even at 96 mph, a fastball right over the heart of the plate sucks.

NL Central

2007-09-07T13:36:00.000-07:00

I was hanging out recently at my favorite bar, Schittzen Giggles, wondering who's going to win the division in the NL Central. Milwaukee and the Chicago Cubs are tied up at 71-68, with St. Louis only a game back at 69-68. Man, the NL Central is a crapfest. Winning this division is like winning the retard spelling bee, or being the world's strongest midget.

Anyway, consulting the ol' BP Playoff Odds Report, it looks like the Cubbies have a slight edge over the Brewers, with Milwaukee predicted to win the division 37% of the time to Chicago's 44%. They've got the same record, why is Chicago 7% more likely to make the playoffs (we all know nobody from the Central is winning the Wild Card)? St. Louis, by the way, still has an outside shot at 17%.

The answer, of course, is the strength of their remaining schedules:

Cubs: .454
Milwaukee: .481
St. Louis: .492

The difference in the strength of each team's remaining schedule is largely accounted for by the fact that, of the three NL Central contenders, only St. Louis has games remaining against both of the others. The Cubs have five games against the Cards, but none against the Brewers; while the Brewers have three against the Cards as well. The Cubs and Brewers basically get to beat up on Cincy, Pittsburg and Florida for the rest of the season, with the exception that the Brewers will play three against the Braves (which is why their remaining schedule is .481 instead of a cakewalk .454).

Of course, the flip side of this is that St. Louis controls their own destiny more than Milwaukee or Chicago. I honestly have no idea who's going to take this division. I guess it'd make my 91 year-old grandpa happy if the Cubs did. On the other hand, if the Cubs actually won a World Series, it would probably kill him. The last time the Cubs were world champions was eight years before he was born.

Hey, Philly . . .

2007-09-06T07:04:00.000-07:00

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!!!

Ahhh . . . you suck. Thanks, Braves. Your season is over, but you can still help out the Mets.

Mets 11 at Cincinnati 7

2007-09-04T20:08:00.000-07:00

Well, that was more like it. A lot of people have been talking recently about how ridiculous it is for Wes Littleton to earn a Save for pitching the final three innings of a 30-3 blowout, but I don't think it's much more ridiculous than Perez getting the W for giving up five runs in as many innings. Perez did not pitch well, but we all know that Wins are a terrible measure of how well a pitcher has pitched, right? Right.

Anyway, Mets remain five games up on the Phillies in the NL East. Somehow, despite the cluster-fuck last week, the Mets' division lead is almost exactly what it was before the 4-game sweep in Philly: five games. The remaining schedule favors the Mets, too. Strength of remaining schedules over the last 24 games (or so) for the three contenders in the NL East:

Mets - .462
Braves - .485
Phillies - .488

I expect the Braves, Mets, and Phillies to play .500 ball against each other*, with final standings in the division being determined by how well each team plays the rest of their games. The Mets will get to beat up on the Marlins and Nats, while the Braves and Phillies have to play the somewhat-respectable Brewers and Rockies, respectively; so I don't expect their relative positions to change.

Braves: your season is over, 8.5 games behind the Mets, and 3.5 behind the Phillies. You're also six games back for the Wild Card with four teams ahead of you. Atlanta's drought of division titles continues.

* These three teams each have one more series left against the other two.

This Is Unacceptable

2007-08-30T14:13:00.000-07:00

Seriously? A fucking sweep? What the fuck?!? The Phillies are only two games out of first now. Before this series, Baseball Prospectus put the Mets chances of winning the division at almost 90%. Making the playoffs was virtually guaranteed. As of this morning, the Mets had about an 80% chance of winning the division. I can't wait to see what it is now.

Attention Mets: you all played like shit this whole series. The only one who gets a pass is El Duque. Yes, he stunk today too, but he should have like 15 wins by now instead of 9. Right now, Mets, you do not deserve to win this division.

And Harry, Jimmy, Trent, wherever you are out there . . . FUCK YOU TOO!

Jeff Conine

2007-08-22T19:34:00.000-07:00

You know Junior, some of the things we've done, man . . . I don't feel like we've done something wrong. Sometimes, man . . . I get this bad feeling. I told the padre the truth man, I like it here. Get to do what you want, nobody fucks with you. The only worry you got is dying. And if that happens you won't know about it anyway. So what the fuck man?
-- Bunny

So . . . Jeff Conine. Another over 40 Met. Whee! The Mets needed a right-handed bat off the bench after Damion Easley's ankle injury, and Conine is as good an available waiver trade as any, I guess. It's hard to get too excited about adding a two-month rental on the wrong side of FORTY, for the love of god, but take a look at this.

Basically, Conine is only going to be used in games against tough lefties to spell mostly Sean Green (who can't hit LHP at this point) in RF, or Delgado (who may or may not be able to hit anything at this point) at first; or as the right-handed PH off the bench. Given Delgado's stature, I think Green is more likely to get replaced, Delgado's shitty 2007 not withstanding. This is pretty much what the Reds have been doing with him. Anyway, if you combine Green (who can't hit lefties) with Conine (who can't hit righties) to form GREENINE, you end up with one relatively OK player.

Just for fun, here's what I think the Mets order will be like when they're facing LHP and RHP, once Lo Duca comes off the DL.

Holy crap, the Mets have been killing lefties this year. By the way, David Wright may as well be the devil as far as left-handers are concerned. That's a .630 slugging %. That's fucking terrifying.

