Blastings! Thrilledge

What Happened to B!T?

2011-08-08T15:38:00.001-06:00

The regime was righted. What more need for vitriol?

Moneyball 2.0

2010-11-17T09:57:00.005-07:00

I'm sure others have used that line, but I don't have time to read baseball stuff anymore. I don't care. I'm happy that I can enjoy the Mets again. The House of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch has been defeated by the House of Sade! (Marquis de) Obscurity! Irony! Delight!

Outfielders Who Are Better than Gary Matthews, Jr.: Part 1

2010-04-22T12:24:00.003-06:00

Jai Miller is a mediocre AAA outfielder who was just released by the Oakland Athletics. Miller has adequate plate discipline and mild pop, but strikes out a lot due to his inability to hit breaking pitches. He is also rangy and capable in the outfield, but nothing special. Still, these attributes make Jai Miller a much better player right now than Gary Matthews, Jr., who can't hit a fastball or a breaking pitch (striking out in 13 of 32 plate appearances) and certainly cannot play outfield very well either.

Journal 4/21

2010-04-21T13:12:00.008-06:00

I am reading the Amazin' Avenue Annual 2010 and I must say, I am pretty impressed. It is well-organized, well-written, and well-conceived. Even Matt "Ellipsis" Cerrone contributed a sensible, if vague, article. Seeing this work makes me want to be part of the Mets blogosphere once again, but I'm not sure I can do it.

The Ike Davis era has begun, and fans are bound for disappointment, as Davis will probably not be a premium first baseman or corner outfielder unless he stops prematurely dropping his hands and thus develops more consistent line drive and home run potential. We'll see a lot of pop-ups and lunges until then. Still, he is superior right now to Mike Jacobs and Mike Hessman, and probably Chris Carter too. Daniel Murphy, the other option at first base, might be able to outperform Davis but is better suited as a four-corners utilityman. Nick Evans probably belongs on the major league bench, but shouldn't be a starting first baseman.

Murphy and Evans are the kinds of players the Mets just don't understand. They provide cheap value, but they have to be used correctly. They shouldn't be counted on as regular starters and aren't worth much as trade bait. They are kind of home-grown players that should be filling out the Mets' bench at a low price instead of relatively high-priced free agent/washout acquisitions like Tatis, Cora, and Matthews.

I was very surprised at Luis Castillo's performance last year, with a .387 OBP and 20 steals. I didn't think that Slappy was able to do anything but decline miserably. Unfortunately, he is still doing that on defense; he is a defensive specialist who can't field anymore. Major league baseball teams have a hard time defending their use of all-field, no-hit infielders, but when it's no-field, no-hit, it's really not worth it. If Castillo could put up a SLG of .400, with a .360 OBP, his sub par defense might be playable. Instead, he lives almost entirely on singles and walks, and not many of those singles are the infield hits he enjoyed earlier in his career. Castillo has some speed left and is a smart baserunner, but his usefulness as a starter is long gone. This is why it is so frustrating that the Mets, who clearly recognize this, failed to sign Orlando Hudson or Felipe Lopez after they couldn't find a taker for Castillo's stupid contract (which, by the way, I predicted before it happened.) It's quite sad that the Mets are sticking a .350 slugging percentage in the 2-hole every day when statistical analysis shows that it is not patience at the plate or contact ability that is most important for that spot, but slugging percentage.

Frank Catalanotto: the Mets could do a lot, lot worse. They have in the past, and they will in the future. Franky the Cat is nothing special for a pinch hitter, of course, but at least he's not Julio Franco. It should go without saying, also, that Catalanotto should not be hitting cleanup.

Speaking of Jerry Manuel being a bad manager, he should really chill it with the relief pitchers. And yes, of course, Jenrry Mejia should be starting games in AA, or at least AAA. And if he has to be on the big club, he should still be starting. I would give him John Maine's spot, because his arm looks dead and I'm still hoping that Oliver Perez has something left.

That makes me kind of like Omar Minaya. In my general post about the fallacies of Mets management strategy, I got some great comments. The best point was that Minaya sometimes acquires adequate personnel but grows attached to them; or, he makes a good gamble and loses but instead of moving on he keeps trying to extract value from the same ghostly, sunk cost player. Minaya should understand that General Managers gamble and lose all the time, but they make up for this by other gambles, by being flexible and fluid with their player acquisitions. But, Omar is not that kind of GM; he's the kind who says, "OK, he's nine out of ten against this guy. Am I going to get that nine out of ten or that one out of ten?" (Quotation courtesy of Derek Carty, writing in the Annual.)

Finally, if the Mets are close (5 games) to the division lead in July (I doubt it, but it's totally possible), they should seriously consider trading Fernando Martinez.

..And We're Back.

2010-04-17T12:38:00.004-06:00

The ~~Devil~~ Rays, the Pirates, the Mariners: one by one the old-school, traditionally-minded general managers and management strategies are being replaced by an intelligent, purposeful, and businesslike approach, making use of the resources and knowledge available today. Left behind are teams like the Mets, Astros, and Giants, to name a few of the most pathetic.

Nevertheless, poorly conceived and poorly constructed squadrons can and do compete-- the Mets had a nice run there from 2006 to 2008-- even if, with some better decisions made on the margins, they could have made the playoffs those latter two years and perhaps brought home a pennant or two. Now, it seems, the opportunity has passed; the Mets can either set themselves up for a burst of success in the future, or continue to throw money around, perpetually fielding 75-85 win teams.

That can work when one has as much money as the Mets, but one must spend that money correctly, not based on potentially heartwarming stories and silly notions of set roles (instead of relative and total value).

This first theory of Mets' management is, I think, highly neglected. Omar Minaya does not have any special talent for constructing a baseball roster. He has skill as a scout, but basically no understanding of the relative value of baseball players, how to measure it, and how to obtain that value at a good price. His thinking is rigid where he needs to be flexible, and imaginative where it just doesn't matter.

What do I mean? This-- that Minaya thinks in terms of stories. When he needs to fill a spot (more on that later), he does not do a thorough analysis of the possible performances but rather decides based on the possible stories. Thus he brought Fernando Tatis and Jose Valentin out of obscurity (good moves), and gave a two-year contract to a Julio Franco who was closer to 50 than 40 (a bad move among many). He wants to be seen as the genius who gave Cuban defector Raul Valdez, toiling in the Latin leagues, his great chance. Frank Catalanatto, Smithtown's own. Etc., etc., ad nauseum.

Which is not to say that such considerations do not have their place-- they do, but they come after actual performance. Minaya's Met front office seems incapable of understanding basic economic principles, let alone the advanced understanding of the game that has revolutionized most other front offices in the last ten years. There are undoubtedly people in the organization who understand these things, but I believe that the perverse notions of Minaya and those around him ultimately trump everything else.

Those notions are, in addition to the desire to pack a roster with stories that beat writers will love: the idea of a baseball team as a 'mix,' as in chemistry, or a puzzle, with the pieces 'fitting together'; defined 'roles,' whether it is 'a power-hitting first baseman,' or 'an eighth-inning guy'; and that minor league statistics are meaningless and completely non-predictive.

Thus we hear stories such as, "The Mets are looking for a power-hitting first basemen." They have decided, arbitrarily, that the other positions are filled and this is the one that needs to be 'filled.' Consequently the team makes a stupid trade, overpays a free agent, or acquires a complete non-entity/liability like Mike Jacobs and considers its job done. Instead of assessing the free agent/trade market for value over and above what the current roster provides, the front office assesses its own roster in terms of 'slots' that are either 'filled' or not. Consequently Alex Cora, backup infielder, is re-signed to a pointlessly large contract while Felipe Lopez, starting second baseman and a far superior option to the Mets' own starting "second baseman," is passed over.

For years Billy Beane and others have been running a scam where they put an adequate reliever into 9th inning situations so that he can acquire "saves," and then flip him, his value inflated by a meaningless statistic, to a gullible team who finds, too late, that he is just an ordinary reliever. The Mets have been and continue to be the team who will overpay for players like these.

How long, oh Lord, will we suffer the Gary Matthews, Jrs. and Mike Jacobses? How long must we wander the desert of general incompetence? How long will we see value wasted and opportunities lost? Oh ye Mets, come down from your high places, put on sackcloth and ashes, for the time of reckoning is soon at hand.

Jerry Manuel Makes the Mets a Worse Team

2009-05-18T10:51:00.000-06:00

That is all.

Marlon Anderson To Go?

2009-04-10T13:39:00.003-06:00

It sounds too good to be true:

It looks like Marlon Anderson's final game as a Met may come Friday night in Florida.

Hopefully it won't just be that he "accepts" a AAA assignment and becomes the first man up if there's an injury.

Blastings-Approved!

2009-04-03T14:24:00.002-06:00

He's no Val Pascucci, but we'll take him!

Marlon Anderson is still around

2009-02-23T18:24:00.002-07:00

so I'll see you guys later.

Oh, and by the way

2008-12-11T12:27:00.002-07:00

Raul Ibanez? Raúúúúúúúúúúúúúúl Ibaññññez?

No.

I wrote last year:

I can't believe this is a real possibility and apparently no one is interested in Adam Dunn because he strikes out too much. Guess what Raul Ibanez can do? If you guessed "play outfield," you would be wrong. He is quite possibly the worst defensive outfielder in the game today. If Barry Bonds came back, he would be better. Hell, Marlon Anderson and Fernando Tatis are better outfielders. Manny Ramirez is better when jogging at half-speed. Mariners blog Lookout Landing lists him as "LF" when they post the lineups in game threads. (They also list Jose Vidro as "DH".) They have a sidebar called "Raul Ibanez is Really Good at Defense." It contains this. And this. And this. And this. AND THIS.

Also here.

Big Putz Trade

2008-12-11T11:50:00.003-07:00

I have been out of the loop, as they say. I watched with mild interest as the Mets signed "K-Rod" for considerably less than had been rumored. And now my eyes are opened a little wider at this creative three-team trade between the Mets, Seattle and Cleveland.

Just seeing that the participants are the Mets, Seattle, and Cleveland, I figured, immediately, that the Mets and Mariners had been screwed. But that wasn't exactly the case.

Still, I read the names and then the analysis at the intelligent sites (mostly Amazin Avenue. Also K-Law at ESPN and Carruth at Fan Graphs.) And I was kinda shocked at how universally praised this deal has been from the Mets' side.

Doesn't it strike anyone as a little uncreative? A little too Ed Wade-like, throwing prospects (however mediocre) away for relief pitchers? Yes, Putz is good. And yea, I guess the prospects are not that good.

A dynamite relief corps does not a championship team make.

Tim Marchman is with me a little bit.

Aaron Heilman is Aaron Heilman; this year aside he's a perfectly good setup man, but he had to go and I don't think anyone will miss him even if he turns into a passable fourth starter. Joe Smith, though, is actually pretty damn good, and a pitcher whom right-handers simply can't hit is a valuable thing to have around. Sean Green, whom the Mets picked up in the deal, is to Smith as Reed is to Chavez: He'll fill the role, but not nearly as well.

As for the prospects, Mike Carp is probably going to be a homeless man's John Olerud, a passable second-division starter, while Makiel Cleto is your generic live arm. They're hardly irreplacable, but you can hear overtones of late 2006, when the Mets pissed away a ton of talent including Heath Bell and Jesus Flores.

Right, well that's what bothers me. That's why I didn't really have the energy to write up my Ranking the GMs for Omar and talk about his two-year extension and do a Building the 2009 Mets and all that. Because the modus operandi of this team is just a tired cliché to me.

The minor leagues are fodder for the major leagues. In the major leagues, we throw a bunch of money and prospects around for players who have established themselves as stars already (and may be fading) and surround them with the dredges of mediocrity, "established veterans" who have outlived their usefulness and block better minor leaguers.

I know, I'm a broken record too.

All in all, I am far too harsh. Omar paid a lot for Carlos Beltran, but he has been more than worth it (though I wasn't around to criticize that deal and probably wouldn't have). He paid a lot for Johan Santana, but he has been great as well (though the jury is still out on that one). However, what did it get us? The exact same record as the year before, because while Santana was a significant improvement over the alternatives, the Mets failed to make the same upgrades at the margins, where they gave away what they had gained.

That's why Valentino Pascucci was a rallying cry.

That's why I have a hard time getting excited over the big deals, which Omar, to his credit, often gets right. Because the organizational philosophy is complete shit. The team may luck into a pennant but it will not have long-term success as long as it continues to rely on big-name-talent and lets the rest rot as if it were unimportant.

Eh. I bore myself.

A call to arms for Mr. Peterson!

2008-12-11T08:48:00.002-07:00

Please return and analyze this 12 player trade I just read about.

It looks like the Mets dealt Heilman, Chavez, Vargas, Maikel Cleto, Mike Carp, and Ezequiel Carrera for J.J. Putz, Sean Green, and Jeremy Reed. Reed seems to be a Chavez replacement, Sean Green is an average bullpen arm, and J.J. Putz instantly becomes one of the top setup men in the game behind K-Rod.

So the Mets' bullpen at the moment is something like: Feliciano, Schoenweis, Sanchez, Green, Putz, K-Rod - with the possibility for the return of Ambiorix Burgos.

Our Clueless Future

2008-10-06T15:09:00.007-06:00

Jerry Manuel is now the manager of the Metropolitans for the next two seasons, or at least until the team's next six-game losing streak. He starts his tenure in style:

"You get so many statistical people together, they put so many stats on paper, and they say, well, if you do this and you score this many runs, you do that many times, you'll be in the playoffs," [Manuel] said.

"That's not really how it works, and that's what we have to get away from. And that's going to have to be a different mind-set of the team in going forward. We must win and we must know how to win rather than win because we have statistical people. We have to win because we have baseball players that know and can understand the game."

Yes, exactly, Jerry! The reason the Mets fell one game short of the playoffs two years in a row is because we have been obsessing over VORP and OBP! If only Willie Randolph had put down The Hardball Times Baseball Annual and did what his gut told him would win the game, we might be well on our way to a second straight World Series! No, I'll go with Eric Simon on this one:

This is going to be a long tenure if Manuel’s first statement since the interim tag was removed from his title is blaming a stat-based baseball culture for his team’s failings. Numbers don’t swing bats, but nor does Jerry Manuel’s gut. Stats are tools that can and should be used — along with other tools — to help a team, and by extension its manager, make informed baseball decisions.

This, of course, is obvious to most Internet-generation baseball fans, whether they are "stat freaks" or not. I would, of course, be less temperate than my colleague. And I will be, forthwith.

We must win and we must know how to win...

This doesn't really mean anything. All baseball players know how to "win," if winning is playing baseball to a successful conclusion a good percentage of the time. But "[knowing] how to win" is not a skill that is hereditary, earned or otherwise existent in any way. Even if it were, "winning" ballplayers need to combine their skills with other players to make a team, and it is the aggregation of those players, not any single one, that makes a team.

But now we have ventured dangerously close to baseball-cliche-land. What is really the point is that all baseball players, whether they have an illusory ability to "win" or not, have different levels of skill. That skill can be measured. It can be compared between players. And most importantly, we can aggregate those skills to estimate how good a team is and how many games it will win.

And even with all that said, we might encounter the Jerry Manuels of the world on their own ground, and ask why Marlon Anderson was on this team if not for his supposed ability "to win and know how to win"? Not only have such things been said about him, but he was preferred over superior and more valuable players, suggesting that he has some "winning" trait above and beyond what we can objectively measure. And still Marlon Anderson's Mets missed the playoffs two years running.

But baseball managers say these things, and no one gets hurt for it. I doubt there are more than one or two managers in the game who would disagree with Manuel's remarks. It's their job to believe in heart and grit and the like. Baseball is a cerebral game with high variance-- long periods of unsustainable success and failure. There is a rote, routine, workmanlike aspect; and a one-of-a-kind, do-or-die immediacy. All baseball players know that each plate appearance in-and-of-itself has little significance, but that sometimes it is just that one plate appearance that can make or break their reputations. And so they elevate its importance, closing the gap between ability and result, irrationally, with a bridge called clutch, built with all the grit and sweat and blood of their baseball bona fides.

We must see, then, that "statistical people" and baseball's "winner" mythologies sprout from the same widely variable soil. Both try to account for baseball's ups and downs. One does it empirically, the other psychologically. Neither could ever replace the other, but each tries to do just that. No baseball player, not even Brian Bannister, fails to sense, psychologically, the immediacy and importance of certain "clutch" situations which would otherwise be mere statistical blips, meaning nothing by themselves. But these are not the deciders and roster-makers, who must-- absolutely must-- have reliable metrics to analyze and predict player performance, if they want to be successful in a competitive market.

So it is not the fact that Jerry Manuel said these things that worries me. It is that Omar Minaya might agree with him.

Yup

2008-09-28T15:12:00.001-06:00

That's it.

For the third consecutive year, unused celebratory champagne is surreptitiously removed from Shea Stadium.

Stay tuned here throughout the offseason for the conclusion of our Ranking the GMs series.

Whether I will be blogging into the Citi Field era remains an open question.

Cheers.

Oh Oliver

2008-09-28T10:54:00.004-06:00

I believe that you are good.
You are in control.
You are a very good pitcher.
The Mets have nothing to worry about, really.
You will shut them down.
Then we will await the results in Milwaukee.

I have lost the ability to analyze objectively.
I can't believe this season is just like the last.
In all but the last game, of course.
Because Oliver is no (*******).

And this time we have Ramon Martinez.
And Brian Schneider.
And Ryan Church.
And Luis Ayala
Proven winners, all.

All the VORP and tRA,
EqA and Zone Ratings in the world
have no power
not like a clutch base hit
to win the pennant*

*In this case, the "Wild Card."

Let's Go Mets!

VOLTRON

2008-09-25T20:33:00.002-06:00

I take back everything I said.

Edit: El esta aquí!

Micah Hoffpauir

2008-09-25T19:11:00.005-06:00

A late-twenties AAA-veteran who has consistently put up powerful minor league numbers can actually contribute at the major league level?

WOW!

Edit: Chone Smith has just released his Major League Equivalencies (MLEs) for minor leaguers. Here are the relevant figures:

Micah Hoffpauir: .307/.336/.606
Valentino Pascucci: .251/.348/.441

Hoffpauir's slugging percentage in AAA was .752 this year. Both he and Pascucci, who slugged "only" .553, played in the offense-heavy Pacific Coast League.

Let's Go Mets!

WHY?

2008-09-25T12:18:00.004-06:00

I am just at a loss for words with recent developments.

Mets blow it, Brewers win and tie with the Mets with four to go, and somehow Omar Minaya gets a 4-year extension.

I... just can't.

You are Excused

2008-09-22T19:18:00.002-06:00

For turning off tonight's game and watching the Jets/Chargers or reading Proust's Remembrance of Things Past or playing Halo 3 or whatever.

In case you missed it, Gary Cohen of SNY offered this Fun Fact: In the last five years there have been three grand slams hit by pitchers. All three were against the Mets, at Shea Stadium, and in the last two years.

Disgusting.

Things I Might Have Been Wrong About

2008-09-19T13:55:00.003-06:00

1) The trade that sent Lastings Milledge to the Nationals for Ryan Church and Brian Schneider was definitely a bad deal for the Mets in the long run, and could even be deleterious in 2008. I wrote:

Kazmir, Part 2.

Milledge for a league-average outfielder and a mediocre catcher.

Lastings will outperform Church next year.

Simply amazingly bad.

Surely this was an exaggeration. Lastings was pretty terrible for most of 2008, but has picked it up considerably in the past month. And while he looks terrible in center field at times, his metrics are pretty good.

All in all, Lastings has improved in his greatest hitting deficiency, chasing outside pitches. As he develops, his bat will be quite valuable as an above-average center fielder.

But the Mets might not be where they are today, poised to make the playoffs, had this trade not been made. And I need to admit that. Brian Schneider is overrated as a defender, and his bat is weak, but it could be a lot weaker. He draws walks, which is helpful. And he doesn't get injured quite like Ramón Castro, this blog's catcher-of-choice.

And Ryan Church has a nice steady bat and impressive corner outfield glove, but he's just a corner outfielder, and they're not that hard to come by. I know that may sound weird to fans of a team who have fielded the likes of Marlon Anderson, Damion Easley and Endy Chavez in the outfield day after day, but it's true.

Still, Church is young and under team control for a few more years. That's worth quite a bit.

2) When he was called up, I wrote of Fernando Tatis:

Tatis is an ancient curiosity, an infielder who was never good at playing infield but now "plays" outfield. His only skill is power, which is easily exploited because his swing is long, loopy, and slow. He briefly experienced success in the late nineties when the general quality of pitching in the league was very low, but he has no place on a major league roster except as [a] comical token veteran reserve.

Well, I was wrong. Somehow Fernando went .297/.369/.484 with 11 home runs and played an adequate left field. When he suffered a separated shoulder the team took a big hit.

Perhaps part of the animosity was that I was beginning my campaign for Valentino Pascucci, who seemed in all respects more worthwhile of the role Tatis was filling. A right-handed bat with better numbers who plays the same position should get the call over a guy who is familiar only because he played in the major leagues once before and flamed out. I stand by that justification, but humbly admit that I never expected Tatis to be this good. I also doubt very much whether he will be able sustain a level of production anywhere near what he did this year.

By the way, the justification for Pascucci over Tatis still holds for Nick Evans. I guess the team figures that Evans is part of the future and Valentino is not. Fair enough. But this is not a team figuring out what it will look like in two years. It is a playoff team that has no reason to start the arbitration clock on a youngster who is clearly not ready to play major league baseball.

3) The Johan Santana trade will be a long-term loser for the Mets. I wrote for Mets Geek:

The Mets traded three starting pitchers with a good chance of major league success and a high-upside outfielder for one year of one pitcher and the privilege of giving him the largest pitching contract ever. There is a lot of risk here.

Again, here, I wrote:

...the Mets are giving up the high-end potential of six below-market years for four players, a total of twenty-four below market years, for one single below-market year of Johan Santana and the special privilege of giving him the largest contract ever given to pitcher.

Of course, you can say that Santana is worth any number of prospects. After all, he is The Best Pitcher in Baseball, and an opportunity to acquire TBPiB doesn't come along every day. Thus, the Mets were smart to snatch him up, and even smarter not to trade their best prospect, Fernando Martinez.

But why, then, did the Yankees and Red Sox compete with each other not to acquire Santana? Why did they fall over each other trying to hit the other one with the winner's curse? Why, as Bob Klapisch reports, did they turn aside even the meager packages the Twins requested at the end, before turning to the Mets?

My arguments may yet prove prophetic, but the relevant players' performances this year indicate otherwise. As David Lennon writes after posting their statistics, "I'm sure the Mets will be happy with this deal for a long time."

The relevant number for Carlos Gomez is his .294 OBP. Plate discipline was, and remains his problem. He is a superb center fielder, a tremendously fast and intelligent base runner, and a quality swinger-of-bats. Unfortunately for the Twins, all of that will amount to a hill of beans if Gomez doesn't learn plate discipline and patience. Yes, he's only 22 and could still learn, but the big leagues ain't the place to do it.

23-year old Kevin Mulvey will almost certainly be a big league pitcher. He had a 121:48 K:BB ratio in AAA. That's very solid and consistent with his numbers through all levels. I'm not sure about his other peripherals (ground balls, mainly), but having a huge K:BB disparity in the right direction is half the battle. But Mulvey himself does not a Santana equal, even considering (as is absolutely necessary in evaluating these things, despite the ignorance of the mainstream media in this respect) the aspects of team control and salary.

The 25-year old Philip Humber could still be a solid major leaguer, but his 106:49 K:BB ratio at AAA is not good enough to cut it in translation to the majors. He also gives up far too many home runs (21 in 136 innings).

Deolis Guerra? Well, he has taken a big step back. See for yourself.

Financially, I think the Twins will probably get equal value out of this trade. But that's in terms of money paid out for performance, strictly. If one counts the money that Santana will surely earn for the Mets by helping them get to the postseason (and if they make it by less than three games, which they almost certainly will, you can thank Santana for it), it makes the trade a clear win for the Mets.

To the Brewers!

2008-09-18T16:20:00.002-06:00

The only team more pitiable than the Mets, as far as September collapses in back-to-back seasons goes. Not that this is a collapse or anything.

Johan Santana, Tim Redding. Should be a pushover, will probably be a nail-biter. I'm just going to assume the Phillies will overcome a 5-run deficit in the ninth to come back and win, 10-9.

Go team!

ahhhhhhhhh!

2008-09-17T01:50:00.002-06:00

This post is when you wake suddenly in the night, screaming from a terrible dream.

Never Forget It

2008-09-11T13:42:00.002-06:00

No, Carlos Delgado is not an MVP candidate. I just assumed that my readers knew that already.

By the way, I am really enjoying this Mets team right now. I will always be vocal about injustices like Marlon Anderson/Valentino Pascucci, no matter what. Because it's not just that we win, but that we make the right choices-- the just choices, the choices that put the team in the best position to win.

So of course it is worth noting how delighted I am that Jerry Manuel has been using a good hitter, Ryan Church, in the #2 spot in the lineup. If he keeps it up for the next couple games, I'll check that item off in the list of B!T causes (on the right).

I am reading all over the Metsblogosphere that Aaron Heilman should just be released outright. This is insane. People sort of know, but they do not take to heart just how volatile the win-loss records and ERAs of relievers are.

People sort of know, but they don't take to heart how important it is to have young players under team control. That's why it's a huge deal to trade away a Lastings Milledge or a Scott Kazmir.

Has Aaron Heilman had problems? Certainly. It is his fault that his walk rate is higher than ever, his ground ball rate lower than ever. But the defensive efficiency (the rate at which batted balls are turned into outs) behind him is the worst it has ever been, lower than 70%. And his rate of home runs allowed per fly ball-- attributable to luck-- is very high.

Quite simply, the best way to measure a pitcher's ability is his peripherals: strikeout rate, walk rate, and ground ball rate. Heilman's rates suggest that he has lost a little control and is giving up more fly balls than usual (and more than their fair share are leaving the park), but nothing significant has changed. The reasonable expectation is that he will continue to be a good pitcher.

And to release him? When he is arbitration-eligible for this offseason and the next (and maybe even the one after that as well)? That would be an insanely terrible move based on flukey, short-term results. That would be like signing Marlon Anderson to a guaranteed two-year contract after a handful of successful at-bats.

How About Them Mets?

2008-09-10T10:43:00.004-06:00

Talking Points to Take to Work:

Mike Pelfrey is a good pitcher now, but he's not half as good as he's going to be.

Oliver Perez does seem to be a "big game pitcher," though I think he got unlucky last night.

Marlon Anderson: .217/.259/.287 over 141 plate appearances. Is there any reason the Mets are still holding on to him? Fantasies about "clutch" and the like? And you do realize, of course, that Anderson is signed through next year. (I was right. I was right about him.)

Meanwhile, Valentino Pascucci, who hit .290/.410/.553 for New Orleans, is surfing or something.

I'm still hoping that Aaron Heilman and Duaner Sanchez become favored over Luis Ayala as "closer" before the season ends. We can't be in the playoffs (if we make it) with that kind of bullpen, no matter how well it's working now.

Wagner: Such an injury was always a risk with him, especially later in his career. I feel bad for him, but surely all his riches will be a consolation. (No, they won't.)

CARLOS DELGADO! I never proclaimed that he was done, but it's not like the thought didn't cross my mind. I openly wondered about it. Now he looks comfortable, slams two home runs a game, and is writing again.

Think I'm a Whiny Bitch, Huh?

2008-09-01T15:25:00.004-06:00

I refer you to the 2007 final National League standings.

I refer you to the current 2008 standings.

I think it's important to point out deficiencies that others ignore, and leave the praise to the other places.

If I had to guess, I would not have come to close to getting Luis Ayala's ERA+ from 2003 to 2007. (154, 168, 153, 132). His peripherals are not terribly impressive. Has he just been lucky? Yes and no. His BABIP has been around average his whole career. His K/9 has been worse than average, but his BB/9 and K/BB have been good, though not outstanding. What is shocking is his line-drive rate; 20% of balls put in play against him are line drives, which fall for hits a good percentage of the time (like 70%). His ground-ball rate is average-ish and doesn't make up for that. Remember, since he gets less strikeouts than average, he allows more balls in play. Too many of those are line drives and not enough are ground balls.

How the hell has he put up ERAs in the high twos and low threes? First, it seems he has left an inordinate amount of batters on base. Second, maybe defense? Third, his HR/FB numbers are low. He's an OK pitcher. But probably not the best healthy reliever in the Mets' bullpen-- that's Aaron Heilman. We'll get to him soon.

Guess Who Wasn't Called Up?

2008-08-31T19:15:00.002-06:00

That's right. The Mets need mediocre relievers and even more mediocre utility players (Welcome back, Marlon! You remember where the toilet is, of course. What's that? Oh, you just looked a little... heavy.) And a fourth catcher! A Molina-who-is-not-a-Molina, the paradox of non-being, a quantum whose position and velocity cannot both be known; he is both a catcher and not a catcher (a "pinch"-hitter who will surely receive more time at the plate than the best catcher on the Mets, Ramon Castro.)

