Dead Team Walking

No sooner do the Yanks show signs of life against one of the best teams in the majors, the Tampa Bay Rays, than they give those gains back against the worst team in the AL. You could excuse the Yanks poor performance against Brandon Morrow on Friday--the youngster, making his first major league start after spending a season and a half in the pen, was throwing bullets. But Sunday, the starter had a much lesser pedigree--Ryan Feierabend is no one's idea of a world beater, but he kept the Yanks to just two solo homers. Mike Mussina, going for win number 18, spit the bit with some longball action of his own, allowing Adrian Beltre and Jose Lopez to go deep against him. A second homer, against Jose Veras, gave Lopez a career day, and the Yanks are kicked into fourth place in the AL East.

Things aren't going to get easier, with the Yanks in Anaheim to play the team with the best record in baseball. Ugh.

***

By the way, I'm holding a chat over on the Baseball Prospectus web site at 1:00 PM, Eastern. Everyone's invited to join in and ask some questions. The link to the chat session is here. Hope to see you there.

Scoreboard!

Opening Da--, erm, Night was all you could ask for in a ballgame and in a start to Joe Girardi's career as Yankee manager. I wrote the experience up for Baseball Prospectus (subscriber article); here's the requisite taste:

The big story of the night was the historic final Opening Day of the House That Ruth Built, one of a litany of lasts that will run at least through September 21 against the Orioles (the Yankees' final scheduled regular season home game) and perhaps be stretched even farther should the Bronx Bombers manage to make it to the playoffs for the 14th straight year. We can look forward to these "historic" markers growing increasingly absurd as the year wears on, with broadcasters encouraging fans to catch the historic final midweek series against the Rays in July, and in August alerting us to Carl Pavano's historic final trip to the Yankee Stadium Trainers' Room. (I can almost hear Suzyn Waldman reverently running down the historic implications of the latter event: "Should Pavano somehow stay with the Yankees next year, and need a cortisone shot, or a rub down, or a precautionary X-Ray, it will be at the new Yankee Stadium.")

Of course, there will be an audience for all the sentimentality that's being unleashed with the Stadium's send-off. In a sport that conscientiously markets itself on its past and its traditions, the Yankees trade most effectively in nostalgia. Possibly the greatest achievement of the Yankees' nostalgia machine is the perceived continuity between the building that Colonel Ruppert built in 1923 to house Babe Ruth's bat and the current Yankee Stadium. The 1976 "renovation" was more of a gut-and-rebuild job than a simple sprucing up of the structure. Just about every significant detail of the building--its dimensions, the playing field, the seats, the scoreboard--was altered, resulting in an arena that doesn't fit in with the great classic ballparks like Wrigley Field or Fenway Park, but doesn't quite have the plastic uniformity of the cookie-cutter parks of the '60s and '70s, either. Although many still admire its timeless look, Yankee Stadium II (as we sometimes like to call the post-1976 structure) shares little with the original other than its address.

Across the street, the new new Yankee Stadium looks a bit like the Death Star, circa Return of the Jedi, enough so that I half-expect it to sprout a laser cannon and vaporize the present stadium sometime after the last pitch of the 2008 season is thrown. Its still-under-construction exterior shell self-consciously recalls the original structure, but the ballpark within will be thoroughly modern and built from scratch-there's no longer any plausible deniability that this isn't a break with history. Talking to fans around the ballpark, the recurring theme was anxiety about the new ballpark. Will they be able to afford tickets? Will they be near the other regular ticket plan holders in their section? Will the new Stadium be the same kind of place the old one was?

I know some of the rest of you had to be there...after all, the place was packed. How do you feel about the the last Opening Day at the old ballpark?

Good News, Links, and Tonight's Meetup

It's already been an eventful spring down in Tampa , with all eyes watching the Yanks' pitching young 'uns like hawks. Protective mother hawks. But the best news of the spring has been the negative biopsy Bobby Murcer received this week, showing that what some thought could have been a recurrence of his brain cancer was actually scar tissue. Surviving cancer is a day-by-day thing, but I'm glad to hear that we'll have the chance to enjoy some more days with Bobby. You can't ask for much better than that.

Anyway, I'll be at the Barnes and Noble on Fifth Avenue tonight at 6:00 (150 Fifth Avenue, & 18th Street). Being on a panel with Joe Sheehan, Steve Goldman and Jay Jaffe means being guaranteed that no one will ask you a question, but I'll fight to get my cuts in anyway. The tour will also take us (minus Goldman) to Long Island on Saturday, with an appearance at the Border's Book Store in Westbury, located at 1260 Old Country Road. That'll be at 2:00 PM. Next week (the 15th), I'll be in Rockaway, New Jersey with Steve, I'll update you on the time and place later on.

A few quick hits:

The rap on Representative Anthony Weiner, like his political mentor, Chuck Shumer, is that it's very dangerous to get between him and a TV camera, ever. He's also one of the more partisan politicos you'll find, which is one reason I hope his plea to the Attorney General, not to waste further federal resources on Roger Clemens finds a sympathetic audience. I'm on the record saying that Congress had no justification trying to sort Clemens's and Brian McNamee's dirty laundry in the first place; the investigation requested by the Oversight Committee is pouring more money after the initial bad investment of time and funds.

For BP subscribers, a couple of fresh Yankees links: Will Carroll's Team Health Report, and Kevin Goldstein's Organizational Rankings, which lists the Pinstripers as the #6 organization in the game.

I also had a quick take on Moneyball and the retirement of Jeremy Brown for Prospectus Toolbox earlier this week. Here's a taste:

The news that Jeremy Brown was hanging up his spikes due to "personal issues" made more of a stir last week than you'd expect from the retirement of a 28-year-old catcher who's spent the last two years in Triple-A. Our prospects expert, Kevin Goldstein, gave Brown an extremely evenhanded send-off over on Unfiltered; others have been less charitable, invoking imaginary choruses of scouts cheering the end of Brown's career. At least, I hope the cheering is imaginary: it'd take a Grinch-sized heart to rejoice in the end of someone's big-league dreams, unless their name is, say, Ben Christensen. The reason that Brown is the focus of such attention and schadenfreude is because the A's drafted him in the first round of the 2002 draft—an overdraft which, by itself, wouldn't be that noteworthy—and because Michael Lewis wrote a best-selling book which hailed Brown's selection as the bellwether of a new way of doing business, which the author dubbed "Moneyball" in the book of the same name. Apparently, those celebrating Brown's retirement are marking the occasion as the death of Moneyball acumen—a festive wake, with dancing and ironic toasts.

