The Intangibles of the Improbable

Seeing Tim Collins traded sucks for a lot of reasons, the ongoing success of the Toronto Blue Jays being somewhere towards the bottom. Collins strikeout numbers suggest he has a future in the major league; the brightness of which is up for debate.

Tim Collins seems to be an interesting bi-product of an strange age in baseball fandom. Of all the people ruing his departure yesterday, very few (myself included) have ever seen him pitch or know much about him. His low-level strikeout numbers make him an anomaly, his tiny stature makes him a legend. It makes us root for him and hopefully his success continues as he climbs the ladder.

Everybody was bummed when Timmy 2.0 was lumped into the trade, but let's be real: he has a limited shelf life. I envision (not project or anything tangible, I just get a sense) that he'd be amazing once through the league. Some Eichhorn in '86 type shit, but then that'd be it.

But Tim Collins represented a whole lot of fun because of his (implied) ability to overcome the odds. A little guy who didn't just scrap and hustle his way into the show, a guy that got there because he is good. Those are fun stories, and eye-popping strikeout numbers move the needle and quicken the heartbeat.

Blair Leaps in Judgement

Other than bemoaning the loss of a possible one-year wonder, I haven't offered much on the Escobar/Gonzalez trade. Let me codify my feelings by taking my favorite Jays(ish) writer to task on a couple points that stuck out in his column earlier this week.

But the Braves have added a superior defensive shortstop having a blistering offensive year and playing to guarantee an option year in 2011. Gonzalez is a shortstop with postseason experience who, if he continues his offensive pace in the National League, will help address a worrying lack of offensive production out of Chipper Jones and Brian McCann, instead of exacerbating it as Escobar did.

While it is true that Alex Gonzalez is an excellent defensive shortstop who saved more than his share of outs, I wouldn't say in any way he's superior to Yunel Escobar. Superior compared to average, but Escobar is a defensive stud. Both UZR (4 runs saved this year, 4.4/150 for his career) and Dewan's +/- (a whopping 21 this year, +14 average over the last three seasons) favor the newest Blue Jay.

To me this is an example of contorting the truth to solidify your point. Yup, Alex is great in the field, but I defy you to find me anybody who thinks he's better than Esco. I don't believe you can.

The "if he continues his offensive production" line is a tricky one. Does anyone believe he will? Considering the way balls fly out to left in Toronto and die in the thick, hateful air in Atlanta, expecting Gonzo to continue mashing dingers and little else is wishful at best.

It goes on to be a classic "these three months are everything/these three months are nothing." Those who wish to paint the Jays as winners point to the track records over time, others look at the recent results and say "landslide." The truth is in the middle, if it exists at all. Like the Rolen/Glaus swap, crazy shit can happen and the pieces involved are three dimensional. Hopefully some of these moving parts fall into place in Toronto for once.

Image courtesy of Robin Thom's Flickrstream

The Fruit Hangs Low

Two days off during the All Star break? How must one fill time and column space? Why listicles, of course! The National Post's Jeremy Sandler clearly took the task of generating letter grades and mid-season awards as you or would take to washing the dishes or raking the yard.

Mid-season awards are a decent way to spark a tiny bit of debate, mostly around the criteria used for said selections. Jeremy Sandler nips this in bud by seemingly eschewing criteria all together. Allow Sandler to explain why he feels Ubaldo Jimenez deserves the NL Cy Young while Roy Halladay deserves nothing because Chase Utley broke his thumb.

All the sabermetricians who argue wins don't matter take note: a league-average 10 wins in place of Jimenez's 15 would drop Colorado from breathing down San Diego's neck in the NL West to a .500 team in fourth place...Innings leader Roy Halladay (10-7, 2.19 ERA) is the NL pitcher owed an apology by his offence. He has two complete game losses and a nine-inning shutout for which he got a no decision.

