FJM is a closed forum, but we welcome reader feedback. We're especially interested in corrections of our work, and research (usually number-crunching) that we may not be able to do ourselves. Please check the comments section as well, where we often post readers' opinions, and, less frequently, announce that we were wrong about something.
You can e-mail dak,Ken Tremendous,Junior,Matthew Murbles, or Coach individually.
Not really. Those would be exciting backyard brawl rules, though, wouldn't they? Anyway, it's being reported here (and quoted on Baseball Think Factory here) that eighteen web writers were nominated for membership in the Baseball Writers Association of America. You may remember the BBWAA as the organization who voted Justin Morneau and Andre Dawson to be MVPs because adorably, kind of like a puppy who destroys your favorite sweater, it just didn't know any better.
Sixteen of the eighteen writers got in. Not bad, huh? But wait: who were the two unluckies who didn't quite cut the baseball-flavored mustard? None other than Rob Neyer and Keith Law, two men of reason.
Let that sink in, and I will regale you with excerpts from columns by Jim Caple, who did get in to the BBWAA:
PARKING Chumps pay $25 for parking. Cheapskates take public transportation, which provides valuable life lessons for the children:
"Daddy, why is that man talking to himself, picking at his sores and not wearing any pants?"
"Because he roots for the Cubs, son."
Haw haw haw! Baseball! Stomach sore from laughing? Better take some Aleve and get a load of some more hilarious baseball talk:
Harry Potter reveals the truth!
There also is no school called Hogwarts, at least, not that I ever went to. I went to Malfoy Academy and our team nickname was the Warthogs so I guess Rowling thought she was being real clever by changing it around. And it ain't no school for wizards, neither. It's a private school founded by the Malfoy family, who made a fortune in something much worse than black magic -- tobacco. I'm so psyched this guy will be eligible for a Hall of Fame vote in the future, along with our good friend JonHeyman. The Hall is in good hands, people.
The BBWAA is clearly an organization all about change, adaptability and flexibility. Check out their state of the art web presence. I'm pretty sure the only way we could improve our own nearly flawless, aesthetically pleasing design is to adopt their eye-catching neon green and web-link-standard-blue color scheme.
Mr. Neyer, Mr. Law: you are not "beat" enough to be beat writers for the BBWAA. You do not spend enough time smelling players' sweat and managers' chaw. Your brand of writing -- writing about facts, information, and data -- will not be tolerated within their ranks. Gentlemen: congratulations.
Irving Janis, the now-deceased Yale research psychologist who was an expert on the topic of 'groupthink,' wrote that groups with high levels of cohesiveness tend to reject dissidents that question their norms. While that may seem obvious, the more interesting phenomenon is something called polarization, wherein the collective view of the group is far more extreme than the views of individual members. Moderates find themselves adopting either excessively conservative or excessively risky positions in order to preserve group norms, even to the detriment of the 'work at hand.' As a result, and I'm quoting here from Janis' seminal 1972 work Victims of Groupthink: A psychological study of foreign-policy decisions and fiascoes, groups tend to "develop stereotyped images that dehumanize out-groups against whom they are engaged in competitive struggles." Think about that the next time one of these douchebags calls Bill James a computer.
Conclusions: a) The BBWA isn't any more stupid than all of the other stupid groups that implement ill-informed, biased, and detrimental decision-making strategies, and b) Neyer and Law, bless their hearts, don't stand a snowball's chance next year, the year after, etc.
For those of you who are interested, there are several infielders available through free agency right now. Two of them are David Eckstein, an adorable 11 inch-tall translucent man who cannot play baseball very well, and Alex Rodriguez, who is better at hitting baseballs than every other person in the entire world.
Let's go to the journalistic/public opinion round-up. First, we have an ESPN.com poll, the final question of which is:
9. Which player would you rather have?
69.6% Alex Rodriguez 30.4% David Eckstein
Now, I suppose it is possible that some of the 150,000+ people who have voted in this poll were taking into consideration things like salary, or the current 3Bman on their favorite team, or something. But the question is, straight-up, who would you rather have?