Now, Brown never asked to be the Luke Skywalker of a sabermetric revolution. He was a guy who was already going to face a fair amount of hazing in the minors because his body was not quite one that Calvin Klein would put on a billboard. After Moneyball was published, not only was he much more famous than the average 35^th overall pick, the negative aspects of his physique were cataloged in the book for ease of heckling. Saddling him with the additional burden of representing the A's organizational philosophy—as interpreted by Lewis—was never particularly fair. However, five years removed from the book's initial release, it is a reasonable time to look back at the 2002 draft, and at the A's organization in general, and ask: is Moneyball really dead?

BP2K8 In My Dirty Little Mitts!

I still remember the day I got my hands on the first edition of Baseball Prospectus. It was the day before Joe Sheehan's wedding, just a few, short hours before the second-most overwhelming drinking experience of my life. (The refrain: "Oh! Another drink? We're still going to dinner after this, right?" Yeah, sure.) Joe pulled it out of a cardboard box, and even though the cover was a plain white thing, barely thicker than the pages inside, it was, at the time, one of the most amazing treasures I'd ever seen. There was the initial shock of "someone I know made this" and then the many tasty nuggets of player and team commentary inside. A few samples, from that year's Yankees chapter:

On then-future Yankee skipper Joe Girardi:

When I spellchecked this document, one of the potential replacements for Girardi was "giardia", an infection often caused by the accidental ingestion of bacteria from beaver feces. But anyway...this organization has the chutzpah to lose Mike Stanley, one of the top two or three catchers in the AL, replace him with this out-with-a-pulse, and call it "an improvement behind the plate." On some level, you have to admire the gall. A truly execrable hitter. He'd have to save 50 runs a year over the average catcher to be worth the roster spot, much less the money. This man's agent should go into the Hall of Fame right now.

Agree or disagree, at least the author of the comment is telling us how they really feel. On faded phenom Kevin Maas:

A highly entertaining player to watch. Studied at the Dick Stuart school of infield defense, the Rob Deer school of hitting, and the Dudley Do-Right school of jawbone. Worse players have jobs.

On recently-praised-for-the-wrong-reasons-by-Congress Andy Pettitte:

Big Lefthanded Kid [tm] who has decent and improving control, is slowly improving his K rate, and hasn't been overworked at a young age. Good thing Dallas Green doesn't have control over this kid, or he'd be proving his manhood by throwing 180 pitches for a few starts, then licking a cheese grater real hard or something. This is a very good prospect, and he will probably become a multimillionaire in this game.

Twelve editions later, the Baseball Prospectus is essentially in the same format Joe laid out as editor for that first book. PECOTA has replaced VLAD as the projection system, the Fungoes section has been added for extended statistical essays, and the cover (as you can see above) is a whole hell of a lot prettier than the original, which just said "Baseball Prospectus '96" and the authors' names in an impact font. What I couldn't have dreamed when Joe pulled that book out of the box in 1996 was that in 2008 Baseball Prospectus would still be going strong, and that I'd not only be one of the writers on the book, but that I'd have responsibility for the Statistical Introduction (which was called the "Tools" section in BP '96)--writing alongside a group of people much smarter than me (Nate Silver, Clay Davenport, and Christina Kahrl)--as well as a team chapter (which isn't bylined, but is the same as last year) and a large handful of other player comments.

I went down to the publisher's office with Joe on Thursday to pick up my copy from BP's extremely clutch publicist, Mary Pomponio, plus an extra as the prize for a contest I ran in my column. I've received the book by mail from the publisher the past couple of years, but that usually happens just as it's hitting the shelves. This time, I think Joe and I had the final product in our hands even before the editors did. As with anything I'm involved with writing, there is the immediate scan through my own stuff to see how it came out (Adrian Beltre made it this time! As did Wladimir Balentien!), and the search for the inevitable first typo (Apologies, Bob Ueker Eucker Youker Yucca Uecker! You get to misspell my name--first or last, your call--whenever you like from now on). Even though I was involved in writing the book, it still holds surprises for me, such as Dan Fox's amazing outfield arms study (Yankee fact: one of the few centerfielders to have a worse arm than Bernie Williams, 2005-2007, was the man who replaced him, Johnny Damon) and Clay Davenport's work on pitchers' counts. The book should start appearing in bookstores and on doorsteps any minute now, and I hope everyone out there enjoys the book as much as I enjoyed working on it.

ODDS AND ENDS:

One reason why it took me a couple of days to get this post up is because I wanted a picture of the actual cover of the book to go with the post. The original cover--which was prepared by the publisher before we'd finished writing--featured one of my guys dead center on the cover, with a blurb that I expected would have hordes of his fans bringing tar and feathers to my doorstep, despite my much more supportive player comment. I like the new one better, even if the blurb under Clay Buchholz is "Better than Joba."

If any of you want to meet me, Joe Sheehan, Steve Goldman, Jay Jaffe, or any of the other folks involved with the book, we'll be hitting the bricks, starting in earnest a week from tomorrow, with an appearance at the Yogi Berra Museum in Montclair. I'm currently booked to be there, at our Manhattan bookstore appearance on March 6, and on Long Island on March 8; for details, you can check Prospectus's events page.

I belatedly completed the latest (can I hope, last, at least for a while?) of my Stupid Lawyer Tricks articles at BP on the Clemens/McNamee/Pettitte PED triangle. I don't know how much I have to stress that I could happily live the rest of my life without seeing Earl Ward, Rusty Hardin, or Richard Emery quoted in print again. Here's a taste of the wrap-up:

The final, bizarre note about the Congress's voyage into the Clemens/McNamee mess was Waxman's attempt to wash his hands of the whole deal, insisting the final hearing was only held at the request of Clemens's attorneys. It was a vicious cop-out that didn't acknowledge the wrong-headedness of the Committee's strategy, which from the very first put Clemens, Pettitte, and McNamee on a collision course in their hearing chamber. I can understand the arguments that the Committee's authority extends to drug testing in professional sports, but it's an entirely different matter for a legislative body—no matter how broad its oversight authority—getting involved in a rather basic dispute between private citizens, no matter how famous. In this case, the Committee would have been well served to remember the words of Rick Blaine: "It doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world." Sometimes you've got to set aside the soap opera and keep your eyes on the bigger picture.

