Playoff Thoughts

I remember seeing Demi Moore on Letterman years ago. She was an aging but still hot human then, not a Scientologist cyborg. She mentioned how she and her then-husband Bruce Willis sent out Christmas cards that featured Demi dressed up in some slutty elf costume sitting on Santa's knee. While you and I would consider it odd to send tarted up pictures of ourselves to our friends and family, Hollywood starlets in the middle of losing their looks think nothing of it.

At any rate, when relating this tale to the viewing audience, Moore let slip an awesome quote of Dave's that opened a window into his deviant soul. You see the Willis/Moore's are so famous that they had David Letterman play Santa in their family photos. As Demi Moore sat on Dave's lap, she claims he whispered in her ear "I never thought I'd be this close to movie star ass."

The power of movie star ass should never be understated. Whether or not your consider Kate Hudson a movie star is up for debate. "Skinny girl with notable parentage who made one good movie and now cashes cheques for appearing in as many high-paying romcom commercials as she can before her looks go" ass doesn't have quite the same ring to it, but A Rod owes her huge either way. I'm sure he figured he'd be close to movie star ass growing up, but now that he's living the dream, he can't be stopped.

Apparently movie star ass is good for what ails you, as Alex Rodriquez suddenly morphed into an animal. Or, he returned to his actual level of production in the playoffs. His home run Saturday night was pretty awesome, until you realize how shitty Brian Fuentes is. A truly terrible, terrible 0-2 pitch. One for the ages.

Don't Let Your Hatred of the Yankees Turn You Into an Idiot

As I liveblogged the game on Saturday night; the calls/whines of Yankee conspiracy grew out of control and, if I'm being honest, pretty pathetic. Of all the major sports, baseball would be the most difficult to rig. Especially if you're talking about base umpires. The cries reached a fever pitch during the Erick Aybar phantom tag/neighbourhood play controversy. The video showed, in my mind, Aybar made zero effort to tag the bag.

The complaints that "they always let that go, the Yankees get all the calls" may seem to have some merit, especially if you already see it that way. But let's all admit one thing: if video showed Jeter the same distance from the bag in a similar situation, we'd all be losing our mind crying over how "he didn't touch the base!!!" The neighbourhood play is one thing, petty hand-wringing is another. Just enjoy the playoffs, root for the Angels if you like being lied to, and have a good time. Save your blind Yankee rage for the summer.

Trouble in the Henhouse!

On the heels of my earlier mission to discover the perfect facepalm, I thought it a good time to examine the relationship between WAR and wins a little further. As far as a simple man such as myself can go, that is.

Is WAR really a better indicator of team success than Pythagorean record? It would seem so, on the surface. Neither measure is perfect, but they must come close to predicting/indicating the true talent of a team. Let's see. My wasted morning at work lies below (click to embiggen):


You see the R squared is 0.6818, or a reasonable connection between WAR wins and actual wins. The Jays and Rays are the real outliers here, badly missing their projected win totals. Notice the Yankees and Red Sox bang on the line.

Does it seem as though the bad teams (or at least, the worse teams) are further from the line to you? Does this speak to luck being the only, true differentiator between the wide swath of mediocre teams in baseball?

What about Pythag record? What is the relationship like here?


Well shit. As much as I wanted WAR to be the more accurate of the two; it just isn't so in 2009. Pythag has a much stronger C.O.D. and it, every so slightly, breaks my heart.

Does this mean I'm going to become of an Amish Luddite and swear off technology and its awful minions? Hardly. I still think WAR is a great tool for evaluating individual players but in the team setting it breaks down slightly. Despite our best attempts, it is a human game. Timing is everything, and that is okay.

As for our fateful Blue Jays, king kommenter SP (who also suggested the two divisions thing a while back) made a great and salient point in the comments of the previous post:

As for the luck thing. It still boggles the mind. How can they be so monumentally unlucky 4 straight years? This stuff is supposed to correct itself over time, right?

It's not like things haven't changed either. The bad luck has persisted through 2 very different coaching regimes, 3 hitting coaches, with good to great pitching, defense, and fielding in each of those years.

