A Recommendation

I am a huge Jeff Bagwell supporter for the Hall of Fame election, so I cannot recommend this piece by The Common Man highly enough. I feel the idea is both perfect as an analogy and overall brilliant; I agree 100%.

Trivia Break-Teammates with All-Star Seasons

I needed a break from writing, so I made a Sporcle quiz instead. This one is naming the teammates with 5+ WAR seasons (as per Fangraphs) from 2006-2011. Look for another quiz tomorrow!

50 Best Players Not in the Hall of Fame Ballot Explanations, Part 1

I participated in Baseball: Past and Present’s now-annual “50 Best Players Not in the Hall of Fame” Project. This is the intersection of all sorts of different things that I love: baseball, baseball stats, the Hall of Fame, arguing, snubs and overlooks, lists, voting, really big projects, and so on. The full list will be coming soon, but seeing as I’d like to actually explain my picks (including some of the people who didn’t make the list), the most prudent thing to do is to break the list down into parts.

Part of the ballot was listing whether we thought our 50 Best were actually Hall of Famers. So, I suppose I should start by saying that I am definitely a big Hall of Fame guy; I marked all 50 Players on my ballot as Yeses (there are actually players who didn’t make my final ballot that I would still put in). I operate on the thinking that the Hall was intended to be closer to a big Hall, anyway. Some of the Veterans Committee players that got in under Frankie Frisch weren’t great, but at the same time, they’re in.

Additionally, the game (and, therefore, the number of players in the game) is growing much faster than the Hall of Fame. For example, there are nearly twice as many teams now as there were when the Hall was founded; shouldn’t we be inducting more players now? (If not at a 2 to 1 rate, then maybe a 1.5 to 1 rate or so.) And even more than that, I like to remember players. Every player was someone’s favorite, and each one has some stories that made them stand out. The Hall of Fame is without a doubt the best way to remember and honor great players, so why not add a few more in any way? It’s not like it would detract from the best of them; nobody now cares any less about Babe Ruth because High Pockets Kelly is in Cooperstown with him.

Best 50 Players Not in the Hall of Fame

Baseball Past and Present just put up their post on the 50 best players not in Cooperstown. I voted, and my explanations will be forthcoming. Right now, I figured I would redirect people to the main project page.

Thoughts on Albert Pujols to the Angels

Well, that didn't happen at all the way I thought it would.

It's been weird; I heard about it minutes after it happened, but didn't get a chance to stop what I was doing and write something until now. Really, I didn't even get a chance to reflect on it until now.

First, I was more expecting the Marlins to offer just plain stupid trump offer. Even more than that, though,  I wasn't expecting a just plain stupid trump offer. I was more or less expecting the Cardinals to overpay for sentimental reasons to bring back Pujols, and the $220 million dollar price tag would hurt, but we'd get over it, and at least there would be the memories to comfort Cardinal fans during the decline years of the contract. Instead, the Angels jumped in out of nowhere to sign him away.

I don't really begrudge Pujols for leaving, or the Cardinals for not upping their offer. Really, this isn't meant to be a bitter piece.

First, I would like thank Albert for his eleven years as a Cardinals. Nothing can take away those three MVP years, or two World Series trophies, or anything else. I still can't wait to see number 5 retired and Albert in Cooperstown with a St. Louis hat (and both will come, eventually).

Next, I would like to thank the Cardinals front office for sticking to their plan and not upping their offer to Pujols. The deal they offered was already about as long as I could have stomached; I think any longer or bigger would have actually crippled the team (and, as an optimist, I didn't even think a $220 million/10 year deal would ruin the team's chances in the future...). So kudos to them.

(Also, in a weird way, I would like to thank the Angels. They saved us $220 million dollars, and I'm sure there will be some humor ten years from now when they're paying a 42-year-old first baseman $26 million+ per year. Essentially, they're paying him whatever we owed him from his time in St. Louis.)

The 2011 Ryan Howard Awards

So, this may or may not be my last piece on the 2011 Awards season, but it is the last one that requires the BBWAA’s voting results. Ladies and gentleman, I present...

The 2011 Ryan Howard Awards

So, what is it, you ask? Simply put, it is the most inexplicable result of the MVP voting. The name sake is Ryan Howard, for two reason. The first is that he was what inspired the award last winter. Last year, I wrote about Ryan Zimmerman’s MVP-quality year, but noted he was getting no attention for his great play. Sure enough, he finished sixteenth in the voting, in spite of his good year. While I was looking at the player who had finished ahead of him, I noticed that Ryan Howard finished tenth. There were other odd choices ahead of Zimmerman, but Howard was definitely the strangest, as he was barely starter-level in 2010 (bWAR had him at 2.0, while fWAR put him at 1.4).