Sosa (Again)

2007-08-20T15:15:00.000-07:00

So over the weekend, Gary Cohen remarked that he was now "Everyday" Jorge Sosa, because he'd pitched in six of the last seven games. And pitched pretty well, too. So I decided to take a look at how Sosa, who I don't think is a very good pitcher, has fared since moving to the bullpen to make way for Brian Lawrence.

The short answer is, great! He's got a 1.69 ERA since he moved to the bullpen. But how's he doing it? Pitching in short bursts, can he cut loose and start striking people out? Well, here's your answer. Of course, after looking at this data, I realized what a shitty way this is to present it.

Below you'll find Sosa's K/9, BB/9, HR/9, and K/BB rates presented as a pecentage above or below NL average, both as a starter and a reliever. For example, as a starter, Sosa strikes out 5.2 batters per nine innings, about 30% below average in the NL.

As a starter, Sosa was below average in strikeouts per nine, and also strikeout-to-walk ratio, but average in walks per nine and HR per nine. As a reliever, Sosa actually has an even worse strikeout rate, an average strikeout-to-walk ratio, but is a stellar 48% better than average in walks per nine, and is infinitely better in HR per nine, having given up none.

So basically, he's striking out fewer batters than before, walking even fewer, and not giving up any home runs. I'm not sure this is sustainable, even pitching out of the bullpen. Of course, the usual small sample size caveats do apply -- he's only pitched 16 innings out of the 'pen.

Having said that, I actually do like using Sosa out of the bullpen. I suspect that his success there has more to do with the fact that he's faced 42 right-handed batters, who have batted .201/.243/.294 against him this year, and only 16 lefties, who've batted .303/.381/.491. Sosa is a ROOGY (Right-handed One Out GuY).

And PS, how can a guy who throws 95 mph strike out so few batters?

The Last 40 Games (Or So)

2007-08-18T18:00:00.000-07:00

So I was thinking about the NL East, watching game 2 against the Nats, and I decided to see who's got the toughest schedule for the remaining 40 games, among the Mets, Phillies, and Braves. It's possible that one of the teams would be playing the Pirates/Cincy a lot, and be able to clinch the NL East by beating up retards. Turns out it's pretty even. The NL East contenders, between the three of them, only play 14 different teams, and most of 'em are other teams in the NL East, including the other two contenders.

Anyway, the Mets have the easiest remaining schedule, while the Phillies have the hardest. But it's not that big a difference. Strength of remaining schedules:

Mets: .490
Braves: .493
Phillies: .502

The difference between the Mets remaining schedule and the Phillies remaining schedule is like the difference between a 79-83 team and an 81-81 team. Yeah. The Braves play out the season against an 80-82 team.

So, it'll basically come down to how well each of the three contenders plays the others. Which is pretty much what we thought before I went and fired up the ol' Strength of Schedule Spreadsheet. Sweet. Time well spent.

Castillo's Defense

2007-08-17T19:16:00.000-07:00

I know I said that it was probably a wash between Gotay and Castillo, but holy crap! that double-play was a) incredible, and b) there's no way Gotay makes that play.

On the other hand, Gotay has more home runs (4) in 67 AB's this year than Castillo has in all of 2007 and 2006 (zero).

Who Stinks?

2007-08-16T19:05:00.000-07:00

The bullpen.

I was prepared to write something about how the Mets have been going through a tough patch since the All Star break, due to the poor performance of the bullpen. The 'pen has been terrible recently, blowing games in Milwaukee and Florida, just off the top of my head; not to mention last night's clusterfuck, or even Wednesday's almost-clusterfuck . But of course, when I looked at the actual data it turns out that wasn't it at all.

This is a graph of the OPS allowed by the Mets starters and relievers, and the OPS achieved by the Mets hitters. Basically, I'm taking OPS here to stand for the general offense, which it pretty much is. Obviously you'd want your hitters to have a higher OPS than your pitchers would allow.

Yeesh, that was an ugly stretch there in June-July, wasn't it? But the bullpen has been pretty good all year, even in August, last night's stinkfest not withstanding. It's the starters who have been letting us down, though the offense has finally started to come around. Look, the bullpen certainly did its part in blowing the game last night, but some of that blame has to go to Brian Lawrence, too. Giving up four runs in five innings to the punchless Pirates is nothing to be proud of.

You may notice that the June-July period where the Mets allowed more OPS than they earned neatly coincided with their shrinking division lead. Thank god the Braves also went into the toilet at the same time.

We couldn't really expect to have the whole rotation spot a .650 OPS for a whole season. On the other hand, they're going to have to do better than .800+ if we want to continue to hold off the Phillies and the Braves (or the Phaves . . . Brillies?). If the bullpen has to continue to pitch four innings every night, they're not going to get any better, either.

Thanks as always to the Day by Day Database, and The Hardball Times, two absolutely indispensable baseball sites.

Castillo vs. Gotay

2007-08-09T14:18:00.000-07:00

Meh.

It's hard to get too excited about this one either way. Basically, the Mets trade a bag of magic beans to the Twins for one of their better offensive players. Castillo at this point, though, isn't the player he was with the Marlins. His knees are shot, taking away his speed, he steals bases at barely a break-even pace, when he even does that anymore, and he has zero pop. Should he even be playing everyday? Is he any better than Gotay? How many damn second basemen do we want on this team?

Anyway, here are their numbers for 2007. Blah. I suspect that Gotay is playing a bit above his head right now -- the relatively small number of AB's he's gotten could mean that his .379 OBP is a fluke. Likewise, Castillo is probably better than his 2007 numbers indicate.

This is probably a wash. Gotay has more power than Castillo (which is easy, because he has none) but Castillo is probably a better OBP candidate, based on career rates. Castillo also probably has the edge in 2B defense, but not by a whole lot at this point -- creaky knees have taken away some of Luis' range.