We have the pitcher from Moneyball who didn't understand that he was traded to the team he was playing against, and was later exiled to Mexico while the Mets waited to do him a favor. We have 35-year old Ramon Martinez, not Pedro's brother but the mediocre infielder (God, we can never have enough of those) who has a career OPS+ of 81.

Omar made a lot of promises in spring training, and he intends to keep them. That must be why he failed to call up the Italian Thunder, Valentino Pascucci, who is currently OPSing .963 with 27 home runs for New Orleans, including a line of .365/.472/.731. How the Mets don't think he would be valuable, even as pinch-hiter, more so than Argenis Reyes, Marlon Anderson and Ramon Martinez, is simply beyond me. I just cannot comprehend this organization's thinking.

Please enlighten me.

What's Happening

2008-08-21T12:00:00.001-06:00

Ah, victory. I don't know what to say. The Mets are awesome. What's more, the young players I said weren't ready for the major leagues are doing well. Daniel Murphy is hitting .404/.491/.617 in 18 games and Nick Evans is hitting .306/.333/.444 in August. Certainly I think both players are performing over their heads a little bit, and it remains to be seen whether either is viable as a starter or even a major league bench player in the long term. But while it lasts, I'm glad for the youthful energy and upside.

Met starters have a 2.92 ERA in August with a 2:1 K:BB ratio. This after a 3.24 ERA in August with a 2.7:1 K:BB ratio. That's tremendous, and it's why the Mets keep winning.

Damion Easley (.192/.263/.250 in August) is making me long for the return of Luis Castillo.

Glorified reliever Billy Wagner is certainly missed, but as long as Met starters keep up their good work, his absence won't be much of a problem. Aaron Heilman is the next-best reliever, despite his bad won-less record and high ERA. Duaner Sanchez is also good. I predict that both of these pitchers, and Pedro Feliciano from the other side, will experience a September resurgence. Meanwhile, Al Reyes and Luis Ayala should provide some near-league average depth.

The Mets are in great, great position to make the playoffs. Ryan Church, who has been great when not out with concussion-related stuff, is due to return tonight. His line is a tremendous .307/.370/.512. The Mets have been missing his bat even with an unlikely .297/.360/.485 in 253 plate appearances from Fernando Tatis. He can't keep that up, and Church is coming back at just the right time to give Tatis a break and make the best use of the respective abilities of each.

Meanwhile, Lastings Milledge is hitting a paltry .261/.325/.405. While it doesn't look like it, the seeds of progress are there, including increased plate discipline and maturity. While I sort-of admitted in the past that Lastings needed a full year to get off the ground, I also thought it was possible he could break out this year. That wasn't the case. But watch out: at 23 years old, Lastings is far from his peak.

#25 - Jim Bowden

2008-08-17T06:58:00.004-06:00

San Diego Padres General Manager Kevin Towers said of Bowden, "The guy's an idiot. I won't take his calls, and I don't think many others do."

I'd take your calls, Jim. But I'd just laugh at the deals you've made. How can this man be one of the 30 best general managers in the sport?

According to Wikipedia, Bowden got his start in baseball because his college roommate's parents were principal owners of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Why he has a job now, I am not quite sure, as his record of public statements and actions paint him as an incompetent buffoon.

The Cincinnati Reds, believe it or not, were a team with a proud tradition when Bowden took the helm at the age of 31 in October of 1992. Baseball's oldest franchise, fresh off a World Series victory in 1990, still had Hall-of-Famer Barry Larkin in his prime at shortstop, a healthy Jose Rijo as a starting fireballer along with Tim Belcher and Greg Swindell, and the Nasty Boys to close it out - both Norm Charlton and Rob Dibble recorded 25+ saves in 1992.

Bowden's first major move was to trade away Ohioan Paul O'Neill to the Yankees for Roberto Kelly - O'Neill would go on to win 4 Championships as a Yankee right fielder. He dealt Norm Chalrton to Seattle for Kevin Mitchell - (hands up, Mets fans, which of you remembers Kevin Mitchell in Seattle?) , and let a little-known pitcher by the name of Trevor Hoffman go in the expansion draft to the Florida Marlins. He also signed former Twin and Pirate John Smiley to a 5 year deal to replace the departed Greg Swindell.

The 93 Reds finished 17 wins worse than the 92 Reds, with Bip Roberts losing 100 points off his batting average, Smiley only starting 18 games and finishing with a 5.62 ERA, Rob Dibble lost the strike zone and issued 9 walks per 9 innings. New acquisitions Mitchell and Kelly only combined for 171 games.

Bowden's response for 1994 was strange. He traded promising young catcher Dan Wilson and a young pitcher named Bobby Ayala for Erik Hanson and Bret Boone. He signed sometime closer and remarkably telegenic righthander Jeff Brantley, but most strangely was his signing of Tony Fernandez during spring training - to play 3rd base.

Bowden started getting creative. He traded Kelly to the Braves for Deion Sanders, but unfortunately for Bengals fans, Sanders would not suit up for their dismal football team. He signed Kevin Maas as a free agent - Maas would never play for the Reds, but hey, why not? He signed Ron Gant even though he was out for the season. He selected a little known pitcher named Rick Reed off waivers, and a little known pitcher named Pete Schourek.

And you know what? The Reds were in first place when Donald Fehr and his jackbooted union trampled on the game of baseball in the late summer of 1994. Schourek had gone 7-2 as a long reliever/starter, Brantley had a sub 3.00 ERA as the closer, and Kevin Mitchell had a legendary season that has gone forgotten, a sublime .326/.429/.681. Mitchell would sign in Japan for the 1995 season, and he would only play 131 more games in the major leagues. Hal Morris was hitting .335, and Bret Boone had a higher batting average in 1994 (.320), than he did OBP in 1993 for Seattle (.301).

1995 brought even more success for Bowden, and is probably why he still has a job in baseball today. New acquisition Ron Gant crushed it in his return, slugging .554. Young right fielder Reggie Sanders outhit him, slugging .579. Free agent acquisition Benito Santiago had a .485 SLG, and his left-handed partner Eddie Taubensee had a .491. The rotation was anchored by waiver acquisition Pete Schourek, Smiley had an excellent season, and while the rest of the starters were a mishmash of injured Jose Rijo, Tim Pugh, and some other dross, Jim Bowden gambled at the deadline, making two huge moves. He dealt Deion Sanders and 4 other players to the Giants for Mark Portugal, Darren Lewis, and Dave Burba. He also dealt his top draft pick from 1993, C.J. Nitkowski, to the Tigers for David Wells. Both were the definition of 'league average', but they were better than the options the Reds were falling to - Frank Viola started 3 games for the 1995 Reds.

It is clear in 1996 that while Bowden seems to know how to run a team, he also falls victim to looking at players' baseball cards, for his moves are dripping with nostalgia. Vince Coleman makes his appearance on the 96 Reds. Eric Davis returns to Cincinnati after terrible stints elsewhere. Former Orioles closer Gregg Olson is signed late in spring training. Lee Smith was traded for a month into the season. Mike Morgan showed up. The Reds traded for Kevin Mitchell at the deadline. But the team was purely average at 81-81. Wells was traded in the off-season to Baltimore, and the starting rotation was this: Smiley, Portugal, Burba, Kevin Jarvis, and Roger Salkeld. The former three provided league average starting, but the back half was terrible, and the Reds were 8th in team ERA. Eric Davis won Comeback Player of the Year, but in left field, the Reds got 240 PAs of sub .500 OPS from Eric Owens.

1997: The Reds are 14th in BA, 13th in OBP, 13th in SLG. Hal Morris puts up a sub 700 OPS as the starting 1B, Deion Sanders does the same in center in his return to Cincinnati, Bret Boone the same at second, and Pokey Reese, filling in for the injured Barry Larkin, is sub 600. While the Reds finish 76-86, their Pythagorean record gives them only 69 wins. Bowden's prospects have been either traded away or simply aren't performing, aside from the league average 3B play from Willie Greene. Schourek, once great, is now terrible - the best starter is the young Brett Tomko and his ERA+ of 125 in 19 starts.

1998: Mike Remlinger is moved to the starting rotation. This is all ye need to know. Pete Harnisch is a gamble that works out. Still 4th in the NL Central.

1999: Before the season, here's some nostalgic names that appear: Steve Avery, Carlos Baerga, and Hal Morris. But then there's some big moves: Reggie Sanders is dealt with 2 other players for slugging LF Greg Vaughn. 1B prospect Paul Konerko is moved to Chicago for Mike Cameron. Vaughn is an instant success, smashing 45 HRs, Sean Casey has a 930 OPS, young outfielder Dmitri Young slugs over .500, and the team is 4th in the NL in slugging. As for pitching, the rotation is once again a mismash, but the bullpen is quite effective, including wunderkind Scott Williamson, who wins the Rookie of the Year with 12 relief wins and a 195 ERA+. They finish 2nd in the NL Central. But here's something else that happens - going for an NL Central title, Bowden throws away B.J. Ryan for Juan Guzman's last hurrah in the majors. It works out - Guzman has a 3.03 ERA - but Ryan would go on to be a dominant relief pitcher, while Guzman would give up 8 runs in 1 and 2/3rds in his last major league start.

2000: Bowden puts himself on the map by trading Brett Tomko, Mike Cameron, and Antonio Perez for Ken Griffey Jr. Griffey hits well in his first season but not MVP well - .387/.556 in the juiced-bicep era. The rotation is again a disgrace of league average or worse pitching - Scott Williamson is added to it for 10 starts. The team wins 85 games.

2001: Griffey hurt, no one on the team hits more than 22 home runs, the rotation is a mix of young bad pitchers and old bad pitchers, and they finish 14th in ERA, only Elmer Dessens is over 100 ERA+ as a starter. A young Adam Dunn has a 136 OPS+ - he leads the team in that category.

2002: More of the same. Dunn and a young Austin Kearns look like future stars, but the infield is all league average or worse, and the team is still near the bottom in slugging and OBP. Someone named Jimmy Haynes is the top starter on the Reds, posting 15 wins and making some fantasy baseball player feel good about his life.

2003: Mercurial RF Jose Guillen OPSes over 1.000 in 91 games. Ken Griffey Jr. plays only 53 games, making 1989 Upper Deck afficianados gnash their teeth. The team is a dismal 14th in OBP. Paul Wilson, he of Generation K, emerges from nowhere to be the team's top starter. No starters ERA+ is over 100. Nostalgia name: Todd Van Poppel. Future Nationals on this team: D' Angelo Jiminez, Austin Kearns, Jose Guillen, Felipe Lopez, Wily Mo Pena.

Not surprisingly, this is the point at which Bowden is fired - at mid-season in 2003. Now while B!T has been rather critical of him, it's also quite obvious he's working from a small budget. However, he developed almost no pitchers in the 10 years as general manager of the Reds - only Harang and Scott Williamson are pitchers to be proud of. The big acquisition of Ken Griffey Jr. didn't work out - Griffey was always injured, but even in spite of that, he wasn't that good when he was healthy, and he wouldn't've saved a team with this dismal pitching.

Here is a quote from Bowden defending his tenure as Reds' GM:"We have to keep [trading]," Bowden said. "It's hard to trade Dave Burba when he's your Opening Day pitcher 24 hours before the game starts, but that's the only way you're going to get a player of Sean Casey's caliber.

"It's hard to trade Elmer Dessens, our No. 1 starter, but that's the only way you're going to a get a player of (shortstop) Felipe Lopez's caliber."
These quotes demonstrate the problem of Bowden's general managing. Yes, Sean Casey was a very good first baseman, but as a guy whose production relied mostly on singles, his batting average and thus value would wildly fluctuate from season to season. Even then, his OPS+ as a 1B is 110, hovering right around the league average. Bowden had Hal Morris and Sean Casey as his 1Bs almost throughout his entire tenure as general manager, and quite simply both were overvalued commodities, as they would pile up .300 BA seasons without much power.

Felipe Lopez has evident skill - but his batting in the minor leagues was never all that tremendous (lifetime .279/.340/.430, and probably promoted a little early), and his career reflects that. Throw in Bowden's extreme sense of nepotism - how many players would be traded or released from Cincinnati, only to return - Deion Sanders, Mark Lewis, Kevin Mitchell, Joe Oliver, Benito Santiago, Hal Morris, even Jose Rijo's heartwarming comeback - in team sports, this kind of thinking can be just fine, but in an individualistic sport like baseball, it's merely self-serving and obtuse.

The men who ascend to run baseball teams are, by and large, smart men, and Bowden is no different. Sometimes he's going to make good trades, sometimes he's going to make good free agency signings, and sometimes he's going to find diamonds in the rough. He will draft an Adam Dunn or Aaron Harang, or trade for a Dmitri Young or Paul Konerko. He and his scouts can identify what they think is talent. I don't think it's necessary to go over his moves with the Nationals - all one has to do is look at the team right now. It's a melange of non-slugging players and journeyman starters. Ron Belliard is leading the team in slugging. They will get better next year - Ryan Zimmerman is a legitimate star, and both Lastings Milledge and Wily Mo Pena cannot be THIS bad - but he is once again emphasizing what he sees over the statistics lines, and therefore commits the mortal sin of the general manager - falling in love.

Aaaaaand good afternoon, everybody!

2008-08-16T09:15:00.002-06:00

The flagship station for Mets' baseball just took a blow, as it was revealed on Thursday that the Mike and the Mad Dog show will not be renewed. I am not sure how the readers of B!T feel about the show - after all, it was the Mets' station, neither of them are Mets fans, and both of them had visible contempt for the panicky Mets fans who would call in to complain about Willie and the team in mid-April.

Somehow I'd often end up listening to the show if I were in the car, despite the fact that there's a commercial about every three minutes, most of the callers are fools, and Mike and the Dog aren't much better. Both Mike and the Mad Dog were against moving Joba Chamberlain from the bullpen, failing to realize that a decent starter is more valuable than a lights out 8th inning guy. Both thought that Luis Castillo was a great second baseman. Both were against Blastings and Reyes for their demonstrative celebrations. Mostly, they were no fun, and a lot of fun to listen to anyway - where else could you hear discussions about Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays in December?

They will be missed. I'm curious how Mets fans felt about them, though.

Note: John Peterson is on vacation, and even if he weren't, a 4 game winning streak means little content for Blastings! Thrilledge. Coming soon - the #25th best general manager.

Mets to Mess with Another Young Player

2008-08-02T11:12:00.005-06:00

Marlon Anderson to the DL. Yay! Dan Murphy to take his place. What?

There's no middle ground with this team, is there? Either they are playing veterans over more-deserving youngsters, or they are wildly promoting youngsters over other far more accomplished players who are actually major league-ready.

Seriously, couldn't Dan Murphy play more than one game in AAA before you brought him up? Are you even trying for long-term sustainability?

On the other hand, here's hoping Dan Murphy is the Mets' second baseman of the future.

Players Promoted Instead of Valentino Pascucci:

Dan Murphy
Argenis Reyes
Fernando Tatis (Okay, that has worked out. So maybe the Mets should consider that while Tatis hit 242/.345/.592 in New Orleans, Pascucci is hitting .282/.405/.538)
Abraham Nuñez
Nick Evans
Chris Aguila
Raúl Casanova
Robinson Cancel
Trot Nixon
Andy Phillips
Gustavo Molina

Mets Trade Catchers

2008-07-31T13:36:00.004-06:00

In an unexpected move just short of the deadline, the Mets significantly improved their club today by trading catcher Brian Schneider to the Bench for catcher Ramon Castro.

Schneider, widely regarded as one of the better defensive catchers in the league, was hitting just .249/.337/.301 through July 31st. While the Mets liked his character and reputation for being a solid defender, they felt it was time to boost the lineup with a heftier bat.

Castro, who was hitting .283/.355/.515 with six home runs for The Bench, has thrown out over 30% of attempted base-stealers over his ten-year career, while Schneider has thrown out nearly 40%. On the other hand, Schneider has allowed proportionally more wild pitches and passed balls than his counterpart on the Bench. Scaling down Schneider's numbers by 39.62%, he has allowed 13.6 passed balls to Castro's 11, and 84.8 wild pitches compared to just 59 for Castro.

The Bench picks up a nice defensive catcher who is making $4 million a year through 2009, while the Starting Lineup receives an offensive boost without emptying the Mets' wallet-- Castro makes just $2.3 million this year and the next.

No cash was included in the deal. New York's General Manager Ramo Ayanim told us, "We feel this deal significantly improves the team going forward. Frankly, we should have done it sooner."

Manny to Marlins?

2008-07-30T16:57:00.008-06:00

It looks like maybe I was wrong about Manny Ramirez getting traded.

This is interesting. The Marlins are supposed to be a contender the NL East, but it's no secret their pitchers have seriously over-performed and are due for a regression, even though they are only 14th of 16 in the league in team ERA. Instead of shoring themselves up in that apartment, the Florida organization has apparently made their already-superb offense even better and their already-terrible defense even worse.

I hope the Mets don't feel the need to "answer."

Edit: Does this mean the Red Sox could be making a play for Jason Bay?

Edit: Am I clairvoyant or what?

Edit: Dave Cameron weighs in:

Florida paid a high price for the Hermida/Ramirez upgrade, believing that Manny’s extra offense could push them into the playoffs. But Jeremy Hermida is no slouch himself. The in-seaosn Marcel tool has him at .276/.352/.458 for the rest of the season, compared to it’s .287/.386/.517 projection for the rest of Manny’s 2008. Clearly, Manny’s better, but like with the Teixeira-Kotchman trade, the upgrade isn’t huge.

In fact, over the course of 237 PAs (the projected total for Hermida), Marcel thinks the offensive difference between the two is about seven runs. The offensive difference… seven runs. Manny’s also a pretty horrible fielder (though the Green Monster makes most zone based stats overstate how bad), and the defensive difference between the two is nearly as large as the offensive difference (The Fielding Bible has Hermida as +4 plays so far in 2008 with Ramirez at -15). Even over two months, the defensive difference between the two will almost certainly be worth at least 3 or 4 runs, and that’s being really kind to Manny. It’s certainly possible that Manny is as bad as UZR, +/-, and the rest all think, and the defensive difference over two months is closer to 10 runs.

In fact, it’s arguable that this trade will actually make the Marlins worse for the rest of 2008. Their two best hitters, Hanley Ramirez and Dan Uggla, are both right-handed, and adding Manny to that now makes the middle of their line-up much more susceptible to right-handed specialists. It’s a minor thing, but when they’re not getting a player substantially better than the one they’re giving up, the minor things can make a difference.

When you factor both offense and defense into the equation, this is basically a push for Florida. This wouldn’t make them better by any real margin, and it would cost them significant future assets.

Since I basically just ripped the whole post, I should tell you: Fan Graphs keeps getting better and better.

On Possible Outfield Acquisitions

2008-07-28T17:02:00.005-06:00

NY Post:

San Francisco's Randy Winn exemplifies their concerns. The Giants are trying to deal the switch-hitter. The Mets like Winn, but he lacks the power they want in a corner outfield addition. Also, if traded, Winn's salary for 2009 grows to $8.625 million. At present, San Francisco has been unwilling to eat much of that salary and without that the Mets will have no interest.

"That is a lot of money," one Mets official said. "And you tie yourself up and miss out on somebody else you really want (for 2009 and beyond)."

So far so good. Winn is a mediocre 34-year old outfielder. Since when do the Mets commit themselves to mediocre, over-the-hill players? Seriously though, that this Mets official said such a thing is encouraging. As basic it as it is. Why deal prospects for a fourth outfielder who won't make an impact? But this is the Mets we're talking about here. No on Winn. Good job.

Mets officials continue to find reports linking them to San Diego's Brian Giles surprising because two executives said the club has never discussed Giles with any seriousness during a meeting.

Well that's kind of weird. Why would the mets adamantly deny even discussing a player with a career line of .293/.404/.511? Who, even at the age of 37, is hitting .299/.395/.425 (even if that's a little flukey). Who only makes $10 million this year and is a free agent afterward. Who is a gamer. (Sure, why not?). Giles is precisely the kind of player the Mets should be trying to acquire: an underrated player in a walk year playing for a losing team.

The Mets worry that Boston's Manny Ramirez is too much of an investment in their prospects, money and patience. Nevertheless, his availability, general manager Omar Minaya's long obsession with Ramirez and the reality of what his bat could mean will keep the Mets engaged with Boston, despite the extremely strong belief there is no deal to be made.

I defer to The Book Blog. Manny Ramirez is extremely overrated, because analysts and organizations fail to account for the atrociousness of his defense. Even though Boston is aware of his true value, they don't have a better option and are engaged in a tough divisional race. They won't trade him. They are just floating their displeasure with him in order to justify what would otherwise be an inexplicable decision (in the eyes of the ignorant media) to pass on his $20 million option. However, as I said on that blog, I am quite fearful that Omar Minaya will give Ramirez a ridiculous deal-- something like 4 years, $90 million. He's not worth that. Not even close. But the Mets will probably give him that anyway. Because they are fish.

The Mets did consider Cincinnati's Adam Dunn, but his poor defense, historical problems in clutch situations and high strikeout rates have eliminated interest.

Waiting for incensed wrath to pass...

First of all, "poor defense"? That doesn't concern them when considering Ramirez and another outfielders we'll get to? Poor defense? Really? His defense is like, a little below average. I guess the Mets prefer their outfielders to be either really good at defense, or really terrible.

Next, "historical problems in clutch situations"? What the fuck? Does anyone still believe in that shit? Do major league organization believe in that? Even then...

He's career .247/.381/.521 hitter. In the arbitrary selection of plate appearances known as "runners in scoring positions" he's a .224/.413/.476 hitter. That's a difference of 14 points of OPS. The 23 points of batting average are more than made up for with 32 points of on-base percentage. One could make the argument (and it's a good one) that Dunn is actually a better hitter in clutch-situations because on-base percentage correlates more strongly with the scoring of runs than does slugging percentage. It's obvious what's happening here. Adam Dunn is very patient at the plate. Among players with at least 200 plate appearances, he's currently 14th in the league in swinging at pitches outside of the strike zone. In situations in which a hit can score a run, pitchers throw more balls and Dunn, smartly, does not swing at them. Consequently he loses points of batting average and picks them up, and more, in his on-base percentage. By the way, the same is true of Carlos Beltran, an awesome player who is also greatly derided by the ignorati.

And finally, the "high strikeout rates." How many times do we have to say this? FOR BATTERS, STRIKING OUT IS NOT VERY MUCH WORSE THAN OTHER WAYS OF MAKING AN OUT! Hitting for contact does not correlate with run production. Luis Castillo hits for contact. Paul Lo Duca is (was) a great contact hitter. Here are the top players in the game at making contact. You've got some good players and some bad players. Dustin Pedroia is a nice little hitter. Jason Kendall is terrible. Sure, hitting for contact has its merits sometimes. Part of what makes Albert Pujols so awesome is that in addition to hitting for power and drawing lots of walks, he also makes very good contact. That's better than just hitting for power and drawing walks, while striking out a lot. But the latter, while not as good, is still fucking awesome. Hitting home runs and drawing walks are the two best skills a hitter can gave. Hitting for a high average is a distant third.

Three points against Dunn, all of them stupid.

One point for him: he's undervalued. Take it from Ted Berg on this one. And if you're looking for comic relief, read the comments over at MetsBlog. Me, I haven't been over there for months. I took MetsBlog off Google Reader. I figured I needed to cut redundant sources of news and subpar analysis out of my Mets reading diet. I had pretty much forgotten about MetsBlog until Berg pointed me to that thread. You can do it, too. You won't miss anything, I swear. Moving on now:

The Mets dislike [Jason] Bay's defense and that he has never played in meaningful games.

There's that defense thing again. I'm baffled. But not as much as the criticism that Bay "has never played in meaningful games." And whose fault is that, exactly? In the words of Jerry Seinfeld, "Who are these people?" What is going through their stupid little heads that they think a professional baseball player at the top of his game and performing very well at the highest level of play in his sport will suddenly crumple up and die when introduced to more competitive games? If anything, wouldn't he, after years of putting up great numbers in meaningless seasons with a terrible team, be more-than-ready to put his skills to work for a competitive franchise?

One Mets official did say, "[Raul] Ibanez is the interesting guy." The Mets like that he is a proven run producer, is considered a high-character player and despite being left-handed hits southpaws well. Nevertheless, he is 36, is a free agent after the season, is a below-average defender, and is having a good year (14 HRs, 61 RBIs), but not up to his previous norms. A scout who has seen a lot of the Mariners said Ibanez is still a high-caliber hitter who is a frustrated victim of the terrible lineup around him. The scout theorized that in a better atmosphere, Ibanez's production would revive fully.

"Proven run producer." Nice. I bet the Mets source used that phrase, too. By "proven run producer," he means that Ibañez has a history of putting up above average on-base and slugging percentages, not that he has some special "run-producing" ability in addition to his talents as a hitter. At least, that's what I hope he means.

Now, normally I would leave the "high-character guy" thing alone. But Ibañez (as I like to call him) is one of those guys who likes to play through injury to show his grit and determination, thus making his team worse and jeopardizing his health and production in the long term. If that's character, I'll pass.

"...despite being left-handed hits southpaws well..."? What? Where do you get that? He's a career .265/.320/.404 hitter vs. lefties compared to .291/.354/.493 vs. right-handers. It could be worse, I guess.

And of course, "below-average defender"? What? That's like sort of a consideration for Ibañez but the deal-breaker for Dunn, Ramirez and Bay? We've been over this before. In case you missed it, Ibañez is really, really, really, really, REALLY bad at defense. He is not "below-average." He is a butcher. He is atrocious. He did beat out Ramirez, Barry Bonds, Chris Duncan and Pat Burrell last year in David Pinto's Probabilistic Model of Range. That's generous.

Also, I love the line: "The scout theorized that in a better atmosphere, Ibanez's production would revive fully." Well, no shit (I'm assuming by "production" he means dumb stats like runs and RBIs). Did you see some hitch in his swing that was caused by being bummed about his shitty teammates? Or was it rather the OBVIOUS CONCLUSION that a hitter, when placed in a better lineup, will score and drive in more runs? If by "production" he means actual hitting skills that matter and are not entirely context-dependent, then he is wrong. The 36-year old Ibañez is not going to suddenly reverse his natural and inevitable career decline because he's excited about playing for a winner. He's a DH, and not a very good one. I will cry when the Mets trade for him.

John Rodriguez

2008-07-25T12:23:00.004-06:00

Reader Peter H pointed out that left-handed hitting outfielder John Rodriguez is hitting .296/.396/.470 in AAA for the Mets, and could be useful on the major league roster. The 30-year old Rodriguez has an OPS of .833 in 12 minor league seasons, including a .354 OBP. What's more impressive is that he has hit .298/.378/.434 in 388 major league plate appearances.

Surely such a player, admittedly on the fringe of usefulness, nevertheless has more offensive and defensive value than Marlon Anderson? Anderson, supposedly a "pinch-hitting specialist," often gets plenty of outfield time anyway, where he is quite out of place. And where does this idea come from that he is a great pinch-hitter? He has a career line of .265/.314/.392. He is 34 years old. Why do the Mets have needless loyalty to such terrible players?

Rodriguez, on the other hand, is probably in his peak. Even if he is a AAAA hitter, he will take his ability to take a walk (something unfamiliar to Anderson) to the big leagues. Why is there this idea that some players are just major leaguers and others are just minor leaguers?

JUST BECAUSE DAMION EASLEY, MARLON ANDERSON, FERNANDO TATIS, ET. AL. HAVE PLAYED IN THE MAJOR LEAGUES BEFORE, IT DOES NOT MEAN THEY ARE CURRENTLY BETTER THAN ANYONE ELSE WHO HAS NOT PLAYED IN THE MAJOR LEAGUES EXTENSIVELY!

The Mets are much worse than their competition at evaluating and properly deploying their players, and they will continue to make poor decisions until there is a change of leadership. If you are a Mets fan, you should not be anticipating any deadline deals with anything other than fear-- fear that the organization will do something terribly stupid.

By the way, Marlon Anderson received the biggest contract of his life last offseason, following two short, obviously fluky seasons with the Mets. Instead of just picking up someone similar from the scrap-heap and giving him the major league minimum, the Mets gave Marlon Anderson a major league contact for two years and $2.2 million. Of course I derided the deal, and people rolled their eyes. After all, Marlon was a great pinch-hitter for us! It's only a couple million! etc.

Guess what, though? The roster can only hold 25 people. The Mets lost the division by one game last year. They currently lead the division by one game.