In case anyone wants to read the whole series, here are some links:

The Mitchell Report, Going to Court

Stupid Lawyer Tricks: Clemens vs. McNamee Mailbag

Stupid Lawyer Tricks: The Mitchell Report in Congress, Round I

Stupid Lawyer Tricks: Combing the Headlines

Stupid Lawyer Tricks: Clemens & McNamee Go to Congress

Stupid Lawyer Tricks: Clemens v. McNamee--After the Hearings

Odds and Ends

I made my debut on Sports Illustrated.com yesterday--sans byline, sadly--with a way abbreviated intro to Baseball Prospectus's Playoff Odds Report, which S.I. will be running periodically down the stretch. You can check that out here.

I missed Phil Hughes' first couple of innings, which meant I didn't really see the "struggling" part of his start. Nonetheless, he didn't look too sharp in the time I watched--his only strikeout of the night came before I turned on the set. Still, a win is a win, and this is two straight quality starts for the Phranchise.

The ninth inning featured Ross Ohlendorf's major league debut. He's a big, corn-fed kid, and he throws plenty hard--clocked at 95 a couple of times, IIRC. I hate his delivery, though. He throws across his body a bit, which looks uncomfortable and could mean shaky control. The 24 walks in 66 IP he had at AAA wasn't th end of the world, but it's hardly inspiring, either. For some reason, he makes me think of Jeff Nelson, which would be a fine career for him, if he can grab it.

Hideki Matsui, when he's going bad, looks like one of the very worst hitters in baseball. It's crazy to see him right now and remember how dominant he was in July. He appears to be one of those hitters--Jason Varitek is another that comes to mind--who sometimes completely lose their rhythm and their swing suffers a total breakdown, becomes all arms. Here's hoping he shakes this off soon.

Quiet Week?

I know I say this every week, but I'm sorry about the lack of posting here. I haven't been completely silent: on Tuesday, my third Prospectus Toolbox article came out, this time dealing with relief pitching stats. Here's a taste:

If saves are such a bad statistic, then what tools should we use to evaluate relievers' performances? When evaluating offense, we tend to emphasize components (hits, walks, home runs, outs made) over results (runs, RBI). That's because we're usually trying to isolate one hitter's performance from those of the batter before him and the batter behind him. The pitcher, on the other hand, stands alone on the mound, and for better or for worse, we tend to blame him for anything that happens in the game while he's up there. The best-known pitching stat, earned run average, is results-oriented: it doesn't matter if a pitcher's earned runs come on solo homers or in a soft barrage of singles and walks, all that matters is how many earned runs have scored. However, ERA isn't the ideal statistic for relievers, either, in large part because relievers often come into the game with another pitcher's runners already on base, and they sometimes leave runners of their own on base for the next reliever on their team to deal with. Any good reliever evaluation stat would have to account for how well the reliever prevents those inherited runs from scoring, and what sort of situation he tends to leave for the next reliever on his team to clean up.

The advanced relief statistics we use here take an extremely result-oriented approach to a relief pitcher's contributions. Using different methodologies, these statistics look at the game situation when the reliever enters the game, and compare that to the game situation when the reliever leaves the game (or the game ends), without much concern over how we got from Point A to Point B. That comparison creates a positive or negative value that represents how well (or poorly) the reliever helped his team by preventing runs from scoring.

If you want to learn more about these advanced stats, you can check out the article here. One piece of research that I did for the article was a look at relief innings against total innings over the years. One side-effect was that I as able to look at the Yanks' relief usage over the last couple of years. It probably won't come as a surprise to anyone, but the Yanks (as of last Monday) had the second-highest percentage of relief innings pitched, 39.2%, a handy boost over 2006's percentage of 35.3%.

Anyway, while I've been occupied with my Baseball Prospectus work, as well as my regular work, the Yanks have been taking care of business. Since the Yanks lost to the White Sox on Monday night--putting a stake through the heart of Matt DeSalvo's Yankee career hopes (he now seems to occupy the same tender place in Torre's heart that's been reserved for Colter Bean)--they've looked like the team we figured would show up at the beginning of the season, alternately grinding opponents into submission and hitting hard in the late innings. Very nice.

We're not calling it a wi...er, we're not calling this anything. More after Rocket Launch.

Updates and Notes

So, having split their six games against the Mets and Red Sox, the Yankees now have to face their third first-place team in a row, the AL West-leading Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, of California, of the United States of America (the LAAoCAUSA, for short), at the Stadium. Then it's on to a week-and-a-half on the road against Toronto, Boston (again) and the White Sox, before the Interleague thing starts up again. This is a tough stretch, and despite their recent signs of life, the Yankees at 21-24 need to make up ground, desperately.

Caught some of the Rocket's second tuneup at the pool hall on Wednesday, and that didn't look like imminent rescue was on its way. True, for Clemens it's more like a Spring Training start--more about getting your pitches in and working on your stuff than serious competition-- but Roger didn't show much command (4 walks in 5 1/3 innings), and the AA batters didn't look overwhelmed by his stuff. Still, it seems that whether or not Clemens makes one more minor league start--this time at Scranton--will be a call the Rocket himself will make.

In other news, I forgot to plug my new series at Baseball Prospectus in this space. It's called Prospectus Toolbox, my attempt to explain some of the numbers that the Prospectus crowd throws about, in language fit for a layperson. You can check out the debut installment, a bit about VORP, here, and the follow-up, with a comparison between VORP and WARP, here.

In sadder news, Anne Ursu, the indominable Batgirl, has decided to hang up her legos (hat tip to BTF). Even though she has no love for the Yanks, Ursu's site has been the best Twins blog out there, and a great source of humor for all baseball fans. The rest of us will be flying in the missing blogger formation during her absence. There's hope that she'll return after she's done teaching her newborn, Dashiell, how to keep score and to throw a slider.

Speaking of taking time off, I'm away at a friend's wedding as I write this, so posts might be scant for the next week or so. But there should be some pretty fun stuff coming down the pike...stay tuned.