On the other hand, it's not a bad trade for a two-month rental. Neither of the AA douchebags the Twins got is going anywhere.*

* PS, Twins fans: your season is over. This was a white flag trade to save the Twins the remainder of Castillo's $5.75 million salary. Sorry.

Not To Get All Fire Joe Morgan, But . . .

2007-08-05T18:33:00.000-07:00

Sunday Night Baseball, Cubs vs Mets. Joe Morgan keeps talking about how Luis Castillo has played his whole career in Minneapolis, and since he spent his whole career in the AL, he doesn't have any idea how to handle the swirling winds at Wrigley, and playing all those games on Astroturf at the Dome have killed his knees, reducing his former speed.

It's possible Castillo isn't familiar with the winds at Wrigley, and playing on 'turf in Minny may indeed have hurt his knees. But if memory serves (or, even if it doesn't) Luis Castillo has spent most of career in Florida. You remember the Marlins, right Joe? No? They won the World Series and everything. Twice. The second time with Juan Pierre and Luis Castillo; the same Castillo that's on the Mets right now. They stole a lot of bases and never hit for power, so I assumed they were two of your favorites.

Anyway, it turns out that Castillo had 26 games at Wrigley with the Marlins; his first in August of 1996, almost exactly eleven years ago. This game tonight makes his 29th. Almost 25% of the games he's played in the Metrodome. But yeah, that Turf is a bitch.

One Thing . . .

2007-07-29T22:41:00.001-07:00

but no graphics. In a fantasy world where I am in charge of the Mets, Ramon Castro is the starting catcher, or he at least goes 50-50 on playing time with Lo Duca. Dookie, though I love him, is just not that good a hitter.

Fuck You, Tony La Russa

2007-07-11T14:57:00.000-07:00

I can't really say it any better than Nate Silver, but take a look at these:

Tony La Russa fucked the rest of the NL because his shitty team that shouldn't even have made the playoff last year, much less become WS champions, isn't going to make the playoffs this year. With the bases loaded and two out in the bottom of the ninth, he'd rather keep Pujols ("the great Pujols," as he's constantly, irritatingly referred to as in that piece of crap Three Nights in August that Tony wrote with Buzz Bissinger) on the bench to make sure he doesn't risk getting hurt than take a real shot at winning this game.

Remember, a walk ties it. And Tony's got 410 points of OBP sitting on the bench. Look, Rowand is having a fine year, and he's a perfectly serviceable center fielder. Maybe playing over his head this year, but a good player none the less. But if I told you that your life depended on the next batter getting on base, who would you rather see at the plate? Can you name a single player in the NL who you'd choose over Pujols, in that situation? Then you are a liar, my friend.

A Look At The AL East

2007-07-06T10:18:00.000-07:00

After the softball game last night, I was talking with my friend Paul, a lifelong Yankee fan, about what was wrong with the Yankees (40-42) this year. His short answer: “everything.” Twelve games behind the Red Sox (53-31) in the AL East, and eight and a half behind the Tigers (49-34) for the Wild Card, there’s a good chance that the Yankees might not even make the playoffs this year. Stunning.

What’s interesting about the Yankees is that they have a pretty good run differential. If you look at the number of runs a team both scores and allows, you can predict fairly accurately how many games they’ll win. Having scored more runs (429) than they allowed (375), you would expect the Yankees to be 46-36, six games better than they are right now, and right in the hunt for a Wild Card playoff berth.

Unfortunately for my friend Paul, the Yankees have dug such a deep hole that it might be too late to recover. I wondered last night: the Yankees have 80 games left, if they play out the rest of the season at the “true” level of ability indicated by their run differential, do they have a shot at the playoffs? I couldn’t do the math right then (mmmm . . . beer) but I can now. Take a look:

I’d expect the Yankees to win 45 of their remaining 80 games, and 45 plus the 40 they’ve won so far equals a record of 85-77, and I don’t think that’s going to be enough to win the Wild Card. Of the teams ahead of the Yankees in the Wild Card standings -- Detroit, Seattle, Oakland, and Minnesota – one of them is bound to win more than 85 games.

Of course, rather than screw around with an Excel grid all morning, I could have just looked up the same information here. Davenport, you magnificent bastard! I read your book!

11 Years Of Interleague Play

2007-06-26T12:36:00.000-07:00

Here's the results of all 11 years of interleague play. The World Series winner came from the stronger league six times out of ten, which I guess doesn't mean much of anything.

One other payroll note: the entire Devil Rays team this year will get paid $3 million less than Alex Rodriguez. That's insane, and it's only going to get insane-er.

Quadruple-A, Part 2

2007-06-26T11:46:00.000-07:00

Interleague play is finally over, thank God; though it mercifully ended on a high note for the Mets. The NL looks like the inferior league again this year, losing out to the AL 115-137. Of course, this is a lot closer than last year's drubbing (98-154 in favor of the AL, if you recall), but the AL still played .540 ball, to the NL's .460. If the leagues are still at the same relative strength they were last year, that's about what you'd expect.

But once again, the reason why? It's the salaries, stupid. This year, AL teams outspent NL teams by over $120 million, despite the fact that there are two fewer AL teams. That's a difference in team payroll of almost $20 million, on average; roughly the between the Phillies and the Reds. Of course the AL is better than the NL.

Obviously a big chunk of that is accounted for by the Yankees and the Red Sox, but still, seven of the top ten teams, salary-wise, are in the AL. In case you were wondering, the AL accounts for 52% of MLB's total salary. I think the AL should be expected to win at least 52% of the games.