Stop talking about Jose Reyes's celebrations or Carlos Beltran's supposed lack of clutch-hitting ability. It's the edges, people. You should be talking about the edges. That's where the Mets could improve themselves considerably RIGHT NOW for PRACTICALLY NOTHING:

-Make Ramon Castro the regular catcher
-Release Marlon Anderson
-DFA Robinson Cancel
-Call up Valentino Pascucci
-Call up John Rodriguez

Ranking the GMs, #26: J.P. Ricciardi

2008-07-20T14:01:00.009-06:00

by Brent Morris

J.P. Ricciardi has been the general manager of the Toronto Blue Jays for almost 7 years, and whenever his name is mentioned, Billy Beane is still almost inevitably brought up. This is a clear demonstration of the man's utter mediocrity at managing a baseball team - he has been able to keep a job for seven years, a rarity in a business where one wretched season will have you updating your resume to send off to the Cincinnati Reds, but has not been able to emerge from the giant shadow his former boss continues to cast.

Overall, Riccardi's Blue Jays are 481-491 from 2002-2007, and this season they have compiled another tremendously average record of 47-49 so far. The astute observer wonders - "How can Ricciardi possibly rank this low? He's had average results and has managed to keep his job for 7 years." The reasoning is simple - Ricciardi has had time to overhaul a moribund organization and has done nothing to do so - the cupboard is bare, the team is right in that meaty part of the Bell Curve, not showing off, but not falling behind. Baseball Prospectus ranked their prospects 24th overall - this is a team that is officially Going Nowhere. With the Rays' upward surge this season, this is going to be a team seeing a lot of 4th place finishes in its future.

Bright-eyed Ricciardi arrived in Toronto with much fanfare - baseball had lost its lustre in the New York of Canada, after Skydome set attendance records in the early 90s with the World Champions, the team had fallen into a funk. The 2001 Toronto Blue Jays were only 80-82, but more importantly, their attendance was short of 2 million - half of the team's record setting marks of the Paul Molitor and Joe Carter days. Gord Ash was let go, and JP Riccardi was brought in, the team ownership hoping he could work that Billy Beane magic on a mid-level budget instead of a small-market one. Ricciardi began by moving closer Billy Koch to the A's for Eric Hinske and Justin Miller. Hinske would hit .279/.365/.481 en route to a Rookie of the Year campaign in 2002. J.P. would fire manager Buck Martinez in mid-season and replace him with Carlos Tosca, one of the few managers in baseball history with no professional baseball experience. Aside from that, his first year was relatively quiet - he dumped malcontent and high-salaried Raul Mondesi on the Yankees, and released future Cy Young award winner Chris Carpenter. In 2003, Roy Halladay and Vernon Wells would emerge as legitimate stars - the team finished 86-76, 15 games in back of the Yankees, but still on the rise. The team nabbed Aqualino Lopez in the Rule 5 draft, and he ended up leading the team in saves with 14. No major deals would come out of the 2003 off-season - the club let go of Kelvim Escobar and Cory Lidle, acquired Miguel Batista to write crime novels, and managed to nab a decent arm in Justin Speier for former NBA bench player Mark Hendrickson.

2004 was a miserable season as the Toronto Blue Jays finished below the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in 5th place of the AL East. The team ranked 12th in OBP and SLG, posting a weak .328 and .403 in those categories respectively. Eric Hinske hit a deplorable .246/.312/.375. Journeyman Chris Gomez got into 110 games at shortstop - always an ill omen. The team had more players finish with a sub-zero VORP than positive - and 31 starts of Pat Hengten and Justin Miller's over 6 ERA didn't help matters. Carlos Tosca was fired and replaced with John Gibbons in mid-season. However, Ricciardi would spend the off-season essentially doing nothing - releasing fringe players, adding more fringe players. He signed Billy Koch, who would never pitch again in the major leagues. He would sign Cory Koskie, a solid third baseman who posted a .495 SLG. However, he let the face of the franchise for the post World Series Blue Jays, Carlos Delgado, walk to the Marlins, replacing him with the seemingly indomitable Eric Hinske. The 2005 Blue Jays were back to .500 - 80-82 - and the team's OBP was 4th in the league, buoyed by professional hitters like Frank Catalanotto, Shea Hillenbrand and Gregg Zaun. In spite of a Roy Halladay injury, Gustavo Chacin and Josh Towers arrived to post sub-4 ERAs with totally unsustainable peripherals - Chacin posted a 3.72 ERA by walking 70 and striking out 121 in 203 innings, Towers would only strike out 112 in 208 innings.

The Blue Jays were always on the cusp - that season where Wells and Halladay would repeat their earlier successes, and prospects like Russ Adams and Alex Rios would finally get on track. 2006 was to be the breakout year - the Jays signed B.J. Ryan and A.J. Burnett to huge contracts - Burnett to a 5 year/55 million dollar deal, Ryan to a 5 year, 47 million dollar deal, the biggest ever granted to a closer in baseball history. After J.P. signed B.J. and A.J., the team traded for Brewers' 1st baseman Lyle Overbay and dealt former closer Batista and slick-fielding second baseman Orlando Hudson to the Diamondbacks for slugging 3rd baseman Troy Glaus - and Corey Koskie, after one season, was sent packing. Glaus had just hit 37 home runs for the Diamondbacks, Ryan had just posted a 2.43 ERA and 36 saves in his first season as Orioles' closer, and Burnett had almost struck out a man per inning while posting a 3.44 ERA for the Marlins. Bengie Molina was signed to a one-year deal to catch, despite Zaun's superb OBP from the previous season. It was Ricciardi's year to challenge the Yankees - themselves coming off a year where they salvaged a playoff berth only thanks to the incredible luck of Aaron Small and Shawn Chacon - and the Red Sox, themselves overhauling a roster that had won them the World Series two years earlier. Russ Adams and Aaron Hill, Ricciardi draft picks, were to supplant currently established players.

It worked - almost. Toronto finished 2nd in the division, ahead of the Red Sox, but were still 10 games behind the Yankees. Alex Rios finally emerged as a star - but the team's other younger players had left something to be desired. Aaron Hill hit .291/.349/.386 as a capable fill-in for Hudson, but Russ Adams had a dismal sub-600 OPS and had to be replaced by veteran gloveman John McDonald. On the veterans' front, Molina slugged 19 home runs, but only walked 19 times. Shea Hillenbrand, now to be the team's DH, was traded at mid-season after a fight with manager John Gibbons. The Jays' pitching staff used 12 different starters - wunderkind Gustavo Chacin got injured and was ineffective when he did pitch, Josh Towers gave up more than a home run per start, Burnett was solid when he stayed healthy, and the team got too much 5th starter pitching in general. In the bullpen, B.J. Ryan was spectacular as closer, and Justin Speier capable as a setup man, but Scott Schoeneweis was atrocious. In all, it appears that Ricciardi overestimated Chacin and Towers' ability to repeat their breakout 2005 seasons - both gave him sub-replacement level pitching in 2006, when they were healthy. In all, the addition of Ryan and Burnett only nudged the Jays' team ERA up from 6th in the AL in '05 to 5th in '06.

In the 2006 off-season, Ricciardi would augment the team with some veteran hitters, signing future Hall of Famer Frank Thomas to be the team's designated hitter, and signing the famous Canadian Matt Stairs to play left field, I guess. Once again the team would finish above .500 - Thomas hit a capable .277/.377/.480, and Stairs slugged .549 in a part-time role - but the team had a batting hole at shortstop with McDonald posting a Ray Oyler like .279 OBP. Rookie Adam Lind struggled as well in left, and Reed Johnson forgot how to hit - having posted a .390 OBP the previous season, he had a .305 OBP in 2007. No one on the 2007 Jays hit 30 home runs, no one hit .300, and only Stairs posted a better than .500 SLG. As for pitching - BJ Ryan missed almost the entire 2007 campaign, and so the team was forced to install Jeremy Accardo as their closer. Regardless, the team pitched rather well, finishing 2nd in the AL in overall ERA - but 12th in BA and OBP.

2008 has been Ricciardi's most puzzling campaign to date. He traded Troy Glaus for Tony Larussa-hating Scott Rolen. He signed Gritty McGrit to supplant McDonald at shortstop - David Eckstein. These moves were not altogether strange - but when the season began, J.P. went into weirdo mode. He released Frank Thomas after Thomas accused the team of benching him to ensure he didn't reach bonus plateaus - Thomas was only hitting .167/.306/.333, but has posted a 900+ OPS for the As since returning to the Bay Area. He fired John Gibbons and replaced him with Cito Gaston of Toronto World Series fame. He also publicly questioned Adam Dunn's desire to play baseball on Toronto sports radio, then sought him out for an apology.

In writing this, I learned that perhaps J.P. Ricciardi is unfairly maligned - he has had the misfortune of never having his good pitching and good hitting seasons line up. There is some bad luck in that - but the team has also never pursued the right kinds of free agents, always paying too much for spots that weren't enormous holes, while stocking the rest of the roster with league average types. In 2008, the Blue Jays' leader in VORP is Vernon Wells, whom the team has locked up long-term, with a stellar 11.4 VORP. That's good for 136th in the league. The horizon doesn't look that promising - Ricciardi's tenure did produce decent pitching prospects in Marcum and Jesse Litsch, but he has only produced Aaron Hill out of his own drafting - and Hill is a mediocre 2nd baseman with little upside. At least with a moron like Ed Wade there's the promise of a fluky playoff season when he cobbles together some veterans - Ricciardi has been unwilling to trade away his prospects or gamble on a big free agent hitter. Toronto fans must ask, Where are the Ed Spragues of yesteryear? At least fans of more outwardly inept teams have the hope that that man will be fired and will be replaced by a pencil-pushing nerd with degrees in Econostatofinanceometrics - but there seems to be no shelter for long-suffering Blue Jays fans, and the turf at the Rogers Centre will never be as green as it was in the early 1990s.

Pitcher Savvy

2008-07-17T11:46:00.022-06:00

Using Pitch F/X Data to Anticipate Peripherals
by Paul Calluzzo

A few months ago Sal Baxmusa talked about building blocks of sabermetrics at The Hardball Times. A main point he made was that peripheral pitching statistics are the building blocks for ERA, which is in turn is the building block of wins. Along these lines of reasoning he made the observation that the development of pitch F/X data would provide the building block for the pitching peripherals statistics BB%, K% and GB/FB rate. Thanks to the information readily available on the Internet, specifically through Fangraphs' Export function and Josh Kalk’s “Bornbybits” Blog, I was able to acquire pitch data that allowed me to quantify pitchers’ "stuff." This data included the fastball velocity, vertical fastball movement, horizontal fastball movement, # of pitches in repertoire, and % of pitches which were fastballs. Using regression analysis I was then able to quantify how these skills affected a pitchers peripherals (BB%, K% GB/FB and FIP). Through this analysis I was then able to assign an expected outcome for each pitcher given their “stuff.”

By looking at the difference between expected outcomes and real life outcomes, we can begin to estimate a “pitcher savvy” skill which may explain the difference between the two outcomes (along with random variance and a lack of explanatory power of the model which is due to the obvious flaws in my econometric ability, my assumptions and my data). Below are my findings.

GB/FB Ratio
After toying with the available pitch f/x data I determined that the inputs which affected a pitcher’s GB/FB ratio were fastball velocity and vertical fastball movement. The analysis showed that 10 mph of fastball velocity increases the GB/FB ratio by 0.26. For each inch a pitcher’s fastball drops, the GB/FB ratio increases by .17. The GB/FB ratio prediction formula can be expressed as follows:

GB/FB Ratio = 1.4778 + (Fastball Velocity*0.2622) + (LnVertical Movement*-1.1658)

The formula is significant at a level p<0.01 and with an adjusted R-squared of 51.7. The R-squared essentially says that 51.7% of the variance in GB/FB ratios can be explained by this model. By plugging all 97 pitchers in my sample into this formula, we can see based on “stuff” which pitchers have the highest and lowest Expected (ex) GB/FB rate. This is listed below:

League Leaders in Expected GB/FB			League Losers in Expected GB/FB
Name	Real GB/FB	exGB/FB	Name	Real GB/FB	exGB/FB
Brandon Webb	3.38	3.38	Scott Olsen	0.75	0.84
Roy Halladay	2.25	2.38	Jered Weaver	0.78	0.86
Derek Lowe	2.44	2.12	Barry Zito	1.08	0.88
Greg Maddux	1.77	2.01	Ted Lilly	0.73	0.89
Tim Hudson	2.67	1.88	Shaun Marcum	1.17	0.99

By subtracting Real GB/FB from exGB/FB we can begin to try to isolate the “pitcher savvy” skill. As I stated before we would need an econometrician with skills far exceeding mine before we can feel confident in the “GB/FB ratio pitcher savvy” metric. This doesn’t mean it’s not fun:

League Leaders in GB Savvy		League Losers in GB Savvy
Name	GB Savvy	Name	GB Savvy
Tim Hudson	0.79	Micah Owings	-0.77
Andy Pettitte	0.76	David Bush	-0.56
Jair Jurrjens	0.59	Paul Byrd	-0.56
John Lannan	0.58	Randy Wolf	-0.51
Jon Garland	0.52	Brandon Backe	-0.48

K/9
I determined that the inputs which affected a pitcher’s K/9 were fastball velocity, horizontal fastball movement and % of pitchers thrown which are fastballs (Fastball %). The analysis showed that 10 mph of fastball velocity increases the K/9 by 3.6. For 10 inches of horizontal movement K/9 increase by 0.6. For a 10% decreases in Fastball %, K/9 increases by 0.3. The K/9 predication formula can be expressed as follows:

K/9 = -23.6625 + (Fastball Velocity*0.3559) + (Horizontal Movement*0.0599) + (Fastball %*-0.0313)

The formula is significant at a level p<0.03 and with an adjusted R-squared of 28.6, meaning 28.6% of the variance in K/9 can be explained by this model. An obvious flaw of this analysis is that to determine “stuff” I am only looking at fastball data. It is outside of my abilities to incorporate multiple pitches into the analysis. I figured a proxy of non-fastball stuff would be Fastball % and the number of pitches in a pitcher’s repertoire (defined as pitches pitcher throws more than 10% of the time). Running these two input variables through the output data, it was shown that Fastball % but not Pitch Repertoire had a significant relationship on the output data. This was the logic for including it in the formula.

As with GB/FB ratio, I will now give a list of league leaders and losers in expected K/9 and Strikeout Savvy:

League Leaders in Expected K/9			League Losers in Expected K/9
Name	Real K/9	exK/9	Name	Real K/9	exK/9
CC Sabathia	8.98	8.25	Greg Maddux	4.43	3.45
Dustin McGowan	6.87	7.84	Livan Hernandez	3.36	3.51
Randy Johnson	8.72	7.61	Jamie Moyer	5.53	4.32
Tim Lincecum	9.38	7.60	Paul Byrd	3.88	4.76
Felix Hernandez	8.04	7.60	Mike Mussina	5.70	4.76

League Leaders in K/9 Savvy		League Losers in K/9 Savvy
Name	K/9 Savvy	Name	K/9 Savvy
Chad Billingsley	3.10	Zach Duke	-2.73
Jonathan Sanchez	2.65	Jesse Litsch	-2.66
Brandon Webb	2.64	Joe Saunders	-2.41
Ted Lilly	2.31	Jon Garland	-2.28
Edinson Volquez	2.21	Nick Blackburn	-2.19

BB%
Analysis showed that both horizontal fastball movement and Fastball % had a statically significant (p<.03) effect on BB%. However, for two reasons I will not delve further into the analysis. Firstly, the adjusted R squared showed that the model only explained 10.3% of the variance in BB%. Secondly and more importantly, I believe that this minimal amount of variance is due to a self-selecting sample error. A pitcher who is able to mix in non-fastball pitches and throws high-movement fastballs can get away with more walks because he is striking out more batters. A pitcher who is unable to mix up his pitches and throws low-movement fastballs, and also walks a lot of batters, is probably not in the Major Leagues. A self-selecting sample may undermine much of the other above data, but logic dictates (I do not know of a way to test for the error) that it is particularly vicious in this part of the analysis.

I also wanted to look at how my “Savvy” stats were related to age, but the same self-selecting sample error would arise. Instead it would be necessary to look at the change in the Savvy metric as an individual pitcher ages. I think that would be a lot of fun.

FIP
My method of analysis to investigate the relationship between “stuff” and FIP was draining. For a time I thought the best method would be to use the discussed “expected” peripherals and use these as building blocks to construct FIP via the traditional FIP formula. Unfortunately I could not find a formula which used these variables in this exact form. Furthermore I did not have a big enough sample of pitchers to make my own FIP metric. I tried but could only get a model with an adjusted-R square of 0.25 which I thought was too low to move forward in this way. In the end I found it most effective to work straight from the pitch F/X data. Perhaps this was another area in which my econometric skills failed me. With this behind us, I think the derived “Complete Savvy” metric is the most telling, if not in an adjusted R-squared perspective, then in a qualitative who-is-doing-the-most-with-the-least and the-least-with-the-most sort of perspective.

I determined that the inputs that affected a pitcher’s FIP were fastball velocity and vertical fastball movement. The analysis showed that 10 mph of fastball velocity decreased FIP by 1.06. 10 inches of fastball drop decreased FIP by 0.46. The FIP prediction formula can be expressed as follows:

FIP = 11.8224 + (Fastball Velocity*-0.0964) + (LnVertical Movement*0.44397)

The formula is significant at a level p<0.06 and with an adjusted R-squared of 14.5, meaning 14.5% of the variance in FIP can be explained by this model. Below are the league leaders and losers in Expected FIP and Complete Savvy:

League Leaders in Expected FIP			League Losers in Expected FIP
Name	Real FIP	exFIP	Name	Real FIP	exFIP
Roy Halladay	2.88	3.46	Jamie Moyer	4.35	4.85
Brandon Webb	3.03	3.50	Barry Zito	4.84	4.75
Felix Hernandez	3.28	3.62	Livan Hernandez	4.48	4.69
Ublado Jimenez	3.88	3.63	Kenny Rogers	4.85	4.58
Josh Beckett	3.45	3.68	Mike Mussina	3.81	4.57

League Leaders in Complete Savvy		League Losers in Complete Savvy
Name	Savvy	Name	Savvy
Cliff Lee	1.85	Brett Myers	-1.54
Dan Haren	1.23	Vicente Padilla	-1.44
Justin Duchscherer	1.19	Brandon Backe	-1.36
Tim Lincecum	1.07	Oliver Perez	-1.34
John Danks	1.04	Daniel Cabrera	-1.26

Applications
Assuming that “Savvy” is a measure of the gap between talent and performance, it may be useful as a tool to identify underperforming players. Not so much in the vein of FIP vs ERA where a large sample size would fix the discrepancy. I think it would be more along the lines of needing an expert (i.e. sabermetrics-minded pitching coach Rick Peterson) adjusting a pitcher’s approach to the game in order to improve their Savvy and bring their performance in line with their talent. Perhaps the next step (in addition to shoring up the robustness of the model with a larger sample size) of this model would be identifying “talent” inputs such as the discussed fastball velocity and movement, but also incorporating “approach” inputs which may also be components of savvy. I wonder if it is true that only by quantitatively identifying the inputs of “savvy” can it be taught.

Perhaps Savvy could be used in ways similar to BABIP for batters. Outliers in Pitcher Savvy (both compared to previous years for themselves and compared to all pitchers) may be due for a regression to the mean. On the subject of individual pitchers’ Savvy over the years, I would be curious to see if this is a repeatable skill, or simply random variance. I’m hoping it is a repeatable skill, otherwise I think that means that Savvy falls into the same bin “clutch” stats are in.

Shortcomings
All this data needs to be taken with a large grain of salt for two reasons. The first problem is the small sample size the model deals with. I am not sure how many years back the Pitch F/X data goes; I only took 97 starting pitchers from 2008 as chosen by Fangraphs. There are no reasons (other than me not wanting to spend days compiling the data) that this sample should not be in the several hundreds if not the thousands. This would instantly make the data more robust.

The second major shortcoming is a dearth of input variables. There are many more metrics which are available but were not included due to inconvenience and my own inabilities. Off the top of my head I think there would be value in looking at metrics such as “release point variability” and “release point distance from home plate.” I have already discussed how this model does not take into account secondary stuff (think Mr. Hamels’ changeup). Furthermore, there is no input metric to gauge control (Strike % or Ball % may suffice) in the model. Some may argue that control is not a component of “stuff” and thus should be excluded from a model that looks at the relationship between “stuff,” “savvy” and peripherals. Where exactly does control fall? Is it a physical skill or more an issue of a pitcher’s approach to the game? I am not exactly sure, but there would be no harm in plugging control variables into the model and seeing what the computer gods spit out.

Because of these problems with the model it is difficult to say how much of the variance between the expected and real life outcomes are due to “Savvy,” how much is due to missing inputs which would yield a statistical significance, and how much is due to natural random variance. Because of this it is would be presumptuous to call the various “Savvy” metrics and regression models I have presented as anything more than pilots. They show the possibilities of analysis the Pitch F/X makes available, but fall far short of the finish line. Well, I also think they are kind of fun to play with. I have only presented the top and bottom five pitchers in each category in this article. It is fun to look up players, and see how your expectations match the results of the model. An example of this is Jamie Moyer’s last-in-league expected FIP matching his beer league “stuff.”

I have one semester of Econometrics under my belt as my statistical training. I’m sure I overlooked a lot. If nothing else, I hope that someone more skilled and with more time then myself will grab upon this article and improve its content. (Well, that’s if I do not have a message in my inbox from Mr. Wilpon.) Not to knock The Hardball Times but I do not find their Anatomy of Pitcher series to be very interesting. Instead I think this is the future of the pitch F/X data: to roll the building blocks back a level from FIP, and look at what factors determine pitching peripherals.

Nine in a Row, ZomG!

2008-07-14T12:13:00.004-06:00

LGM.

The proprietor of Tacoby Bellsbury is a hanger-on. I once commended Surly Blondbeard for his funny blog that is also named by changing the beginnings of the first and last names of a young baseball player, and now he's obsessed with me.

Plus, his blog is seriously ugly. I know people hate the black background here but at least it's not puke-green.

The Mets are the graveyard team: Tatis, Easley, Julio Franco, Tom Glavine, I could go on. They just stack it up with has beens and never will bes, I can't wait until Kenny Lofton signs on with them for the playoffs. Oh yeah. You don't think Minaya will shell the $3 mil or whatever he wants to be the speed man off the bench? I like Endy Chavez. I like Ryan Go to Church. I hate Carlos Delgado. That's about all I can say about the Mets right now. They will sign Kenny Lofton, Wilfredo Cordero and maybe even Dante Bichette before October. Sorry, September.

Dante Bichette never played for the Expos.

Reports that the Mets are interested in trading for Raúl Ibañez scare the shit out of me. I won't do anyone who dares suggest that the dignity of a link. Except U.S.S. Mariner (Trades I'm Rooting For):

Raul Ibanez to the Mets for LHP Jon Niese and 1B Mike Carp

The Mets are surging, but their outfield is a mess. Moises Alou is out for the year, and Ryan Church’s status is up in the air thanks to lingering concussion issues. Omar Minaya is going to make a move, so the M’s should put themselves in the forefront of his thoughts and convince him that Ibanez is the guy he wants. He has no problem emptying his farm system in attempts to win now, and Ibanez has the reputation to command more than he’s worth.

Niese is a 21-year-old southpaw with an average fastball and good curve who mixes his pitches well and is already succeeding in Double-A. He’s not a high upside guy, but as a potential #3/#4 starter, he’d help give the M’s a legitimate young pitching prospect who could potentially help the team as early as next year.

Carp is a 22-year-old left handed hitting first baseman with a good eye at the plate and gap power. Right now, he projects as a Lyle Overbay type, but there is room in his swing for some extra pop, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility that he grows into a 25 to 30 home run guy down the line.

Why The M’s Should Do This: Ibanez is obviously in decline, and 2008 might be the last year he’s a starting quality player. As such, he shouldn’t spend the rest of the year in Seattle. Niese and Carp give the M’s some moderate reward youngsters that could be useful players down the line.

Why The Mets Should Do This: They sold the farm to get Johan and they’re running down the Phillies in the east, but a Fernando Tatis/Endy Chavez combination isn’t going to work in RF/LF. While they would prefer to keep Niese and Carp, Ibanez will almost certainly be a Type A free agent, so if they offer him arbitration and let him leave in the winter, they’ll get two draft picks to replace the prospects they gave up. The addition of Ibanez for the stretch run and the draft picks makes it worth doing for New York.

Go to hell, Dave. I can't believe this is a real possibility and apparently no one is interested in Adam Dunn because he strikes out too much. Guess what Raul Ibanez can do? If you guessed "play outfield," you would be wrong. He is quite possibly the worst defensive outfielder in the game today. If Barry Bonds came back, he would be better. Hell, Marlon Anderson and Fernando Tatis are better outfielders. Manny Ramirez is better when jogging at half-speed. Mariners blog Lookout Landing lists him as "LF" when they post the lineups in game threads. (They also list Jose Vidro as "DH".) They have a sidebar called "Raul Ibanez is Really Good at Defense." It contains this. And this. And this. And this. AND THIS.

The Mets have a fly ball pitching staff. So, no thanks. Give me Dunn.

Go Matros

2008-07-11T01:36:00.004-06:00

I had a couple friends in the WSOP Main Event, but one busted on Day One and the other fell on Day Three. The latter doubled through Phil Hellmuth on Day 2 in a hand that's sure to be on TV, but on Day 3 ran into a bad string of luck and busted short of the money.

Now I'm rooting for poker pro and Brooklynite Matt Matros, who has commented at this blog and sometimes writes for Hot Foot. As of the latest update, Matt's chip stack is second in a field of over 600 (from am initial field of 6844).

Matros already cashed in this World Series, taking sixth place in Event #51: $1500 No-Limit Hold 'Em, good for $148,875. First place in the Main Event is good for $9.1 million.

Update: Matros is eliminated on Day 6 in 78th place. He reraised all-in with A7 and a short stack and got called by 33, saying "That's a great call." (He meant, "That's a terrible call.") The board wasn't favorable and Matros exits the tournament, pocketing $77,200. Nice run, Matt.

Tatis Time? How About No?

2008-07-10T23:03:00.004-06:00

Daily News:

Timing, it's all about timing. When Omar Minaya delivered the bad news about Alou, and somebody immediately pushed the Bonds button, the GM's answer contained only one name. The same name the crowd chanted after the important home run and before his last at-bat.

"Right now, we're going to go with our guy," the GM said. "We were talking upstairs and we said, 'It's a good day for Fernando Tatis to have a good day.'"

Omar Minaya's greatest strength as a general manager, ladies and gentlemen: public relations. His greatest weakness: player analysis.

Tatis is an ancient curiosity, an infielder who was never good at playing infield but now "plays" outfield. His only skill is power, which is easily exploited because his swing is long, loopy, and slow. He briefly experienced success in the late nineties when the general quality of pitching in the league was very low, but he has no place on a major league roster except as comical token veteran reserve. Unfortunately, the Mets have a rotating fleet of six or seven of those guys.

Do I like that he has had some dramatic hits for the Mets? Of course. But let's not get carried away. Fernando Tatis is not a hero. He is a guy who is being favored over better options by an irresponsible general manager. We should not chuckle along with Minaya and pretend that we "know" what he's "sayin'." He is failing the fans and his employers with this kind of conduct.

It ain't easy being the voice of reason.

Nick InEvansitability

2008-07-09T16:36:00.004-06:00

The young Evans, not ready for major league action, who plays the same positions as Val Pascucci and just as well and looked terribly overmatched in his first appearance with the Mets, gets another look with Ryan Church heading to the DL. He did hit three doubles in a game once.

Productive Outs and Crackerjack:

Nick Evans is back again, presumably to fail as miserably as he did in his first stint with the Mets. No knock on Evans, who may have a future with this club, but he simply is not a major leaguer yet. Better him then Marlon Anderson, I suppose. I think I'm going to end every Roster Move in the future with these words: Free Valentino Pascucci!!

Matt Himelfarb:

Manuel and Mets management did not exactly try and redeem themselves- as if there was that much public outrage over Manuel’s comments anyways- by calling up Nick Evans to replace Ryan Church on the Mets roster. The funny part about this move is that I cannot ascribe it to any bias or hidden agenda or any of that sort of nonsense. Do not get me wrong, I think Evans is a good player with a bright future in front of him, and one short trip to the big leagues may be enough of a motivator this time around. The problem is, in his last trip to the big leagues, Evans looked laughably over matched.

Ok, we get it, Valentino Pascucci hit .177 in 62 at-bats for the Montreal Expos in 2004! But why not give the call to Mike Carp, who is hitting just as well at AA as Evans and has a combined 677 AB’s at the level, compared to Evans 296? It certainly not a left-righty issue, as others have assumed. And while Evans is surely more athletic than Carp, both are playing their first year in the outfield in AA, and the Mets are not exactly throwing out gold glovers in Fernando Tatis and Marlon Anderson lately.

I'll let these fine bloggers speak for me, as I have said all that I can about the Mets' distaste for Pascucci at this point. The good news is, the Mets are winning and Jerry Manuel likes Ramon Castro.