This led me to look closer at the AL voting; my choice for the 2010 AL Ryan Howard Award was also tenth place in the voting. If you recalled that this was Delmon Young, then congratulations; you must understand the Baseball Writers Association better than I do. Young hit 21 home runs and drove in 112 runs...which was apparently enough for the BBWAA to collectively overlook the fact that .298/.333/.493. And .826 OPS with bad defense in left field just isn’t that valuable, which partly explains his 1.7 bWAR (lowest among all MVP vote-getters in either league).

So, who are the Ryan Howard Award winners for the 2011 season? Well, the award requires a combination of votes and awfulness. So, David Robertson got an MVP vote in the AL, but he won’t win the Ryan Howard Award because he was so unsupported. Voting for a reliever for MVP is a fairly bad choice, but in Robertson’s case, he got one point. These things happen; writers vote for friends or guys they like or so on. The RHA winner has to be both unjustifiable as MVP, but at the same time a popular MVP choice.

Why the Newest Pujols-to-Miami Rumors Make No Sense

So, the current buzz is that the Marlins are still going after Pujols, but they mean it this time!

Really, I’m still skeptical for several reasons. First, the Cardinals were apparently the only team left standing on Pujols as recently a week ago, meaning that they didn’t need to raise their bid for his services. Now, suddenly, the Marlins (and Cubs!) are showing interest. This seems an awful lot like the classic “mystery team” ploy (or, it could be both teams trying to force the Cardinals to up their offer, which would more or less be the same thing, just a different instigator).

Ron Santo Elected to Hall of Fame

It's long overdue, but Ron Santo has finally made the Hall of Fame. It's a shame it took until after his death for it to happen, but at least he's finally in.

It's good to see another third baseman make the Hall, too. The position has long been underrepresented.

MLB's Borderline-Insane New Draft Gimmick

So, did you hear that MLB has a new draft pick lottery thing? Yep, as part of the new Collective Bargaining Agreement, Selig made sure to fix that much-squabbled about problem of who gets the picks after the first round of the draft.

I don’t want to say this is the dumbest thing in baseball history; baseball has had numerous dumb things in history. There’s this. These. Most of these. This and this (you’ll know them when you see them). Yeah, not to beat the point into the ground, but if you’re looking for dumb things, there are worse. But I’m not sure how many of them rival the Competitive Balance Lottery on things like poor planning, inexplicability, or sheer out-of-nowhereness.

Granted, people had issues with the draft. The Free Agent type rankings were a mess, most of the owners wanted to curb spending on amateurs, some people wanted to add countries to the draft or remove them, and so on. Nowhere did I hear anything about teams needing more picks or less picks or anything like that.

Awards Season Explanations, Part 3

So, I didn’t quite get this up before the MVPs were announced, but I still want to explain my voting. And so I shall. Let’s jump right in. (The first two explanation articles can be found here and here.)

AL MVP-1. Jose Bautista

2. Jacoby Ellsbury - This was the hard part, really. The two were more or less equal, with each one bettering the other in different categories. Ellsbury was the better fielder (at a harder position), Bautista was the better hitter (while playing multiple positions). Ellsbury led the AL in fWAR (9.4 to 8.3), while Bautista led in bWAR (8.5 to 7.2). In both of those cases, they were 1-2 (with Verlander tying Baustista in bWAR; however, I trust fWAR for pitchers a little more, and I have already explained my reasons for not voting for him repeatedly).

In the end, I went with Bautista for 2 reasons: first, a lot of Ellsbury’s value came from his fielding, which was suddenly improved. Fielding stats are both less certain than hitting stats and more prone to random fluke fluctuation, meaning that we can be much more certain of Bautista’s value. Second, Bautista played about two dozen games at third base. While Ellsbury did play the harder position (center field is definitely harder to play than right, although it’s similar in difficulty to third base), WAR (both versions) accounts for position difficulty; it does not account for versatility. So, I felt comfortable using that as a sort of tiebreaker. Really, though, both were fine choices, and would have made fine MVPs (the next five players or so would also be decent choices, although I don’t think any of them had as good a claim to the trophy as these two).

The Great 2011 Awards Cheat Sheet

Well, Award Season has more or less wrapped up. So, for some reason, I decided to create a giant summary of the winners, listed by awards and voting block. No, I don’t understand how my mind works either.

In any case, the results in question are from myself, the General Chapter voting of the Baseball Bloggers Alliance, the full Baseball Bloggers Alliance, and the Baseball Writers Association of America (aka, “The Official Awards”). As an added bonus, I’ll throw in some commentary on the results, because what good is an awards summary without remarks containing varying degrees of sarcasm?

Pitching Triple Crowns: Where Do Verlander and Kershaw Rank?

So, first off, congratulations to recently-named Cy Young winners Clayton Kershaw and Justin Verlander. Both were deserving winners, and this piece is not meant to disparage their seasons in any way (because I know that, if enough people read this, at least one person will think that it is). Rather, it more sprung from my curiosity about pitchers and the MVP.