Mets vs. Twins, Game Three

2007-06-20T18:20:00.000-07:00

I'm live-blogging, fuckers!

This team is absolute horseshit right now. God damn it, here comes Guillermo Mota and his 6.00 ERA. Oh, good. Apparently the Mets are going to roll over for the Twins here. How the fuck the Mets are still in first place in the NL East is a god-damn mystery. Fortunately the Phillies and Braves have obliged us by playing like shit during this losing streak, too. Ugh.

Well, Mota pitches a scoreless seventh to lower his ERA to 5.54. Sweet. Of course it doesn't matter; the way the team is hitting these days, a 4-run defeceit might as well be 40.

I Got A Bad Feeling About This

2007-06-19T10:12:00.000-07:00

Johan Santana’s numbers versus the Mets, courtesy of David Pinto’s day-by-day database. Yeesh.

Hell Is Other Pirates

2007-06-19T10:07:00.000-07:00

HJ, you forgot a couple things. In Hell, the game is always called by Joe Morgan, and Kenny Rogers always walks in the winning run. Ben Roethlisberger still doesn’t wear a helmet. Also, there’s nonstop salsa music. God, I fucking hate salsa music.

On the other hand, it’d be some consolation to know that Larry is also in Hell.

I’ll try to save you a cool spot.

I Hate Roger Clemens, Yankees

2007-06-15T10:05:00.000-07:00

Roger Clemens is a punk. Arguably the greatest pitcher of all time, but a punk nonetheless. He’s like the pudgy kid in fourth grade that becomes a bully out of self-defense, so no one will make fun of what a fat sack of crap he is. That kid will pick on you right up until you fight back, then run home and cry when you pop him one on the nose.

That’s why Mike Piazza has no sack. There, I said it. When Clemens threw that bat fragment at Piazza in the Series, Clemens was testing the Mets, specifically Piazza, to see if they were willing to stand up to him, like a bully picking on the new kid on the first day of school. By not charging the mound, Piazza effectively gave up his lunch money, and the rest of the team followed his lead and rolled over, too.

If Rocket Roger was really interested in being the pitching savior for the Yankees, he damn well would have been ready to pitch against the Red Sox in Fenway. Instead, he waited to join the team until he would start against the punchless Pirates. Whether or not the Yankees have a shot at the postseason this year will depend not on how well they play against other teams (they're too talented, slow start aside, not to win their share of games) but on how well they do against the Red Sox. If they want to hold onto the AL East, they pretty much need to win out against the Sox, not beat up on a crappy NL Central team that Roger's beaten six times in nine starts since 2004. Wuss.

Having said that, the Mets are playing like absolute crap right now. I would actually cut off a finger for a win at this point. Not my finger, mind you; but somebody's.

Anyway, one of my favorite things on the internets are the upcoming series previews on Metsgeek.com. I always check it out when the Mets start a new series, especially if it's against a team with whose pitchers I am not familiar. Alex Nelson does a great job of telling you about the match-ups, who's pitching against whom; who throws what, and how both teams are playing in general. Good stuff.

Sosa: Is This Guy For Real?

2007-06-13T11:25:00.000-07:00

Short answer, no.

Jorge Sosa, a reclamation project signed over the winter, started the year in Triple-A, but since getting called up has gone 6-1 in seven starts with a 2.64 ERA. That’s pretty freaking good. But is he really this good, or is he just lucky?

Sosa came up in 2002 as a 23-year-old and had a few mediocre-to-bad years with the Devil Rays before getting traded to the Braves in 2005. He had one great season in 2005, going 13-3 with a 2.55 ERA. After pitching guru Leo Mazzone left the Braves in 2006, new pitching coach (and former Met/second spitter) Roger McDowell turned the knob back to ‘suck,’ and Sosa had a crummy four months starting for the Braves before he got traded to the Cardinals for a bag of magic beans, then had a crummy two months pitching out of the Cardinal bullpen. The Cards left him off their post-season roster, and did not try to re-sign him after becoming the worst team to ever win a World Series.

The Mets took a flyer on Sosa this winter, and after a crummy spring training he was assigned to Triple-A. Then, Pelfrey stunk up the joint, the Mets called up Sosa, and he’s been pitching great ever since. So, is he this good?

The answer, of course, is no. He’s lucky. Below you’ll find four graphs of Sosa’s career peripheral numbers (peripheral numbers, like strikeouts per nine innings pitched or strikeout-to-walk ratio, are frequently better predictors of pitcher success than their ERA or win-loss record, which can be greatly affected by luck).

Frankly, his numbers just aren’t that good, including this year, even with his 2.64 ERA. Except for 2004, Sosa has never struck guys out at a better than league-average pace. He has managed to limit the walks this year and in 2006; but his strikeout-to-walk ratio is barely league-average. Sosa is a flyball pitcher (almost 50% of the balls put in play against him are fly balls) who doesn’t strike many guys out, but doesn’t walk many, either. Which means that he is going to live and die based on how many of those fly balls turn into big fly balls, i.e. home runs.

And unfortunately, pitchers don’t have a lot of control over that. Around 11% or 12% of fly balls get turned into home runs, on average. If a pitcher’s home run-to-fly-ball ratio is significantly higher or lower than that, it’s probably due to luck. Sosa’s HR/F rate this year: 7.4%. Which means I expect a fairly significant regression to the mean. In Sosa’s case, the mean is ‘sucky.’

Of course, this might be a brilliant move on GM Omar Minaya’s part. Shea Stadium is definitely a pitchers’ park, and with its spacious outfield, it’s particularly good at limiting home runs.