Hardly a sabermetrician, I still must argue that wins do matter as they're the thing we use in the standings to tell which team is better than the other teams. Team. It's a team stat and this is an individual award. Halladay is quite rightly owed an apology by the Phils worsening offence, yet Yoo-Baldo gets all the credit for his Rockies picking him up? I dunno. Besides, this is Josh Johnson's award to lose and no amount of HR/FB suppression will let Ubaldo take it away.

The Jays grades are tough to figure. John Buck gets an A+ thanks to his 14 home runs and 43 RBI, "on pace for personal highs." Adam Lind gets a F for his 12 home runs and 40 RBI, because those are sad numbers for a talented hitter. The lesson here: everyone wins with lowered expectations.

One would think Vernon Wells lackluster fielding over the last few years would bring the expectations to the basement, and one would be right. Sandler insists Wells's defense is in decline but the numbers suggest otherwise.

UZR finds Wells still below average but not to the degree of the last two years while Dewan's plus/minus has Vernon 5 runs to the happy side. Considering the depths of his hamstring and shoulder woes, this is at least decent news.

All in all, the only thing more forced and pointless than mid-season report cards and hypothetical halfway awards are blog hit pieces fisking those articles. The circle of life!

Thanks to Seasonal Chef for the obvious image

Just Remember, Part II

The Home Run Derby sucks, but the All Star game is — warts and all — awesome. Scott Rolen goes first to third then Matt Thornton enters the game; giving rise to extended Inception trailers? That is my idea of a good time.

Another thing to just remember: I called Joe Girardi a clown yesterday, way before he went out and proved his clowndom to the world. Remember to check out the Walkoff Walk live All Star glogcast - a cast of thousands riffing cheaply on whatever wanders before us like overfed veal calves.

Reuters image courtesy of Daylife.

Just Remember

Though I'm not entirely comfortable with the roll of villain, I embraced it last night amidst the deafening howls of injustice over Jose Bautista's exclusion from the home run derby. Outrage!

Do you see the picture above? Do you remember when ESPN aired the clusterfuck of the ages, hosted by a "ball-less, drooling sycophant Jim Gray?" Do you think ESPN is in the "doing what's right" business, or the "selling lots of adspace" business? What makes any of the outraged Blue Jays fans, who seemingly cannot wrap their heads around the politics of excluding Jose Bautista from the home run derby, think that ESPN suddenly had a change of heart on the weekend?

Before we get into the vagaries of who or should be included in the backbackbackbackbackstravaganza, consider the following (All Stars in italics):

Name	Team	WAR
Alex Rios	White Sox	3.3
Ben Zobrist	Rays	3.1
Shin-Soo Choo	Indians	2.8
Brennan Boesch	Tigers	2.7
David DeJesus	Royals	2.7
Magglio Ordonez	Tigers	2.6
J.D. Drew	Red Sox	2.4
Jose Bautista	Blue Jays	2.3

I don't mean to be a dick, but there are several outfielders who could make the case that Jose (and/or Vernon) don't deserve to be at the All Star game. I am not one of those people, and it has nothing to do with any personal stake I (apparently) have in casting doubt on the validity of Bautista's skills.

Personally, I think Jose will get plenty of burn tonight; as he's a valuable utility guy who plays multiple positions. Hopefully that clown Girardi sees it that way. Let's do right by the BAS and appreciate that he's in, not angrily spew over his exclusion from a drawn-out Bermanfest.

WAR data courtesy of Fangraphs, image courtesy of Syracuse.com

All Star Break Thoughts

Heading into the break, I'm surely not alone in wondering where the first half of the season went? Not where it went wrong, but where it went in general. 89 games down already? Crazy. That means there are fewer Blue Jays games remaining than we've already seen. That's a bummer.

You know what else is a bummer? The Jays offense. Sure, home runs are fun and all, but the good people at Sportsnet put up a simple graphic during yesterday's game that sort of blew my mind. The Jays offense, for all its ding-donging, is performing worse than last year. As a team the Jays have scored 30 runs fewer than they scored at the exact same point last year, despite hitting an extra 35 home runs. That is....messed up.