And 30% say Eckstein. Thirty percent. Thir. Ty. Per. Ce. N. T.
That means that more than 45,000 people sat at their computers, and thought it over, and they said, you know, I don't want the guy who is 32 and had a .354 EqA+ last year with 54 HR. I want the 32 year-old who only played in 117 games last year (and 123 the year before) and hit 3 HR and had a .275 EqA+, and who needs a relay man to get the ball from short to first.
Who are you people? What is wrong with your brains?
Speaking of people whose brains are wrong, ESPN's Buster Olney has some things to say about Eckstein: 3. David Eckstein, SS
Injuries have limited the shortstop to 240 games over his last two seasons, and he doesn't have the body or playing style of someone who will last.
Sign him!
But nobody can argue this: When Eckstein plays, he produces.
I can argue that. I can easily argue that. You want me to argue that? I will argue that.
The man's career OPS+ is 89. That is below average for baseball players. His career high OPS+ is 101. That is one percent better than the average baseball player. He has never had more than 26 doubles in a season. He has never had a slugging percentage in the .400s. He is a terrible hitter.
His batting average in each of his last three seasons is .294, .292 and .309, and he made a couple of All-Star teams.
Oh my God. If Buster Olney were a GM, he would stock his teams with Ecksteins and Juan Pierres and Christian Guzmans and they would go 20-142.
He has been a shortstop and the Cardinals need a shortstop, and Eckstein may end up returning to St. Louis. But Eckstein could also be, for a big-market contending club, a very interesting buy as a super utility player, because he can play second base, and perhaps even third base, along with some shortstop.
David Eckstein playing third base would be amazing. I would love to see that. If Jacoby Ellsbury hit a ball down the line to David Eckstein and Eck had to backhand it and throw from foul territory, by the time the ball landed in the first baseman's glove Ellsbury would be sitting on the bench after his inside-the-park little-league HR and Kevin Youkilis would be at the plate with a count of 2-0.
You could move him around, give him days off when he had a nagging injury, and always inject energy into your team -- like a sixth man in basketball.
This is a reason to sign him?
GM: So, tell me why we should sign your client.
Eckstein's Agent: Tons of reasons. First of all, he's a winner. Second, he can inject energy into your team. Third, when we gets injured -- and he will definitely get injured -- you can give him days off!
GM: (has long since left room)
Pay him well on a two-year deal and promise him 400 plate appearances, and he could help you get to October.
Pay him well on a two-year deal, and he will certainly collect his paychecks while not helping your team at all. And if your team makes it to October despite his mediocre/bad play, he will totally help you win in October, with his career .278/.333/.335 line in the postseason.
Finally, here is the voice of reason, in the form of Keith Law:
Quite possibly the most overrated player in baseball because people say "gritty" and "scrappy" and "smart" when they really just mean "short." Eckstein has had a nice run in the National League as a slap-and-run guy who does all of the little things and not many of the big things: He's got a short swing and isn't strong, so he hits for very little power, and he's never drawn many walks or worked the count. He's still an above-average runner, but not a burner and not worth much on the base paths; the speed is most valuable in helping him bunt for hits or leg out some ground balls. He's a bad defensive shortstop, and given his age he's likely to get worse, so it makes much more sense for someone to sign him as a second baseman.
Ahhhhhh. Soothing. Although how he is at #15 I will never know.
(And yes, as Junior said in correcting himself, we really shouldn't be using just ERA here. [Too convenient for a pitcher whose only experience has been for a team in a relatively weak division, in a pitcher's dream park.] Not that ERA+ is perfect, but it's (a) a fairer metric to use than just crude ERA and (b) designed to make it a little easier to measure against other players.)
Anyway. ERA+. One hundred is league average, and for starters, though I haven't looked too far into the numbers, I'd imagine the average is a little lower, as relievers generally have lower ERAs. Remember: for ERA+, higher = awesomer.