Opening Day Photoblog

I was at Opening Day on Monday, the kind of experience that never gets tired. My notes of what went down are up at Baseball Prospectus as a Game of the Week piece--as free basic content. Here's the required taste:

• Speaking of upsets, who had 1:16 PM ET in the pool on when Alex Rodriguez would start getting booed? With two outs and Cark Crawford on base in the first inning, Rodriguez had trouble seeing a foul pop-up off of the bat of first baseman Ty Wigginton. Rodriguez got a late break, then overran the ball for an error, and you’d have thought Project A13 never existed. Happy Opening Day, Alex!

• Twelve minutes later, it was Rodriguez at the plate with two men on and one out in the bottom of the first. As the count went full, a fan behind us hissed “If he strikes out looking here, he’s done. For the season, it’s over.” Again, this was inning one of game one. Fortunately for Rodriguez’s season, he struck out swinging rather than looking, flailing away at a low-90s fastball from Scott Kazmir. The runners eventually came around to score on a Jason Giambi single.

For follow-up I wrote a few additional notes over on BP's Unfiltered...er, blogthingie that they don't want to call a blog. The taste of that (as with all Unfiltered content, that, too is free):

Best Moment of the Day: With not only Lidle, but remembrances for Bowie Kuhn and Hank Bauer at the beginning of the program, things were pretty somber at the Stadium to start the day. So when the Stadium video screen started on a tribute to Bobby Murcer, who was diagnosed with brain cancer less than four months ago, I was ready to get bummed out again–until they showed Murcer, minus quite a bit of hair but looking pretty good otherwise, in the YES Network broadcast booth. Probably the most heartfelt standing ovation I’ve seen, for something that didn’t happen on the field.

But wait, there's more! More brother and I had our cameras, so we snapped a few pics to go along with all this prose:


Here, courtesy of my brother JJ, is a shot from the IRT train platform outside the Stadium. One of the things I discussed in my Game of the Week column was the joy of seeing the ballpark come into view as the 4 Train goes elevated approaching the 161st Street Station. Usually, you can hear a buzz in the subway car as the Stadium pops into view. (Yesterday, however, we were pressed into the Subway like sardines. The only sound as we rolled into the station was the sound of people preparing to exhale).

Here (again, courtesy of JJ) is a view of River Ave, and the creatures waiting to get into the bleachers.








This one's one of mine: the new Stadium, embryonic view. Right now it looks like an extensive (not to mention expensive) collection of wooden scaffolds. Sadly, it won't remain that way, or magically transform itself back into a park.








Another one of mine, this time the Yanks and Rays lined up after the announcements--just moments away from the start of the season.









...and three hours later, we're off to never-never land. This shot (courtesy of JJ, who as you can probably tell by now has a better camera and way better skills than I do) is the final pitch of the game, Mariano Rivera delivering to B.J. Upton. Rivera was absolutely throwing darts out there, pumping fastball after fastball 95 MPH.

At BP: Hope & Faith, The Tampa Bay Devil Rays

New article up at Baseball Prospectus, for the Hope & Faith series. Hope & Faith is BP's season preview series, that has run every publishing day at BP for the last month or so. The point of each article is to make an argument how each of the 30 major league teams could win the World Series this year--in Bud Selig lingo, why fans of each team should have "hope and faith" that their team can win. The series has featured guest writers like Rich Lederer, Tracy Ringolsby, and BP founder Gary Huckabay.

I drew the Tampa Bay Devil Rays as my Hope & Faith assignment. I started out by working on humorous ways the Devil Rays could win (the Yanks and Red Sox get thrown into quarantine after it's revealed--during a bench-clearing brawl--that Carl Pavano is infected with a flesh-eating bacteria, which he was hiding from the Yankees brass; Toronto forfeits half its schedule when the U.S. declares war on Canada, and the Blue Jays are sent to Guantanamo as enemy combatants; Billy Beane's [expletive deleted] doesn't work in the playoffs, that kind of thing), but in the end I decided to play things straight and look at ways that the Devil Rays could emulate recent world champions. Here's the obligatory taste:

That’s a lot of ifs, mights, coulds and maybes up there. To some, this entire exercise may seem ridiculous. The Devil Rays have never come within ten games of a winning record, in their entire history. They’re in a tough division, with two of the best-heeled gatekeepers in the game’s history. Nothing in this team’s track record indicates that they have what it takes to contend.

That’s why we leave you with a lesson from the 1997 World Champions. History doesn’t matter in baseball. Every Opening Day, you start with a clean slate, no matter how bad or good your team was the year before. The Florida Marlins won the World Series in the first winning season of their franchise’s history. So did the New York Mets. It would take hard work, good timing, and an almost ridiculous amount of luck, but for the moment we can still wonder: why not the Devil Rays?

It's a pay article, but there's also an interview with me and BP Radio's Brad Wochomurka, which is available for free--either by using the radio interface on BP's new-look front page, or by clicking this link here. Monday's BP Radio spot with Brad on the Mariners is available here. Of course, if you use iTunes you should already be subscribed to BP Radio's podcast (c'mon...it's free!).

Hope to see all you locals at the Columbia University event tonight at six.

Everything You've Ever Wanted to Know About Baseball Prospectus (But Were Afraid to Ask)

This one's a little bit personal and more than a little self-involved, so if you're just here for the baseball you might want to come back tomorrow.

I got news Saturday that Baseball Prospectus 2007 hit (or will hit, I've never quite figured out how this works) #9 on the New York Times Bestseller list, in the "Paperback Advice" section, as of March 25. Apparently, this reflects how well the book sold through March 10. Saturday was March 17, by the way. Confused? Me, too!

More certain (but certainly not less confusing) is that this means that all the authors of BP2K7 (as we like to call it) are best-selling authors. Including me. This was unexpected (apparently, this is Baseball Prospectus's best-ever showing), and it came on the tail of some big changes in my life.

So the last few weeks, I've been dealing with the ups and downs of being a BP author. On the up side, at the end of February, I was interviewed for Japanese television, a story about the Yanks/Red Sox rivalry and Daisuke Matsuzaka. The opportunity was sent my way by BP colleague Neil deMause. It was pretty cool: the crew came to my home, and did a detailed interview in which I talked about the Yanks' and Sox's finances and payroll advantage, explained the luxury tax, and gave the Yanks an extremely slight edge going into the season. Then they asked me for action shots of me at my computer, which you can see above. Sadly, the interview will only air in Japan; if I'm able to get my hands on the footage, I'll be sure to share. But it was weird being interviewed on TV, particularly since they were interviewing me...and Bob Ryan of the Boston Globe.