Now that's a lineup

2008-07-05T16:09:00.002-06:00

The lineup for today's game in Philadelphia:

Reyes SS
Church RF
Wright 3B
Beltran CF
Easley 2B
Delgado 1B
Castro C
Aguila LF
Maine P

Church hitting second? Awesome! No weak, slap-happy Luis Castillo (Rest on the DL in Peace, Oh Anointed One), Endy Chavez (The Catch! The Bunt Walk-Off!) or Marlon "Pinch-Hitting 'Skill' with Extremely Limited Offensive and Defensive Talents" Anderson!

I would switch Wright and Beltran-- actually I might even move Delgado or Easley into the third spot. Lineup Analysis has shown that the #3 spot is a lot less important than people think, while the #2 spot is a lot more important. Nevertheless, I like it. Another start for Ramon Castro, who, quite simply, is a better all-around player than the presumed regular, Brian Schneider.

And Chris Aguila, well, whatever, he's a right-hander and he's facing a left-hander. Personally I would prefer (you know who) Valentino Pascucci in there at first base instead of Delgado. But the manager doesn't know who he is, and the GM has erroneously decided that he has no value to this team.

Forget last night. Baseball will not stop for us to grieve.

And good luck! to my friend Brent, a frequent commenter here, who is currently playing in Day 1C of the World Series of Poker Main Event.

Happy Independence Day

2008-07-04T17:47:00.002-06:00

Unfortunately, I still cannot declare myself independent from the cause of Valentino Pascucci. I've gotten a little lazy, but yea, Andy Phillips, Chris Aguila and Argenis Reyes are the newest Mets to take precedence over Pascucci.

And then there's this barb:

For all those minor-league followers clamoring for Valentino Pascucci to get called up from New Orleans, here’s some sobering news from Jerry Manuel:

“I’ll be honest with you, who is he?” Manuel asked with a laugh.

Told he was a power hitter with the Zephyrs, Manuel added: “Okay. I apologize. I haven’t the slightest idea. Was he in spring training?”

Perhaps it isn't the job of the field manager to know of his minor league players, but to some extent, I would have imagined that Manuel would have some idea. I mean, the vast majority of the Mets blogosphere is aware of Pascucci, including the masses of MetsBlog, yet our own team's manager doesn't know his name. Of course, the more relevant question is, does Omar Minaya know who he is?

I'm not going to talk about where he fits into the roster, his defensive shortcomings as compared to the defensive "abilities" of the favored ones. I've done it too much already.

Who's the Boss? In that first post-Santana column, I mentioned journeyman slugger Val Pascucci in a list of potential right-handed power bats for the Mets' bench. By a stroke of good fortune, the Mets acquired Pascucci early this season, and since joining the Mets' Triple-A New Orleans club he's done nothing but mash. I won't bother you with more of his absurd statistics; the dude just keeps hitting.

He must be the worst defensive player in the history of baseball if the Mets can't find a spot for him on a bench that includes Marlon Anderson, Damion Easley, Fernando Tatis and newcomer Andy Phillips. Even if he could never play the field, Pascucci still has a case to be on the active roster: Mets' pinch hitters are batting .191 with a .258 OBP.

That's Ted Berg, of course. Keep up the good fight, Ted. (As I watch yet another pathetic swing from Delgado against a left-hander). Did you know that Pascucci is a career .393/.507/.821 minor league hitter against lefties, a 1.328 OPS? Somehow I doubt that the Mets do.

That next GM thing is coming soon, I promise.

Thanks for Noticing

2008-06-25T14:24:00.006-06:00

RJ Anderson at Beyond the Box Score:

Now I do understand that three outfielders the Mets were depending on to fill out the roster are on the disabled list -- Ryan Church, Angel Pagan, and the potentially finished Moises Alou -- but for the love of all that is holy can Val Pascucci get a look over Endy Chavez? He's a decent pinch runner you say, well how about Marlon Anderson? He plays all over? Wait, what's Easley's job then? Why do you need Tatis if Wright and Nixon are playing everyday with Marlon and Endy sharing time?

The problem with the Mets is roster management. Simply there is no need for Anderson, Easley, and Tatis. Ideally the Mets will realize their redundancies when Pagan or Church return and rid themselves of Chavez and Anderson, but I'm not holding my breath on that one.

Me neither. The Mets have deemed Chavez and Anderson good bench guys who add flexibility to the roster, and it will take a lot more than numbers for them to change their minds about that.

And it's worse than RJ suggests. Not only do Chavez and Anderson play pretty much every day, but even Robinson Cancel and Abraham Nunez have received pinch-hitting appearances instead of Val Pascucci, Chris Aguila, and a million other players who are more worthy.

The Mets are simply not a well-run organization.

The Mets suck so much more than the Mariners, you don't even know

2008-06-25T11:13:00.004-06:00

(King Felix, indeed. Winking. Getting took out.)

Simon says:

The Mets were already down a handful when Carlos Beltran was run from the game by an unseasonably ornery home plate umpire Brian Runge. Marlon Anderson came in to finish Beltran's at-bat, at which point the Mets' lineup looked like this (2008 EqA in parens):

Jose Reyes (.295)
Luis Castillo (.262)
Marlon Anderson (.167)
Carlos Delgado (.247)
Trot Nixon (.251)
Fernando Tatis (.197)
Brian Schneider (.230)
Endy Chavez (.211)

Yes, Eric. the Mets are a steaming pile of suck and the sooner Omar Minaya is fired, the better.

Funny, the Mariners' fans don't even want to win. They are upset about winning because they want to have the worst record in baseball this year and thus procure next year's first overall draft pick, who might be right-handed strikeout king Stephen Strasburg from San Diego State.

Jeff at Lookout Landing writes:

For several weeks now, Mets fans everywhere have been going insane. With the team underachieving, public opinion got the organization to scapegoat a manager, and there have been calls for the heads of everybody from Marlon Anderson to David Wright to Omar Minaya to people even higher. It's a mess of a situation with a thousand parallels to ours, but for one little exception:

The Mets are 37-39.

Yes, and the Mariners are 28-49. So what? You know what that means. It means, first of all, that the Mariners have a shot at Strasburg. It also means that the front office won't be tempted to trade away prospects and commit itself to large contracts for aging stars. The Mets, on the other hand, are pretty much guaranteed to do those things, because they are still "in it."

The Mariners just fired their abysmal general manager. They are poised to make significant organizational changes, and a glorious new age of statistical analysis and modernized baseball operations may be on the horizon in Seattle.

Omar Minaya, on the other hand, is still in charge of the Mets and is signed through 2009. There is zero indication that the Mets ownership is displeased with him or is seeking to move the franchise in the direction of teams like Boston, Cleveland, San Diego, Pittsburgh, or even the Yankees. No, the Mets are going to be stuck in an unhealthy and suboptimal method of baseball management for quite some time. There's just no incentive in this industry to adapt and change, especially when your company is making money hand-over-fist, owns a majority interest in a hugely successful regional cable sports network, and is about to move into a nice new ballpark.

Tell me again which team is better off?

New Post, New Manager

2008-06-23T22:54:00.010-06:00

Wow, things are stale around here. I pull up B!T and everything's about Willie Randolph. Well Willie's not here no more. There's a new sheriff in town.

I gotta say that I like Jerry Manuel right now. I like his grizzled visage. I like his square glasses. I like that only one at-bat into his regime he went out into the field and literally grabbed his star young shortstop by the arm and told him that he was going out of the game, that he wasn't going to risk aggravating a possible injury.

That's not something Willie Randolph would have done. Willie Randolph is soft. While his other tactical blunders are harder to see and it is difficult to measure their effects, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that Randolph was unable to assert control and authority over his players, often allowing injured and inferior players to dictate their own playing time, insert themselves in the lineup and schedule rest days as they pleased.

This kind of atmosphere also led to a situation where players were favored because of major league experience and familiarity with the manager, rather than actual talent, injury status, and platoon splits. It is unknown to me whether Randolph knew that closer Braden Looper was injured for the majority of 2005, but I would be inclined to believe that Randolph did know and was complicit. This situation is not so much a testament to Looper's commitment and courage to fight through adversity, as some have narrated, as it is an example of how a spirit of entitlement took precedence in the clubhouse over a commitment to putting the best team on the field.

New manager Jerry Manuel has iterated a meritocratic policy: the best players will play. Already we have seen more time for Damion Easley, who was rewarded for success in the short term, and Ramon Castro, who is probably a better overall player than Brian Schneider, and should at least get the majority of plate appearances against left-handed pitching. Some of the time was due to injury, but Manuel has shown early signs of giving these guys more time. Randolph was rigid in defense of the status quo. He even eschewed platoon match-ups because he didn't want to derogate and upset his "regulars," as he would call them, or maybe "one of my guys." It remains to be seen whether Manuel's meritocracy will extend itself to the optimization of platoon splits.

Certainly there is new hope with Manuel. But there is only so much a manager can do. He should do as much to institute better management techniques, more authority, different lineup paradigms, and more optimal strategy during this, his period of grace. Whether he is able to do some of these things is a question. Whether it would matter is another.

No matter what Manuel does, he will have to do it with the players he has been given. And being very, very liberal in crediting the effect of mangers, I'll say that the players account for at least 98% of the team's performance. The other 2% is almost by definition unmeasurable.

As we have seen, the team has many holes. While some of them fay be filled cheaply with a little creativity, that function is not Minaya's strong suit. His favorite card is the splash. As fans of a team with bad information and outdated operational strategies, we should be fearful of further decimation of the farm system and committals of the team to more large contracts for fast-declining players. I have little doubt that Omar Minaya will continue to fail in assessing the value of the players under his control and appropriating his resources accordingly.

Which is to say that the Mets will continue to be run poorly, even if the game on the ground floor is more pleasing to our fanatic sensibilities. But of course, why shouldn't you be excited? The Mets are still within striking distance. They don't need to play much better than they have been to stay that way. Perhaps the team ducked out in most humiliating fashion last year only to storm back in glorious victory in this campaign. Why not?

I am Unmoved

2008-06-20T13:38:00.005-06:00

Willie Randolph writes about his time with the Mets and how he feels about getting fired. It's pretty boring. I wish I could say he is a better writer than he was a manager, but it wouldn't be true.

Honestly, I really don't feel that bad for him. The Mets missed the playoffs by one game in 2007, and I have to think that Willie's stubbornness and obstinacy was a leading cause of that. If he would have stopped using Guillermo Mota in every high-leverage spot or plugging the terrible Shawn Green into the lineup every day, the Mets would have won a few more games.

Sorry, Willie. All managers are fired unjustly. But I think your millions of dollars should be enough to comfort you. Frankly, I was tired-- all of us were tired-- of hearing the same stupid talk about how your gut told you this and that, and how this bad player or the other is "one of your guys," and how the team just needs to get into "a nice little rhythm."

I could have included a picture with this post, but I am tired of looking at the man. What makes him so special, that he should get to manage the Mets?

What's unjust is that such an unqualified person was able to lord over the team for so long. Unjust, I tell you. That it will happen again and be that way for the foreseeable future is upsetting, but not defeating. I won't give up hope that someday the Mets will have a manager (and a general manager) who knows what he is doing. Perhaps that manager and general manager will be the same person. Perhaps he will wear a suit in the dugout. I think that's how it should be.

A Randolph Moment

2008-06-18T13:02:00.007-06:00

Bob Klapisch shares with us an event from early May:

The manager summoned one of his veterans into his office for a closed-door meeting, challenging him to focus more on baseball. It was a rare, line-in-the-sand moment for Randolph, who avoided confrontation with his players. But the manager’s attempt to assert his authority failed miserably, as the two men raised their voices at each other.

As he walked out the door, the elder Met taunted Randolph, “I’m going to be here longer than you.”

Of course, he was right. This makes me wonder, how much is "veteran leadership" worth when the whole team is full of veterans? If there is a benefit to such leadership, surely there is a tipping point where having too many veterans causes a sense of entitlement, not leadership.

I know this is supposed to be an anecdote that shows Randolph's failure as leader, but to me it is more of an indictment of Omar Minaya, just as most of the team's problems are. The unnamed veteran could be anybody. It doesn't really matter, because there are so many of them on the team. It was probably Carlos Delgado, who can be sure of his job because the general manager has turned the Mets' bench into a club for all his buddies instead of a source of depth and roster flexibility.

I'm not going to name all the crappy players on the Mets here. You know who they are. If you don't, do yourself a favor and look at all the guys who have played left field for the Mets in 2008. Met left fielders have hit .243/.294/.315 this year. I don't care how bad the situation is or how much you've been caught by surprise-- finding at least replacement level production in left field should be one of the easiest parts of the job. And that Moises Alou will hit the Disabled List should have been Omar Minaya's Assumption Number One.

Met first basemen have hit .247/.317/.406 this year. If that's not below replacement, it's pretty damn close. Again, finding replacement level production at first base should be one of the easiest parts of the job. A platoon partner for Delgado should be easy to find. There's one in AAA right now.

But did Omar Minaya stock the bench with suitable depth and protection for left field and first base? No, he started the offseason by handing out guaranteed contracts to mediocrities-- easily replaceable guys who should hold no special place in the organization. And now, with two starting outfielders out of the picture (one predictably and the other due to Minaya's negligence) the lineup regular features the worst offensive and defensive corner outfielders in the game, an old and broken first baseman, and two starters who would be lucky to ever slug over .400-- two starters whom Omar Minaya went out of his way to obtain and retain for the 2008 season and beyond.

So yea, quip all you want about how Willie Randolph was a poor leader. He was an even worse tactician. But 100% of the blame should go to Omar Minaya.

Preemptive Coach-Firing Post

2008-06-16T14:48:00.004-06:00

Yea, Rick Peterson and Tom Nieto have zilch to do with the Mets' failures. Try again.

Send 'em Sandy, on the other hand...

Next Day Edit: And... Randolph too. Midnight Massacre indeed. I recommend reading that article by Mike Vaccaro. It's a little strong, but that's what we expect from the Post. And it pretty much nails why, when we've been calling for Randolph's head for weeks, months (and in some cases, years), when it finally does happen we are left shaking our heads in disgust and disappointment.

And here's the ridiculous part: They could have gone through the transaction of what they did – firing Randolph, firing Rick Peterson, firing Tom Nieto, elevating Jerry Manuel and Ken Oberkfell and Luis Aguayo and Dan Warthen, at any time across the past few weeks and they would have been perfectly justified.

Hell, if they wanted to raze the whole staff last October, after the epic collapse of September, that would have been all right, too. You may not have agreed with it (although a loud segment of Mets fans surely would have). But that would have simply been a baseball decision. And the baseball was enough to warrant it.

This? This is unspeakable. These men couldn't have been fired in New York, before heading on a plane and flying 3,000 miles to their doom? They couldn't have been spared the ignominy of a public perp walk back east, their dignity thrown into their carry-on luggage?

Vacarro has it right. If there's one thing to come of this mess, it's that Willie Randolph will be respected as a man who responded very, very well to the unnecessarily long and drawn-out process of his termination. That it was prolonged led many to see that the team's problems were more the fault of the general manager than the manager, and while there are few who would laud Randolph's tactics and deployments from the dugout, in the clubhouse he handled himself with a tact not shared by his employers.

No, he won't be missed. And no, Jerry Manuel is probably not going to be any kind of franchise savior. If the Mets rebound and start playing consistent winning baseball, it will have little to do with the manager. Still, it was about time this happened. But it was the wrong time and the wrong way. Would we expect anything else from the Mets?

Ranking the GMs, #27: Ned Colletti

2008-06-16T14:00:00.002-06:00

Yes, it has been a while. I'd better move faster. #28: Bill Bavasi has already been fired. Might that happen soon with Ned Colletti?

Colletti's last job was Assistant General Manager to Brian Sabean, who still has a job and bottoms our list at #30. So his pedigree is not the best. (Speaking of pedigree, here's a good resource for "GM bloodlines.")

What has Colletti done since becoming the Dodgers' GM prior to the start of the 2006 season? He has consistently mishandled an astonishing core of young players that should have his team in position to compete in the National League West for years to come. Here's a snappy little quotation I found by way of Bucs Dugout:

''Do I use VORP?" Colletti said, referring to one such sabermetric tool, Value Over Replacement Player. ''I may be using it and not even know it, and if I am, it's nobody's business. There are a lot of different criteria in judging players. I think I use, um, esoteric qualitative mathematical review times five. That's one of them."

If I'm a Dodger fan at that point I cringe and recoil. We've just gone from one of the most promising baseball minds to someone who snidely dismisses modern statistical analysis. Buckle your seat belts, right? Well, not exactly. Even though Colletti comes in at #26, it's because everyone else is better, not because he's been so bad. He's been bad, but it could be a lot worse.

In the interest of not duplicating work and taking credit for it, I'll merely link to a few excellent sources. First, a GM Profile from Chatterbalks. Said profile is written ironically, with every single transaction being called a "great move." However, some of the moves were pretty good. For instance, dealing Milton Bradley to the A's for Andre Ethier worked out pretty well. And other deals he has made that could have gone horribly wrong have been merely pointless in the end. A sign of a bad GM is trading good young prospects for questionable relievers, but even Theo Epstein does that sometimes.

The aforementioned Bucs Dugout has a good summary of Colletti's mistakes:

Colletti's 2006-2007 offseason was awful. Rather than being satisfied with the one good year he got out of the rickety Garciaparra, Colletti resigned him to a two-year contract, even though he had terrific prospects (Andy LaRoche and James Loney) ready or nearly ready at both positions Garciaparra played, plus another useful and fairly young third baseman in Wilson Betemit. He signed the nearly worthless Luis Gonzalez to play the outfield even though he had Matt Kemp banging on the door there. He signed Jason Schmidt to a deal that seemed reasonable at the time but that so far has failed to generate any returns.

The way Colletti handled his young position players in 2007 was really criminal. James Loney and Andy Laroche had to make way for Garciaparra. The useful young Wilson Betemit was dealt to the Yankees for veteran reliever Scott Proctor. Juan Pierre and Luis Gonzalez forced Andre Ethier and Matt Kemp into the background. On any given night, there would be three young players on the bench with more ability than their on-field positional counterparts. The Dodgers should have won the division easily. Instead, they finished in 4th place.

This year the youngsters are getting more time, but only because Nomar Garciaparra is injured. Ironically, a young player in Blake Dewitt has "won" the third base job due to overlapping injuries in spring training. But now he is just blocking the far-more-talented Andy Laroche, who is being forced to learn first base in AAA. Meanwhile, the $44 million mistake, Juan Pierre, and the the $36 million mistake, Andruw Jones, are daily stealing playing time from Ethier and Kemp. Again, only injury has saved the Dodgers' stupidity there.

But Colletti is to be commended. He has not short-sightedly dealt away Chad Billingsley, Clayton Kershaw, Jonathan Broxton, Ethier, Kemp, LaRoche, Russell Martin, Chin-Lung Hu or James Loney in search of "proven veterans."

Still, as Bucs Dugout points out, "The 2007 Dodgers won just 82 games, and their success was due almost entirely to players acquired before Colletti arrived, some of whom he'd tried to block in the offseason... The only Colletti acquisitions who really played well were relievers Saito and Rudy Seanez and reserve infielder Betemit. Furcal, Ethier, Gonzalez and Randy Wolf were all mediocre; Pierre, Hendrickson, David Wells, Brett Tomko and any number of other part-timers were just awful."

Not trading away youngsters is a plus, even if it's just non-activity, but acquiring crappy players with which to block them is typical of a bad GM. Colletti's best move was Takashi Saito, but the signings of Pierre and Jason Schmidt more than make up for that. He gave too much money to Rafael Furcal, probably too much money to Hiroki Kuroda, and as it turns out, far too much money to Andruw Jones. Some of these contracts are debatable, but when they serve to block obviously superior and much cheaper young players, it's just stupid. Time will tell whether Colletti will get good value for those youngsters, whether on the field or in trades, but it is almost certain that he will hand out more large contracts to mediocre players this offseason. As a Brian Sabean protege, it's all he knows.

Here Are Some Links and My Corresponding Opinions

2008-06-16T12:25:00.003-06:00

Jonah Keri, writing for the New York Sun, points out that the Mets' contingency plan sucks. It sucked last year, and it sucks now. And it wasn't like it was a huge surprise that the Mets would face injuries and declining production. Keri adds:

All those teams did a better job of scouting and player acquisition than the Mets did. They also did so with smaller payrolls, in some cases much smaller.

They say necessity is the mother of invention. Maybe necessity is what the Mets have been missing.

Maybe. But the Red Sox and Yankees also have big payrolls, and they aren't backing up their outfielders with the likes of Endy Chavez and Marlon Anderson. It's not lack of necessity that makes Omar Minaya so bad at roster construction. It's that he actually thinks those guys are good players. Or, he doesn't realize the extent to which they are inadequate for the roles to which he has assigned them.

Greg at Faith and Fear writes a typically cute post in "Desperate Times Call for Robinson Cancel." It would make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside if it weren't for the fact that Cancel should not be on the team and should not be pinch-hitting in that spot, even if his weakly-struck ground ball found a hole. (However, I disagree strongly with the Shea Stadium crowd that Pedro should have hit for himself there.) If you still think Cancel is a better hitter than Valentino Pascucci or any number of other freely-available players, I don't know what to tell you. First of all, if we have three catchers on the roster, why is the best hitter amongst them not starting? If he's not starting (because Brian Schneider is presumably a great defender), why is he not used as a pinch-hitter ahead of the most anemic hitter of the bunch? It is so incomprehensible that I have a hard time giving a shit about the last time Cancel got a hit. There's a reason it has been so long: he sucks.

Yes, Joe, It's Toasted is consistently funny. Here we have a typical interaction between Omar Minaya and the media:

Reporter: Omar, what is Willie Randolph's job status right now?

OM: We have a manager. His name is Willie Randolph. Obviously I evaluate things every day, but right now, Sunday, June 15, 2008, we have a manager, named Willie Randolph.

Funny, but basically true. In addition to his poor decisions about everything else, Minaya isn't making it easy for his team to concentrate on playing baseball, even as he adds "a gamer" to the roster. Speaking of such:

"He's a hard-nosed player," David Wright said. "He's a guy who's going to go out there and get dirty. He's a guy that plays with a lot of intensity, and I think that's a good thing both on the field and as a clubhouse guy. He's been on a championship team. He knows what it takes to win and he'll go out there and give you something day in and day out."

But what I really want to know is whether he's a blue collar kind of guy. Does he bring a lunch pail to work? I don't want to hear that he's only leaving something on the field and not all of it. Does he know the meaning of the word "quit"? If he does, I want no part of him. I know he's "hard-nosed" and "dirty," but does he play the game the way it was meant to be played? Also, is he a professional hitter? Let's not just skim the surface here, David.

Get ready for some token firings.

Cancel

2008-06-13T15:51:00.005-06:00

The Mets add a third catcher to the roster as Moises Alou heads back to the DL. Robinson Cancel was hitting .333/.368/.667 in AAA, so this move makes se... oh, that was in only 20 plate appearances. Cancel is a career .260/.319/.369 minor league hitter.

Val Pascucci is a career .277/.391/.491 hitter in the minor leagues.

Before, the Mets floated the idea that with Raul Casanova on the roster, Ramon Castro could be used as a pinch-hitter. However, that never happened and Casanova was the one who got the plate appearances. Meanwhile, Brian Schneider and his career .253/.324/.374 line continues to get regular duty, while Ramon Castro, who slugged .556 in 2007, gets so little playing time that he forgets what time the game starts.

I don't know if Casanova is injured or what his contract status is, but he better be unavailable, because his career .287/.347/.468 line in the minors puts Cancel to shame. I don't know if it's just an intern in charge of roster moves, or what.

Having a third catcher means that Ramon Castro can DH in American League parks, but the Mets won't do this (Marlon Anderson, anyone?) and even if they did, why wouldn't they just use the better-hitting Castro at catcher in the first place and use someone like, I don't know, Valentino Pascucci at DH? Oh, right. Because they're stupid.

Seriously. Let's go around the diamond and see what Omar Minaya did the solidify the Mets' position players for 2008:

First Base: Hoped that Delgado wouldn't crash and burn, even though he made it obvious in 2007 that he was going to do that. Insurance: Nothing. Delgado crashes and burns.

Second Base: Locked up the fast-declining Luis Castillo for four years, thus ensuring a .358 slugging percentage at the top of the lineup for years to come. Castillo begins his slow and hideous decline, as expected.

Shortstop/Third Base: Reyes and Wright, pre-Minaya era players. Nothing to do here.

Catcher: Tried to sign Yorvit Torrealba and his career .249/.309/.387 line to a three-year deal, then backed out. Briefly considered Johnny Estrada. Finally paid dearly for the right to stick Brian Schneider's career .374 slugging percentage into the lineup with Castillo for years to come. Oh, but his glove! Schneider hits terribly and is merely average with the glove, as expected.

Left Field: Hoped that Moises Alou didn't spend most of the year on the Disabled List. Insurance: Nothing. Moises Alou spends most of the year on the Disabled List.

Center Field: Minaya's best work. Nothing to do here.

Right Field: Acquired a nice player in Ryan Church. Unfortunately, it cost the organization's premier young player. Minaya goes on to seriously jeopardize Church's career by failing to put him on the DL after his second concussion of the young season.

At every spot where Minaya had a move to make, he messed things up. He ensured that two very weak bats would be in the lineup for years to come, and provided no viable insurance at all for two positions that were sure to see frequent injury and declining production.

So who's supposed to get fired again?

Tonight, the Mets' lineup features Marlon Anderson in left field, Endy Chavez in right, Luis Castillo at second, Brian Schneider behind the plate and the shell of Carlos Delgado's former self at first base. The Mets are 12th in the league in home runs, 13th in slugging, and 13th in OPS. The only thing keeping this offense afloat is its ability to get on base.

Omar Minaya should hire Paul DePodesta as Assistant GM and then immediately fire himself.

Nuñez

2008-06-05T16:21:00.002-06:00

The Mets finally sent down Nick Evans. Unfortunately, they called up Abraham Nuñez to replace him.

I could not have sniped it better myself. You guessed it: a backup infielder. A career 62 OPS+. Totally useless to the Mets.

How is it that Omar Minaya is in charge of baseball operations for a major league team? How is the general manager making such a move not the worst in the game?

Now come and tell me that Nuñez is a major leaguer, while Valentino Pascucci is a quadruple-A player.

Sigh. Nuñez will wear #6.

Pascucci Everywhere

2008-06-02T16:16:00.012-06:00

Read Ted Berg's interview with Valentino Pascucci on MetsBlog.

Read more about Pascucci from Ted Berg at Flushing Fussing.

Read R.J. Anderson on Pascucci at Beyond the Box Score.

Fortunately for The Boss, the Mets front office probably pays attention to MetsBlog. Unfortunately for the Mets, their front office pays attention to MetsBlog.

Bringing up Pascucci would rectify some wrongs, but it wouldn't change the fact that for two weeks the Mets have had this roster:

[x] Old first basement with a .618 OPS vs. lefties
[x] Right-handed back-up second baseman playing first base vs. lefties
[x] Slow, switch-hitting third catcher with career line of .236/.303/.380 getting plenty of time as a pinch-hitter
[x] 22-year old first baseman with minimal outfield experienced called up from AA and starting in the outfield
[x] Former power-hitting third baseman way past his prime starting games in the outfield
[ ] Valentino Pascucci
[x] Edit: On the DL, a 37-year old backup infielder who can sort of play outfield, pretty much guaranteed a roster spot as soon as he comes back from having his robotic exoskeleton installed
[x] On the DL, a 34-year old backup infielder with a career 84 OPS+ who is a bad infielder and who can theoretically play outfield, whose job is guaranteed because of a nebulous pinch-hitting "ability" and a short, unsustainable run of success with the team in the past, and because the manager likes him

It doesn't make any sense. Yes, Val's abilities are extremely limited. Yes, he has a lot of flaws and is not good enough to play every day in the big leagues. The Mets have read his scouting reports, which say something like: "Very big and very slow. A quadruple-A player, his bat won't play in the big leagues, where his big swing will be exposed. Would strike out about 180-190 times in a full season, without the secondary skills to compensate. Perhaps useful as a platoon vs. left-handers or strictly as a pinch-hitter." The Mets concluded based on this that they won't give Pascucci a chance, leaving them with the absurd situation above. They have a bench full of proven veterans who have "proven" that they aren't very good any more. They have a first baseman whose skills are rapidly declining and who could use a platoon partner. They have a 22-year old who plays the same positions as Pascucci but does not yet belong in the big leagues. It's absurd.

Edit: The Mets signed Raul Gonzalez to a minor league contract. A sign of Pascucci's impending promotion? (Or José Valentín's?)

Another Edit: In an interview with Aaron Dorman at Mets Geek, Kevin Goldstein of Baseball Prospectus weighs in on Pascucci:

MetsGeek: What are Valentino Pascucci’s pluses? Can he help the Mets at all?