How is that possible? Oh RIGHT, the outs. Making all the outs. Hitting the solo jone runs and what not. It got me thinking: which stat has the most direct relationship to runs scored? Rather than do actual, valuable research, I think I'll make a graph!

Here's what I did: I took all runs scored totals for each team thus far in 2010 and graphed it against their on-base, slugging, OPS, and weight on-base average (wOBA.) Then I added a trendline and took the R-squared or coefficient of determination. Basically I'm using this small, noisy sample to show which rate has the strongest relationship to runs scored. The higher the number (closer to 1), the stronger the relationship between that stat and scoring runs. Hardly scientific or ironclad, but worth a look either way. The results are below, click to enlarge.



Man, those nerds aren't just talking out of their collective, square-shaped asses. Does the Jays offense reflect this? They rank 15th in runs scored, 27th in OBP, 2nd in slugging, 9th in OPS, and 12th in wOBA. The conclusion? Despite what we all learned as starving bachelors; man cannot live on tater tots alone.

A couple interesting asides: the Jays are victims of the worst BABIP in baseball, though luck isn't the only one to blame. The incredible number of fly balls they hit make them easy to defend efficiently. Also having one of the lower line drive rates in baseball makes it hard to get people on base. The HR/FB% is super high but, as I've mentioned before, that might be by design.

The other exciting finding from this little experiment has to do with batting average. I gave good old baseball card average the same treatment against runs scored, and guess what I found? A R² of 0.4815. A mere 60% of the relationship between OPS, wOBA & runs scored. This surely isn't news to anyone who'd be interested in this kind of information but it certainly lays waste to the value of average for basically anything, doesn't it?

Image courtesy of Happy Hour Valley, data courtesy of Fangraphs

The Wellness Train Rolls On

By virtue of patience and remembering that interacting with other people can be fun, I made my way to a BBQ with a whole pile of old friends on Saturday afternoon. After being the most excited guy on the subway on the way there, I heard a couple interesting things. The first was a quote I submit without comment: "They're from Barrie, they eat cheeseburgers every day."

A couple friends of friends provided the second thing. Turns out a two members of the Toronto Maple Leafs inter-county team were in attendance, one of which is an old friend of my host. I got to talking to one dude and it turns out he played a couple years in the Jays minor league systems, both at Auburn and another short-season stop. Following up a comment-section discussion from earlier this summer, I set out to ask him about nutrition in the minor leagues. Thrusting on my quasi-reporter hat I asked how they were treated at the outset of their careers.

His answer (paraphrased): other than a short tutorial in the spring, the only time players hear anything about their eating is if they gain so much weight that it impacts their performance.

I then asked him about the way they're treated; if the team treats bonus babies better or differently. His (shocking) answer: of course! They have a vested interest in the kids with big price tags attached to their names. In his words "some guys don't even get a shot, they're just there to fill out the rosters." Sad but true, likely with no small amount of autobiography.

The other thing that struck me was how big these dudes are. Both pitchers, they had chests so far around you could go over Niagara Falls in their rib cages. Big, thick dudes who got close and now play semi-pro for love of the game or whatever. They also said people are crazy, as random dudes start adding them on facebook and send along weird messages. I don't think I need to tell anyone reading this: don't be that guy.

Image Courtesy of This is Why You're Fat

The Détente Cycle

Just under two years ago, I publicly copped to going soft on the Yankees. The impending closure of old (real) Yankee Stadium and the Mo factor combined with the Yankees single season of mortality made it easy to focus my hate on the Red Sox.

Well, two years and three four? aces later, guess what? The Yankee hate is in full swing while the Red Sox limp into down, bloodied but unbowed. Maybe it's the bum rap given to the nerd-friendly "pitching and defense" offseason approach, but I feel pretty bad for the Red Sox. The fans don't travel like they did and my standard issue love of Adrian Beltre softens up my hatred for the Irish.