What do we do? The Rays had extreme bad luck this year, one season after outperforming their Pythag (by 4) but nailed their true talent wins (96.9 WAR and 97 total wins)? I don't have that answer, but I'm going to try and find out.

What kind of things did the Jays and Rays have in common this year? What was different between the 08 and 09 Rays? Stay tuned, as they say.

All WAR data courtesy of Fangraphs and Pythag stuff via Baseball Reference. Doing the Lord's work

Now and Zen

Obviously there is plenty going on in the baseball world and zero going on in Blue Jays world. Zero outside of, as the Tao smartly points out, AA doing the identical thing to J.P. (firing/shaking up scouts) without a peep emanating from the local slam gang.

A popular past-time here in the land of milk, honey, and schadenfraude seems to be one of two things:

1. Laughing at the Red Sox or
   
2. Lamenting the Twins.

There is only so much of the former I can take without it becoming a little perverse. Too bad for the Red Sox fans, I guess they'll have to drown their sorrows in the two World Series titles in the past five years, the historic ballpark, the pre-punched tickets to the playoffs next year yadda yadda yadda. The other topic, however, I'm more than willing to dive into.

The Twins, you won't be surprised to hear me say, were awful. Terrible. Their inclusion in the post season was nothing more than a tragedy. While some trot them out as baseball's be all and end all, one cannot get away from the fact that they suck. Well they don't suck, but they aren't good.

I could go on and on about their easy schedule and their adjusted records and blah blah, but you've heard that a million times before. How about a different approach to define the cosmic screw job that is the Toronto Blue Jays: let's use WAR.

I've used WAR and its component stats all year and with good reason: it is by far the most comprehensive way to evaluate the talent on the field. Hopefully, it all comes out in the wash. Why not use it on a team-wide scale (with a hat tip to U.S.S Mariner) for the Jays?

The Jays won 75 games, this you know. The Jays were "expected" to win between 82 and 85 games, depending on you calculated it using their runs scored and the strength of their opponents. Does WAR support that? Would this be another stat to prove that the luck the Jays so desperately need continues to allude them?

In a word: yes. If you combine the WAR of all Jays batters and pitchers, you get a grand total of 39.1 wins above replacement. 20.9 for the pitchers, 18.2 for the hitters. We know, thanks to smart people like Tom Tango, that a team of replacement level players (good AAA guys that are freely available) would win about 46 games in 2009. Add'em together and you get 85.1 wins. Shit.

The Twins, the playoff bound role models for all to see, got 21.8 wins from their offense and 16.4 wins from their pitching. That's 38.2 WAR, making a total of 84.2 total wins and making my day completely ruined.

This type of disparity gets your GM run out of some towns yet put up on a pedestal in others. I will note two things before we proceed: the Jays figures don't tell the whole story as the team was markedly different at the end of the season compared to the beginning. That said, the late-season runs by Vernon Wells and Jose Bautista made their seasons look much better than they did in August. Vernon ended the season a hair below replacement level; all for the low low price of one zillion dollars!

The other thing I would like to note is the 2008 Toronto Blue Jays finished the season with 86 total wins. Their WAR-adjusted total? 90. 90 fucking wins! Replacement level in 2008 was slightly higher (47.4 wins) yet the Jays, on the strength of their insane pitching (26.3 WAR) amassed 42.6 WAR. That is nuts. I think we can say the 2008 Jays are among the better Blue Jays teams of all time. We can say because I just did, that doesn't make it true. (Ed Note: I think I'll actually do this another time. Just looking quickly, I see the 2006 Jays were a 93.7 win team! Eep!)

Where am I going with all this? Realignment! The only answer remaining, the one least likely to ever occur! What? How could that be? Why doesn't baseball adapt the ingenious ideal (that I first came across in the DFJ transcription of a Keith Law chat) of two big divisions with two wild cards from wherever? Surely in the name of all that is collusion the owners want to please their customers, don't they? Of course they don't.

Who do you think would oppose this move the most? The owners of the Jays, Orioles, and Rays would fight tooth and nail to avoid this. The value of 9 home dates with the Red Sox and Yankees CANNOT be overstated. You think the Jays or Rays want less of that with more weeknight dates against the Royals and a slightly increased possibility of the playoffs in return? Fuck no, they don't.