Kevin Goldstein: No, not really. Obviously Val Pascucci is having a great year, but he is one of those classic Quadruple-A hitters. Off the top of my head, I’m guessing he’s 29 or 30 years old. He’s always been a guy who draws walks, hits home runs, and strikes out a lot. I think the problem is that if you took him up to the big leagues, he’d strike out even more. He does most of his damage against lefties, he really struggles against right-handers. He’s really kind of an org player, Quadruple-A hitter. Maybe an occasional insurance policy, but he has no important role at all in the Mets’ future.

MetsGeek: So we shouldn’t be rooting for the Mets to release Delgado and call him up?

Kevin Goldstein: (Laughs) No, you should not. I mean, you might, just because it’s hard not to dig a guy named Val Pascucci. And as big as he is, I have a personal bias in favor of big baseball players, and he certainly is enormous, but on a skill level, he’s up and down, played in Triple-A, played across the sea a few times, he’s the definition of what an org player is.

Goldstein's a smart guy, but I don't see where he's coming from here. Has he seen the players on the Mets' bench? No one is asking about Pasucci's "future" with the Mets. They are clamoring for him to platoon with Delgado and be the primary pinch-hitter instead of Raul Casanova, Damion Easley and Marlon Anderson. Kevin must coming at the situation like a scout, because as a fan and evaluator of major league talent, he has to see that the Mets could use an .800 OPS bat on the bench and to spell Delgado vs. lefties. It's not like the aforementioned bench scrubs aren't "organizational players" themselves.

Heilman

2008-06-02T14:47:00.006-06:00

I don't usually use this space to come out in support of players or decisions. Usually I wait until I have something to criticize.

But I don't get the criticism of Randolph for using Aaron Heilman in the 9-5 loss to the Dodgers Friday night. Aaron Heilman is a good pitcher who has been a little unlucky early on this year. Randolph is right to use Heilman in high-leverage situations, and he should continue to do so.

Here is a graph of Heilman's season BABIP. As you can see, there is a big spike up to .356 this year, well up from his career mark of .294. BABIP is mostly due to luck, as it does not correlate from year to year. An increased line drive rate will result in a higher BABIP, but Heilman has actually been surrendering fewer line drives this year than any previous season.

Furthermore, Heilman's strikeout rate is up, while his walk rate is just a little above his career norms. He has surrendered five home runs in only 28 innings (a rate of 1.59/9), but don't expect that to continue.

The argument was that Randolph should have let Heilman start the inning instead of leaving Feliciano in to face the lefty Juan Pierre, who singled (not really, but he was called safe on a slow grounder to Reyes). Some have cited a really unimportant split, that Heilman's opposition has hit .284/.363/.444 against him with runners on, while hitting only .214/.287/.328 against him with the bases empty. I have to think this is luck, as Heilman always pitches from the stretch and those lines have corresponding BABIPs of .330 and .260, respectively.

I have actually heard suggestions that Heilman, who still has "options," should be moved to the minor leagues or traded. The former is ludicrous, as he is a better pitcher than most in the Mets bullpen. The latter is ill-timed, as one hopes to trade players when they are performing well and have a greater perceived value.

Nonsensical Favoritism Hurts the Mets

2008-05-30T12:44:00.006-06:00

One of the reasons Willie Randolph should be fired is tonight's inevitable starting lineup. The Mets are facing left-handed Clayton Kershaw, but will undoubtedly start lefties Carlos Delgado and Brian Schneider, both of whom are miserable against lefties but have capable right-handed alternatives in Damion Easley (or Nick Evans, or Val Pascucci) and Ramon Castro.

However, those veterans have spoken out against being platooned, and if there's one thing we know about Willie, it's that he always does what his veterans want him to do. Last year when Paul Lo Duca was hurt, he managed to convince Willie to play him, even though the offensively superior Castro was actually healthy and ready to play. Cliff Floyd conned Willie into giving him a spot on the 2006 NLCS roster. Braden Looper managed to pitch while injured for all of 2005, ultimately hurting the team.

Carlos Delgado has been miserable against left-handers this year, and it's not luck, as he has just looked clueless at the plate. Ramon Castro is actually a better all-around catcher than Brian Schneider and should be the regular when healthy, but if that's not going to happen he should at least be starting against left-handers.

Normally a player speaking out for playing time is irrelevant, as the decision rests with the front office and field manager. But with the Mets, there is a history of letting veteran players dictate their own playing time. Recently we saw a sickening example of this when Ryan Church, who had just suffered his second concussion of the year, pinch-hit and later admitted he did not remember the at-bat.

It would be nice to see the Mets use their roster optimally. Sorry, though. Willie trusts his guys, whatever that means.

Edit: I forgot to mention that the Mets are playing a day game against a right-hander on Saturday, so it makes it even more important to start the right-handers against the lefty today.

"[A catching platoon] could eventually happen," manager Willie Randolph said. "But I'm not ready to do that yet because I think that Brian, when he catches, is more of an asset to us than worrying about his offense. We like what he does behind the plate, and that, to me, is first and foremost on our team."

(MLB.com) Somehow I doubt that Willie and the Mets' statistical staff sat down and crunched the numbers to determine that the difference between Schneider's defense and Castro's defense is greater than the difference between Castro's offense and Schneider's offense. Actually, I remember how much the Mets used to talk up Castro's defense before it no longer suited them to do so. Honestly, I think (and most Mets fans would probably agree) that Schneider has looked pretty miserable on defense this year. Schneider seems like a nice guy who leaves a good impression on people, and that's probably the basis for his defensive reputation.

That's why the Mets traded for Schneider, and that's why they'll continue to play him -- no matter what.

And that's why the Mets are a poorly run and poorly managed team that repeatedly makes suboptimal decisions.

Edit 2:
Reyes
Castillo
Wright
Beltran
Tatis
Castro
Delgado
Evans
Maine

I stand corrected. Delgado is in, but as a Mets Geek commenter noted, it may be "a put up or shut up appearance." It's odd, because I thought that Schneider was the one the Mets had put their weight behind, and Delgado could go either way. This makes more sense.

Maybe the Mets, and Willie Randolph, are learning.

Valentin? You're Joking, Right?

2008-05-28T15:00:00.004-06:00

MetBlog has a poll where they ask who the fans want to be called up if Ryan Church goes on the DL, as he should. Jose Valentin wins with 64% of the vote over Valentino Pascucci, with 30%. This is ridiculous. MetsBlog readers and commenters are a bigger joke than the Mets front office itself. What are they thinking? That with Marlon Anderson on the DL, the Mets need another backup 2B? Minaya caught lightning in a bottle with Valentin in 2006. He couldn't help himself and gave him a ridiculous contract for like $4 million with an option for 2008 that would have vested with about 400 plate appearances. He was injured almost the whole time, got playing time over superior options when he was healthy and played very poorly, and the Mets still gave him a contract for 2008. And the fans actually want him back, because they haven't had enough of the shitty decrepit old middle infield veteran-ness that is New York Mets under Omar Minaya.

They need Valentín. He’s one of those guys that makes everyone better just by being there.

Valentin will be a positive influence, whether or not he hits.

You can never have enough good people around like Valentin. I don’t know how much he will be able to help as a player at this point, but he’s a great baseball man.

Congratulations, Mets fans. You have done violence to reason. You have set back the progress of civilization at least five years.

Here's a thought. What the hell is 22-year old Nick Evans, who has played all of 17 games in the minor leagues in the outfield, doing here as our starting left fielder? When the Mets aren't favoring "proven veterans" who were All-Stars six years ago over major-league-ready youngsters, they're busy promoting prospects well before their time in order to fuck with their heads.

If Valentin is such a fucking charmer, make him a coach. But he has next-to-nothing left as a baseball player, and pretending otherwise is silly. Knowing as much and still putting him on the team is stupid. How many old backup second basement types can we have on this team? Oh, lots:

Marlon Anderson (34 years old, 77% of career games at 2B, career 84 OPS+)
Damion Easley (38 years old, 81% of career games at 2B, career 92 OPS+)
Luis Castillo (32 years old, 100% of career games at 2B, career 93 OPS+)
Jose Valentin (37 years old, 77% of career games at SS, 90% at SS+2B, career 96 OPS+)
Fernando Tatis (33 years old, 88% of career games at 3B, career 100 OPS+)

Willie Watch: Getting Past

2008-05-27T13:43:00.003-06:00

Craig Calcaterra of Shyster Ball:

The dreaded vote of confidence accompanies the latest in a string of crappy Mike Pelfrey outings and here the Mets sit 6.5 games out, having lost seven of their last ten. I tend to over think this kind of stuff, but let me throw this out there: the meeting yesterday was to provide the appearance of "getting past" Willie's stupid racial comments, and rather than provide him with any real security or confidence, the real result of the meeting is to hasten his departure by allowing the team to cite terrible performance and terrible performance alone as the reason for the axing.

That sounds about right to me. Hearing reports of the press conference following the "good, productive meeting" (read: they talked about how getting Jose Valentin back was going to be a huge lift), I was surprised at how much they discussed Willie's comments. I thought to myself, Who gives a shit about the comments? What about this crappy baseball team? But I forget how careful people have to get when anything slightly racial is in the air.

The Metropolitans has some excerpts from Rob Neyer about Willie Randolph and some thoughts of his own on the subject. Don't worry, Rob. It doesn't make sense to any of us, either.

And Tim Marchman:

When a manager is not fired, as Willie Randolph was not after a long meeting yesterday with Mets owners Fred and Jeff Wilpon and general manager Omar Minaya, it is usually not news. Managers are not fired all the time. Only rarely, though, can a manager for a team with a $140 million payroll lose more games than he wins for a full year, wax paranoid about racist camera angles, follow that up by losing six of seven games, and then keep his job. This is why yesterday's press conference was carried live on ESPNews. What baseball fan, given the chance, wouldn't gawk at this bizarre spectacle?

It's all very sad.

Ranking the GMs, #28: Bill Bavasi

2008-05-27T13:00:00.000-06:00

Recently Dave Cameron of the superlatively excellent Mariners blog U.S.S. Mariner wrote to his favorite team's general manager:

Learn more about baseball than a blogger who lives 2,500 miles from Safeco Field and covers the team as a freaking hobby. I shouldn’t know more about how to build a baseball team than you, but I do, and that’s why you and your entire staff deserve to be fired.

Normally such a statement would be easily interpreted as the ramblings of an impudent and caustic blogger, who in the midst of rage about some minor perceived injustice, and suffering from delusions about his own intelligence, saw fit to rail against the man with the rancor and lack of professionalism that is endemic to his craft. But in this case, he's perfectly correct. Bill Bavasi has shown his incompetence time and time again, while the bloggers of U.S.S. Mariner have proven to be superior analysts.

What sparked this angry and righteous remark were Bavasi's recent comments:

Nobody had the nerve to pick us less than second place in our division. We were picked anything from first to second to wild-card. You name it. The expectations were a heck of a lot higher than this, based on any analysts’ evaluation of out players’ individual track records and their age. Their ages are such that they’re not all young guys that they’re inexperienced. But they’re not too old to believe that they would backslide. So, I think those expectations are realistic. They were and they are.

Cameron rightly called bullshit, as several models predicted the Mariners would lose far more games than they won, and many foresaw the team in third place to end the season, well short of the playoffs. Currently the team is 18-34, worst in baseball.

Last year the Mariners, like the Mets, won 88 games. In the offseason the Mariners, like the Mets, acquired an ace pitcher. But the Mets and Mariners, though both are run rather poorly, were in quite different positions. I wrote about their differences at Mets Geek. Basically, I wrote that the Mariners made the wrong choice in dealing Adam Jones and others for Erik Bedard, because they weren't really an 88-win team in 2007, but a 79 win team by Pythagorean record. Even then, one can't blame the Mariners for trying to compete in baseball's only four-team division when the only competition is the L.A. Angels. But Bill Bavasi went about it in entirely the wrong way, and he did so because he doesn't understand the strengths and weaknesses of his own team.

Raúl Ibañez is a competent hitter. He's not a superstar, and his on-base percentage is a little low (not the the Mariners know anything about that), but he can hit. The problem with Ibañez is that he's a terrible fielder. Bavasi seems to be ignorant of this.

Jose Vidro is a competent hitter. He has a .300 career average. He can walk a little bit. A little bit more would be nice, but he's a nice hitter. The problem with Jose Vidro, though, is that he's the Mariners' designated hitter. Apparently he either can't play second base anymore or Seattle feels that Jose Lopez is the better option. The problem with this arrangement is that Jose Vidro hits like a second baseman. The DH doesn't have to play the field. The Mariners could use anyone there, including Barry Bonds or Frank Thomas. Or Raúl Ibañez. Instead, it's Jose Vidro. I have to think it's the batting average, and that makes me think that Bill Bavasi has no idea what he's doing. In fact, he actually traded for Vidro's contract, which had two years and $16 million left on it. Yea, he's better than Luis Castillo. But not by much.

So 2007 was a season in which the Mariners significantly over-performed, despite this unfortunate arrangement with Ibañez in left field, Vidro at DH, and the young Adam Jones hitting .314/.382/.586 in AAA and playing a much better defense than Ibañez could ever dream of.

There have been more recent blunders and more distant ones. Recently the Mariners gave catcher Kenji Johjima a 3-year, $24 million extension. Johjima is an above-average hitter for a catcher, but doesn't shock anyone with his power and doesn't get on base very much. And he's 32. And the Mariners have a catcher in AAA who OPSed .867 last year and is hitting .382/.507/.755 in 138 AAA plate appearances this year. AND (I'm going crazy here), the Mariners recently allowed crappy fifth starter-type Jarrod Washburn to dictate that he prefers backup catcher Jamie Burke, citing "communications issues with the language barrier." The Mariners happily complied, making Burke the personal catcher for both Bedard and Washburn, with the newly extended Johjima works only 3/5ths of the time.

Johjima's extension means that Jeff Clement immediately loses value, as he must become a 1B or DH to remain with the Mariners. In the sphere of extensions for pre-free agent players, this one didn't make a lot of sense. The Mariners could have simply kept Johjima under their control and dealt him if necessary, instead of needlessly locking him up and blocking Jeff Clement. In fairness to Bavasi, this deal might have had more to do with the Mariners' Japanese ownership.

Other notable transgressions:

Not offering free agent Jose Guillen arbitration, and thereby failing to collect a compensatory draft pick. He's unlikely to accept. If he does, he can be released and the team only has to pay 1/6th of the price.

Trading Rafael Soriano to the Braves for Horacio Ramirez.

Willie Bloomquist! Miguel Cairo! Chemistry! Veteran leadership!

Really, I haven't touched the surface of how bad Bill Bavasi has been as the General Manager of the Seattle Mariners, a position he has held since November 2003. In that time, he has been unable to get the Mariners to the playoffs, despite having a large payroll in a division that has only four teams. Nor as he set up the team for long-term success, as he falls over himself to give long-term contracts to mediocrities like Carlos Silva (4 years, $48 million, career 100 ERA+, 3.7 K/9) and Jarrod Washburn (4 years, $37.5 million, career 107 ERA+ but worse now), pay for the decline phases of guys like Jose Vidro and Richie Sexson, and fill his bench with useless veteran "leaders." He has repeatedly shown himself to be ignorant of modern statistical analysis, and that ignorance has doomed his team to perpetual mediocrity, despite all the market and resources to compete in baseball's only four-team division. He's better than Sabean because Sabean has a lot more bad contracts, and he's better than Ed Wade because at least Bavasi has a semblance of a plan, but that's not saying a whole lot.

If there's one good thing for Mariners fans about Seattle's already disastrous 2008 campaign, it's that it might be the end for Bill Bavasi.

Hey Julian Tavarez

2008-05-26T10:41:00.003-06:00

What makes you think the Mets want you?

Oh, of course, you're right.

Welcome aboard, Julian. We could always use more of a veteran presence around here.

Willie Watch: Imminent Termination

2008-05-24T12:40:00.004-06:00

"Willie's our manager, guys," Minaya said during an interview in the fourth inning. "I fully support Willie, and hopefully Willie will be our manager for many years."

(Post)

(U.S.S. Mariner)

“I’m going to tell you that Willie Randolph is our manager,” Minaya said. “He has my support. He has our ownership’s support. And that’s what it is. To me, that’s what I’m going to tell you. I am here to support Willie. Ownership is supporting Willie. We’re supporting everything.

(Steve Popper, Bergen Record)

The Mets Are Stupid Fucks

2008-05-24T12:12:00.003-06:00

who deserve to lose. Seriously, intelligent Mets fans everywhere rejoiced when Marlon Anderson pulled up lame last night, an obvious hamstring injury and a sure trip to the DL. It's not that we don't like Marlon, it's that he's just not very good, yet bats sixth in the lineup in a string of crappy left-handers. Why Valentino Pascucci is not on this team yet is beyond our nerdy comprehension.

But, what the fuck? The Mets have called up 22-year old 1B/OF right-handed hitting Nick Evans from AA Binghamton?

Am I fucking invisible?

Omar Minaya's put together a horrible bench with no depth, and he can't even use the players he does have correctly. I'm willing to bet anything that we'll see Jose Valentin this season. This team is a joke, a fucking anachronism.

Game #44: Milledge Day & Lineup Notes

2008-05-21T14:54:00.011-06:00

The 44th game of the year, is, of course, dedicated to Lastings Milledge. Lineup via Delcos:

SS Jose Reyes
RF Endy Chavez
3B David Wright
CF Carlos Beltran
LF Moises Alou
1B Carlos Delgado
C Brian Schneider
2B Luis Castillo
P Mike Pelfrey

Well Luis and his power bat (I called that HR, believe it or not) aren't hitting second anymore; instead an even worse hitter in Endy Chavez. Like a commenter here said, managers have this fantastic notion of the leadoff hitter getting on base, the #2 guy moving him along, and the #3 or #4 guy driving him home. Of course, it almost never works out that way and this way of thinking leads to mediocre #2 hitters. Why do I talk about this so much? Because it's easy, and the thinking behind the error is seriously flawed.

The Mets aren't the only team that puts out a suboptimal lineup. Dusty Baker uses Cory Patterson and his career .297 OBP in the leadoff spot because he's fast. Adam Dunn and his career .380 OBP are usually fifth. I mean, look at that batting average! And all those strikeouts!

Meanwhile, the Cubs have a ton of guys OBPing over .400 (guess how many the Mets have), but Alfonso Soriano and his .315 OBP (career .327) are leading off. That's terrible. I heard Joe Morgan say that the Cubs were considering moving him, but then he started hitting lots of home runs, so that's out. What? Isn't that the reason to move him? His ten homers would have yielded more than 26 home runs if he was hitting in front of Soto (.418), DeRosa (.410), Ramirez (.410), Theriot (.401), Fukudome (.412) and/or Cedeno (.410). I'm not even kidding. 5 of 8 of the Cubs' regulars are getting on base more than 40% of the time this year, yet they use Soriano in the leadoff spot. And he's got power!

I like Endy. He had The Catch, but he also had the walk-off bunt. Frankly, Willie Randolph doesn't use him enough. He doesn't use his bench enough in general. But seriously, he's not a very good player.

Willie Watch: New York

2008-05-19T14:49:00.004-06:00

Post:

"That's what bench coaches do," Randolph said. "The ump told me to shut up, and he was looking to bait someone. I wasn't going to argue with him, but Jerry took the bait. Thanks, Jerry."

This is some LOLtastic doublespeak here from Randolph. Since when is it the role of the bench coach to get ejected? Since never. Randolph somehow manages to praise Jerry Manuel for 'doing his job' (the time-honored bench coach ejection) while disparaging him for being a hothead and 'taking the bait.' What was the bait, exactly? Was it blowing a call? Whatever. I am not of the opinion that Randolph necessarily should have gotten ejected, but I definitely wanted to see it and thought it was coming. It is highly amusing that Randolph, recently and widely criticized for being too docile, failed to get ejected while his bench coach did the job. The ump told me to shut up. What do you want me to do?

While most Mets fans whom I would consider of like mind in terms of statistical analysis would argue that manager ejections have no correlation with wins, I still cling to the notion that umpires rule against the Mets with no trepidation and with increasing frequency simply because they have no fear of retribution from the New York dugout. Prove me wrong.

Same paper, different quote:

"The guy told me to shut up and Jerry took exception to that and so did I," Randolph said. "[DavidSon] was looking to bait someone. I wasn't going to argue with him, but Jerry took the bait."

The "what do you want me to do?" is unfair.

Subway Series Post

2008-05-16T16:44:00.011-06:00

This is a place where I will put any thoughts I feel like sharing during the Subway Series this weekend, if I'm around. The Mets aren't fun to watch right now and there's this big party that lasts for days...

I kind of like it when Billy Wagner says the things he does, because everything else said by Met players, coaches and officials is just PR, PR, PR. And PR is mostly bullshit. Sell the product, sign on the line that is dotted, etc.

Is there some unwritten managerial rule that the #2 hitter has to be crappy? Joe Torre recently hit Andruw Jones second because he's been terrible. Willie Randolph reserves the spot for weak-hitting second basemen. Wait a minute, Marlon Anderson is the DH? Marlon Anderson of the career 85+ OPS? He's the best bench hitter we have? I really want to see Valentino Pascucci on the roster now. That's just silly. The Mets' payroll is like $140 million and we can't get someone better than an old second baseman to DH? What are we, the Mariners? That's just inexcusable. Fire Willie and Omar. I hear Paul DePodesta has some free time on his hands.

Willie: It's unfortunate that people sit back who really don't know the game or understand what we're dealing with calling for people's livelihood. I agree; it is unfortunate. But why do you have to accuse such people of not knowing the game? Is there a correlation? Or is the game of which you are speaking not baseball?

"This is all about winning games. If we were winning more games, then all this crap wouldn't be going on," Randolph said.

Right, but if you were not the manager, the team might be winning some more games. If the team were winning more games, you might be a better manager. Wait... if you were a better manager, the team would win more games. Hmm... I don't want to get into tautologies here. It's really quite simple.

I'm on a roll here. Popper:

About the only thing that sounded unscripted was Willie Randolph, who admitted, "My head is on the chopping block." Minaya then dismissed that notion.

That can only mean the axe is getting closer.

I guess I didn't really get to updating this. One thought from Sunday's game. Joe Morgan's weird thing about the word 'accountability.' He explained it, and then he interrupted Peter Gammons to say it again. His point: Players aren't 'accountable' to the media, they are 'accountable' to each other on the field with their play. Fine, but the word 'account' usually signifies a written or spoken description, argument, or explanation. I'm sure Joe didn't mean it in the monetary sense. So basically he was just weirdly redefining a word because in his head, it means something different than it actually means. What a weird, weird guy.

The games themselves were great. Plenty of offense and good pitching (despite Santana's worrisome home run-inducing habits). The Mets had timely hitting and big hitting and huge innings where they capitalized on opponent errors. Jose Reyes hitting two home runs is nice, Marlon Anderson hitting second and grounding out weakly over and over again is sad. There were no bullpen blowups at all, as Joe Smith was used wisely and effectively against a right-hander to spell Oliver Perez's fantastic outing, and Scott Schoeneweis was used properly: in an 11-2 game. With Jorge Sosa's banishment, maybe the Mets asked Ben Baumer what he thought and he gave the team a treatise on defense-independent pitching statistics and the varied strengths and weaknesses of the Mets pitchers. That would be nice.

Ranking the GMs, #29: Ed Wade

2008-05-14T12:31:00.007-06:00

Ed Wade's an old school baseball guy. He began his career in public relations in 1977 and worked in various capacities around the game before becoming the general manager of the Phillies in 1998. Philadelphia fired him in 2005, and in late 2007 he became the new GM of the Houston Astros. Between the time he worked in public relations and the time he began working for the Phillies, Wade worked for Tal Smith Enterprises, a consulting firm that advises major league teams on arbitration cases. His career as a general manager reflects this past. Not incidentally, Tal Smith, Wade's former employer, is the current president of the Houston Astros, and as the team's web site reports, "all signs are pointing to... Tal Smith taking on a more proactive role." Is Wade just a figurehead?

Does Tal Smith Enterprises really evaluate the worth of baseball players? Because it doesn't seem like Smith or Wade have a solid grasp of that area. Certainly they lag behind the game's greater minds. It does make sense, though, that the team's expertise would be arbitration, which is such a business-minded and unnatural process of evaluation, kind of like the Elias Sports Bureau's rankings and Type A/B classifications that are released each year. Tal Smith Enterprises is probably good at saving major league teams money because they are so familiar with the way arbitration cases are decided, but that process has little to do with the actual value of a player on the field, even if it is a little related.

Similarly, public relations has little concern with actual meaningful evaluation and decisions. It is concerned with lying, primarily. Putting a good face on a bad situation, making the most of a good situation, and generally protecting an organization's image are the jobs of a public relations director. But these are not the most important tasks of a general manager.

Certainly both PR and fighting arbitration cases are processes that a general manager must be involved in, but usually he will delegate these tasks. The primary job of a GM is player evaluation and assigning appropriate value. He must see the current situation of a team not as a PR director sees it, with a shiny, ticket-selling sheen, but as it truly is. He must assess the strength of the minor league system and the likely paths of its prospects. He must be able to grade and estimate the future performance and contract value of every player in baseball. And he must put this all together into a plan for his team. It's a hard job. Ed Wade isn't the best at it.

In the amateur draft, Wade has had success. He drafted Brett Meyers (99), Chase Utley (00), Taylor Buchholz (00), Cole Hamels (02) and Kyle Kendrick (03).

However, in trades Wade has often been dangerous and uncreative, but worst of all he's been unclear about the current goals of the team. In late '99 he dealt 22 year-old pitching prospect Adam Eaton along with two others to the Padres for the 32-year old Andy Ashby. Not a terrible deal if you're trying to compete in the next couple years, but the Phillies had just gone 77-85 and didn't look strong. And Andy Ashby wasn't the missing piece. He didn't last the year and was traded in July to the Braves for Bruce Chen. But that, really, was nothing.

Later that month Wade, having decided that the team wasn't going anywhere, dealt a far-from-done Curt Schilling to the Diamondbacks for Omar Daal, Travis Lee, Vicente Padilla and Nelson Figueroa. Perhaps it was a good gamble; after all, Schilling was already 33 and Lee and Padilla at least were good bets to become stars. They didn't.

That winter, after a 65-97 campaign, Wade went about signing relief pitchers, as is his wont. He picked up Rheal Cormier (3 years, $8.75 million), Jose Mesa (2 years, $6.8 million), and Ricky Bottalico. Did he think his team's poor performance was the result of a shoddy bullpen? Fix that and fix the rest? Surely the organization had some AAA stopgaps to use while it repaired itself in other, more pressing places.

But the team was a lot better in 2001. Jimmy Rollins joined the team, Pat Burrell had his first full year, Marlon Anderson had his best year as a regular second baseman, and Travis Lee was serviceable. Robert Person, who had been pilfered from the Blue Jays, was the team's best starter. The bullpen was actually quite good. Wade improved it further by trading Paul Byrd to the Royals for Jose Santiago (probably not the best move; Byrd went on to have more good times) and dealing Bruce Chen to the Mets for Turk Wendell and Dennis Cook. Really, 2001 was a good year for Wade and the Phillies. But perhaps if he had sought improvement at catcher (Johnny Estrada: .273 OBP), center field (Doug Glanville: .285 OBP) or first base (Travis Lee: 101 OPS+ for a first baseman), instead of obsessively improving the bullpen, the Phillies might have surpassed the two games they fell short of Atlanta that year.

The Phillies continued in this manner for the rest of Wade's tenure, winning between 80 and 88 games and finishing either second or third in the division. With a little more clarity and foresight, Wade could have brought home a division title. But he always seemed to be doing things like:

July 2002: Trades Scott Rolen to Cardinals for Placido Polanco, Mike Timlin and Bud Smith. Continued greatness for Rolen. Timlin finishes year with Phillies, who finish under .500 with the inferior Polanco at third and Marlon Anderson being crappy at second base.

August 2002: Signs 30-year old catcher Mike Lieberthal to silly four-year extension.

December 2002: Signs Jim Thome to 6 year, $ 85 million deal. With Howard ready in 2004, new GM Pat Gillick is forced to trade Thome and pay half his remaining salary. Signs mediocre 3B David Bell to silly 4-year contract. Can't help himself, gives 41-year old reliever Dan Plesac $2 million.

November/December 2003: Trades lots for Billy Wagner, trades Carlos Silva and Nick Punto for Eric Milton. Signs (you guessed it!) relief pitchers Tim Worrell and Roberto Hernandez.

2004: More relievers. He loves relievers. Drafts Shane Victorino in the Rule 5. Re-signs an unheralded Placido Polanco.

Rejoining Tal Smith in Houston, Wade has continued his confusing ways. The Astros finished fourth in 2007 with a 73-89 record and little hope for the future, but Wade set out to build a contender anyway. It seemed he was in rebuilding mode when he traded Brad Lidge to the Phillies for Michael Bourn, Michael Costanzo and Geoff Geary. But why acquire the mediocre middle reliever Geary (except for the reason that Wade loves mediocre middle relievers)? Wade also traded outfielder Josh Anderson to the Braves for reliever Oscar Villareal and signed him to a two-year contract.

