10/27/2006

How The Tigers Can Win The World Series

Filed under: — Jeff @ 12:06 pm

So, where has it gone wrong so far?

That’s actually pretty obvious.  The Tigers aren’t hitting, and they aren’t playing very good defense.  When essentially 70% of the game just leaves you, it’s tough to win baseball games, even against a team that really isn’t all that good.  You can read that anywhere though.  Although the odds are very much stacked against them, the Detroit Tigers can still win this thing.

The first step is pretty obvious, but it merits mentioning.  They need to get out of St Louis.  Of course the only way to do that is win game 5 (either tonight or tomorrow).  The Cardinals have looked pretty awesome at home so far, only dropping the single game to teams that were stronger than they in each round (Game 3 to the Padres, and Game 4 against the Mets).  Even if the series was tied at 2, this game would be very important for the Tigers to win.

Next, is to stop the miscues that have been plaguing the AL champs all series.  Just last night, Rodney threw the ball away, Granderson and Monroe got bad reads on balls that ended up going for doubles and giving the Cardinals runs (though Monroe almost made a terrific catch). 

The second to last way they can take these next three is to stop hitting like all the players have a collective case of vertigo.  The Tigers weak spot this year was their offense.  They weren’t at all patient, and offenses constructed like that are more libel to be exposed by even average pitching (as an aside, I think that impatient hitters do better against the cream of the crop, because they are less likely to fall behind in the count…I’ll have something about that this winter).  Even guys that are prone to take more pitches, like Curtis Granderson and Magglio Ordonez seem to be swinging from their heels every pitch.  The result is that the Jeff Weaver’s and the Jeff Suppan’s are getting deeper into games, leaving the Tyler Johnson’s and the Josh Hancock’s watching, rather than pitching. 

 Finally, the Tigers need a shitton of luck.  There aren’t a whole lot of people that gave the Cardinals a chance before the series…I think that speaks to the quality of the Tigers relative to the Cards.  However, it’s tough for any team to win three games in a row from any other…let alone in the World Series.  The Tigers need to get back to Detroit, where they hold the pitching matchup for game 6 (Rogers vs. Suppan) and then have to use a guy tough on lefties against a team that was handled by southpaws in game 7.  Plus, Carpenter does need to have a weakness somewhere, right?

This series is the Cardinals to lose.  That doesn’t mean it’s over.

10/23/2006

The Modern Rotation

Filed under: — Jeff @ 12:43 pm

Hey 

After a short hiatus decompressing from the failed Red Sox campaign, we’re back!  So…

What determines the labeling of the guys that toe the mound for a baseball team?
 

The perception of the back of the rotation is the following paradigm:  Guy that can pitch league average or slightly below league average innings, normally average 5-6 innings a game.  You know, guys that are easily replaceable by better guys.  Basically…a back of the rotation guy throws 170-180 innings of 5.00 ball. 
 

This man does not exist in the baseball market.  The reason is that this man is a solid #3 starter.
 

We throw subjective ratings (this guy is a 1…this guy is a 3) out at starting pitchers all the time, and the general meaning behind them is usually around the neighborhood of quality (a number 1 is a very good pitcher, a #3 is average ect…)
 

The fact remains though, that logically, there are 30 number 1’s, 30 #2’s ect.  We have 30 teams, and each team must have a #1 starter.  There is really no logical way to argue against that because in fact it’s inherently true…the Royals have a best pitcher…their Number One.
 

Now that we have boundaries (the pitchers ranked between 1-30 are your #1’s, the guys 31-60 are your number 2’s ect.), we need to limit the sample.  I thought because of the perception that your back of the rotation guys should be innings eaters of questionable effectiveness.  I put this limit at 120 innings as a starter.  This covers translates to 20 starts @ 6 innings per, or 24 starts @ 5 innings.  Basically, this should give a good set of pitchers to determine who is actually a number 1 vs. a number 5.
 

Anyway, that was my thinking a few days ago when I was going to write about how rotations shake out.  And I was thrown for a loop.
 

Basically, because we have a standard five man rotation these days, at any given time, there are 150 guys in major league rotations. 
 

Given these parameters, it should be easy to figure out who is slotted where…but given the 120 inning rule, there were only 110 pitchers that qualified.  This means there were 10 open 4 starter spots, and 30 open 5th starter spots due to the easily reachable boundaries set up.  The idea of the back of the rotation is strong, yet there were no pitchers that were actually slotted there.
 

Only the White Sox, Colorado, Florida, Oakland, Padres, and Giants had 5 primary starters that reached the 120 inning plateau.
 