An alignment of this type would expose the fraudulent Twins and their shitty division mates, but it surely wouldn't help the Jays. Even during the aforementioned 2006 season, the Jays coulda/shoulda won 93.7 games, the damn Twins WAR'd 93.4. So there'd the Jays would be again, hoping against hope to string some lucky wins together with a chance at grabbing the remaining non-Red Socked wildcard spot. Sigh.

As for fixing the everpresent disparity between the Jays actual win total and their projected one? Just hit like crazy in the clutch like the Twins! Who cares how unsustainable it is or how inaccurate it is of the team, just follow their lead! Fill your team with one superduper start, two decent power bats and dozens of shitty singles hitters! Just hit single after single because your luck will never ru...oh, right.

The Importance of Giving Thanks

Give thanks any way you can. Sometimes you visit a soup kitchen, sometimes you sponsor Roy Halladay's Pitch F/X entries on Brooks Baseball.Net. Nerds need love too. Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Red Flag Fridays!

While the playoffs heat up for some lucky fans and the covetous eyes of the also-rans dart across the free agent lists, I figured it attempt to throw some cold water on some of the scarier whispers I've heard.

Jeff Blair took time away from glaring at babies and building a shrine to Saint Joe Strummer to announce his presidency of the Orlando Cabrera fan club. Frighteningly enough, Blair points to new Jays GM A.A. Milne as the driving force behind the rumored "sign and trade" that may have been in the works this past winter. While getting around the Type A draft pick sacrifice would be a deft bit of business, I'll reiterate what I said in March: fuck no to O Cab. As much as I enjoy aging me-first malcontents that don't get on base, I think I'll pass. You can talk about winners all you want, but showing up the umpire in a one-game playoff because you don't like a strike one call is horseshit. Doubly so when you KNOW he won't throw you out because of the situation.

Remember when I said "fuck no" to Jason Bay last month? Well the much-smarter people at U.S.S. Mariner chimed in and offered their own "fuck no" to the local boy that is Canadian lives in the area and hits for power.

Some of the reasons he doesn't work in Seattle don't apply here (his bad defense won't be made to look worse as in gigantic Safeco Field) but the rest applies. Age. Decline Phase. Old Player Skills. Too much money for too many years. Enough.

Image courtesy of Flikr user /sizemore/. Topical!

Two Great Tastes that Taste Great Together

For the sake of a little levity and because I'm obsessed; how about some Fun with Google Street View!


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Good family fun at ye olde ballyard!

Appease and Thank You

Oh right. The Jays fired J.P. this weekend. How could I forget. Was it the right move? It was certainly inevitable, so what difference does it make arguing? I do, however, take umbrage with the way it was handled and what it means for the future of this team.

I've hardly been shy with my feelings on Paul Beeston. Most Jays writers seem to love him, and that I get. All signs point to him treating them like actual human beings and his schlubby, shambolic everyman persona makes him relatable and likely sympathetic. Despite my harsh words as the firing was announced I doubt I'd take a hard stance in a face to face setting. If he were here right now I'm sure he'd politely decline my mother's offer of Bagel Bits while praising her for giving her son the opportunity to bang away at her computer with his cloven hooves. My mother and I would blush and make excuses and allowances without recognizing the serious pull Beeston has in corner offices all over North America.

That said, two things appear to colour every decision Beeton's made and they do nothing to endear him to me.

1. I get the distinct impression Paul Beeston doesn't think too highly of the baseball fans in this city.
   
2. I also get the distinct impression Paul Beeston doesn't think there is any chance of building a winner in Toronto.

These two things are clearly related but one is worse than the other. I get the sense Beeston realized building a winner in Toronto was impossible on or around Day One of his second stint in Toronto. Everything he's done sinks of him delivering a very specific message to the suits at Rogers: "we can't win but I can certainly make you money."

The events of this weekend only solidify this in my mind. People coming down on the sentimental manager? Protect his unsullied reputation and fire the wildly unpopular GM two days before the season ends! That quickly quashed any discussion of Cito's future, didn't it?