So...105, 116, 116...I'd guess, yeah, most "contenders" would take that out of their #2 starters.
Right?
All right, fine, my flight's delayed so I'm going to take this a step further.
Zito's 3-year ERA+ average is 112 1/3. Let's look at all teams who were "in contention" last year (by my own, kind of vague definition) and see where Zito would have ranked on those 2006 starting staffs, in ERA+.
Yes, that's right, I'm using his 3-year average against the single-year stats of 2006 pitching staffs. Seems right enough to me.
NYM: 3rd (Way better than team "ace" Pedro Martinez. Basically in a tie with Tom Glavine (113), and worse than John Maine on a kind of small sample size. I'd call it more of a 2 than a 3. But! This is science, motherfuckers. It's a 3.) STL: 2nd SDP: 4th (At least he was better than Jake Peavy.) LAD: 4th (Maddux, Lowe, sure. Billinglsey is iffy again at 90.0 IP.) PHI: 3rd HOU: 3rd (Goddam, Clemens was good.) NYY: 3rd TOR: 3rd BOS: 2nd MIN: 3rd DET: 4th CHI: 1st OAK: 1st (Well, he was 1st. Thanks, maybe, to an injured Rich Harden.) LAA: 4th
Of these contenders, Zito would have been an average number 2.85 starter, thus obscuring all possible meaning the phrase "number n starter" might have.
Drop CHI and BOS from the calculus -- teams who both finished 3rd in their divisions -- and Zito becomes a number 3.08 starter. You know, the guy you usually pitch 3rd in the rotation, and then, once every 12 cycles through the rotation, you pitch him 4th.
I gotta gay say after going through these numbers, Keith Law doesn't look nearly as wrong as I thought he would. I mean, he's wrong that Zito's "at best" a number 3 starter. Zito basically should be a number 3 starter on a contending team. But I don't think he's far off. And as Law writes in his blolumn: Zito's only getting older. His fastball is, by most reports, slippin'.
In fact, Law may have more accurately said that Zito will at best be a number 3 starter; you have to wonder how BZ 2010-13 is going to perform. (2013?!)
Hopefully we can agree on this: Keith Law was off; Brian Sabean was way off.
Adding "on a contender" lets him off the hook a little in my book. Saying "at best" a third starter does not help his case.
Man, he hates Zito. I forgot about this, but in his rankings of the top 40 free agents (just Google Keith Law free agents) Zito is 15th, behind Ted Lilly and Gil Meche. Honestly, maybe Zito's Cy Young is undeserved and maybe he's a different pitcher now then he was when he won it, but what have those fuckers ever done to project better than he does?
Keep in mind Meche is the same age as Zito and Lilly is two years older!
Barry Zito: Not That Good But Not That Bad, Either
Look, Barry Zito probably isn't worth $18 million dollars a year for seven years. He walks a lot of guys. His WHIP last year was 1.40. He probably benefitted from a good outfield defense behind him in Oakland. His numbers against the better offensive teams are less than stellar.
I don't really even like calling pitchers ones, twos, threes, sixes, or twelves. Pitchers are pitchers -- they give you a certain value and that's that. Putting them into absolute, defined, discrete categories speaks to a level of confidence about what their performance will be that we often don't have. Obviously, I really hate it when guys loudly proclaim "Pitcher X is not an ace, okay? He's not an ace." What the fuck does that even mean? (It means "I like to scream meaningless things and act indignant if anyone disagrees with my totally made-up bullshit.")
I understand that there are reasons to do it. It gives a rough idea of what to expect from a guy, it relates to their spot in the rotation, it sounds like baseball talk, whatever.
Back to Zito. Law, who's normally pretty reasonable on non-Gil Meche issues, is down on the guy. I want to be down on him too. His peripherals are bad. But let's be fair: even the new, bad Barry Zito of the past three years is a steady high 3 or at worst, low 4 ERA guy. For 35 starts a year. Last year his ERA was 3.83. You know what that was good for? Tenth in the AL. Twenty-third in baseball.