It became clear that Wade wasn't rebuilding when he traded a pile of prospects to the Orioles for Miguel Tejada. Tejada, then thought to be 32, is a good offensive player but at this point a little out of his element defensively at shortstop. For this, the Astros gave up a ton of prospects. In addition, they non-tendered their superb defensive shortstop, Adam Everett. What was the point of doing this? Despite their current 22-18 record, the Astros are not going to contend this year. Now Ed Wade has made it harder for the organization to contend in the years to come.

Two days later he acquired Arizona's closer Jose Valverde for Chris Burke, Juan Gutierrez and Chad Qualls. Basically, Wade gave up a high-upside pitcher (Gutierrez) and an equivalent pitcher (Qualls) for the artificial title of closer and shiny save totals (Valverde).

Wade wasn't done. He gave Kaz Matsui a three-year, $16.5 million contract. Matsui's production (.272/.326/.386) can be equaled almost anywhere. This deal is reminiscent of David Bell's absurd contract and surpassed only by Omar Minaya's gift of 4 years and $24 million to the anemic Luis Castillo. Comically, Wade also gave one year and a million dollars to Darin Erstad, and, as usual, brought in a ton of relievers.

Whatever the Astros think they're doing, it's stupid. They can't compete this year, but they're trying to do just that, mortgaging their future in the process. Ed Wade's just the man for the job: an old school guy with a soft spot for relief pitchers. As a PR man who is knowledgeable enough to be able to piece together a roster but always does it clumsily, he's one of the last of his kind in the GM business.
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PLEASE VOTE in the poll in the right sidebar. Your vote will "help decide" the focus of the next piece in this series.

Waiting

2008-05-09T15:19:00.004-06:00

This is what's exciting to me: waiting to see what the Mets will do when they activate Matt Wise from the Disabled List. Will they designate Jorge Sosa for assignment? Or will they demote Joe Smith or some other player who has options but is better than Sosa? It may seem minor, of course, but with every little move like this the Mets have a chance to start down the right path again. Teams everywhere have been cutting veterans this year, and lots of veterans who would in the past have found places on major league rosters have been unable to land a job. Matt Morris, Jacque Jones and Jim Edmonds are a few such established veterans who have been simply released, allowing any team to acquire them. There are many others this year, many more than in years past. When Edmonds was released, Tim Dierkes of MLB Trade Rumors remarked, "Cutting veteran dead weight seems in vogue this year." The Mets should do this with Sosa. Adam Rubin agrees:

While [Joe] Smith can be optioned to the minors without being exposed to waivers, Sosa can declare himself a free agent and still collect his salary if the Mets try to demote him. But Smith has far superior numbers: a 3.07 ERA and 12 of 13 inherited runners stranded - and performance presumably should bear more weight than major-league service time.

Exactly. I feel beat writers are wising up as well. I don't remember hearing such weighty considerations of minor roster moves from Rubin in the past, but I'm glad to have him on board.

Minaya botched the handling of Sosa's contract this winter with another example of overzealous spending on veterans, which is why the Mets face a difficult decision now about how to create room for Matt Wise...

In the I-told-you-so of the week, I'd like to point out this post from February, in which I wrote:

But Jorge Sosa is eminently replaceable, if not by Mike Pelfrey then by countless other pitchers with similar skills who can be signed to minor league contracts. Official BT opinion: they should have non-tendered his ass.

I don't recall too many others being criticial of the contract.

In other news, the Willie Watch is on in Chez Wilpon, according to "a person familiar with the Mets' thinking, who requested anonymity because he was relaying details of private conversations" quoted by Dan Graziano of the New Jersey Star-Ledger. He writes, "...if the team hasn't found a way to assert itself in the division by June, the Wilpons will look seriously at whether a change is necessary in the manager's office."

That anonymous source was quick to add that Randolph will probably not be fired unless the team seriously falters.

Basically, everything is the same.

Update: Oh for the love of all that is good and holy! Just bat Ryan Church second already! I promise you Willie, if you never hit Castillo second again, I will never say another bad word about you for as long as I live. I'm a man of my word, I think.

Let's Do This Again

2008-05-07T13:37:00.004-06:00

Mets anticipating Castillo surge

And I'm anticipating banging my head against the wall. It's gonna be great.

Luis Castillo entered this season having amassed 1,720 at-bats in the second spot of the lineup. Ryan Church entered the year having hit there only 40 times. And logic made a clear case for who the more appropriate second hitter might be.

Ah, the logical principle of modus repititum. The more one does something, the more correct it is.

Let's get this out of the way real quick. I am a little too hard on Castillo. OK, I'm very hard on him. He can draw a walk. But he's a below-average career hitter at .293/.368/.356. Sure, that batting average looks nice. But 1) batting average is stupid and not very interesting and 2) most of that average is the result of Castillo's quickly diminishing speed. His pathetic slugging percentage means that when Reyes reaches base in front of him or the #8 hitter is still standing at first, the likelihood of Castillo bringing the runner home is almost zero. That is just unacceptable from a #2 hitter.

I don't want my #2 guy "doing the little things" and "moving the runner along." I want him "getting on base," "hitting home runs" and "extra-base hits." Castillo's ability to make contact is simply overrated. Honestly it doesn't matter whether a guy strikes out or grounds out weakly to third, except that in the latter case he can cause more than one out thereby. Luis has been doing plenty of that, too; his speed just isn't there anymore. Entering the fifth of 48 months of steady decline. Logic. Or something.

Yet logic, in this game, has a funny way of being wrong.

Especially when the "logic" is neither logic nor logical.

So it is with the Mets, who have seen Castillo fizzle and Church flourish in the second spot of the lineup. Manager Willie Randolph insisted last week that the switch would be temporary, and that he considered Castillo one of the most valuable second hitters in the game. But as long as Castillo continues to struggle, and as long as Church continues to lead the team in hitting, logic -- pesky logic -- makes the current arrangement the more productive one.

That's not apt to change when the Mets play their third and final game at Dodger Stadium on Wednesday afternoon, though the team can only hope that Castillo's struggles will. Entering Tuesday night in an 0-for-18 slump, Castillo reached base in each of his first three at-bats of the game, which could help spark something of a resurgence.

Too late. Willie is a step ahead of you, and the game that is being played right now features Castillo hitting second, where he, uh, belongs.

"Just like the rest of the guys, Luis is a guy who's proven in the past that he can hit Major League pitching," Randolph said. "He'll get going again, and I'm not concerned."

Yes, Willie. That's good. Each of the position players on your team is by definition capable of hitting major league pitching. It's too bad, however, that we don't have objective measures of comparison for offensive production. If we did, we could make statements like "Ryan Church is a better hitter than Luis Castillo." Since we do not have any such objective measures, we'll just have to assume that Castillo, who has often hit second in lineups, is the better hitter and would thus provide more production at the top of the lineup where he would get more and better plate appearances than Ryan Church. It's only logical.

For proof, Randolph referenced last September, when Castillo rapped out 13 hits over the season's final seven games, a stretch that coincided with his 12-game hitting streak.

"I'm feeling," Randolph said, "like he's going to do that again."

"I'm feeling," Peterson said, "like my favorite team's manager doesn't understand how much luck factors into hitting streaks and the nature of balls hit into play in general; or even the varying offensive values of batted balls which result in hits, as not expressed in batting average. No reason. Just a gut thing." The snarky blogger snuffed his cigarette in an old ceramic flower pot and decended the stairs once again to his basement lair. Upstairs, his mother prepared dinner.

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This is Blastings! Thrilledge's 200th post! Thank you, readers, for everything.

Whence Sosa?

2008-05-05T12:00:00.004-06:00

I cringed last night when Willie Randolph replaced Pedro Feliciano with Jorge Sosa with one out and a runner on first with the game tied in the eighth inning. Sosa is the worst reliever on the Mets, but he has more innings than any other bullpen arm.

I find it hard to believe the Mets would DFA Sosa when Matt Wise returns from the DL. The way they use Sosa indicates that they think he is superlatively valuable. More likely, the superior Joe Smith will be optioned to AAA because the Mets can do this without losing him. But Sosa would have to clear waivers, and the Mets don't want to risk that.

But look at these numbers:

Career K/9, BB/9, SO/9, AVG/OBP/SLG vs. RHB, AVG/OBP/SLG vs. LHB
Sosa: 5.6, 4.1, 1.3, .232/.297/.375, .298/.386/.511
Wise: 6.9, 3.0, 1.1, .262/.326/.437, .226/.289/.349
Smith: 8.6, 4.0, 0.5, .240/.333/.316, .328/.435/.446

Randolph has often justified his liberal use of Sosa by proclaiming him durable and able to pitch many innings. However, as these numbers show, both Sosa and Smith are basically ROOGYs, exhibiting extreme platoon splits. Sosa and Smith both should not face any average-to-good left-handed batters, which they are bound to face in most lineups if they pitch more than one inning. With Sosa, left-handers have put up a superstar line off him over a whopping 1490 plate appearances. At least with Joe Smith it's over an insignificant 71 appearances. Smith could learn a better approach against left-handers, but Sosa has no chance of that. On the whole, Sosa is a pitcher who gives up a lot of extra base-hits, even vs. right-handers, compared to Smith. There's no question that Smith is the better pitcher.

On the other hand, Matt Wise exhibits a significant reverse platoon split and is thus a better option for pitching multiple innings in relief. The odd man out is clearly Sosa. Let's see if the Mets make a smart baseball decision or once again unreasonably opt for the veteran name.

Fire Willie

2008-05-02T12:40:00.002-06:00

All the best people are saying it.

Marchman says it.

Faith and Fear is saying it.

When have I not said it?

The Mets made a business decision to hire Willie Randolph and not Manny Acta as their manager, preferring a more well-known name to the obviously superior baseball mind.

I don't think they need to be told how wrong they were to do that. The only things stopping the Mets from firing Willie Randolph now are cowardice, precedent, and lack of a viable replacement. Cowardice because they know there will be a media backlash. After all, Randolph is a Yankee. How could he not bring his Yankee championship-winning ways with him to the Mets? This thought repulses me, but I'm convinced that's how the mainstream writers think of him. Precedent, because there were ample opportunities to fire Randolph in the past-- none greater than at the conclusion of the Mets' horrible 2007 collapse-- but they didn't fire him then, so why now?

And who is there to replace him? Tactics aside, I recommend a manager who is the opposite of Randolph emotionally. One who will scream and shout and fire up his players. One who will not throw his young players under the bus at every opportunity, but rather protect them and speak glowingly of them to the media, while coaching or admonishing them as necessary in private.

It's sad. I don't want to be an example of those bloggers whose primary tone is vitriol, whose only function is to deride and destroy. There is a lot to say for the human aspect of the game, and writers who interact with players, managers, team officials, executives and other members of the media on a human level are going to be more respectful of those people as people, not just names or commodities.

Willie Randolph is a man. He has a job. We are saying that he is not good at his job, that he should be fired. Even though that's true, we should say it with hearts full of sorrow, not glee or derision. Sorry, Willie. You've got to go.

Pascucci!

2008-05-01T10:04:00.002-06:00

The Mets have signed Valentino Pascucci! It's a move so minor that no one is mentioning it anywhere! He's a career minor-leaguer! Why am I screaming!?

Matt Cerrone writes:

…looks like some one has been taking the advice of SNY’s Ted Berg, who is the only person i had ever heard mention this man’s name prior to today…

Evidently Matt is not a reader of Blastings! Thrilledge. Last year when the Mets signed Jeff Conine, I wrote:

What about any number of players who, while having no name recognition, would perform just as well, if not better, than Conine, while also being a lot more flexible defensively? Fernando Tatis and Chip Ambres are two guys in AAA who hit left-handers well, and Tatis is even a veteran.

Really need a right-handed first baseman? Why not Valentino Pascucci, mashing it in the Marlins' organization? Or any number of other guys who would love to get into a pennant race?

Of course, that was back when most of the feedback I got here was spam.

I've seen a lot of Pascucci in Albuquerque (I live in New Mexico), but can't tell you much more than the stats. He's got a lot of power, and lot of holes in his swing. A perfect platoon partner, but no Jack Cust. This is a smart move.

Ranking the GMs, #30: Brian Sabean

2008-04-29T17:00:00.004-06:00

Ranking every single general manager in baseball is an act so callous only a cranky blogger like myself could do it. Those more qualified bloggers, like Tom Tango or David Pinto, are far too professional to undertake such a petty and useless exercise. If Tango were to do it, perhaps he would create a metric for measuring every trade, draft pick and free agent signing relative to free agent value, thereby arriving at a cumulative total of value won or lost. Such a metric would have its limitations, but would provide a base of objective value upon which to pile the subjective invective of the critic.

No such statistical work here; this is not a sabermetrics blog any more than it is a blog about Lastings Milledge. No, do not expect comprehensive analysis of every move each GM has made, or even most of the moves he has made. Rather, I will attempt to assess the general strategy and execution of each GM, as best as I understand them. Will the list be passed around front offices? Will the world carefully dissect my rankings? Will heads roll? Of course not. But I can tell you one thing: this list is better than the one in Forbes, where Brian Sabean is ranked fourth.

I first announced my plan to rank every GM in baseball over two weeks ago. Since then, one GM (Wayne Krivsky) has already been replaced (with Walt Jocketty), Bucs Dugout started a bunch of polls on the subject, and Jon Heyman asked, 'which baseball GMs are just pretenders'? But the series of posts to come here will not only criticize the bad ones; it will praise the good guys too.

Brian Sabean is not a good general manager, no matter what anyone says. Still, he was once considered a top GM, responsible for assembling Giants teams that finished either first or second in the division from his first year, 1997, to 2004-- a span of eight years. That is no small achievement. In 1996 the team went 68-94, but in '97 they won 90 games. How did he do it?

First, he replaced 1B Mark Carreon and his inadequate .317 OBP with JT Snow, acquired for pennies on the dollar from the Angels. Snow went on to have his best year ever in '97 and a long and respectable career for the Giants. Then he traded star third baseman Matt Williams to the Indians for cheap, useful young players Julian Tavarez, Jose Vizcaino and Jeff Kent. The Giants had young Bill Mueller waiting to take over at third, and Vizcaino and Kent represented solid upgrades over the current options at their positions, with the added bonus of significant upside. Kent quickly realized his potential and become a perennial MVP candidate, winning the award in 2000.

But how much credit can one give to an executive who over his 11-year reign has done nothing to ensure long-term competitiveness for his team? Sabean is a very unique general manager in that his entire job has been to assemble role players around a guy who is quite possibly the best baseball player ever: Barry Bonds. That Barry Bonds was so astoundingly good that he could carry a roster of aging scrubs long past their primes, is a testament to Bonds' supreme ability and unnatural career path, not Sabean's skill as a general manager. How could he have known that Bonds, who was already turning 32 in Sabean's first year as general manager, would sustain an amazing level of production through age 35, and then instead of slowly declining, become a significantly better player than he had ever been for four more years, through age 39? Sabean could not have anticipated this; no one could. He was just lucky that Bonds' insane career path masked a continually flawed and uninspired player acquisition and roster construction strategy. It is no accident that when Bonds lost most of 2005 to injury, the Giants finished under .500 for the first time since 1996.

Sabean made bad free agent signings, bad trades, and bad decisions all around. Of course, in eleven years that's bound to happen, but Sabean has had more than his share. Everyone knows about the trade of Francisco Liriano, Boof Bonser and Joe Nathan for average catcher A.J. Pierzynski. Otherwise Sabean has not been burned terribly by the prospects he likes to deal for veterans. He prefers to pay free agent value or higher for his old players. I'm too lazy to count how many 32-to-36 year olds on the verge of breakdown Sabean has signed to long term deals, but he has taken it to a new level in the last few years. The team is now a catalogue of ancient players and bad contracts: 36-year old former infielder Rich Aurilia plays first base. For some reason 40-year old Omar Vizquel was given a one year extension last year despite the team's obvious non-competitiveness. Equally mystifying is the deal given to Aaron Rowand, a good enough player but with no purpose on the Giants, who also have long-term deals with unremarkable 30-something Randy Winn and equally boring 36-year old Dave Roberts, both signed through 2009. Why?

Sabean is stuck in Bonds mode, where he could afford to give family-friendly deals to guys like Winn and Roberts, 3rd-to-4th outfielder types with little power and not enough plate discipline to compensate for it. In the 2006/07 offseason the end of the Giants' competitive streak had come and the Bonds era was almost over, but Sabean proceeded to hand out contracts to Bengie Molina, Aurilia, Roberts, Ray Durham, Ryan Klesko, Steve Kline and Pedro Feliz, all thirty-somethings who were not going to help the team be competitive in 2007. Sabean also brought back Bonds, knowing only one way to win: just put a bunch of known quantities out there with Barry Bonds. Unfortunately, it was much too late for that.

The biggest offense of that offseason, however, will be felt for many years to come. That was the signing of Barry Zito to a seven-year, $126 million contract, the most money ever given to a pitcher at that time. Sabean wasn't the only one vying for Zito's services, but he was clearly the most enthusiastic. The nature of bidding wars is that the team that wins often overpays; we call this the winner's curse. However, when a team (like the Mets trading for Santana) benefits more than the other bidders because of a unique situation such as being on the edge of contention, they are justified in overpaying. This was not the case with the Giants and Zito, nor was it the case with every other veteran they resigned that offseason.

As you're probably aware, Zito was no ace last year and is terrible this year. He has already been moved to the bullpen. Lookout Landing recently remarked, "Barry Zito's contract is the worst contract ever signed in baseball history." That's bad.

Today's Giants are laughably bad, almost guaranteed to be the worst team in baseball despite a roster full of old players and two great young pitchers in Tim Lincecum and Matt Cain. It's fine to have a bad team; the Devil Rays were miserable for a few years while Andrew Friedman fixed the organization; the same cannot be said for the Giants. Last year's free agent signings and this year's signing of Aaron Rowand to a long-term deal mean that Brian Sabean and the Giants either don't realize that they need to rebuild and ship out all their veterans or they don't care and just want to pretend that they are competing so they can make a little bit more money. That's lazy and irresponsible.

In a predictable turn, the Giants' old and feeble players cannot play on the field consistently, so this year they have been forced to play minor leaguers who are far too young for the major leagues. Normally it would be wise for the Giants to go young and strengthen the organization over the next few years by obtaining prospects in return for their established veterans, but by using players who are far too young for the major leagues they are stunting the development of those players and further compromising the organization's future. When they hold onto every one of their veteran players for too long it's funny, but when they embarrass their young players and themselves by promoting them well before their time, it's almost criminal. With Barry Bonds gone from San Francisco, Brian Sabean's smoke and mirrors show was destroyed, an incompetent general manager revealed. Inexplicably, last year he was able to trade Matt Morris and his entire contract to the Pirates for Rajai Davis-- not that it matters who it was; giving him away would have been a great move-- but that was more about the even greater incompetence of Dave Littlefield than the smart maneuvering of Brian Sabean.

Even though every move he makes seems to hurt the team, the Giants signed Sabean to a two-year extension in 2007. Take a long draft, San Francisco. You're the laughingstock of the league.
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PLEASE VOTE in the poll to the right. Your vote will "help decide" the focus of the next piece in this series.

Willie's Guide to the Bullpen

2008-04-23T11:51:00.010-06:00

Billy Wagner: Billy. Can't say enough about Billy. He's my closer. He comes in when we need three outs. Not four, not five, not two. He's a future Hall of Famer. Shuts the door for us when we're leading by one, two or three runs. I used to use him when the game was tied or we were behind by one or ahead by four runs, but Billy put a stop to that. Hopefully we'll play some more close games with us on top so Billy can get more than seven innings every 20 games. But sometimes that's how it is with a stopper like Billy. You save him until you really need him. It might not be today, it might not be tomorrow, it might not be until next week. But when we're up 6-4 on the Pirates in the ninth, there's only one man I want out there.

Aaron Heilman: Aaron's my guy in the eighth inning. He can be shaky at times, but he's solid out there, and I trust him. Yea, so what if he wants to be a starter? Not on our team, not on these Mets. He's too valuable in the bullpen. He just needs to get into a nice little rhythm, stay consistent and he'll be fine. Yea, the other night he caught some bad breaks and he almost got out of it, but he's fine. Don't worry about Aaron.

Jorge Sosa: Yea, Sosa, he's my workhorse. He can start for us if we need it, he can go one inning, two innings, three innings. I like to bring him in around the sixth or seventh, let him get a couple innings. He's solid against both left and right-handers, so I don't need to worry about that. He's a good setup guy, a useful guy to have out there. What's that? In 1478 plate appearances, left-handers have hit .297/.385/.509 off Sosa? Sosa turns every lefty into some combination of John Olerud, Paul Konerko and Chase Utley? I don't think so. He has a very good changeup that he uses against left-handers. Plus, he's a workhorse. I can use him every day. He can go out there every day. Why not use him every day?

Scott Schoeneweis: He's my number one lefty setup guy. The fans have been a little upset about him because he's struggled in spots, but as long as he stays confident, he's the man out there. I use him around the seventh and eighth when some lefties are coming up, but the good thing about him is that he's tough on righties too. There's a reason he's making $3.5 million a year. What? Not again! Look, baseball isn't played by computers, and I don't care that you say right-handers have hit .292/.364/.465 off Scott in 2697 plate appearances. He's my guy out there.

Pedro Feliciano: Pedro's a nice little lefty to have in the pen. You can bring him in to get a couple lefties out, maybe every once in a while get him a whole inning or two and let him face some righties if we got a big lead or we're behind by a lot. You don't want to mess with his confidence though, so right now Sosa and Schoeneweis are going to get the big spots. Nice little pitcher, though; he can be useful.

Duaner Sanchez: Duaner's been good so far. Don't want to rush things coming back from all that time off, but we'll get him an appearance here and there. I wouldn't get too excited. He's still a baby.

Matt Wise: I don't know too much about Matty, but he's a proven arm and whenever he comes back we've got a spot in the bullpen for him.

Joe Smith: Yea, Joe's been real good for us in some tough spots this year. He's still just a kid and he's got to pay his dues doing some mop-up but he's a good guy to get out there for a little change of pace against a right-hander. We'll probably send him down when Matt Wise gets back, but he's a nice kid.

Carlos Muñiz: Who?

Mets Record by #2 Hitter

2008-04-22T11:14:00.003-06:00

Church: 5-0
Pagan: 3-0
Castillo: 2-8

It's no secret that Castillo can't really hit. He has no place hitting second. I fought all last year about Lo Duca, only to have him replaced with someone with even less power. I don't really want to talk about it anymore; I just want it to end.

Here's another fun statistic: Castillo has 17 career sacrifice flies in 6299 plate appearances. That's one every 370.5 plate appearances, or less than two per season. Is this because he can't hit the ball deep enough in the outfield? Or has he squeeze bunted a lot over his career? (The other day, Castillo was at the plate with one out and Pagan at third. Pagan ran home as the pitcher delivered, but Castillo had missed the sign and was swinging away. One would think that a player of his type would be familiar with such a play.) Or is it because he has been a leadoff hitter? Ah, if only someone had the time to rank players by career sac-fly rate normalized by team, era and batting order.

Willie Watch: MetsBlog Poll Disappears

2008-04-16T11:41:00.003-06:00

Now that the Willie Randolph Approval Rating on MetsBlog has dipped below 50%, it has been removed from the front of the site. It had been appearing along with the "Fan Confidence in the Overall Direction of Team" rating, but since the latest poll, where Willie received a positive vote of 41%, it has been removed.

Is it possible that MetsBlog, which is owned by SNY, which is partially owned by the Mets, was ordered to make the poll less prominent? It is no secret that with such things opinions are quite fluid, and if opinion switches one way it can keep going that way. No need to encourage others.

In other Willie News, he remarked after Pelfrey's awesome performance last night:

Obviously, Pelfrey was outstanding. The kid threw the heck out of the ball tonight. He used everything he had…total game for him. That’s the way we want him to be…He’s growing, he’s maturing, and that’s the main thing for him. He gets better as he goes out there…Pelfrey is just learning how to pitch at this level. I mean, he’s gone through some growing pains, and he still needs to be more consistent with his location, but you can see he’s coming. He’s a kid with a good chance to be a quality major-league pitcher.

It's funny. Even in praising Pelfrey, Randolph loads his speech down with qualifiers and little jabs: He's growing, he's maturing... he's just learning how to pitch... growing pains... he still needs to be more consistent... he [has] a good chance. Seriously. That is not necessary. He needs to be more consistent? Even the best and most experienced pitchers have bad games. You're upset because Pelfrey threw a gem last night but doesn't throw a gem every time out? Sure he's learning, but there's also something called random fluctuation you should familiarize yourself with. Pelfrey has Chien-Ming Wang upside. He could be a really good pitcher, it's true. But Randolph's comments are just pointless. Whatever, I'm just nitpicking here. Cerrone continues his account:

Pelfrey was introduced to reporters while Randolph was wrapping up his comments and still sitting at the table, so Randolph smiled and said jokingly, “Oh he’s over there, and I was saying good things about it him, (sigh), never mind, never mind all that.”

Wait, so that was his example of "saying good things"? Using diminutive terms, calling him a "kid," saying that he needs to be more consistent? I guess, if that's the best he can do.

Good news on the Randolph front: yesterday Ryan Church hit second. Though he's a better option than Pagan and a much better option than Castillo, I don't expect this to last. Maybe it had to do with the left-hand pitcher, though why the left-handed Church gives more balance to the lineup than the switch-hitting Castillo, who hits better from the right side, I do not know.

Speaking of Castillo, who is disappointing everyone all of a sudden: I would like to remind everyone that I disagreed with the original trade, with the caveat that letting him go as a free agent would make it better, and I strongly opposed the signing before it even happened, calling a 4-year, $28 million deal for the old, mono-skilled Castillo my "worst case scenario." So when people write (and they will write) that nobody foresaw such a rapid decline, ignore them. Such a turn of events is sorry indeed, but far from unpredictable.

Lastings Watch: Game On

2008-04-15T12:31:00.006-06:00

Milledge: .308/.351/.442, 1 HR, 3 BB, 6 SO, 1 SB (.333 BABIP)
Church: .326/.383/.419, 1 HR, 3 BB, 8 SO, 0 SB (.382 BABIP)
Schneider: .324/.409/.324, 0 HR, 6 BB, 5 SO, 0 SB (.375 BABIP)

Amazin' Avenue interviews Nationals bloggers We've Got Heart. On Lastings Milledge:

There have been moments that I've been impressed and moments where it's clear he's learning. He will steal a base or get a hit but then get out by making a silly base running move. I can forgive these mistakes in April, but if it continues throughout the season and costs us crucial outs, it will be much harder to forgive. He's also made some errors in the field by letting a single turn into an easy double, but it was reported that he's apologized to teammates for his mistakes. I think that shows signs of his willingness to learn and desire to improve. That said, he looks like he could be everything we were promised. He's enormously talented.

MetsBlog interviews Capitol Punishment on the same topic:

I really like his approach to the game. In the small number of games I’ve seen, he’s the kind of player that’s really fun to watch: a little bit of speed, a little bit of power, and just enough flash to keep you entertained. His first game or two, it looked like he was trying to do too much, but he’s settled in nicely, and I’d still make that trade 100 times out of 100.

As far as saying all the right things, what’s been telling is how it’s the other guys around him. Dmitri Young really welcomed him, pointing out that criticism of the high five incident was done mostly by people with sticks firmly lodged up their backsides. (Seriously, it was off Armando Benitez! What Mets fan wasn’t doing that happy dance after that one?)

Milledge, in a blowout earlier this week, dogged it in the middle of the game, and stood up, on his own, and apologized to the team, even though he was far from the only one to mail it in. He’s definitely making the most of his fresh start.

I just came across this gem from Steve Popper:

While I think many of Milledge's faults were overblown, I actually liked one that I'll retell for you in the cleanest terms I can. When the Mets beat up on the Marlins in the second to last game of the season last year, some of the Marlins contended that Milledge fired them up for the season finale with his home run trot/handshakes/antics. A few of us approached Milledge after the final game, the disappointing one-sided loss, and asked him if he had fired up the Marlins. His response - which should have spoken for all the Mets' fans - was, "fuck the Marlins."

Popper bleeped it, but I am not so delicate. Thanks for the story, Steve.

So far Brian Schneider has not showed any of that great defensive skill we've heard so much about; on the contrary, he has already allowed two passed balls and is one of only four major league catchers with more than one. The Mets are also tied for third the league with six wild pitches (none on Casanova). This isn't extremely meaningful, of course; it just goes to show that Schneider hasn't exactly sparkled defensively (though a new glove might be to blame). He has been surprisingly good on offense, partly because of his plate discipline and partly because of an unsustainably high BABIP.