And what forward-thinking young man will you hire to take over as GM? I'm sure this new man provides the fresh vision and unique outlook required to steer his moribund franchise in the right direction, right? Oh, it's a long-serving lieutenant of the old guy! Why inject new blood or start fresh when you can milk the "good Canadian boy finally reaches the apex through hard work and good Canadian perserverance" story as the season winds down.

Each and every move a cynical play at sentimentality, calculated & designed to distract the fanbase from the futility of their pursuit without turning them off completely. Goodwill money looks the same as hope money but it comes much cheaper. Cut the payroll, lay off staff, all the while counting on our worst Canadian instincts of flag-waving and heritage stroking.

It isn't that I believe Alex Anthopolous will do a poor job or is undeserving of his promotion. But are to believe he is some front office savant, held down under J.P.'s oppressive thumb all this time? Once HE calls the shots, things will be different? Somehow I doubt it. It's taken Beeston nearly one full year to find a replacement president, yet he spent all of 0 minutes scouring the world for his next GM? Horseshit.

This isn't the time nor the situation for more of the same. They need to think completely outside the box because not matter how much Rogers is willing to spend, the box will always be too small. So here is my idea:

Another retread GM with mixed results in another market won't do. Best case scenario with an experienced baseball hand; he/she (somehow) improves on JP's draft record, fixes the injury woes and the team suddenly (magically?) improves their situational hitting. Why not just take the $120 million bucks and put it down on 17 at Rama?

Like any smart mid-sized corporation, the Jays need to eschew the MBAbots that swept through front offices over the last decade. Like the wise companies, they need a fresh outlook and unique skillsets. Hire an MFA with a design background and a Computer Science/analytical type. Lock them both in a room with Tom Tango and don't let anybody out until they've changed the world.

They need to fire from completely new angles because the Yankees and Rays defenses are too strong. Innovate or wither on the vine. Do something. Just don't sell the same shitty cake made by the same short-order cook. Just do something I won't expect.

Y.O.Y

Why oh why Brandon League, why did you have to leave such a bitter taste in my mouth for the next 5 months? Not because you cost the Jays a game that meant less than nothing, but because you exhausted the goodwill I spent ALL SEASON building up for you. Nobody else gives a good god damn about you Brandon League, but I've convinced myself and at least one of my dozen readers that you are the second coming! You didn't have a superduper year, but you made The Step which precedes The Leap you are going to make next year as you head into free agency!

Now Brandon, they call it "Fielding Indepedent Pitching" for a reason, it's based on the components rates and averages you produce that help create outs. Low walks? Yup, you got it. Ground balls? Yup, you generate them. Strike outs? You piled up this year. Home runs? You manage to only give them up at the exact worst moment! Basically, this evaluative stat gives you the benefit of the doubt, working under the assumption that the guys behind you are boobs. What this stat can't do for you, Brandon, is account for your own errors. Nor can it TEACH YOU TO THROW THE BALL TO FIRST BASE LIKE A MAN. Sigh.

I Can't Believe It's Not Butter

Managing this team from this day forward. Clearly a wise tactician and man who has the support of the players, there is no reason for the Citocharade to continue one minute longer. I'm referring, of course, to the Rosenweasel report over mutiny in the Jays clubhouse. Wilner supported the sentiment on-air &mdash if not the strong tone &mdash stating numerous uniformed players approached him over the last week to express their disapproval. For me, this uprising stems from one thing and one thing only: Millar.

Players are no different than you or I, they are generally self-interested only. In a vocation where one man has the power to impact your year-to-year earnings so dramatically, the players see Randy Ruiz perform at high level only to receive more pine time in exchange. They see their boss flagrantly playing favorites and they hate it. They (presumably) see their increasingly negative and bitter manager shit down the throat of a 21 year old kid, a player that manager appears to resent penciling into the lineup everyday due to an order from on high. They see a manager with zero faith in two mid twenties outfielders, to the point that he'd rather put a 37 year old player at third base for the first time in seven years.