After comparing Verlander’s Triple Crown season to the previous few, I decided that I might want to take a more in-depth look at how his season compared to other Triple Crown winners (and yes, this is partly related to why I’m not a big fan of Verlander winning the MVP). I figured the best way was to do a straight up comparison bewtween his season and the seven other Pitching Triple Crown seasons that have followed Dwight Gooden’s 1985 (and yes, it is now seven, with Kershaw’s PTC).

Awards Season Explanations, Part 2

With MLB wrapping up the major awards over the next week, I was planning on finishing explaining my ballots. (Part 1 of my explanations can be found here.) I figured that it should be quick; after all, the first part I did had five awards, and I wrote that reasonable quick. But the MVP ballots are long, and I could either delay the NL Cy Young until after the award is announced, or break up the series further. So, my thinking on my NL Cy Young ballot, plus a public service announcement about something exciting coming up.

NL Cy Young-1. Roy Halladay

2. Clayton Kershaw

3. Cliff Lee-I feel like these three more or less had to be the top three; it was merely a matter of arranging them. Both Baseball-Reference WAR and Fangraphs WAR agreed that the order was Halladay-Kershaw-Lee. But Kershaw did win the pitching triple crown (which is one thing I hope to write more about, hopefully by next week). So, I was somewhat pre-disposed to put him first. But, everything I looked at seemed to indicate that Halladay was the better pitcher by a slight margin. Halladay made one fewer start than Kershaw, but threw one third of an inning more. Kershaw had 248 strikeouts to Lee’s 238 and Halladay’s 220 (first, second, and tied for third, respectively), and a 9.57 K/9 Innings (to Lee’s 9.21 and Halladay’s 8.47). But Halladay has both of them topped in BB/9 innings, with 1.35 to Kershaw’s 2.08 and Lee’s 1.62. Halladay also led the group in HR/9 innings, .39 to .58 (Kershaw) and .70 (Lee), despite the fact that Kershaw played in a better pitcher’s park. Their ERA’s were close as well, with Kershaw leading Halladay and Lee 2.28 to 2.35 and 2.40. But playing in a pitcher’s park hurt him; ERA+ put him second (163) to Halladay (164), with Lee and incredibly close third (161). Really, they were all incredible, but it seemed like Halladay consistently edged out Kershaw while playing in a better hitter’s park, leading to this order.

4. Ian Kennedy

5. Cole Hamels-Again, my down-ballot spots are less rigid. Kennedy seemed like a good fourth place, and I was split on whether to try and slide Carpenter into the fifth slot. In the end, I went against it, which is totally the opposite of what I did on my AL Rookie of the Year ballot. So yes, my philosophy on the final ballot spots fluctuates quite easily.


Now, for an announcement. The project for this site that is currently taking up my time is this Baseball Past and Present idea. Basically, it’s just what it sounds like (if you clicked the link, then came back); Who are the 50 Best Players who currently aren’t in the Hall of Fame? My ballot currently stands at 42 players, with 12 more fighting for the last 8 spaces (and I actually am being very deliberate with these final picks). I feel like this may lead to numerous future updates; there will be at least one, to be sure. Keep your eyes open.

Awards Season Explanations, Part 1

So, this being awards week, I would finally like to go over some of my picks that I made a while ago for the Baseball Bloggers Alliance voting.

First, the Rookie of the Year Awards.

AL-1. Dustin Ackley-The rookie leader in fWAR in the AL was actually second place Michael Pineda, at 3.4, followed by a 3-way tie between Ackley, Brett Lawrie, and Ivan Nova (Desmond Jennings was also pretty close). However, Pineda and Nova played full seasons, while Lawrie played in only 43 games, and Ackley played in 90 games. 43 games didn’t seem like enough, but 90 games is just over half the season. Ackley’s WAR seems surprising, but he did it in a number of ways; about .9 WAR came from his batting 117 wRC+, meaning he was about 17% better than the league average hitter (going off of wOBA). About .1 WAR came from his base running and .2 from his fielding, meaning the rest came from the fact that he did all of that while playing second base. In any case, I decided his 2.7 fWAR in 90 games was impressive enough in a large enough portion of the season.

2. Michael Pineda-See above

3. Zach Britton-he was pretty close with 2.5 fWAR, and I wanted to vote for an Oriole.

A Post in Which I Try and Emulate Ken Tremendous

There are several articles I’ve been meaning to analyze. One’s older, but it’s about the MVP races. Those are coming up, so I think it’s still relevant. The other covers the recent World Series, but it’s fairly new, so I’m also calling that one relevant.

We’ll start this week with the one that will become irrelevant sooner, and if I get time, go on to the MVP one later (or something else awards related; I’ll play it by ear). Bill Madden of the New York Daily News thinks there are too many teams in MLB right now, and the 2011 World Series showed why.