Back Again! And What Happened To Oliver Perez

2007-05-31T14:36:00.001-07:00

Jeez, I'm out of it for a little while to get married and everybody’s got delusions of grandeur. So at 6-3 with a 2.69 ERA, Ollie’s starting to look more like the good 2004 version, than the chump that showed up in 2005 and 2006. What gives?

There’s a bunch more stuff I could have put in there, like how the percentage of Oliver’s fly balls that turn into home runs is back to normal, or how he’s generating more infield flies (an infield fly ball is almost always an out, and some saber-nerds think getting weak pop-ups is a repeatable skill) but there’s really only one story: walks. Specifically, Oliver’s strikeout-to-walk ratio.

Since he came into the league, he’s always struck guys out at a pretty good pace, even during the bad years in 2005 and 2006. Striking out six batters per nine innings is OK. Seven is good, eight is really good, and 9 Ks per nine is dominant. He’s just eliminated the walks.

In baseball, as in life, there’s more than one way to skin a cat; so it’s OK if a pitcher doesn’t strike many people out, as long as he also doesn’t walk very many, either (Greg Maddux). It’s also OK to walk a bunch of guys, as long as you strike out a ton of ‘em, too (Nolan Ryan). A good measure of a pitcher’s overall ability is the strikeout-to-walk ratio, or K/BB. Average pitchers strike out two for every one they walk. Anything above 2-to-1 is good; 3-to-1 is dominant. Perez is still striking guys out at about the same rate – he’s just cut way down on the walks.

Now, what exactly the Jacket has done to make this happen, I have no idea. Some of Perez’s other numbers, which I didn’t include above because they’re both boring and complicated, indicate that he’s maybe been a little lucky. His Fielding Independent Pitching stats suggest that we should expect him to have an ERA around 3.91. And of course, the usual small-sample-size caveats still apply. But still, if you’d told me during the off-season that Perez would end the year with an ERA under four, I’d have been ecstatic.

What do we learn from all this? Once again, the Pirates are the worst-run organization in all of baseball.

Gotta Love That Endy Chavez

2007-04-24T21:53:00.000-07:00

That was one helluva bunt. Man, you just don't see that that much any more.

My Fantasy Baseball Team

2007-03-28T21:35:00.000-07:00

Is it any good? What do you think? Before you answer that, I gotta tell you that this is the first time I've participated in this league, and it's a weird one. They use a bunch of weird stats, not the usual 5x5, or even the weird-but-consistent Sabermetric version. They also count 8 hitting stats, but only 6 pitching: R, HR, RBI, SB, BB, FPCT, AVG, OBP, W, SV, K, ERA, WHIP, K/9. I've never drafted a team where you have to worry about fielding percentage, or OBP, or BB, or K/9. Anyway, since OBP and Fielding percentage count in this league and I didn't know what the fuck to do, I drafted guys based on their projected Wins Above Replacement Level, from Baseball Prospectus. So, is my team any good? I have no idea.

Not Quite Happy With That Last One . . .

2007-03-28T14:34:00.000-07:00

. . . so here it is again:

This time, I used PECOTA projections for the whole thing. I used Marcel ERAs earlier because I am an idiot and couldn't find the PECOTA ERA projections. Anyway, the results are even more favorable.

Let's assume that all of these guys meet their projections; or at least, any variation one way is cancelled out by some variation the other way. For example, maybe El Duque gets hurt (knock wood) and can't even make his 23 projected starts -- but Perez is slightly better than expected and makes 20 instead of 16. You get the picture.

Anyway, assuming that these five starters can pitch somewhat close to their projection, all they'd need to do to duplicate last year's starters is find 50 starts and 240 innings worth of 5.66 ERA. We'd need to find two guys to make 25 starts a piece, who can give up three runs over four and two-thirds innings. That shouldn't be too hard -- that's like a couple of Steve Trachsels.

The Mets Rotation

2007-03-27T22:00:00.000-07:00

Lots of writers are predicting the Phillies, or even the Braves to win the NL East this year; which seems kind of crazy, given that the Mets went to town on the division in 2006 like a fat kid with a cupcake. The 2007 Mets, Braves, and Phillies all ought to have great offenses; but the nobody thinks that the Mets starting rotation will be able to hold up.

Granted, the Mets are relying heavily on two 40-year-olds at the front of the rotation in El Duque and Glavine. On the other hand, they aren't relying on Steve Trachsel and Lima Time, either. I think that the Met rotation is going to surprise a lot of people this season, and could end up, if not a strength exactly, then at least as good as last year. Take a look at this:

Those are a combo of Baseball Prospectus' PECOTA projections for what the Mets starters are going to do this year, along with the Marcel projection for their ERAs. The Mets five starters project to be about the same as last year's starters, or maybe even a little bit better (I'm more bullish on Maine, Pelfrey, and especially Perez than either Marcel or PECOTA, but I digress). Yeah, we'll have to use the Sele's, Parks, and (God help us) Sosas more than I'd like, but there's no way the rotation is going to be as bad as everybody thinks it is.

Something on Batting Order . . . and I’m Back!

2007-03-22T15:04:00.000-07:00

This spring, Willie has been messing around with batting Wright second in the order, rather than his usual fifth spot from last year, moving Paul Lo Duca from the 2-spot and dropping him down to sixth or seventh. Is this a good idea? Sure, batting a guy higher up in the order means he’ll get more at-bats over the course of the season, but a lot of managers* subscribe to the idea that each spot in the batting order has a particular job; and some players are much more suited for one job rather than another. I think most players believe this, as well.