That's a weird feeling. Ryan's been one of the top sports writers in the country since I was in high school, if not earlier. How'd I become the next name they pick out of the hat?

On the down side of all this, came the news just after BP was released that four players were missing from the book--and two of them were from my chapter, including the one that people would be most likely to miss, Seattle third baseman Adrian Beltre. Now, as one of my editors, Christina Kahrl, made clear on BP's Unfiltered Blog, if wasn't that we forgot about Beltre or anything. The team working on BP2K7 had a really cool web-based interface that we used to submit and edit our work, rather than emailing dozens of Word files to each other. From what I understand, something went wrong in that interface, causing the entries on Beltre, Wladimir Balentien, Bob Wickman, and Hernan Iribarren (how's that for a bizarre random sampling of players?) to get lost on their way to the publisher, and so none of those guys made it into the book.

These things happen. The first Baseball Prospectus annual, back in 1996, was missing an entire team, the Cardinals. As was the case back then, we're trying to make the inconvenience up to people--this time, by making all the information from the entry, plus quite a bit more, available to the public by making all four players' PECOTA cards available to the public for free (you can click on any of the player names above to see what those PECOTA cards look like, and the comments that should have been in this year's annual). Still, it sucks because a) a bit of work, by myself and others, went into those comments, and it sucks that they didn't get into print, and b) there are plenty of people who will buy the annual but never see Christina's Unfiltered post, or know that they could get the missing entries online. To all those people, I am very deeply sorry.

Even without Beltre (and Balentien), it's still a great book, and I'm still proud of the Seattle chapter, which is where I made my contribution.

Still, I'd only just gotten over the waves of nausea that the missing players caused me, when another hubub erupted, having to do with my chapter. This one was simultaneously more annoying and far less substantial. Someone took one of the players comments as a personal insult against one of his friends, and decided to make a giant public stink about it. The post about this no longer exists, but the Baseball Think Factory thread on that post can be found here, and another post from the same website giving the denouement of the whole affair can be found here. All in all, I guess the firestorm took maybe six or seven hours one afternoon and evening. It didn't help that I got to the party late, by which time there were many, many comments at both the site in question and at BTF, accusing me and my colleagues of all manner of ugly and scurrilous conduct.

The worst part is, people took great umbrage over the fact that the person who wrote the comment in question (me) was anonymous, as a result of BP's policy that team chapters and player comments are written by the Baseball Prospectus Team as opposed to any particular author. To understand why that policy makes sense, you have to understand how the book writing process works. There are chapter authors, each responsible for writing the team essay and a number of player comments. Each author decides--with the able assistance of BP's resident prospect expert, Kevin Goldstein--which players he'll write about, and who will get a full comment or just a single-sentence Lineout comment. Kevin will also give input on the minor leaguers, ranging from the incredibly detailed to a simple "big fastball, no command."

Then it's off to deal with the blank page, but even that isn't a solitary process. Writers have the backup of BP's technical staff and internal mailing list, where they make requests for statistical queries, often drawing commentary and suggestions from other members of mailing list. By the time all's said and done, the research is collaborative enough that if you had to attribute all the individual contributions, something like "based on research by Ben Murphy with suggestions from Keith Woolner, and a verbal smackdown about historical context from Jim Baker..." by the time you got through with all the shoutouts, you wouldn't have much wordcount left to actually say anything.

Once all the research is done there's the writing, and after the writing, our editors get their thing on. Sometimes their influence is relatively small, just covering up the fact that the writer doesn't know when one should use "that" as opposed to "which", or that he doesn't have any idea about the proper use of the semicolon. In other situations, they're streamlining the text, making it more readable, adding jokes, and trying to make the whole thing read less like a dozen different authors writing in their own voices, and more like a chorus singing in a single key. Sometimes the verbal surgery they perform is radical--in one 120-word player comment I submitted, the editors kept only two of my words, re-writing everything else. Those words? "Hamster wheel."

So the point is, it takes a village to write a player comment.

This comes into play in the weird internet argument I was talking about before. The problem was, I wrote a comment about longtime Mariner Raul Ibanez, in which I looked back at BP's 2004 comment about Ibanez, in which the Mariners' signing Ibanez away from the Kansas City Royals was labeled a waste of money, and pointed out that the previous comment had turned out completely wrong: Ibanez stopped his decline, started playing like a completely different person, and was a bargain over the course of his contract. At the end of this, my editors appended, for humorous purposes "...the guy who made that comment isn't with us anymore."

Someone assumed that this last part was a dig at former BP author Derek Zumsteg, who did the Mariners chapter for several years, including 2004. The only problem with this theory was, well, that the Ibanez comment in 2004 wasn't in the Mariners chapter--it was in the Kansas City Royals chapter, which was written by someone else. I knew that when I wrote the comment (although I'll admit that I forgot for a while in the post-accusation shock period; I thought the guy who'd accused me of being a miserable person was right, and that my memory was wrong). I have absolutely no grudges against either Zumsteg or the person who actually wrote the comment (to the contrary, they're two of my favorite writers). The idea wasn't to get a dig in on anyone, it was to take accountability for a prediction that turned out wrong--one that lots and lots of people, and not just at Baseball Prospectus, shared.

Anyway, all of this comes up because as of today, I'm outed from my Seattle chapter anonymity. I did a Baseball Prospectus Radio spot for today previewing the Mariners' season--ironically, in connection with a piece Zumsteg wrote for Baseball Prospectus's Hope and Faith series. With any luck, my own Hope and Faith entry--on the Tampa Bay Devil Rays--will be up on the site later this week. On Thursday night, I'll be at Columbia University and on Saturday afternoon I'll be at the Yogi Berra Museum in Montclair, New Jersey, signing copies of Baseball Prospectus 2007 and talking baseball (details can be found on BP's events page). Feel free to come by and have your book signed. If you've happened on a copy of Bombers Broadside 2007, I'll gladly sign that, also.

Heck, if you bring a printout of the Adrian Beltre or Wladimir Balentien PECOTA cards, I'll sign those, too.