All three players meet on the same field tonight, with the added bonus of Paul Lo Duca, who is hitting a predictably horrible .200/.317/.286, but with no cessation of the annoying habit of speaking his mind that characterized his Mets career. We've Got Heart:

It's pretty clear that Lo Duca will probably be a waist (sic) of money. Just days after being signed, his name came out in the Mitchell Report, which would have decreased his value. His other character flaws and indiscretions aside, fans are already tired of his attitude. We're a rebuilding team, not a contending team. Having Lo Duca mouth off every night about his frustrations just doesn't help, especially when his numbers don't match his talk. Sending Flores to the minors isn't as much about him learning and playing everyday as it is about Bowden not wanting to admit he made a mistake in signing Lo Duca and Estrada. My guess is that Flores is in triple A for a month or two. Once it becomes overwhelmingly clear that Lo Duca is washed up, Flores will be back as a starter with Lo Duca or Estrada as an occasional backup. I think the Lo Duca deal was one of the worst moves the Nats made this winter.

By the way, in case you didn't know, Lo Duca and tonight's starter Odalis Perez are not the best of friends.

Willie Watch: Waiting for Gutman

2008-04-14T15:13:00.007-06:00

The MetsBlog Willie Randolph Approval Rating, about which I wrote in this seminal Mets Geek column when it stood at 89%, has hit an all-time low of 40%.

Typical Met fan despair? Or failure brought to light? Mets Today, which reminds us to "believe me when I tell you I sincerely LOVE Willie Randolph," writes:

Five days ago, Willie Randolph criticized Ollie Perez after six innings of shutout ball. Based on what happened in his latest start, I’ll go on a limb and say Willie’s tough love failed to motivate OP. Maybe he should try pumping the kid up instead of bringing him down. We’ve known all along that Ollie is something of a head case, a guy who needs confidence. Throwing him under the bus after 11 2/3 innings of shutout ball is a real head-scratcher.

Michael Salfino, who is an SNY.tv columnist and decidedly not a crank, writes:

Managers like Randolph who profess to have talking guts will never understand random variance. But a former player like Randolph should know that players need selective memories to thrive in the heat of competition that's at a level unimaginable to us fans. Focus on your successes, which in Reyes' case are considerable, and erase all failure from your brain.

If Randolph wants to find a reason for Reyes' poor second half, maybe he can look back to his very public benching for not running out a ground ball. You can make a reasonable case that triggered his slump. Just because Gary Cohen considers failing to run out grounders and popups high treason doesn't really make it a crime. There's not a player around who isn't guilty of this. Why selectively enforce it in such a public way?

Matt Cerrone, the biggest homer since Skip Carey, the official ungrammatical jock-sniffing blogger of the Mets, employee of SNY, and solid company man to the end, waxes and weaves and winds elliptically to this statement:

…i realize people get on willie, and rightfully so…i have a hard time with this, because, while i do not think he is passive, as most like to write, i do think he suffers from a bad case of tunnel vision and he is very, very trusting in his players…maybe to a fault…however, i like his style of baseball, i.e., aggressive base running, having a killer mentality and playing strong defense…my fear, though, is that, while the team may have some serious, high-priced talent, it may not be the type of talent best suited for willie’s style…and so, what we may be witnessing is a conflict of style playing out on the field, in the locker room and in the press…

That SNY employees are critical of Randolph, even though the in-game announcers are not, is interesting. Sterling Mets, LP owns about a third of SNY. Their holding in SNY is worth more than the Mets themselves.

What does all this mean? I guess Willie is losing public favor pretty fast. I honestly don't really care whether it's for a good reason or not, because there are good reasons why Randolph should never have been the manager of the Mets and it didn't take me long to realize it.

As for this booing of Mets at Shea Stadium, I don't know where I fall. I have been to one game at Shea Stadium in person in the last five years and I sat at the very top of the upper deck. I have not purchased any Mets "gear" in longer. The only money the Mets get from me is 1/30th of my $120 a year for MLB.tv, or $4, probably minus some operating costs. But I imagine that those fans who attend games regularly want to feel like they are getting their money's worth, and if they feel that the team isn't trying hard or that the wrong players are on the field or the manager is making a bad decision, they might be inclined to boo. It is easy for bloggers to take the high ground and tsk-tsk the booers, but the booers don't have blogs and thus need another way to air their frustrations. I prefer heckling and hissing, but the pedestrian catcall in vogue today is the boo, and as long as working class, piss-flavored-beer-swilling plain folk are allowed in the stadiums, they will boo players; and when those folk are loud, obnoxious New Yorkers, they are going to boo their own players too.

It's easy for me to say this stoically 2500 miles away, literally following my favorite team through the computer screen alone, not attending games, not going to Mets-related parties or blogging conventions, not seeing the Post and Newsday and whatever other papers you have in New York where they sprawl sort-of-clever sports headlines on the back pages and talking heads angrily say dumb things, and not hearing sports radio talk shows repeatedly redefining the lower limits of ignorance, so take my opinion on this matter for what it's worth.

But sometimes in sports (and in politics), the further away the viewer is, the more he sees. This is why bloggers and amateurs are often more insightful than journalists and professionals. They are far from the clichés, the clubhouse camaraderie, and the hero-worship. In this case, though, what do I know? I wouldn't boo Santana, but I'm not going to fault the guy who does. I mean, the whole stadium is full of loud, obnoxious cheers like "EVERYBODY CLAP YOUR HANDS!" and "Yankees suck," and people doing the wave and drinking eight dollar horse piss in big plastic cups. So people boo. It's not the opera, people.

About What?

2008-04-14T11:52:00.005-06:00

Hahahaha.

After the pathetic 9-7 loss to the Brewers at Shea Stadium yesterday, Carlos Delgado was asked if he was disappointed, disgusted or angry. It was a simple question after the most sloppy of games.

Delgado shot back a quizzical look and asked, "About what?"

Oh snap!

I don't know, Carlos, how about when the Brewers, after fighting back for the lead Sunday afternoon, tried to give it back by bringing Guillermo Mota to the mound, up by only two. You guys got first and third and nobody out, of course, since Mota is one of the suckiest sucks to ever suck while at the same time possessing a blistering fastball and devastating changeup. Then Luis Castillo, the Juan Pierre Lite who at this point is basically just hoping to walk because he can't hit and can't run, hit a grounder to first that Prince Fielder took to the bag before firing home to nab Brady Clark, prized more for his right-handed batting style than his base-running ability. After that setback the Mets still loaded the bases for you, Mr. Delgado, and you popped that shit up to give your team nothing. Four baserunners in the inning, zero runs.

Kind of sucks, right?

---------------------------

I'm going to start a long and difficult series of posts called "Ranking the GMs" or something like that. I'm going to go from #30 to #1. Please vote in the poll for the GM you think is the worst in baseball. Your vote will "help decide" my ranking.

Edit: Also, if you vote "Other," it would be great if you would indicate your choice and reasoning in the comments.

Lastings Watch

2008-04-10T11:16:00.003-06:00

Lastings Milledge has one walk in 41 plate appearances, not an encouraging sign of improvement for the young outfielder who last year swung at more outside balls than he took, according to the Bill James Gold Mine. He doesn't whiff at the inside ball, but pitchers aren't going to throw it to him as long as he's such a fish on the other side of the plate.

Lastings really needs to improve in this area. If he doesn't, he could end up as a merely average-to-mediocre center fielder, a Preston Wilson type at best. Wilson had his value, but it wasn't quite Rondell White or Carlos Beltran, let alone Gary Sheffield.

As you can see by Lastings' pitch plot card, opposing pitchers are generally pounding the outside of his zone with sliders, curves and changeups, while whiffing him primarily on sliders away and fastballs up. Lastings has only swung and missed at two inside pitches, a curveball and a sinker; but has swung and missed at about ten outside sliders and a couple curveballs away. Pitchers have thrown him less than 30% fastballs, which is well below the league average of ~46%. He gets sliders more than 20% of the time (league average: ~16%), and almost 27% of the time against right-handers. In fact-- get this-- he has yet to record a single hit on a slider, despite seeing 64 of them to date. He has also seen 29 curveballs, resulting in... zero hits. He has seen 43 cutters, resulting in... zero hits. That's 136 sliders, curves and cutters that Lastings has been unable to put in play for a hit. All of his hits are off fastballs, sinkers and changeups. If I were throwing to him, I would give him as many breaking-balls as possible.

Of course, this is the kind of thing that young major league hitters need to work on and improve while they are still 22 or 23; they just need to have big league at-bats. There's no guarantee that Milledge will get better. Even if he turns out to be only average defensively as well, that's still quite valuable. But if there's no improvement at all in this area, the Mets will not have lost as much as we thought. They will still have lost-- there's almost no way to win that one-- but not terribly.

I still vote for the superstar projection.

Willie Watch

2008-04-09T11:54:00.002-06:00

It won't happen for a month or so, but Willie Randolph is going to get fired. I honestly don't know whether this is a good thing or not, because I don't know who would replace him, and if it's Jerry Manuel or some other member of the Mets' current coaching staff, it probably won't make a lick of difference.

But if there's one thing that's good about MetsBlog, it's measuring the feeling of the mainstream fans. I imagine that the audience here (about 100 people a day, probably the same 100) is quite different from the MetsBlog populace (about 70,000 a day). No matter how right we are, what they think is way, way more important. And the most distilled form of their opinions is to be found in the polls. So, yes, it is important that Willie's approval rating fell from 81 to 56 percent in just one week. That 70,000 surely includes employees of Sterling Mets, LP.

And now, the usually positive and upbeat proprietor of that site has written an editorial proclaiming that "Willie's message must change." It is worth reading first for the novelty of the criticism and second for the salience of its points, if not for the shoddy grammar and hackneyed style that is typical of that author and his site:

…what’s more, i had hoped to see this team play out of the gate as though they had no choice but to redeem themselves for what happened last year…because, you know what, they have no choice…they need redemption, otherwise a whole lot of people will be looking for new jobs next season…i hoped that the Mets would remember the Collapse, not brush it off, using it is motivation to start hot, emotionally and in the standings, to send a message to us, the Braves, Phillies, etc, that this year will be different…

Indeed. How long will Randolph preach "a nice little rhythm" and defensively shoot down any criticism made by writers and fans, eschewing all wisdom in favor of the wisdom of his gut, which is slow and cantankerous and altogether wrong?

How can he fail to argue and spit and scream or even have a discussion with the umpires when Chase Utley leans into multiple pitches with no retribution, no hard fastballs in the back, nothing but three free trips to first base?

How long will the Mets allow this manager to perpetrate this message to his players: "we are here to earn paychecks, nothing more," a message that finds its way out on the field, into the stadium and the papers, upsetting our very notions of glory as sports fans?

Sit down, Lastings! No celebrations, José! We're not devastated. We're fine. You're the ones who are devastated. You fans, you boors in the seats. Get a job, loser.

How long? About a month, I think.

Game 6 Postmortem

2008-04-08T15:07:00.005-06:00

This guy here on the left did not appear in the game. Willie's got a Gotay for him. He's not his guy.

When the Mets trailed 3-2 thanks to Show, So-So and Carlo, it was finally safe to bring in Strong Sad. And down by three, well, the game's out of reach and you might as well bring in the kid just out of AAA.

Brian Schneider, aka "One of the Best Defensive Catchers in the League," committed two passed balls. Chase Utley is good at leaning into pitches. MLB.tv sucks.

Don't expect any less of Schoeneweis and Sosa. To change now would be to not "trust my guys"; it would be to admit error. That is not going to happen.

Laughable, mang.

Edit: Feliciano was unavailable. Let's hope he's not punished and "suspended" for three more games full of Show-So goodness.

Progress

2008-04-07T12:22:00.001-06:00

Ah, how fickle the fans are.

Did I have anything to do with that?

The Mets Are Depressing

2008-04-06T11:59:00.004-06:00

It's Willie Randolph anointing Jorge Sosa as his "guy" while Pedro Feliciano gets garbage innings and barely plays. Nothing changes.

Every time I look at Brian Schneider I think of how Ramon Castro and Johnny Estrada would have been a fine platoon and they would not have cost...

Lastings Milledge, of whom I think every time I see Ryan Church.

It's depressing when Jose Reyes is bunting ahead of Luis Castillo, he of the career .358 slugging percentage.

You know that all season long we'll be saying

Schoeneweis for left-handers.
Sosa for right-handers.
Smith for right-handers.

Matt Wise vs. both, mop-up situations
Pedro Feliciano is better vs. lefties, but good vs. righties too
Aaron Heilman is better vs. righties, but good vs. lefties too
Billy Wagner is good vs. both

Leverage, leverage, leverage.

It's depressing because the more I learn about baseball I discover a few dispiriting things.

1) The Mets are just a flawed baseball organization.
2) Baseball is just a sport, the people who play it are jocks. Jocks mostly make up the ranks of baseball management.
3) There are much, much better run baseball organizations.

Game Notes, I Guess: Part Six Thousand

2008-04-02T16:12:00.003-06:00

This make me really mad. Our manager, in addition to being really lame strategically, is also a total pushover. Not only does he fail to come out on the field to defend his players when atrocious calls are made against them, basically granting the umpires permission to fuck the Mets over, but he also lacks authority with them as well. Case in point:

Willie considered putting Raul Casanova in tonight for Ryan Schneider to give him some rest but Schneider talked him out of it.

It wouldn't be for "rest," by the way; it would be in order to gain a platoon advantage, since Schneider, a terrible hitter all around, is even worse against lefties. This isn't unique of course. Last year Paul Lo Duca managed to convince Randolph repeatedly to let him play even though he was injured and underperforming his already meager offensive standards, while the red-hot Ramon Castro sat on the bench. It really took until the last day of the season for Willie to realize that Castro was the better player.

“Gotay really is one dimensional. Gotay doesn’t play the outfield, he doesn’t play the corners. I like Gotay a lot but he didn’t fit into this team. I think Clark right now is a better bat off the bench. Clark can get on base, he can walk, he will scrap and battle. With the left handed dominance in our line up we need a Clark in there to give us an at bat.”

I don't even know what to say about this. It's especially infuriating because roster flexibility concerns like this are completely legitimate, but this isn't really relevant to the reasons why Gotay was denied the chance of playing regularly at second base last year, even when he was consistently successful. Randolph's complaints don't sound very accurate anyway. If Damion Easley and Marlon Anderson are both considered infielder/outfielders, despite being less than average at any position, why the hell can't Ruben Gotay play third base or left field? Whatever. The point is, Randolph is a total dick who just decides he doesn't like someone for some irrational reason and sticks to it. It's usually because the player is young and lacks experience, but it could be for other reasons too. Really, he's just a terrible manager all-around.

Setback #1

2008-04-02T13:58:00.005-06:00

Just like that, heartbreak.

Somehow I take comfort that the first two games of 2008 mirror the last two of 2007. First, a great victory all-around. Then, terrible defeat.

Robert Andino, who hit the game-winning homer off Matt Wise, is familiar to me from the Albuquerque Isotopes, the Marlins' AAA affiliate. He looks pretty slick at shortstop, pretty terrible at the plate, and comes to bat to mainstream hip-hop music. One game I went to with my wife and one of her friends, and Andino impressed them with some slick dance moves during pre-inning warm-ups.

Enjoy your 15 minutes, dude. Wait, what happened?

"Yes, Joe, It's Toasted" provides a nightmare scenario with regards to Pedro Martinez. I don't know. My guess: out for a month, Jorge Sosa makes a start or two, maybe El Duque gets back in action, and Nelson Figueroa takes the mound once or twice.

Figueroa is a 32-year old journeyman from Brooklyn who really lives up to that title. Last year he was the MVP of the Taiwan Series, the first ever foreigner to win that award. He also pitched for two different Mexican teams and a Dominican team last year. Figueroa was originally drafted by the Mets in the 30th round of the 1995 amateur draft as a 21-year old college student. He was traded to the Diamondbacks in the 1998 Bernard Gilkey deal, pitched for Arizona in 2000 and then traded to Philadelphia with three other players for Curt Schilling. He went on to play for the Phillies, Brewers, and Pirates before missing all of 2005 due to rotator cuff surgery. In 2006 he signed a minor league contract with the Nationals and couldn't make their rotation, spending the year in AAA New Orleans (then a Washington affiliate). In 2007 he began his tour to Mexico, Taiwan, the Dominican Republic and back to Mexico again. He impressed the Mets enough in the Caribbean Series for them to give him a contract. This is a chance for a hometown boy to make good. Tissues all around.

Also, did we sign Barry Bonds yet?

Blogging About Baseball Games: Part Whatever

2008-04-01T17:51:00.004-06:00

Games the Mets Have Played in 2008 without Barry Bonds: 2.

There really is no good excuse why the Mets have not acquired a Kevin Mensch-type right handed hitting outfielder with a strong platoon split. That's kind of like why we have a General Manager and a front office behind him. So we can find players to make our team better. Mensch himself was available, so were a lot of other suitable candidates. Instead Angel Pagan is the dude against lefties. The dude is a career .219/.280/.406 hitter against lefties and yet he was batting fifth for the Mets on opening day. That is a failure. By the way, Pagan is a career .280/.337/.373 hitter in the minor leagues.

Is Oliver Perez the Mets third starter, and not John Maine, because he has more major league experience? Because it should be clear that Maine is the better pitcher.

Pedro is not looking good.

The Mets' offense is really unhealthy when one can name three hitters in the lineup worse than Luis Castillo.

I've only seen like 1 1/3 games so far, but Schneider just looks like a catcher. Nothing spectacular there. He better have been hitting against the lefty yesterday just because it was opening day and the Mets didn't want to hurt his feelings, not because the Mets intend to use him regularly against left-handers.

You know what would really balance this lineup out? If one of the Mets' left-handed hitting outfielders with severe weaknesses against left-handers were a right-hander who could hit lefties. If we could replace say, Ryan Church, with say, Lastings Milledge. Well, Milledge is asking a little too much. Young, extremely talented and cheap. Someone else, though.

Also if our #2 hitter wasn't a slap-hitting bunt-a-thon out there. How come no one calls Luis Castillo "scrappy"?

Here, I'm going to predict the standings in the AL West:

1) Athletics
I know I picked the Angels over at Mets Geek, but that was before I knew about Kelvim Escobar's injury. I never really liked the Angels anyway. Their offenses are slightly less egregious than the Dodgers. Overrating Gary Matthews Jr. one year and Torii Hunter the next. Plus, this is where David Eckstein and Darin Erstad came from. Oh, this is about the Athletics. They might just be good enough to beat the overrated Angels and Mariners, despite the fire sale. In fact, the fire sale might have given them some talent that could help them out late in the season.

2) Angels
3) Mariners
I bet the there are more Mets blogs out there than any other team blogs, even Yankees blogs. Yankees fans are a mindless brood by and large, and even though it doesn't take much intelligence or skill to make and maintain a blog, I think even attaining those meager standards are difficult for the simple-minded fanatics that share the New York name. Did that sentence make sense? What's going on? Oh right. There's lots of Mets blogs. But there aren't even two that are as good as USS Mariner and Lookout Landing, both Mariners blogs. And they both kind of indicate that the Mariners fucked up by trading Adam Jones AND a zillion other players for Erik Bedard.

Rangers:
I know so little about the Rangers, except that they signed A-Rod to a huge contract that was actually probably a good deal for them, except that they traded him to the Yankees with money for Alfonso Soriano. Then they traded Soriano for such winners as Armando (not Andres) Galarraga, Brad Wilkerson and Termel Sledge. They must have some good young players or something. Hell, they could finish second.

Damnit David Wright, throw the ball straight.

It's Not Inspiring, It's Insane

2008-03-28T14:22:00.002-06:00

Eric Simon of Amazin' Avenue pretty much echoes my thoughts here. The Mets are going to decide their remaining bullpen and bench spots by the results of a couple spring training games. That's insane.

Over the past month, the Mets have not acted like a big league organization with millions of dollars at stake. Instead of making shrewd, low-cost pickups of guys like Justin Huber or Reed Johnson, the Mets are pretending like a few meaningless games are going to prove something about the players they do have:

"It's part of my job," Randolph said. "Sometimes, it's a good thing when you have some depth and some surplus, and hopefully, you keep some of these guys. I like the competition. It's always good."

No, you have mediocrity. Fernando Tatis is not better than you think, Brady Clark is not going to prove anything in two days. You should have already analyzed your players thoroughly. Spring training is mostly not for seeing what skills players have. You should know that already. It is for getting the players in shape for the regular season. If you are judging right now, with Opening Day three days away, you are not doing your job well.

"The fact that it's going down to the wire is good."

No, it's bad.

How do I react to the news that the Mets waived young, cheap, useful Ruben Gotay who, with tears in his eyes cried about this, the cruelest cut of all? How, that the Braves claimed him? How, that the Mets seem to favor nice, but brittle and old fellows like Valentin, Easley and Tatis?

Gotay sat in front of his locker, tears in his eyes and told the media, "I thought I did a good job last year. I didn't think I deserved this."

You happy now, Mets? You made the young man cry. It's bad enough that you decided to base his entire defensive reputation on one botched double play in order to justify your acquisition of distant, unrequited love Luis Castillo, but now you must cast him out in shame?

That's all for now. Let's Go Mets!

Baseball 2008

2008-03-25T15:03:00.003-06:00

Now that the 2008 baseball season is under way, I'm going to go ahead and stop using the third person. Good old "I" and "me" are here to stay.

That was a great discussion in the comments about how much pitcher HR rate is random. I lean more towards Manhasset Paulie's thinking, that HR rate is largely a function of batter contact, as with BABIP.

While BABIP also is affected by defense, it is still is mostly about how well the batter makes contact with the ball.

So given equal fly-ball rates, I am inclined to think that any variation in home-run rate is mostly luck. If I'm not mistaken, regression analysis has shown HR rate to fluctuate more than walk, strikeout or ground ball rates, but not as much as BABIP.

It is possible that any repeatable difference in home run rates between pitchers with equal fly ball rates is due to a certain knowledge of situational tendencies. For instance, Guillermo Mota always throws the wrong pitch at the wrong time.

Of course, people used this same 'situational pitching' argument to refute the concept of BABIP and its essential randomness when Voros McCracken first discovered it. They would argue that Tom Glavine, for example, always knew what pitch to throw in what spot, resulting in weak contact by the hitter.

It is possible, however, that in the case of fly balls only, and not in line drives or ground balls, that certain pitchers throw pitches which are more likely to be pulled, resulting in more home runs because fences are closer down the lines. This would be the cause of differentiation in HR rates.

Anyway.

Think the Mets miss Lastings Milledge now?

Tuesday Notes

2008-03-18T10:14:00.007-06:00

You know, Tuesday notes? Like we do every Tuesday?

Lederer plots some relievers, following yesterday's starters. As to the question, how come he uses K/BF and not K/BB (since with strikeout rate and ground ball rate, walk rate is one of the most important properties of a pitcher), we think it's because K/BF is a purer representation of a pitcher's strikeout ability aside from his control. A third axis for walks? Show us how that works, because we don't understand.

What he could do is make the dots red if the pitcher's BB/BF is below average (good) and blue if it's not.

Joe Smith is in the Northeast Quadrant, another reason why he should make the team, as we've suggested. Has he been optioned yet? We haven't been paying attention to that stuff. Pedro Feliciano is obviously in the Northeast Quadrant, because he's awesome. So is Heath Bell, just like last year. By the way, we think this Quadrant exercise effectively demonstrates how poor the Mets are at evaluating pitchers. Let's continue.

Billy Wagner has always been a Northeast kind of guy, but not last year, when his ground ball rate plummeted to below-average territory. Lederer writes, "Be forewarned: age may finally be catching up to the hard-throwing lefty."

In the Northwest, where ground-outs come easy but strikeouts don't, we find a number of recent Met relievers (Oliver, Bradford, Sele, Mota, Hernandez), but no current ones, unless you count Ruddy Lugo. And, Scott Schoeneweis is there, but we refuse to believe he is going to make this team. Throwing ground balls is good; if he stops doing that even a little bit, he's done. Yet somehow Willie Randolph considers him more valuable than Pedro Feliciano. Baffling.

In the Southwest (aka mediocre) Quadrant, the Mets have Matt Wise and Jorge Sosa. The quadrant also features a number of mediocre middle relievers signed to substantial contracts this off-season.
--------

Paul Lo Duca? You be quiet. You're one of those guys who has always had this great reputation as a gamer and all this nonsense that has inflated your value. You're lucky to have a one-year contract with the Nationals. You don't get to dictate your value. The market determines it. You're not entitled to anything. We will celebrate when you are forced to retire because no one wants to sign you, and another egomaniac jock will fade into obscurity. Have fun hitting .250/.290/.330 for half the year before Jesus Flores takes over.
----------------------

Omar Minaya tries to talk Jose Valentin* out of retirement:

Jose: I'm done, O. What am I even doing here? I was done last year... I mean, thanks for that contract, but
Omar: Anytime, Jose.
Jose: But, my knees have zero cartilage left, and it hurts to walk, let alone run and dive after ground balls. I really think I'm done for good, O.
Omar: Don't be so hasty. We can fix that.
Jose: But really, it's my neck that hurts now. It hurts like hell.
Omar: Where? Here?
Jose: Ow!
Omar: Right here?
Jose: Ow! Fuck! Yes!
Omar: Yea, a pinched nerve.
Jose: Ow! Yea, so I'll have to go to New York for an injection, and then I'll be out who knows how long...
Omar: Nah, we'll just give you some horse pills.
Jose: You can do that?
Omar: You're a valuable part of the team, Jose.
Jose: I mean, thanks, but I'm not really. We have plenty of players who can play the positions I play, and they're better than me at it, plus I can't really hit anymore, and...
Omar: So, we'll get you some pills, then we'll see about getting you on the roster.
Jose: But...
Omar: Don't worry, we'll talk about a contract extension later.

*You might be delighted to know that it is "March Mustache Madness" here in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Something the kids do.
--------------

Bob Costas may want to clarify and amplify his distaste for bloggery, but obviously still doesn't really understand blogs or know how good they can be, since he's talking with Deadspin. Deadspin is like the ESPN of blogs, which is funny, because they're always making fun of ESPN. But really interesting and informative blogs, which do original work and have vibrant comment communities (not professionally sarcastic one-liners), just ignore ESPN completely and never talk about it.

I think old sports people see a few comments on their newspaper's website, maybe some ESPN comments, and then like, Deadspin, and they write off the Internet based on that. Whatever.

There's not really much to say about Bob Costas. He has shown his ignorance of blogs* and has shown no interest in becoming informed on the subject. As far as we are concerned, he is just another ignorant ass spouting nonsense on the Internet. Why we should spend any more time analyzing his words is beyond me.

*He thinks people commenting on newspaper websites are "bloggers." He thinks Baseball Prospectus and The Onion are blogs. They're not.
------------------

John Walsh asks and answers five questions about the Mets.

First, "What is the meaning of Johan Santana?" He's better than Tom Glavine by almost four wins. Next.

Second, "What can we expect from Billy Wagner?" Walsh calls this a BP fastball, but we disagree. Not only did we predict a possible Wagner decline this year, but so did Rich Lederer. Walsh points out how great Wagner has been in his career, which is nice, but we need him to be great this year.

Third, "Will the real Jose Reyes please stand up?" Walsh talks about how often Jose popped up at the end of last year, and how his hitting problems were exacerbated by "motivational problems." Maybe because he plays for the Mets, who hate and distrust young players. Walsh writes, "In any case, it looks like Reyes is implementing some changes for 2008, both in his dugout and on-field mannerisms and, perhaps more worrisomely, in his hitting approach." We find both aspects of this Reyes-reform worrisome. Evidently the Mets want to turn Reyes into Luis Castillo.

Fourth, "Is this the trainer's room or a M*A*S*H unit?" Yes, players are injured. Nothing too serious, though. Yet.

Fifth, "Is lack of depth going to be a problem?" Considering that the Mets are actually considering using Angel Pagan as their opening day left fielder, yes. Yes, it's a problem, and the sooner the Mets can trade The Show and/or Jorge Sosa and/or Matt Wise for a solid right-handed hitting outfielder/first baseman, the better. Walsh gets into this.
----------

A piece we wrote for Mets Geek stirred up some discussion at ShysterBall, Baseball Think Factory and The Book blog. Clearly it was a seminal work.

The Mets' Southeast Pitchers

2008-03-17T12:52:00.004-06:00

One of our favorite visual/statistical devices at Blastings! is Rich Lederer's pitching quadrants, aka "Categorizing Pitchers by Strikeout and Groundball Rates." Today he plotted some starters' 2007 performances.

Four Met starters make the Southeast Quadrant, the home of those with above average strikeout rates and below average ground ball rates: Johan Santana, Oliver Perez, John Maine and Orlando Hernandez. Throw in Pedro Martinez, who with a 10.2 career K/9 and a GB-rate in the low 30 percents has emphatically been a Southeast Quadrant pitcher throughout his career, and that's the entire starting rotation.

Mike Pelfrey, whose sinking fastball gets him ground balls at a well above average pace, would be in either the Northwest (high GB-rate, below average K-rate) or Northeast (high GB, high K) Quadrant, depending on the development of his other pitches, presumably.