What I believe is that batting order doesn’t hardly make any difference at all in how many runs a team scores. If you buy into this kind of thing, which I am sure most major-league managers don’t, David Pinto has got a lineup analysis tool over at Baseball Musings that calculates how many runs you should expect a batting order to score per game. It seems self evident that you’d probably score a different number of runs in a game, even with the same nine guys, if you bat them in a different order.

Anyway, here are two potential lineups for your amusement; one like the standard from last season, with DW batting fifth, and the other with Wright bumped up to second. Included are each hitter’s Marcel** projections for On-base Percentage and Slugging for 2007, which you can plug into Pinto’s lineup analyzer to figure out how many runs each lineup should score. Pitchers are a composite of all Mets pitchers from last season (boy, pitchers are really terrible hitters, aren’t they?) I also included the handedness of the batter, because you know that Willie just loves to do that alternating lefty-righty thing.

What can we conclude from this? It looks like batting Wright second would probably result in about 13 more runs for the Mets than they would get if they batted him fifth. Not a huge difference over the course of a season – it’s less than one run every 10 games. Most of this difference is probably due to the extra plate appearances Wright would get out of the second spot; the number 2-hitter for the Mets came to the plate about 50 more times last season than the number 5-hitter.

On the other hand, most of your smarty-pants sabermetric-types figure that improving a team by 10 runs is worth about one win in the standings (whether by scoring 10 more runs, allowing 10 fewer runs, or by scoring 5 more runs and allowing 5 fewer runs). In what’s probably going to be a much tighter pennant race, with an improved Philly and Atlanta, one extra win in the standings could make the difference between the playoffs and October golf.

I’m going to bet that Willie goes ahead and bats Wright second to start the season. Not because he thinks that giving 50 more plate appearances to Wright (projected .920 OPS) than Paul Lo Duca (projected .744 OPS) would result in more runs, but because he loves that alternating lefty-righty shit. Which just goes to prove that managers can sometimes do the smart thing for stupid reasons.

*Except Billy Martin, who famously drew his batting order out of a hat during a period in the early seventies.

**Marcel is a projection system named after the monkey from Friends, because it’s so simple even a monkey could do it. Despite its simplicity, Marcel is surprisingly accurate.

Happy 12th Annual Pirate Got Hit by a Car Day!

2007-02-16T14:38:00.000-08:00

Hooray! Still not dead! Also, pitchers and catchers have reported to St. Lucie. This day just keeps getting better and better!

Heads up -- I will murder the first person that asks me if I was looking the wrong way.* Anyway, I should probably go drink a bunch of beer, as is my tradition, to express thanks for my survival to an ultimately merciful, if occasionally sadistic Maker.

* I was not looking the wrong way. Vaunted London cabbie drove up onto the sidewalk and plowed through a crowd of pedestrians, then crashed into a building. Nicely done, Reg.

The Dugout Is Funny

2007-02-14T14:19:00.000-08:00

And so are advanced sabermetric acronyms.

One more day.

Let's Compare

2007-02-07T15:47:00.000-08:00

Does anybody still find this interesting? Apart from me, I mean?

Here's the graphs of HBP/G, ISO, SLG, and OPS presented all together. I added a different constant to each to get them to appear on the same graph. If you follow me, OPS (that's On-Base Percentage + Slugging Percentage) will run somewhere between .625 at the bottom and .780 at the top, while the number of Hit By Pitches per Game ranges from .125 to .389, so I added .500 to all my HBP values. Crude? Yes. Good statistics? Probably not. But who cares?

So, ah . . . what does this tell us? Well first of all, for our purposes, OPS, SLG and ISO are all equally good as indicators of a year's offensive fireworks. Apart from being different colors, all those graphs may as well be the same. And second, wow, guys are getting hit like crazy these days. Why?

Well, I guess it's a couple of different things, like those articles said. Guys are wearing all that body armor these days, so they're not afraid to get hit -- remember, batting helmets weren't even mandatory until, like, the sixties, and if you don't think that had an effect on HBP rates, you obviously don't know who Ray Chapman is. Batters are also diving out over the plate more these days, so they're more likely to get hit. So what do we do about it?

Bill James wrote that he would gradually move the batter's box four inches further away from the plate, making it both easier to hit the inside corner of the plate, but not the batter; and also making it more difficult for batters to dive out over the plate and pull an outside pitch. And that might work. But the very first thing I would do, is stop awarding first base for getting hit on armor.* Already, the umpires don't give you first if you don't make an effort to get out of the way of the pitch -- same principle.

*Except the helmet.

Even More HBP

2007-02-06T15:59:00.000-08:00

It just dawned on me that, implicit in my arguments is that there’s some idealized rate at which a pitcher “should” be hitting batters. Here’s a little thought experiment:

Imagine a baseball league in which nobody ever hits anything but singles. Logically, pitchers in such a league would never want to walk a batter or hit him, because those ALWAYS lead to baserunners; whereas a pitcher who makes the batter put the ball in play will get him out two-thirds of the time. And even if he does get a hit, you're basically no worse off than if he'd taken a base on balls or a HBP.

Conversely, imagine a league where EVERY hit goes for extra bases. In this slugging league, pitchers might decide that they're better off pitching inside and risking a walk or HBP, rather than giving up a double, single, or homer. You can't score the runner on first with a walk.

So, it seems logical that the more extra base hits there are, the more willing a pitcher should be to pitch to the inside of the plate and risk either walking or hitting the batter. What that exact rate should be, I don't know. But it seems like isolated power and HBP would go up and down together. And they do!