The bottom guys on the list…the 10 “average 4’s” were:
John Koronka
Wandy Rodriguez
Sean Marshall
Mark Redman
Jeff Weaver
Rodrigo Lopez
Jason Marquis
Brian Moehler
Carlos Silva
Joel Piniero
The combined run saved (using the baseline of 1 run better than 1.5 times the league average) was -40.4.  Or 40 runs worse than good starters in AAA could theoretically do.
 

So the idea of grabbing a 4th and 5th starter is pretty much a fools errand.  They just don’t exist in modern baseball.  The back of the rotation is filled with guys that cycle in and out (of those guys listed, they were either hurt, completely ineffective, or were rotated in and out of the pen/rotation).
 

Championship level baseball rotations are made of a solid complement of 1-3 level starters. The thought of a team who’s competitive goal is to be in the running for a World Series (not economic goal) grabbing guys on the cheap and sitting back in the rotation (like the Indians did with Paul Byrd) probably isn’t the best way to solidify the runs prevented side of the baseball equation.
 

Where there is a decided economic advantage, going cheap in the rotation is a good way to have 12-15 starters start games for you (the Red Sox are actually a good example of this…also a good example on how a good medical staff is the best way to make sure you don’t see “Woah, Matt Clement’s arm is dead?  Who Knew!?! LOL!”).  This should put the values of the Derek Lowe’s and the Bronson Arroyo’s in better perspective (Arroyo’s value in a vacuum was underrated by just about everyone, though his actual talent level is probably worth Wily Mo Pena’s potential.)
 

The Sox would be well served to go and buy a Ted Lilly for $5 million.  The problem will come when they cross their arms, sit back and declare him “Our Number 5 starter this year!”

10/1/2006

Less Manny = More Ponies and Lollypops and Chemistry and such…

Filed under: — Sully @ 6:54 am

In an otherwise informative and thoughtful look at the job Theo Epstein and his Baseball Operations staff have done in 2006, Gordo champions the Manny Ramirez addition-by-subtraction cause by mentioning the 2001 Mariners.

Imagine, for a moment, the Sox replacing Ramírez with, say, a .259 hitter, one who hit just five home runs. Disaster, right? Well, that’s what the Seattle Mariners did when they didn’t re-sign Alex Rodriguez, after a 2000 season in which he hit 41 home runs, drove in 132 and scored 134 — numbers even more meaningful because they were produced by a shortstop — and replaced him with Carlos Guillen, the .259 hitter in question. In 2001, the Mariners won 116 games.

So the Mariners elininated A-Rod, brought in a clubhouse ping-pong table and water bubbler and that’s how they won 116 games?  Or do you think it may have had something to do with Bret Boone’s arrival (.331/.372/.578, 141 RBI)?  And did you know that the Rookie of the Year and League MVP in 2001 just so happened not to be on the club in 2000?   His name is Ichiro Suzuki and I am pretty sure he helped to make up some of A-Rod’s production.  Did you know the team OPS+ in 2000 was a very solid 111 but improved in 2001 to 119 thanks to Boone and Suzuki, as well as significant upticks in play from John Olerud, Mike Cameron and Mark McLemore. 

On the run prevention side, the 2000 Mariners were just about dead average - they sported a 101 ERA+.  Freddy Garcia and Paul Abbott were solid enough but the rotation also featured two soft-tossing left handers that both posted ERA’s north of five.  The bullpen, as it would be in 2001, was very good.  Where the enormous difference was made - how they went from an average pitching/defense unit to the very best basically came from two guys.  Freddy Garcia went from nice mid-rotation guy to bona fide front end horse, tossing nearly 239 innings with an ERA that barely exceeded three.  Jamie Moyer went from Joe Hesketh to Andy Pettitte in terms of output between 2000 and 2001, looking like a replacement level guy the first year only to find himself on the shortlist of the AL’s very best starters the next.  The M’s surrendered a league-low 627 runs in 2001.

I write this simply to demonstrate that Edes’s point is at best incompetently presented and at worst an intentional omission of facts to keep fighting the good fight against Manny Ramirez.  You don’t get better simply by subtracting HOF-caliber talent and replacing it with run-of-the-mill guys.  What works is when you get significant improvement/career years from some of your holdovers (Olerud, Sele, Garcia, Cameron, Moyer, McLemore, Rhodes) while adding to the mix two players that turn in MVP-caliber seasons of their own (Boone and Suzuki).   

So yeah, if Beckett turns in a Cy Young 2007, Schilling is lights out, the Sox go and get two MVP-candidates to fill out their lineup, Jonathan Papelbon turns out to be a very good starter, Jason Varitek and Coco Crisp return to form and Dustin Pedroia becomes a top-10 2B then sure, the Sox very well could afford to see Manny walk.  But this notion that Edes floats wherein he more or less asserts that simply by virtue of taking Manny away the Red Sox would stand to gain is just preposterous. 

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