[UPDATE: fixed typo]

Prospectus: Hughes 2nd Best Prospect in Baseball

Yeah, I've blown the top story with my headline, but Baseball Prospectus has released its yearly top prospects list, this time a top 100, and things look pretty good for the Yankees. Phil Hughes comes in second behind Royals hitting machine Alex Gordon and ahead of last year's #1 the Devil Rays' Delmon Young. This is the highest ranking by a Yankee since Nick Johnson was Prospectus's top prospect in 2000, and probably the highest ranking since the Little Unit, Ryan Anderson, taught Mariners fans the meaning of TINSTAAPP after topping the 2001 rankings.

Further on down the line, Jose Tabata checks in at #22 on the rankings, followed by Joba Chamberlain at #56, Humberto Sanchez at #65, Dellin Betances at #92, and Tyler Clippard as an honorable mention. Before you get too excited by the number of players from the Yanks that made the list, remember that BP doubled its top prospects rankings this year, from 50 to 100, only a couple of years after moving up from their traditional top 40. Chamberlain would have been an honorable mention, at best, under last year's system, and Sanchez, Betances, and Clippard wouldn't have been mentioned at all; so this still definitely ranks behind the 2000 prospects list, when Johnson was #1, D'Angelo Jimenez #16, and Alfonso Soriano #33.

[ASIDE: Yep, there was a time--particularly, but not exclusively, before he broke his neck, that we liked Jimenez more than Soriano. And I wonder, had Prospectus and all the other prospect hounds known that Sori was two years older than he claimed, if he would've ranked anywhere at all. Fast forward to February, 2007, and Johnson's an above-average, but not elite, first baseman, Jimenez is a non-roster invitee, and Soriano's sitting on a $136 million contract. None of them are Yankees. The world's a funny place.]

One of the reasons that the BP list has expanded is because it's now in the capable hands of Kevin Goldstein, who has really improved BP's prospects coverage. Still, as cool as Kevin is and as much fun as it's been working with him is, I kind of miss the old days of the Prospectus Prospects roundtables, where the whole gang would put their two bits in concerning the prospects lists, often leading to some interesting tangents and vicious battle royales.

****

Elsewhere in Yankeedom, not much is happening. Well, Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter are talking about their relationship, which gives you an idea of the level of news we're talking about. I'd like to thank the Metropolitan area news corps for treating us to a homoerotic undertone in their coverage. Not that there's anything wrong with that, mind you. Just it doesn't have much to do with baseball.

Perhaps of marginally higher significance, Carl Pavano recently had to sit out with "heavy legs." It's gonna be a an up-and-down ride with Can't Play Carl this season, if we're lucky. Otherwise, like last season, it will simply be a down-and-down ride. Pavano's already had his own relationship subplot this pre-season with Mike Mussina. Any second now, I expect to see the headline "Pavano: Pinstripes Make My Butt Look Big."

Where On Earth Are You?

Well, if you think things have been a little quiet around here, it's because since late last week I've been working press at the Caribbean World Series, in Puerto Rico. You can see (and, to my chagrin, hear) the fruit of my labors at Baseball Prospectus. Links follow:

The Return of Game of the Week (Unfiltered--free)

Caribbean Series Round Robin Preview (BP--pay article)

BP Radio February 2, Caribbean Series

Caribbean Series Day One -- (BP--free)

Caribbean Series Programming Notes (Unfiltered)

Caribbean Series Day Three -- (BP--pay)

Caribbean Question of the Day -- (Unfiltered)


Hopefully, I'll have some cool pictures to post soon. In the comments section, please tell me: what's going on in baseball in New York?

Sin Filtro

Yesterday marked my debut on Baseball Prospectus's new blog, BP:Unfiltered. I'll admit, I thought the name was a little silly, in a pack-o-smokes kind of way. Still, it's fun to have the kind of platform BP gives you, without all the process and editorial oversight. Here's the requisite taste, which expands on some of the issues I addressed in yesterday's post:

Getting to enjoy or even follow winter baseball can be a challenge. The official minor league baseball site, for example, will list a minor leaguer’s current winter league stats on his player page, and will list the day’s games on the site’s scoreboard–but there are no links for winter league teams, standings, or boxscores, aside from the Arizona Fall League. Baseball America, which used to be the resource for winter league info in the pre-Internet days, now only has coverage of the Arizona and Hawaiian leagues in its “Winter” section, ignoring the latin american leagues, so far.

Despite the fact that MLB.tv carried last year’s Caribbean World Series, MLBAM isn’t carrying video of any Winter League action, so far (the exceptions being the Arizona Fall League’s championship game, and the MLB/Japan exhibitions last month). If your cable or satellite provider carries ESPN Deportes, you’re in luck–they regularly carry Dominican, Venezuelan and Mexican Winter League games. Sadly, Deportes hasn’t reached the level of ubiquity of the Worldwide Leader’s other offerings, and is not carried by a large number of cable systems, even in areas with big Hispanic populations–like New York freakin’ City.

Frustrated in my efforts to find baseball action on the ‘net or the tube, I started looking forward to my upcoming trip to Puerto Rico. Sadly, it’s harder to get information on the Puerto Rican Winter League than it is to discover the Pentagon’s top-secret war plans. I’m both bilingual and more than a little bit obsessive-compulsive, so I eventually found a website that sells tickets, but you have to wonder if a lot of sports fans looking for an easy baseball fix wouldn’t just throw up their hands when a couple of simple google searches won’t reveal updated team websites or ticket information.

I'm throwing this topic out for suggestions: does anyone know a decent bar in New York where you can catch winter league action? Does anyone have winter league resources or stories they want to share?

World Series Diary

Over at Baseball Prospectus, they have the running Diary I did of Game one of the World Series. It's a pay article (don't complain, you should be subscribing to Baseball Prospectus anyway), but here's a taste, with my take on the big controversial play of the game:

9:39: BPer Neil deMause nominates "Who would you say is the most complex character on Saved by the Bell?" for dumbest conversation topic of the World Series. Dumbest conversation topic yet, is all I have to add. I was kind of hoping that Joe Buck would turn the conversation to Screech’s porn tape--Bill Simmons’ head would have exploded, for certain.

9:41: Pujols, on first with a walk, goes first-to-third on a bad pickoff throw by Verlander. Have to wonder if a more experienced first baseman than Guillen might have been able to control the damage on that throw. A Jim Edmonds single scores Pujols, and Scott Rolen follows with a ground-rule double to send Verlander to the showers.