What does this mean? It definitely means that the Mets won't be employing that solid infield defense as often as they could. Not that fly balls at Shea Stadium are a bad thing, of course, but the Mets' outfield defense isn't as spectacular. Beltran is one of the best defensive center fielders in the league, but Ryan Church is about average and Moises Alou is well below average. Lastings Milledge is a very good defender, but he's gone. Endy Chavez is brilliant, but can't really hit enough to play outfield regularly. Still, the Met starters' flyball tendencies give him a little more value.

We suspect that the Mets bullpen is the opposite.

Outfielderz...

2008-03-12T14:15:00.007-06:00

+ Well?

Shannon Stewart? Reed Johnson? We don't know, either.

+ Hey, Ricardo Rincon is looking pretty good. Maybe Scott Blowenweis should give up his highly-coveted reserved parking spot so more important players like Fernando Martinez and Ryan Church don't have to hike in from the swamps.

Two words, Mets fans: sunk cost. That's what the LOOGY's silly contract is. The emergence of Rincon is an example of why one should not hand out such contracts to mediocre, replaceable players like The Blow.

+ MetsBlog says things like "Carlos Beltran was hitless in three at bats," when the guy drew a walk. "At-bats" are stupid, and so is MetsBlog. Yea, fuck it. We'll rip on 'em until the day they start using real fucking English paragraphs without senseless ellipses.

+ The collective dumbassery that is the failure of any MLB team to sign Barry Bonds, who is probably the best hitter ever and only one of many players to use steroids in his era, will be remembered by future fans as a defining moment for baseball, but not in a good way.

Usually, I Come Out on Top

2008-03-05T13:07:00.003-07:00

"Unbelievable offensive talent."

Words used to describe Lastings Milledge by former and current teammate, Paul Lo Duca. It's hard to shake the feeling that if TOAST! were still a Met, he'd be echoing the sentiments of Country Time and When There's Trouble, Call DW. But still.

I've always been humble. I don't ever say, 'I'm the best guy on the team.' I just go out there and play to the best of my ability," Milledge said. "And usually, I come out on top.

We like that. He says one thing, utters a baseball cliché, and then turns it on its head. That's genius.

But what's this?

"Good Bye and Good Riddance."

Wally, is that you? Marty? Tell us, Mike Silva.

Today I am going to amend my statement so “10,000 maniacs” can put this topic to bed: Milledge will never live up to his potential here, in Washington, or anywhere else he lands throughout his career.

Does anyone else smell that? It smells like a prop bet. Nice alt-rock reference, by the way.

I originally wrote back on February 25th, 2007, for a now defunct website, that the Mets should sell Lastings Milledge because he was “like a tech stock in the late nineties just before the bubble burst”.

Because you're a dummy. You wrote it because you don't understand how to evaluate prospects. It's all right; most guys have this problem. Girls too. But here's where you went wrong: When you wrote that, Lastings had already hit 277/.388/.440 as a 21-year old at AAA. He was not and is not a nebulous "tools" player. He can hit, has done so at every level of professional baseball and will continue do so at the major league level. He is not Alex Escobar. He is not Carlos Gomez. His "misguided ego and attitude" have clearly not hindered his performance as a baseball player. But you want to say something?

Fortunately for the Mets, they did heed the advice and sold Milledge minutes before the” bubble bursted” and landed two pieces that should help in 2008.

Oh we get it now. This is a joke! Because surely you cannot be defending the deal that sent Milledge to Washington for Ryan "go to" Church and Brian Schneider, can you? That kind of silliness is for the Marty Nobles of the world.

Injuries to key players like Xavier Nady, Shawn Green, and Moises Alou allowed him the opportunity to play more than a rookie should on a team with championship aspirations.

Ohhhhhhhhhhh.... sorry. We're making fun of a 12-year old kid here. Boy are we embarrassed. Because no one but a dumb little kid would think of Xavier Nady and Shawn Green as anything but pieces of flotsam cobbled together to stand in the outfield and hit pitchers from the opposite side. No one but infants and Marty Noble would characterize them as "key players." And no one else but Marty Noble, diaper-donning toddlers and mainstream sportswriters would ever assert that rookies shouldn't play on winning teams. We guess we won't be making that prop bet. It would be like taking candy from a baby.

Here's Some Things

2008-03-03T10:57:00.006-07:00

Sorry about the lack of posts around here-- the comment threads are buzzing, which is great, but they're mostly about how we do nothing but whine and dine around here, which is bad. We aren't really following spring training contests yet.

So, are you pumped up for Kyle Lohse? Yea! Am I right? Am I right?

We've talked about Lohse before, but in lieu of linking we'll just reiterate that he is not good, he has "experience" but the same talent as many AAA players. Therefore there really is no point in signing. Nevertheless (sigh):

Mets officials remain divided on free-agent right-hander Kyle Lohse. Some view Lohse as protection against an injury to righty Orlando Hernandez. Others see him as unnecessary in the wake of the Johan Santana trade. Righty Mike Pelfrey currently is the Mets' sixth starter, and the return of righty Duaner Sanchez from a dislocated shoulder would add depth to the bullpen.

Thanks, Rosenthal. Now we all have to read a million words about this guy. Not from me.

The Mets' biggest need remains a right-handed hitter who — ideally — could play both left field and first base. Left fielder Moises Alou, 41, has appeared in fewer than 100 games each of the past two seasons, and first baseman Carlos Delgado, 35, could use a break against lefties.

We think he means that just Delagado, not Alou also, could use a break against lefties. Alou could just use a break, err... time off, generally.

It would be great if the Mets could somehow get the Nationals to trade Nick Johnson to them. It would almost be payback for the Lastings Milledge deal. In this case Washington is in Camp Irrational, because they think that Dmitri Young is a 'character guy' who will be a good influence on Lastings Milledge and Elijah Dukes. You know, because he's black and has a record of assault, alcohol abuse and substance abuse. You know, a 'character guy.' For the kids.

Of course, Johnson doesn't exactly fit the role. He would be more of a replacement for Delgado than a platoon partner. We would make Johnson the starter and immediately start looking to find Delgado a new home. Johnson, for his part, has little difficulty with left-handers. Whatever. But if Carlos Delgado has a hole in his hip, we want nothing to do with Olmedo Saenz.

Hey, what do you know? The Mets are looking to trade Scott Schoeneweis, and Jorge Sosa too? Sell low, get rid of him (Show), and sell high, make a profit (Sosa). Dealing one or both of these guys would clear some room in the bullpen, obviously.

Great quote from David Wright re: Milledge:

Personally, I like Lastings. There were times when he messed up and he knew it and he learned from it. I don't see where this is coming from. I don't know if it's just trying to play that 'bitter traded guy' role. I don't know what he's trying to accomplish by the things that he's saying.

Wright points out that all rookies go through a "tough love" period, and Lastings was just a sorry-ass pussy who couldn't handle it. Of course, DW didn't use those words, but he definitely implied them. Billy Wagner, for his part, contends that "everyone in the organization babied the heck out of him. We couldn't get on him too much because we were told to lay off of him. It could have been a whole lot worse for him and all we did was try to help him to help us." Uh... we think you all realize what happened here:

Take it easy on Lastings, all right?

Okay. Official B!T response. You're gonna need a statement. Aw geez...

Lastings Milledge is probably somewhat of a problem. He does, after all, record mediocre hip-hop music. He probably has an attitude problem, given his history. It's likely, even, that he's really annoying to be around. But so fucking what? The Mets act like it's the point of a baseball team that all the players are real comfortable with their roles and no one pisses off anyone else. Well, maybe with the Mets that's the point. Let's hear from O'Bannon again:

"When you get a guy like Cliff Floyd, a guy that he could someday take his job, and they're out there helping him, it's awful hard to sit there and say we were bad teammates," Wagner said. "This business is hard. He probably shouldn't even have been up in the big leagues.

Oh my god, he could take a guy's job. A nice guy, like Cliff Floyd! Union forever!

Milledge. What a pussy.

Milledge Words

2008-02-27T16:22:00.005-07:00

You've probably seen this Sports Illustrated article from John Donovan about Nationals' camp. Donovan writes:

No one is getting more attention at this camp than the ever-confident [Lastings] Milledge. The other day he told a New York newspaper, in so many words, that he couldn't wait to kick the Mets' butt. Manager Manny Acta got on him a little for that on Monday.

Good for him. We're rooting for Lastings to kill the Mets because he represents everything the Mets aren't. He is young, he is energetic, he is exciting. The Mets have one guy like that in Jose Reyes, but they are doing all they can to make him less exciting, encouraging him not to do elaborate celebratory handshakes, deemphasizing his obvious role as team leader (along with David Wright). The Mets allow Willie Randolph to enforce a horrible double-standard for his players, where youngsters like Reyes are benched for not running out ground balls but veterans are not, and are even encouraged to create a hostile, pro-veteran environment in the clubhouse. Fuck that bullshit, and fuck the Mets for as long as that lasts. We still want the Mets to win, but aren't going to forgive. The Mets count on their fan base being fluid, easily changing their stupid minds when they trade four promising minor leaguers for the right to sign Johan Santana as a free agent. Well this blogger has not changed his mind. The Mets are really good in 2008, especially if they aren't unlucky to the point of having several key injuries, a good possibility on an old, veteran team, but they are still a very badly-run organization that deserves to be criticized daily by its fan base. Most likely, the Mets will always count on their block-headed, short-term memory having stock of angry, spoiled New Yorkers, and people with our opinion will remain distant, wack-job VORPies howling impotently on unread blogs of ill-repute. But that's not going to stop us.

"A lot of veterans [on the Mets] didn't like the way I play the game. They thought I didn't respect it," Milledge says later in the clubhouse. "But the vets here have no problem with me. They know I respect it. They know I work hard."

And, on his time in New York: "I can't go through anything worse than I went through in New York. It only gets better from here."

Now this kind of thing makes me wonder: how the fuck did David Wright ever become so perfect at dealing with everything? Is he just better at tact and public relations than Milledge and everyone else? What did we ever do to deserve such an awesome player and person as David Wright?

Part of the success of Reyes and Wright, we think, has a lot to do with the fact that they came up during 2003 and 2004, when the Mets were horrible. Even then Willie Randolph managed them moronically, using Reyes as a leadoff hitter and batting Wright seventh (A rookie is a rookie unless he has some speed, then he can bat leadoff. OBP? What's that? Willie Randolph you are a terrible manager and I hate you... ahem), but at least they got to play everyday and the Mets didn't think they had to use the Shawn Greens and Jose Valentins of the world in their place.

So what did Milledge do wrong? He came of age at the wrong time. Sorry, dude.

Photo: AP

Get Off My Lawn

2008-02-25T11:44:00.003-07:00

From Baseball Analysts, the youngsters who will make an impact in the 2008 National League Eastern Division:

Washington: RHP Collin Balester, RHP Tyler Clippard, LHP John Lannan
Florida: OF Cameron Maybin
Atlanta: RHP Jair Jurrgens, LF Brandon Jones
Philadelphia: RHP Carlos Carrasco, C Jason Jaramillo
New York:

This is who the Mets are. A team with nothing to renew it but money and image.

96 wins, baby.

I Heard it From a Friend Who... Heard it From a Friend Who... Heard it from Another You've Been Messin' Around

2008-02-22T15:07:00.003-07:00

MP of Ketchup on Your Ice Cream points us to this post at Shoot Your Hopes and Dreams:

A friend of a friend (reliable I know) has a friend who is friends with Lastings Milledge. Got it? This friend of a friend who has a friend (herein referred to as "Friend") hung out with Lastings and his crew in South Florida sometime during the holiday season. Friend is a Mets fan and chatted with Lastings about baseball. Lastings informed Friend that his true love was music and that he only played baseball because he was naturally gifted at the sport. Milledge aka LMillz stated that he did not really care for baseball and has no inclination to improve through hardwork, such as watching video of his at bats, shagging extra fungos, or taking additional batting practice. He is content to simply go as far as his talent will take him and that's it.

Whoa. That's some serious shit. Lastings, is this true? It's probably bullshit. But just in case:

Lastings! Your music sucks!

This Deal is Getting Worse All the Time

2008-02-16T13:33:00.005-07:00

PECOTA Projections, 2008:
Lastings Milledge, CF: 559 PA, .289/.358/.478, 19 HR, 22 SB, 32.6 VORP, basically free for years

Ryan Church, RF: 494 PA, .268/.349/.472, 18 HR, 6 SB, 24.9 VORP, cheap for 2 years

Brian Schneider, C: 384 PA, .242/.319/.345, 5 HR, 4.4 VORP, $4 million per for two years

Ramon Castro, C: 256 PA, .249/.324/.463, 11 HR, 13.3 VORP

Not only did the Mets trade a younger and cheaper player who will probably outperform his older and more pedestrian replacement despite playing a less offensively demanding position, they acquired a terrible catcher who only serves to block a much better player.

Nice move, Wilpons.

This isn't over. Expect updates all year long.

Grading the Mets, Other Teams

2008-02-15T12:29:00.005-07:00

Every off-season we read "grades" like this one by Sports Illustrated's Jon Heyman. We feel bad for the average fan, because these grades are often horribly wrong. This season the Mets are getting stellar reviews all around.

We don't agree with the Mets' score, because we think trading Milledge was absolutely horrible and getting Santana was merely good. We can't call the Santana trade great because the Mets basically signed him as a free agent but gave up four B prospects for the privilege. The over-the-hump factor is considerable, but the Mets had more room for improvement in their offense than their pitching, and actually got worse at the former by bringing back an aging Luis Castillo and trading an above-average outfielder who happened to be only 22 for one of the worst offensive players in the game in Brian Schneider and a merely good outfielder who with giant holes in his swing is already as good as he is going to get. How can the Mets top the list? Because they got the big flashy name. That only works for so long.

We would rank the offseasons of the Tigers, Orioles, Athletics, Diamondbacks and Rays above them. Heyman includes the Mariners in his "grand slam division." We would rank them dead last.

In the middle tier we would put the Cubs and Padres.

We don't know about the Twins, but they're definitely not losers. People who say they are just don't know how to analyze trades or are just to vested to think outside the mainstream.

The biggest example of this is how Heyman grades the Pirates. To him, they've done nothing. In reality, new GM Neil Huntington is completely working over the organization in a process that will take several years. Perhaps Heyman would be more impressed had they signed Carlos Silva and Scott Linebrink?

The big losers are the Mariners, Giants, Astros and Reds. Heyman is right about Houston's grade, but for the wrong reason.

Assembling the 2008 Mets, Part Five: The Bullpen

2008-02-08T10:47:00.002-07:00

Previous Posts in this Series:
Part 1: Mets' Position Players
Part 2: Mets' Pitchers
Part 3-A: Other Position Players, Outfielders
Part 3-B: Infielders
Part 3-C: Catchers
Part 4-A: Other Starting Pitchers
Part 4-B: Other Relief Pitchers (never written)

Oh man. Do you remember this?

Johan Santana, Twins: Santana is the best pitcher in baseball, and the Twins are trading him. Some have suggested that Santana, who is 28, has already started to decline. However, we agree with David Pinto that Santana will be a very good pitcher for years to come. That's not the issue. The issue is that Santana will cost a lot of young, cheap, good players and then a lot of years and money, all invested in one fallible arm. While we'll continue to hear reports of how involved the Mets are, in the end, we will not get him. At least, that's what we're hoping for. First, the Mets do not need Santana. Second, it is a much healthier move going forward to get the most value from one's young, cheap players than to go out there and get the best guy possible at whatever cost. When one runs a franchise like a fantasy team, this is what happens. (That will never get old.) Possible trade: Fernando Martinez, Mike Pelfrey, Kevin Mulvey and some other prospect for Johan Santana. Why it won't happen: With Garza traded, the Twins are going to want two young major-league ready pitchers, and they don't seem attracted to Humber and Pelfrey. Speculation that the Mets are going to send Jose Reyes to Minnesota is just that: speculation.

They did want two major-league ready pitchers, and they got 'em: Humber and Mulvey. We stick by what we said then, way back in November, the day before The Day. Santana did cost a lot of cheap, young players and a lot of years and money, and it is healthier going forward not to do stuff like that. But let's turn the page.

As far as we can tell, the Met bullpen is pretty set, but that's not necessarily a good thing. The inflexibility in that regard was a big stumbling block last year.

(Note: For the tables below, we used the equivalents [adjusted for league and park] and not the actually projected numbers for PECOTA hit, walk, strikeout and home run rates. Why? Because they provided them. Also we're leaving out the Bill James projections because we don't have the book with us right now and while the BJ numbers are interesting in comparison, they are also kind of dubious and arbitrary.)

Billy Wagner (L)	IP	H/9	K/9	BB/9	HR/9	ERA
PECOTA	58.7	7.2	8.3	2.8	0.9	2.77
ZiPS	73	7.0	10.4	2.7	1.0	2.71
Marcels	66	8.0	9.1	3.0	1.0	3.48
Chone	70	7.6	9.5	3.0	0.8	3.09

ZiPS is the most optimistic, but generally all the projection systems agree that Billy Wagner is on the downside of his career. PECOTA spits out a "Collapse" rate of 53%, which is considerable. Wagner's walk rate has increased over the last few years. Of course, he's still a very valuable pitcher, the best in the Mets' bullpen, and we can't rule out a late-career resurgence. Wasn't he working on some new pitch? It's just the fastball and slider for now.

Aaron Heilman (R)	IP	H/9	K/9	BB/9	HR/9	ERA
PECOTA	67.3	8.5	6.1	2.6	0.7	3.47
ZiPS	87	7.9	7.6	2.8	0.7	3.21
Marcels	77	8.2	7.1	2.8	0.8	3.62
Chone	87	8.5	7.3	2.8	0.7	3.62

Heilman threw 86 innings last year, the most of any Mets reliever. Clearly PECOTA isn't confident that he will throw that many again, but our projection systems are more confident about Heilman's ability than they have been in the past. No, he's not good enough to be a starter, but he's a valuable and capable reliever. He's got two pitches: a sinker and a change, and looking at his pitch data we might suggest he throw the change a little less often. His ground ball rate has been around 45% for most of his career, and we would be willing to guess that most of his home runs are off changeups.

Pedro Feliciano (L)	IP	H/9	K/9	BB/9	HR/9	ERA
PECOTA	56.3	8.2	6.5	3.5	0.6	3.43
ZiPS	65	7.8	8.0	3.5	0.7	3.18
Marcels	77	8.3	7.6	3.6	0.7	3.62
Chone	63	8.2	8.2	3.9	0.7	3.60

Feliciano is another sure member of the Met bullpen, but the question remains: will Willie Randolph continue to use him as LOOGY, or what? Ted Berg recently wrote about this problem, namely, that Scott Schoeneweis should be used primarily against left-handers, while Feliciano is strong versus both. Just because Feliciano makes a lot less money doesn't mean he should have the more limited role. Feliciano throws four pitches: a sinker, a slider, a change, and a cutter. He uses these pitches differently against left-handers and right-handers, which is why he is successful against both, keeping right-handers to a .221/.325/.371 line in 2007 (compared to a minuscule .483 OPS for lefties). His career numbers are similar: .727 OPS for righties, .575 for lefties. We wish he would get his due, because he's a solid pitcher. Look past his average K/BB rates to his low HR totals and increasing ground ball rates (40.7% in 2005, 49.4% in 2006, and 55.7% in 2007).

Scott Schoeneweis (L)	IP	H/9	K/9	BB/9	HR/9	ERA
PECOTA	48.3	9.1	5.1	3.5	0.6	4.05
ZiPS	56	8.7	6.3	4.5	0.8	4.34
Marcels	60	9.2	6.2	3.9	0.9	4.58
Chone	58	9.0	6.7	4.0	0.8	4.34

Unlike Feliciano, Shoeneweis is not successful against right-handers. In fact, in his career they have an .830 OPS against him, an absolutely miserable line for a reliever. This is no surprise, as he only features a fastball and a slider, which he throws in nearly the same ratio to both sides. It was a bad contract to give him nearly $3.5 million per year for year, but at least the Mets could have maximized his value by strictly using him as a LOOGY, or at least letting him face right-handers only in low leverage situations. Surely Omar Minaya is aware of his massive platoon split, which was the worst "true" platoon split of any lefty vs. righties in the time period explored in The Book. He has never been good against right-handers. Sticking him out there against them in nearly the same proportion as Feliciano, a left-hander who actually handles them well, is lunacy. If the Mets aren't going to use him as a LOOGY, The Show doesn't deserve a spot on the major league roster, despite his contract. All of his rates are below average, and he is only saved by his high ground ball rates. But if the Mets were to use him mostly against lefties, I mean, look at this. But there is little hope of that, and there is little hope that The Show won't make the team. That makes four guaranteed bullpen spots.

Jorge Sosa (R)	IP*	H/9	K/9	BB/9	HR/9	ERA
PECOTA	74	9.1	8.5	2.9	1.2	4.33
ZiPS	131	5.3	3.4	4.5	1.2	4.47
Marcels	105	9.3	5.9	3.4	1.2	4.50
Chone	135	9.3	5.8	3.3	1.1	4.33
* Sosa is classified as a "swingman," so PECOTA projects 8 starts, ZiPs and Chone 18 each, and Marcels an unknown number, presumably 13-15.

As we said here, we're not sure Sosa is worth the $2 million the Mets gave him to avoid arbitration. He is certainly replaceable, and the Mets could have non-tendered him. But whatever, we're not gonna sweat it. Of these projections, PECOTA is clearly the more accurate, as it's unlikely that Sosa will make 18 starts this year, let alone 8. We don't know what PECOTA does differently, but the other systems are just taking his history and projecting it into the future, whereas we know anecdotally that Sosa is destined for bullpen duty, despite his history of starting. That's why PECOTA's numbers are much better, as a pitcher's numbers improve significantly in the bullpen. We don't think that's enough to account for the drastically different rates, however. PECOTA clearly thinks nice thoughts about Sosa. We think his home run rate is bound to explode again. Sosa's probably in. That's five.

Duaner Sanchez (R)	IP	H/9	K/9	BB/9	HR/9	ERA
PECOTA	55	8.3	5.9	3.1	0.8	3.60
ZiPS	69	8.5	6.9	3.5	0.8	3.52
Marcels	31	8.4	7.0	3.5	0.9	3.77
Chone	NA	NA	NA	NA	NA	NA

Marcels has Sanchez only throwing 31 innings because it is a simple system that heavily weighs the last year, in which Duaner threw no pitches. Apparently he is now ready to go, and should be ready for opening day, but that's what they said last year, when he showed up fat and then injured his shoulder. Duaner, or "Dirty," as some people prone to vulgarity call him, is surely a wild card. We don't know how he'll do after not throwing very much since the trade deadline in 2006, but if it's anywhere near his 2006 performance he ought to be quite useful. There's a good chance he starts the year in AAA.

Matt Wise (R)	IP	H/9	K/9	BB/9	HR/9	ERA
PECOTA	50.3	8.8	5.7	2.7	1.0	3.91
ZiPS	54	8.8	7.0	3.0	1.0	4.00
Marcels	56	9.3	6.9	3.2	1.0	4.26
Chone	54	8.7	7.0	3.0	1.0	3.83

Wise throws a fastball and a changeup, and he throws the changeup more often. This gives him a reverse platoon split; he's more effective against left-handers, with a career OPS against of .631 against them. How useful is that, however, in a bullpen that already features three left-handers? Still, the Wise has a major league contract (though for just $1.2 million, a bargain), and is thus quite likely to make the team. That's six.

Joe Smith (R)	IP	H/9	K/9	BB/9	HR/9	ERA
PECOTA	55.7	8.2	7.0	3.6	0.5	3.18
ZiPS	59	8.5	7.5	3.4	0.6	3.66
Marcels	47	9.2	7.9	3.6	1.0	4.31
Chone	37	8.3	8.3	3.4	0.7	3.65

These are solid numbers, and the platoon splits for Smith suggest to us that he might be more useful to this bullpen than Wise, but Joe's still a pre-arbitration player who struggled in the second half of last year, so he's likely to begin the season in AAA. We'd like to see him in the bigs though, because he's a ground ball machine, and the Mets have great infield defense. At this point, we might favor Smith over Sosa.

Other Options:
Mike Pelfrey has his supporters for the bullpen, but the Mets have said he's not an option for the bullpen; he'll either slide into the rotation due to injury, or throw in AAA, where he can be terrorized by pitching in Albuquerque and other offensive environments. Speaking of injuries, many have suggested that the injury prone Orlando Hernandez should move to the pen, but the Mets said nay to that. The Mets made a minor trade for Brian Stokes, who has been a OK starter in the minors but has not been very good as a reliever, either. Steven Register is a 24-year old AA closer taken from Colorado in the Rule 5 draft. If the Mets were to keep him, he would have to make the team. His numbers are a little inflated from pitching in the Texas League, and he did seem to improve considerably after moving to the bullpen. Still, he's a long shot. The Mets recently picked up righty Ruddy Lugo off waivers from the Athletics. He's not very impressive, walking as many as he strikes out. The team also just signed Tony Armas Jr., a starter whose career path looks like promising to mediocre to terrible, and all before the age of 30. From the Mets' own minor leagues are Willie Collazo, a non-prospect who enjoyed some success last year at AAA; and Carlos Muniz, a 26-year old who closed for AA Binghamton last year before being promoted to New Orleans and then New York. And finally, don't forget about Juan Padilla, who last pitched professionally in 2005, where he put up an unsustainable 1.49 ERA in 36.3 innings for the Mets, before undergoing multiple elbow surgeries that sidelined him for two seasons. The Mets non-tendered him in November, but gave him a minor league contract in January. We have a feeling we'll see him sometime this year.

Conclusion: The Mets have a fine bullpen, if they can keep healthy and Willie Randolph stubbornly entrenches the pitchers in roles that actually suit their various talents. The bullpen will have less importance this year, of course, with such a kick-ass starting rotation.

Pedro, Perez, Wilson, Livan, Lohse, Santana, Sosa

2008-02-07T10:42:00.000-07:00

Shocker! Pedro Martinez doesn't share our cultural values! He's from the Dominican Republic! It's not just a place where baseball players come from.

It's a shame, but Ollie P is not ready to deal. One can't blame him; after all, his inconsistency would drive down his price. Of course the Mets would probably fall all over themselves to give him a four-year contract right now, as they should. How much would he make now? How much next year? We can't even guess. There seems to be a closing gap between mediocre pitchers (Carlos Silva: $12 million a year) and superstar pitchers (Johan Santana: ~$22 million a year), and there's a lot of room for pitchers to be overpaid (Silva, Barry Zito) or underpaid (Jake Peavy).

The Mets are interested in Craig Wilson. It's a good idea, as the Mets need a right-handed outfielder with some power to counter Ryan Church's lefty weakness, and Wilson is a career .290/.389/.527 hitter against lefties. Of course we're still a little bummed about Chip Ambres going to the Padres, as he could have served that role as well. (Note the blurb at the bottom of that Padres article includes the words, "The Nationals' Ryan Church, a corner outfielder who has appeared in 114 games in center, also is on the Padres' radar, but the Nationals want a lot in return." Sorry, we're going to feel the sting of this for a long time. Speaking of Padres, Ben Johnson is also an option for the aforementioned role, though he seems to have forgotten how to hit. Damnit, Heath Bell still hurts too.

The Mets don't want Livan Hernandez. Good. If they need another starter, it should be Mike Pelfrey and only Mike Pelfrey (since he's all we have left). If not him, then Jason Vargas or Adam Bostick. It's not worth it wasting money on these guys. But Wilpon is determined to spend. This is a curse. A curse, we tell you. Teams with limited payrolls are forced to evaluate players well and hand out money wisely. Somehow we don't think this is ushering in an age of reason in Flushing: "You've got to remember that when you make a trade midway through the season, a 10 million guy becomes 5 million. It's not dollar for dollar if he makes it during the season," Wilpon said. Mike Pelfrey for Kevin Millar anyone?

Apparently the Mets are still looking at Kyle Lohse. This is some bullshit. Kyle Lohse is a mediocre, dime-a-dozen pitcher and there is no reason to give him any money at all. End of story.

We realize that Johan Santana had a press conference and people talked and Johan is great and it's going to be exciting to have him on the Mets and maybe Luis Castillo had something to do with that. Whatever. We've never been much for the hoo-rah! form of blogging, so that's why we're not saying much about that. We've already been pumped up; we don't need team officials to tell us.

Right now we're thinking about the bullpen, and who is going to be in it. The Mets seemed to constrict themselves when they gave Jorge Sosa $2 million; he's not that good, and now he seems to be guaranteed a job that Duaner Sanchez, Matt Wise or someone else might deserve more. The Mets seem to be just as clueless about building bullpens as almost everyone else.

The next post, on the bullpen, will be the penultimate installment of "Assembling the 2008 Mets."

Edit: Curt Schilling is not underpaid. Forget you ever saw that.