So I ask you, Keith Law, on what crazy awesome team is Barry Zito a goddamn number four?
There were, going by last year's stats, only three teams on which you or Keith Law could call Barry Zito a number three (by ERA alone): the Padres, the Yankees, and the Angels. There were zero teams on which he would have been a number four. From a quick look (I could be off by a couple here), there were nine teams on which Barry Zito would have been your number one, including the team he pitched for, Oakland.
Well, you say, Oakland must have been a terrible baseball squadron, then! They were seventh in ERA and they did okay in the playoffs. Speaks to depth, bullpen, lots of things -- but clearly having a number three (or a number four, depending on which Keith Law opinion you subscribe to) as their number one didn't totally wreck them.
At a certain point, being contrarian, as Law often is (and as FJM often is), can sometimes lead you into being just as wrong as the idiots you're showing up. Zito is overrated by a lot of dumb people ("he's a Cy Young winner!"), and Law sees that. But now he's overcompensating.
Point is: dude, Barry Zito is not a number three. Factoring in his durability, he's a solid number two, and in a pinch, he could even be your number one and you still might have a decent team.
He's not worth $126 million, though.
** INSERT **
Thank you, Jeff Sackmann of the Hardball Times for hive-minding with me and publishing a very relevant article yesterday that I hadn't read until reader Tim alerted me to it. Jeff ran the numbers, and this is what he found:
To start with, here are the averages for each rotation position:
MLB 3.60 4.14 4.58 5.10 6.24
AL 3.70 4.24 4.58 5.09 6.22
NL 3.51 4.04 4.57 5.11 6.26
Sorry that's so ugly. Jeff had it in a neat table. Go read his whole article. If you buy Jeff's procedure, then according to these results, Barry Zito was a #1/#2 starter in the AL. Who was "a third, maybe a fourth starter"? I don't know, Kris Benson (ERA of 4.82)? And he had a bad year even for Kris Benson. Barry Zito is not Kris Benson.
Jeff also states more clearly what I should have said about all of this kind of talk in the first place:
Of course, this usage is extremely imprecise: one man's #2 is another man's #4, and there's no clear way to settle the debate. Taken literally, a pitcher's position in the rotation depends entirely on context: Zach Miner, the fifth-best starter on last year's Tigers, had a lower ERA than any regular starter for the Royals.
And second:
My biggest beef with this kind of talk is that it invariably overestimates just how good pitchers should be.
Thanks, Jeff.
** END INSERT **
Ed. note: Colin Cowherd was not doing his own show today, or else he would have said something that certainly would have been fodder for a much more entertaining post. Something like this:
Fictional Colin Cowherd (in a nasal, contemptuous sneer): You know what bothers me about this signing? What has Barry Zito ever done on the big stage? What tells me he's a big-game pitcher? Do something in October, then come to me for the big bucks. Cy Young Award? That's a regular-season thing. Do you ever remember Barry Zito coming through with two out and two on in the bottom of the ninth in Game 7? No! That's why he doesn't deserve 18 million a year. We'll be right back with Tony Romo. You're in the herd!
Fuck off and die, Fictional Colin Cowherd.
Second Ed. note: I just remembered that the guy filling in for Colin Cowherd did say something Cowherd-level dumb. I'm not going to take five seconds to go back and listen to the thing, so I'll just pretend I transcribed it. Here's the gist of it:
Guy Filling In For Colin Cowherd: Keith, I've always looked at Barry Zito and looked at a lot of the A's pitchers and wondered why there weren't more signature moments.
Signature moments? Signature moments? We're talking about $126 million. Do you know how low on the list "signature moments" is when a rational person decides how to make a $126 million investment? Answer: it's not even on the fucking list. Fuck off and die, Guy Filling In For Colin Cowherd.