Jon Lester? Love him to pieces. Dan Bard? Be mine. Pedroia & Yook? You can still die in separate, non-consecutive fires. Did you know Daisuke Matsuzaka directly translates to "great sponge of all fun?" But, after all, this team willingly employed Rocco? How could I hate that?

Stepping into the Friday Rockout Void

The Tao's counterpoint to this post left a gaping hole in the Friday Rockout universe. So I'll step up and offer The Bronx "They Will Kill Us all Without Mercy" No subtext, just an awesome song from a great record.



Image courtesy of the Deist Review

Ice Ages

On consecutive nights this week, the Rogers Centre showcased two very different pitchers. One who does nearly everything right, one who might be at the end of his leash.

Marc Rzepczynski pitched wonderfully Wednesday night, striking out 7 against only one walk. He missed bats, he changed speeds, he induced ground balls. It was awesome. I'm unabashed in my support/belief in Rzepczynski and last night went a long way in explaining why. Other than the two home runs he surrendered; he was great.

Jesse Litsch, deep in his post-Tommy John hangover period, was the opposite. Litsch was bad, as he has been all season long. Jesse Litsch gets nobody out, no matter how hard he tries. His 7 strikeouts in 24.2 innings thrown in 2010 make for a tidy 2.55 K/9! That's downright awful, even for "heave-it-and-hope" Jesse.

See, strikeouts are important. Jeff Sullivan of SB Nation and Lookout Landing summed it up nicely yesterday in reference to Brandon "holy shit, Anthopoulos made Jack Z his dog's bitch" Morrow

But you can afford some walks when you strike out more than a quarter of the batters you face. Striking out that many batters limits their opportunities to do damage...While strikeouts aren't everything, they can help make up for an awful lot of shortcomings

Everybody has shortcomings. Marc Rzepczynski sometimes loses sight of the plate and offers up a few more gopher balls than you'd like. But Litsch? If the Listch isn't exactly right, he gets covered to all corners of the yard.

Remember when B.J. Ryan came back from Tommy John and begged, borrowed, and stole 32 saves? It took him a while to find his spots and his velocity and movement were way down, but he was okay? Doing that for one inning a night, needing to con only three hitters into retiring themselves is one thing. Trying to get all the way through a major league lineup twice is something else entirely.

Jesse Litsch needs to go away - soon. Not that I wish him ill, he just doesn't have what it takes at this time. Usually the kind of guys who can get away with really low K rates are sinkerballing maniacs. Litsch may throw that slutter of his until the precious new tendons deep in his elbow are ground to a fine paste, but he has a long way to go to reach maniac-level status. See, that's the thing with barely above replacement-level fifth starters: it doesn't take much for someone better to take your job.

Why that video? No reason, it's simply the funniest thing I've ever seen in my life. It is perfect. Not many things are. Sorry, Lebron-fatigue (on both sides) makes me wistful.

Knowledge is Power

The good men at Mop Up Duty wrote an interesting post yesterday about the rise of the power pitcher. Callum provides a laundry list of big-armed hurlers known to touch triple digits on the handy stadium radar gun. Despite taking spurious shots at Brandon League, the M.U.D.men make a fair observation. My questions is why?

Hard throwing guys getting chance after chance is nothing new to baseball, but perhaps the volumes of research done over the past 15 years or so is coming home to roost. The value of missed bats, ground balls, and strikes thrown causes a selection bias of Strasburgian proportions.

While finding phenoms in the rough is no easier now than before, the combination of better training, more specified coaching at younger ages, and baseball's age of enlightenment funneling these pitchers — let's call them "good" — to the big leagues in record numbers.

Impossibly tall athletes like Ubaldo or Halladay or whomever are steered towards the the fine art of pitching. Baseball grooms pitchers with very specific skills sets, emphasizing very specific outcomes (grounders, whiffs) where once guys (may have) gotten by on guile, reputation, and harder-to-pin-down soft skills. Such training isn't quite available to hitters, their's being an reactive event to the pitcher's initiation of the action.