9:49: With Jason Grilli on the mound, a ball is hit to Inge, who is playing in. Inge throws wide to Ivan Rodriguez, and then collides, in foul territory by the third base coaches’ box, with Scott Rolen, who took a wide turn around third. The play continues, with Rolen going home and being tagged out easily. However, obstruction is called on Inge, so Rolen scores.

I get the call, but it's kind of hard to swallow, since Inge was well out of the base path, with his back to the runner, so he couldn’t have seen Rolen or expected to be in Rolen's way. I guess the message here is that it’s the fielder's job to make sure he stays the heck out of the runner’s way, regardless of what one should expect. The only safe place for Inge to stand after that play would be on the infield grass, because then Rolen couldn’t run him over without being automatically called out for running inside the base line.

What are you guys thinking about the World Serious? Are you following it at all?

Notebooks & Such

I've got a Notebook piece up at Baseball Prospectus, on the Yanks and the booing of Alex Rodriguez. Normally I'd give you a taste (that is, a small sample of the article) but I'm away for the weekend, posting this from my cellphone. Clicking the title of this post should give you the full article, which is free (no sub required).

I know the Yanks have split their first two games with the Mets, but I haven't seen a pitch of the action. If any kind souls want to reflect on Subway Series Games 4 & 5, please feel free to use the comments below.

Scribbling in the Notebook

I know it's been quiet here on the Blog, but in the meanwhile I've written a couple of Prospectus Notebook pieces, on the Royals and Yankees.

The Royals piece is a solo Notebook, my first since the old Prospectus Triple Plays. It's all about the Royals' spending on place-fillers like Mark Grudzielanek, Doug Mientkiewicz, Mark Redman, Scott Elarton, and Paul Bako. Here's a sample:

That’s the big theme of [the Royals' free agent] acquisitions, one that reportedly will continue with the signing of outfielder Reggie Sanders. The Royals are on a two-year plan, matching the time remaining on Mike Sweeney’s contract, in which they intend to use veteran placeholders to support their youngsters. Like cedar chips in a closet, having a bunch of mildly above-average thirtysomethings around the clubhouse could keep the club from stinking while the Royals await the arrival of prospects like Billy Butler, Alex Gordon, Justin Huber, and Chris Lubanski. In 2008, all those players could be in the show, along with $15 million which will come off the payroll in veteran players. In comparison, if the Royals had signed A.J. Burnett to the same five years, $55 million he received from the Toronto Blue Jays, they’d have a good, but not great, pitcher on a bad team now, and probably a 31 year-old innings-eater making $11 million in 2008.

The Yankees piece (you have to scroll down, since it's the second segment in this Notebook) is a rundown of the Yanks' tradition of offering the fans "Christmas present" acquisitions over the past ten or so years. Here's a sample:

2005
The Gift: Johnny Damon, CF
They Left a Price Tag on This One: Four years, $52 million
Naughty or Nice: Some years, what you receive for Christmas is something new and extravagant, the equivalent of an XBox 360. Some years, it's something commonplace and practical, like a nice pair of woolen socks. Rarely do you come across a present that combines both the spark of novelty and the adult virtue of practicality--such as a slinky new cell phone to replace the one you've dropped a thousand times. For a team whose incumbent center fielders posted EqAs of .242 (Bernie Williams) and .227 (Bubba Crosby) in 2005, and one long in need of outfield defense, Damon was close to a necessity. Add in the fun of ticking off the entire fan base of the Yankees' closest rivals, and Damon is clearly a toy that's both fun and educational. We have to hope that the Yanks got the extended warranty, here--last season's PECOTA projections featured a couple of players comparable to Damon who fell off the face of the earth in their early 30s, most notably Lloyd Moseby and Andy Van Slyke.

It's a fun topic, and one I'd love to take on, much more in-depth, in the future. Enjoy!

Notebookin' the BoSox

This one's a day stale, but over at Baseball Prospectus, I have a list of questions for the next Red Sox manager to answer, covering such vital topics as Johnny Damon, Manny Ramirez, Keith Foulke, and Blistex (just go read it, you'll understand).

***

In other news, Rafael Palmeiro's lawyers are still blaming his positive test for stanazolol(sp?) on a B-12 shot Palmeiro got from fellow Latino slugger Miguel Tejada. So first he wagged his finger at a Congressional committee, now he points that finger at another, trying to deflect blame from himself in the lamest way possible. At least, the House of Representatives has finally admitted what anyone in their right minds would have known to begin with: that it would be close to impossible to pursue perjury charges against Palmeiro.

Given the fact that Palmeiro didn't have to worry much about the end of the season, you'd think he'd've had the chance to come up with something better than this. Just off the top of my head, a few better excuses that Raffy could've used:

1. Honest to God, I thought it was heroin. I would never shoot up steroids.
2. Now I know what the secret ingredient of Colonel Sanders' chicken is!
3. I must've caught it from Paris Hilton, the time we filmed that video.
4. You know, I figured everyone else lies to Congress, so why not?
5. The Viagra guys send me pills, and I don't ask any questions.
6. To help the zero tolerance effort, I decided to go undercover in the steroid underground. YOu should be thanking me!
7. So I'm at Barry Bonds' beach house, and he's rubbing this lotion on me he says is SPF 45--wait a minute, you don't think...

Notebookin'

The curse of the Black Sox looks like it will soon be broken, chaos reigns around the world...and I'm engaged in self-promotion. Dropped a Notebook piece on the Rockies and their relievers over at Baseball Prospectus.

Check it out. Seriously, go ahead. It's not like the Astros are going anywhere...

(I get a little bit bitter when teams are bitten by the Curse of the Weblog That Derek Built. More on this tomorrow.)

Flippin' Through the Notebook

Just in case you think I've given up on writing about the Yankees, I have a piece up at Baseball Prospectus on the Bronx Bombers. It's about roster uncertainty in the House that Ruth Built, and it goes a little something like this:

A more interesting possibility is that--should the Yankees find sufficient depth in the rotation--Alois Leiter could find his way to the bullpen. Leiter has been effective against lefties over the past several years (664 OPS against), which indicates that he could be effective as a LOOGY in relief.

Like many of the other solutions the Yankees have stumbled across this season, putting Leiter in the bullpen would be more creative than their roster usage has been over the past several years. It’s a cliché to state that necessity is the mother of invention, but it’s only fair to point out that the Yankees haven’t had this much necessity in nearly a decade.