They see that shit and they get fed up. Quickly. Just as we in the peanut gallery have been fed up since, well, forever. That they go crawling to the Rosenelf is a shame, but it had to come out some time.

So vote for Butter! He made Marco Scutaro millions of dollars and turned guys Johnny Mac into a local legend. He survived one regime change, no reason he can't stick around through the next one.

Roy Halladay - Self Saboteur

Roy Halladay single handedly killed his trade value this week.

After his perfunctory plunking of The Only Swinging Dick in the Sox lineup Wednesday night, Roy Halladay elevated his status among Blue Jays fans from "legend" to "demigod." I don't think I am overstating it when I say the love-in has reached "epic swoonfest." Combine his three hit mastery of the flaccid minor league bats (and Rocco, who went 1-3), Halladay is now, from a consumer confidence standpoint, utterly untradeable. The streets will run run red with front office blood if the living embodiment of all that is good and mighty and just in the world is shipped out for a crateful of arms.

By the by, as my man Rob Iracane pointed out today as we addressed the Walkoff Walk urinals, we shouldn't discount Halladay's effortless dismissal of the Lesser Sox while we all heap copious praise on Zack Grienke. I'm still firmly in the Zack for Cy camp, but have you SEEN the Twins??? I liveblogged last night's game and let me tell you, they are fucking terrible. Awful. They miss Morneau like Jeter misses his 2006 MVP trophy. That they played playoff baseball with the Tigers this week is a travesty. A travesty! Good thing The Zombie will set it all right by carving up the shitty Twins lineup like Millar at a low rent steakhouse.

Lindependence Day!

Let me make two quick apologies: firstly to you the dear reader for subjecting you to such a cheesy and predictable title and submitting this post a day late. I know one day is forever in internet time but I hope you'll bare with me. And secondly to Adam Lind, whom I've shamefully ignored this season.

There is no good excuse for the lack of credit given to Adam Lind, both here and the greater Blue Jays universe. I haven't used the "Adam Lind" tag since APRIL, for crying out loud. During the offseason Lind was a forgotten man after a quiet ending to 2008 and the emergence of Travis Snider, who took up all the hope space in my thoughthole.

Last year, as Lind wiled away in Syracuse, we at Ghostrunner on First dubbed him the OPS EXPRESS. We waited with baited breath for him to arrive on the scene and save the day. And that he did, until he slumped through the second half. We weren't alone in expressing some skepticism over Lind's credentials.

The numbers in 2009 speak for themselves, his .932 OPS and .394 wOBA are impressive in ways I'm not quiet comfortable with. That he's gone unmentioned around here says a lot about the way I think about baseball and players and I don't think I'm alone. We take the here and now for granted while coveting the youth and future, hoping they're the answer to all our prayers. Adam Lind as been that and MORE, a fuck load more. He exceeded any and all projections in 2009 while continuing to provide hope for the future.

Where does that hope come from? This. Adam Lind's Hit Tracker profile. Lind uses all fields with power. He takes what you throw him and mashes it at will. Let's take a look at the pitches he saw Tuesday and what he did with them.



In the first inning he waits on a curveball and drives it to deep center. Next he rides a 94 mph fastball out to center again. Finally he spins on a slider inside, yanking it down the line for cheapy. (Video of all three here.) Pure hitting mastery. What a pro. If I had code-crunching skills I'd do a graph like those found at the bottom of this amazing post, but I have no such R skills and the only guy who could probably help me is having computer meltdown challenges. So my breathless praise will have to do.

Update: I'm asleep at wheel it would seem. Dave Allen created the very graph I longed for today at Fangraphs. Check it out here. Plate coverage like a motherfucker.

Displays like this will keep my faith in Adam Lind. He won't hit 35+ every year but he is a true master at the plate. Sure, he runs like a 8 year at recess and plays the field like a drunk on a unicycle, but he can hit like no other. Well some others, but nobody we've seen around here since Carlos Delgado. The power to all fields, the quick bat. Yum. I promise I won't overlook you ever again Mr. Lind.

Thanks to the usual victims of my theft Daylife, Brooks Baseball, Fangraphs, and Hit Tracker Online