That isn't to say focusing on big arms and big whiffs is a new phenomenon. But perhaps the ability to drill down to the bare essentials causes the upswing in pitcher performance. As this Denver Post piece on "The Year of The Pitcher" points out, the type of offensive players and offensive strategies (Ks aren't the end of the world) make it much easier to rack up big strikeout numbers. Or maybe it's just a cyclical thing, one coinciding with a drug shakedown inside the sport. Whatever, it's fun to watch.

Midsummer SuperNova

If you have any sense, you read the Tao's pro-All Star post long ago. If not, do so now. Twice even. The Tao makes a impassioned case for the All Star game and for not losing sight of what makes us all fans. And he's right. Except for one sad little thing: I don't like the All Star festivities because it's bad TV.

Bad TV is a hell of a thing. Overproduced, underwhelming broadcasts choke full of so much hyperbole and time-filling garbage as to overshadow the actual thing I'm supposed to be enjoying.

The NFL is largely bad TV, unless you use that TV as an excuse to do scores of other, awesomer things. To sit and watch a full football game is an excruciating experience unless your home is awash in beer, friends, and greasy snack foods.

Much like the All Star Weekend Spectacular. It's an ESPN property now, meaning all the stuff that once made it fun and exciting is now scrubbed clean and/or shoe-horned into every moment of television time.

The home run derby is much worse, but as a made of TV extravaganza, I have a hard time taking it in. The Bermanisms get turned to 1000, the steadicam shots add nothing (which is really hard to do; steadicam should be impossible to fuck up), the boring interviews and the interminable round after round coverage and the endless commercial breaks don't exactly make for appointment TV.

Hey, I realize the kids gotta eat and networks need to make money, but quality of that being broadcast suffers when the event is an exhibition game at best. The attempts to legitimize it while grafting weirdly inclusive rules and working extra hard to keep the egg of Bud Selig's face don't really excite me. Watching Matt Thornton strike out Brian McCann, David Wright, and Joey Votto¹ Ryan Howard in order en route to another American League victory certainly does excite me, I simply can't handle the 4 hours of hype and ESPYs promos required to get there.

¹ - Yeah right, Votto will stick'em.

Image courtesy of the Mud Monkey's Photostream on Flickr. It's awesome, huge thanks to them.

Relativity

What you see above is the first (FIRST!!1) comment on my Fangraphs Q & A session with the esteemed Carson Cistulli¹. While I certainly don't believe I whine about being a Blue Jays fan, "Kyle" brings up an interesting point: how much worse off are the O's than the Jays?

On the surface, one would say "a lot." The Orioles are abjectly awful and have been for years. But consider the criteria we use for success, consider the complaints generally lobbied against the Jays. No playoffs since 1993? The Orioles made the playoffs in both 1996 & 1997, the latter club winning 98 games. Sure, they haven't won even 80 games since then, but if your thought process is Playoffs or Bust; what's the difference?

The Rogers Dome is a sterile, unlovable concrete toilet bowl. Camden Yards is the blueprint and standard measuring stick for all retro themed baseball-specific playgrounds. Who's ahead here?

The Jays got 12 glorious years of Roy Halladay greatness, the Orioles had 300-odd seasons of demigod Cal Ripken anointing the sores on Dukie's feet. The RSN and Yankees take over both buildings so that's a wash.

The Orioles spend money on free agents (with generally hilarious results), if you listen to Jays Talk callers the Jays haven't done that since Jack Morris. The Jays win scads of "meaningless" games but that certainly doesn't sate the "meaningful baseball" hordes.

So what's the difference? Would you rather be the excellent also-ran or consistently pitiful doormat? Is there a difference? Are the Jays really no better than the Pirates or Nationals because the results, ultimately, are the same?

¹ - Please read this. It is no small amount of mind-blowing to see my name on Fangraphs in any capacity. Incalculable thanks to Carson Cistulli for including me.