More HBP

2007-02-02T21:31:00.000-08:00

I was thinking about this again today and realized that maybe ISO would be a better stat to compare to HBP. ISO, or Isolated Power, is just Slugging percentage minus Batting Average. Slugging %, or SLG, is the total number of bases a batter hits -- one base for a single, two for a double, three for a triple, and so on -- divided by his at bats; so if you subtract a guy's batting average from his slugging percentage, you'll get a pretty good idea of how frequently his hits go for more than one base. It's a general measure of how hard guys are hitting the ball.

I also plotted this graph using a three-year linear moving average, to smooth out the curves and make the line a little less jumpy. Hopefully, that makes my point a little clearer, but mostly it's because I was bored.

HBP

2007-02-02T20:51:00.000-08:00

I read a really interesting article by Steve Treder yesterday at the Hardball Times, about the sudden HBP (that's Hit By Pitch, for you non-baseball people. Hi, honey!) explosion that nobody seems to have noticed, and it got me thinking. Apparently, batters are getting plunked at unprecedented rates. Pitchers today are hitting batters more frequently than Don Drysdale and Sal "The Barber" Maglie. Steve also cites a series of very interesting articles by Dan Fox, which I frankly can no longer read because I have allowed my Baseball Prospectus subscription to expire*. Anyway, I remember reading 'em when they came out, sort of. They were good.

My basic theory is that HBP is a self-regulating system. When offense goes up, eventually batters start getting hit more frequently -- either by pitchers needing to pitch on the inside part of the plate and hitting guys by accident, or pitchers just saying "fuck it," and figuring that it's better to just go ahead and plunk Barry Bonds and put him on first rather than letting him hit -- until batters are so consistently getting backed off the plate (or taking first on an HBP) that batting levels start to drop. And then it starts all over again.

So, to figure out if I was on to anything, I had to do a couple things. Number one, I had to reconstruct Steve's HBP graph (which involved a lot of time on both retrosheet.org and baseball-reference.com) so I could screw around with the data, and compare the relative rates of HBP and slugging (a general measure of how hard batters are hitting the ball) and OPS (which correlates extremely well with overall scoring). That was a pain in the ass. Anyway.

Wow, look at that -- batters really are getting hit more often. Huh. Anyway, take a look at OPS and Slugging over the same time period.

They look similar, yeah? If you look at the graph of HBP per Game, and the graphs of OPS and SLG, the shape of the graph is almost the same -- it starts out low, then there's a hump in the 60's before it starts taking off in the late 70's/early 80's -- but the HBP graph is a couple of years behind. Let's not forget that the pitchers who are hitting all of these batters are human. I don't imagine that Dontrelle Willis conjures up a batter's ISO power before he decides whether or not to plunk a guy in the ribs. But I do think that pitchers apply the lessons they learned last year to the batters they face this year.

If you look at the graph of changes in HBP rate with the changes in SLG and OPS, they're kind of opposite. When the rate of hitting is going up, the rate of hit batsmen is going down, and vice versa. I wish I knew enough statistics to do a correlation, because it looks to me like HBP and offense are negatively correlated. But I'm not that smart. Anyway, here's a graph of the percentage of change in ML HBP, SLG, and OPS.

*I allowed my Baseball Prospectus subscription to expire on principle, because I refuse to pay for baseball analysis on the internet; especially when you can get so much great stuff for free. Look, I really like the BP site -- it's great; I have their book and everything. But if retrosheet.org is free, I just can't see my way clear to pay for Baseball Prospectus. I don't pay for ESPN Insider, either.

This Is Going To Take Crackerjack Timing

2007-01-31T21:48:00.000-08:00

While I'm working on my HBP post . . . you know who's awesome? Fucking John Carpenter. The Thing, Halloween, Escape From New York . . . They Live, for the love of God. Jesus Christ. What more can a man do?

Fantasy Camp

2007-01-29T15:32:00.000-08:00

I meant to get to this earlier, but here's a link to Eric Brown's blog about his experiences at Mets fantasy camp (via Metsblog). Eric's a lifelong Mets fan, and I remember reading his blog from the first time he went to Mets fantasy camp, two years ago. Fantasy camp might not be everybody's cup of tea, but any innocent pleasure is a real good.

95 Theses

2007-01-24T22:56:00.000-08:00

At some point, vis-a-vis my last post, and soon I think, people will either describe themselves as Ecksteinians, or Sabermetricians; the same way we've got Catholics and Protestants.

Obviously, Moneyball is the 95 Theses nailed to the door of this Church of Baseball; and I think we all know what side of this heresy I'm on. My point here is that, whether or not you agree with Moneyball, or think it's some kind of nerd porn sent from Al-Qaeda to corrupt the American game; everyone should agree that it's the most important baseball book written since Ball Four.

Look, Joe Morgan: just because a book is important doesn't necessarily mean that you agree with it. One could make the case that Adolph Hitler was the most important man of the 20th century; that doesn't mean that I necessarily agree with him.

Not that I think Billy Beane is Hitler or anything.

I'm Pretty Sure This Is Actually How He Feels

2007-01-23T16:25:00.000-08:00

God knows, I would. Non-baseball-related, but I thought I'd mention it. Also, that rant is funny as hell.

There's also a funny shot at Bill Simmons here. I don't ordinarily mention the Sports Guy, because:

1. He doesn't really talk about baseball. When he does, he's more of an ecksteinian than a sabermetrician.

2. I think most of his columns are written with AutoText. Seriously, he says the same three things over and over.

On the other hand, I do still read him. So who am I to criticize? Anyway, as soon as I can remember how to update my template, Kissing Suzy Kolber are gettin' a link. I'm sure they're thrilled.

Insomnia

2007-01-19T01:14:00.000-08:00

Man, this freaking rules. I just can't get enough of being awake at 4:00 am.