A LOOGY, for those of you new to these shores, is a Lefty One-Out GuY, the reliever you send in to get that critical lefthanded batter (coughDavidOrtizcough) in a tough spot. Right now, the Yankees would probably use Tom Gordon in that spot, because Mariano Rivera is a "closer" and because the rest of the bullpen, particularly the lefties, are rather craptastic.

After my Notebook piece hit the presses, word hit the streets that Leiter is scheduled to be skipped for his next start, with the Yanks starting Chien Ming Wang against Tampa Bay, instead. So it looks like Leiter may have a shot at bullpen glory. And I'm cheering for him, if only because I consider the alternatives.

Alan Embree has looked promising at times, but we have to admit that 50% of the appeal of picking up guys like him and Mark Bellhorn is the off-chance that they will provide an in-your-face moment in the ongoing war against the Red Sox. Steinbrenner has always operated this way, realizing that there is room for a little psychological warfare in the game of baseball. That's why he has always picked up the opposition's discards--in the past ten years, the most prominent ones have been Darryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden from the Mets, Wade Boggs and Roger Clemens from the Red Sox, but there have been others.

While none of those stars shone quite as brightly in pinstripes as they had for the Yanks' rivals, anything you get out of such players not only helps the home team, but it chips away at the opposition. It killed some of my Mets fan friends to see Doc Gooden pitch a no-hitter in Yankee Stadium. Wade Boggs' horse ride after the '96 World Series win put a knot in the stomachs of my pals in Boston.

There's a chance that Embree gets a key strikeout, or Bellhorn hits a key home run down the stretch, or (if they make it) in the playoffs. And if they manage to do that, Red Sox fans are going to wind up scratching their heads--why exactly did Boston DFA two players at positions (second base, lefty reliever) where their arch-rival needed help? Couldn't they pay off one of the baseball Syberias to take these guys off their hands, and keep them out of Brian Cashman's clutches?

However, aside from the PR benefits of playing Embree and Bellhorn, you can't quite depend on them to carry the team to a pennant. After all, there were reasons the Sox let these guys go, and reasons the rest of baseball didn't snap them up on waivers. So it pays to have a Plan B. In this case, that's Leiter, and the sooner he practices jogging to the mound from center field, the sooner we discover if he can serve the team as a reliever.

****

Damned Devil Rays. The bad news is that the Devil Rays own Randy Johnson. The good news is that if the Yanks get to the post-season, Johnson doesn't have to worry about facing the Devil Rays. On the other hand, if the Yanks don't make the postseason, Vince Naimoli and the Tampa crew get to say "In your face!" to Steinbrenner and the Yankees.

I'd include Lou Piniella in there, except I think that if the Yanks miss the Playoffs, Piniella will be in pinstripes in short order.

Notebooks and Penguins

Two more Notebook pieces this week, dealing with Toronto and Pittsburgh.

For the Blue Jays, I ran down the AL Rookie of the Year race, which features a broad and talented field, currently lead by Toronto lefty Gustavo Chacin. To take on one Yankees issue, Robinson Cano isn't in this conversation right now, and he really doesn't deserve to be. After batting .316 with a pretty decent slugging percentage in June and July, he's been sucktastic in August--.205 batting average with a .500 OPS. That's not just bad, that's Womack Bad(tm). Overall, he isn't the best middle infield rookie (those would be the White Sox's Tad Iguchi and Toronto's Russ Adams) or the most glamorous rookie (hello, Felix Hernandez) or the biggest pennant contender rookie (Oakland has both slugging firstbaseman Dan Johnson and closer Huston Street).

The weirdest thing about Cano's performance is that he's been completely horrible at Yankee Stadium. He's batting .236/.254/.345 at home against .318/.349/.490 on the road. I don't think anyone tracks fielding stats by those splits, but I'd bet an inordinate number of Cano's errors this year have come at home. Cano's done better than expected, and he shows good promise for the future if he can build up more power or learn how to draw more walks. However, he's not an elite rookie, not in this class.

The Pirates piece, which ran on Friday, was about the Pirates rookies. On Thursday, the Mets were dazzled by Pirate rookie Zach Duke, who is 6-0 through nine major league starts, with an ERA of 1.87. Since he came up from AAA in July, Duke's only had one bad outing. Against the Mets on Thursday, he only allowed two hits. He's a keeper, and one of a handful of names (the other big one is Braves outfielder Jeff Francouer) in the NL Rookie of the Year Race. Here's what I wrote about Zach:

Look, I know what you're thinking. That other kid, Burnett, he looked good through nine starts, too. Then he didn't look so good, and then he was looking at a scalpel to the elbow. But you just got to convince yourself that things are going to be better this time. You've gotta think that after Burnett and John Van Benschoten, and all those other guys, McLendon and Spin Williams are going to treat this kid like those penguins treated their egg in that movie.

That Burnett kid is Sean Burnett, who pitched nicely for the Pirates last year, before suddenly losing his mojo and winding up under the knife for Tommy John surgery. Similar story with Van Benschoten. That Penguin movie is March of the Penguins, which I had the good fortune to see last weekend.

March of the Penguins is simply one of the best documentaries I've ever seen. It's your basic National Geographic-style nature doc, about the life cycle of the Emperor Penguin, in Antarctica. The penguins abandon their homes in the sea to come to a relatively remote part of their local ice shelf, some 70 someodd miles away, to meet and greet with penguins of the opposite sex, get it on, and make some penguin babies. In between, they face the trials that nature throws at each new generation of penguins--storms, starvation, predators.

Now, if this is sounding like every other National Geographic nature show, that's because it is. What makes March of the Penguins stand out is that the moviemakers give the penguins' story many of the same qualities as a good sports film: it's about a plucky group of outcasts that come together, and through teamwork--and having a lot of heart and endurance--fight against all odds to achieve the big goal. They come to depend on each other and stick up for each other. Watching masses of penguins huddle against the wind, it's hard not to anthropomorphize them, and think of them as persons acting in cooperation rather than animals acting on instinct. The film is so effective on this level, that the filmmakers don't have to resort to the usual technique of focusing on one particular penguin (or penguin family) and giving them pet names, in order to make the audience bond with them.

You don't need such tricks, because the penguins themselves will win you over. It's a strong enough illusion that at some points, when the penguins don't act like people, it leaves you utterly befuddled. I can't recommend this film highly enough.