John Thomson Hates Lo Duca

2007-01-10T15:43:00.000-08:00

Via Baseball Musings.

Huh. I'm surprised that Thomson would let Lo Duca's presence push him to the Blue Jays. Not only do the Jays have, like, zero chance of making the playoffs in the same division as the Red Sox and Yankees; but I'd have to assume that any pitcher, the money being equal, would much prefer to be in the DH-less and generally weaker league. Especially if he could be in an nice pitcher's park like Shea. He must really hate Dookie.

Of course, he also thinks that Cliffy still plays for the Mets, and that Toronto has better outfield defense, so he's clearly an idiot, too.

First Mini-Camp

2007-01-10T07:46:00.000-08:00

I'll bet D.W. slept in his uniform the night before and everything. Seriously, I think he looks forward to Spring Training even more than I do.

Willie Rocks

2007-01-08T19:32:00.000-08:00

No, not the Mets manager. Willie Nelson. Apropos of nothing, apart from the fact that I'm listening to some Red Headed Stranger right now, but Willie Nelson kicks ass.

Who's Left?

2007-01-03T15:10:00.000-08:00

I took a quick look today over at ESPN.com's free agent tracker, to see which starting pitchers were left for Omar to pick over on the scrap heap. Included in this chart is each pitcher's 2006 Win Shares Above Bench. A pitcher with a WSAB of zero is a bench player; it looks to me like these options aren't any better than what we've got internally.

I've got some more thoughts on pitching rotations, and how good the #4 and #5 starters need to be; actually, I've been thinking about this for a long time, but Jeff Sackmann does a good job talking about it here and here. God, I fucking love the Hardball Times.

Has anybody expressed any interest in poor Steve Trachsel? Boy, he could not have looked worse than he did in his final playoff start. Played himself right out of a contract with somebody. Remind me, I need to write up my defense of Steve Trachsel sometime soon. He might not be a bad sixth option for some team. The Mets'll never take him, though; Willie hates him.

Barry Zito and $126 million

2006-12-28T14:40:00.000-08:00

It looks like Zito's signed with the Giants for $126 million/7 years. That's absurd. I wanted the Mets to get him, but not at that price.

Number one, no pitcher should ever be given a 7-year contract, ever. Particularly not tall, skinny guys who don't throw that hard to begin with. Two, Barry Zito, good as he is, is not worth $18 million a year. Frankly, nobody is.

So the Mets will likely try to get by with Glavine, El Duque, and some combo of Oliver Perez, John Maine, Mike Pelfrey, and maybe Philip Humber until Pedro is back. I think that Heilman is going to stay in the bullpen, which is either bold and brilliant or incredibly stupid, depending on who you ask.

Merry XXX-mas

2006-12-27T19:55:00.000-08:00

Pirate needs booze, badly.

I'm on Day Five of the Great Eight-Day FMP* Christmas Extravaganza, and I need to get very drunk sometime soon. Don't get me wrong, I actually really like the FMP's family, but I've been on my best behavior for about as long as I can take it. Also, I fucking hate Christmas. There, I said it. Anyway, I get back into town on Saturday, at which point I will need to drink vast quantities of bourbon. Anybody with me?

* Future Mrs. Pirate

Three Things

2006-12-21T13:34:00.000-08:00

Here are three things I've realized about my super anal-compulsive, and probably incredibly boring MVP analyses:

I may very well be picking nits and splitting hairs. Really, does looking at the percentage of the team's RBIs that a guy knocks in tell you anything? On the other hand, at least it's an objective point from which to start an MVP discussion.
It's been pointed out that RBI production may have more to do with one's spot in the batting order than one's ability as a batter. I thought about trying to rate players versus the average production from their customary lineup position (like, "Ryan Howard's 149 RBI out of the 3-spot is 8.65% more than the average No. 3-hitter, while Soriano's 95 RBIs were 17.5% more than a league-average leadoff hitter) but then realized that I have no idea where I can easily get that kind of information, and that I am very lazy.
It's easier for NL players to separate themselves from the pack on their teams because there's no DH. Our NL MVP candidates all hit somewhere between 13% and 19% of their team's RBIs; while the AL players ranged from 10% to 17%. Also, Lance Berkman knocked in almost one fifth of the Astros runs. That's retarded. What the hell did they do for runs in the 10 games Berkman didn't play? Probably nothing. Of course, LB had more than twice as many ribbies as the next closest guy on the team, Biggio with 62. Ugh.

Anyway, I'm back from Illinois, where me and the FMP* had gone for my grandmother's funeral. Yeah, good times. A non-baseball story from Watseka: the food there sucks. I mean, every time I go out to visit my grandparents, every meal is like a badly cooked steak, served with an iceberg lettuce salad (ranch dressing, natch) and a baked potato with lots of sour cream. Strangely, for farm country, the produce always sucks. Bland on top of bland, with a side of bland. Anyway, after the funeral service we were going to go to this place for lunch, and my brother Tampa went to see if he could find it on the ol' interweb, and if so, how it rated; or, barring that, if there was secretly a halfway-decent restaurant somewhere in Iroquois County we could go to instead. Shockingly, he was able to find an online restaurant guide for the town of Watseka; the place we were supposed to go was actually on it, and it had a five-star rating. Can't be too bad, right? That's what he thought, until he realized that the McDonald's and the Pizza Hut had five-star ratings, too. Hell, even gas station take-out pizza got a four-and-a-half.

I know it's ridiculously expensive in New York, but I like living in a place where food you get from a gas station doesn't get a restaurant review.

* Future Mrs. Pirate