May 11, 2008
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Ten Things I Didn’t Know Last Weekby Dave StudemanJune 07, 2007 What a long, strange week it's been. Consider... Infantile managersLast Saturday, Lou Piniella lost his cool on a correct umpire call, later conceding that "I was going to argue if he was out, safe or whatever." Evidently, Piniella wanted to get in on the previous day's embarrassing dugout action between Carlos Zambrano and Michael Barrett. Or he wanted to "shake up the team." Or something. I guess it sort of worked; the Cubs won their next two games convincingly. But things really were falling apart at Wrigley, and it's hard to believe that a managerial rant can make much difference. If it can, consider the case of Philip Wellman, the manager of the minor league Mississippi Braves. This rant has been a big hit on You Tube, and it's easy to see why. But I found the entire thing pathetic instead of funny. The guy was just putting on a show instead of fighting for his team. I guess it falls under the heading of minor league entertainment but, if so, it doesn't make me want to attend a minor league game. A couple of innings later, three of his players were also thrown out of the game, following their manager's lead (hat tip, BBTF). Seems to me that's the real difference a managerial rant can make: turn players into whiners. I guess the Braves don't feel too bad about it. They suspended Wellman for three games, which is less than Piniella's four-game suspension. Gary Sheffield sounding racistWhat else can you call it when you hear Sheffield spout things like "Where I'm from, you can't control us. You might get a guy to do it that way for a while because he wants to benefit, but in the end he is going to go back to being who he is," as he said in a recent GQ article. Unfortunately, that remark will just reinforce the perception that black players aren't team players, and will ensure that only short, white players like David Eckstein will continue to win awards for "hustle." It's too bad, really, because Sheffield has some useful things to say. There is a difference in the backgrounds of Latin American and black ballplayers and baseball can be doing more to appeal to young blacks in the USA. But I personally think he's off base when he says that the relatively low proportion of black baseball players is "a baseball issue." It's a deep-seated cultural issue that isn't going to change easily. Buzz Bissinger losing his coolDid you hear the radio interview with Buzz Bissinger about his Sunday New York Times Kerry Wood article? (subscription required). Bissinger was already a controversial figure for the anti-sabermetric slant in his book Three Nights in August, and he lost it when the interviewer challenged his assumption that young pitchers are spending less time in the minors these days. Some folks at the Baseball Think Factory took a random sample of well-known pitchers and came up with this list: Pitcher, Minor League Innings (numbers courtesy of The Baseball Cube) Baseball Prospectus's Clay Davenport took a more systematic look and found that major league pitchers who debuted in 1973 had pitched 423 innings in the minors, while pitchers who debuted last year pitched 434 minor league innings. And Joe Posnanski has conducted his own research into the matter. Buzz Bissinger seriously doesn't know what he's writing about, and should be forced to prove his points before someone publishes his stuff again. A-Rod's got bad karmaMeanwhile, controversy continues to dog Alex Rodriguez. First he was discovered hanging out with a "mystery blonde", accompanied by the shocking revelation that he hangs out in strip clubs. Then he called off an infielder on a pop fly, when he wasn't actually on the field with a glove. Kind of bush league, but mild compared to something Ty Cobb might have done. Then he hit a game-winning home run in the ninth inning of a nationally televised game. Talk about paradoxes: A-Rod leads the majors in All-Star voting, but is the subject of trade rumors. Really, if you want to understand Alex Rodriguez, just throw all of those news items in a box, shake them up and see what the insides look like. It won't be pretty, but that is A-Rod's karma: relatively mild misbehavior, heroic achievements, high pay, controversy. You can win a ballgame with no baserunners.Thank goodness they continued to actually play baseball last week, just to distract us from everything else. Last Thursday, the Blue Jays beat the White Sox, 2-0, on two solo home runs and literally nothing else. According to the Blue Jay announcers, it was the first time in the history of the game (or, at least since 1900) that a team had won a game without getting an actual runner on base (in other words, not including guys trotting around the bases on home runs). (Hat tip: SABR buddies) The best fielders in 2007Meanwhile, baseball analyst Mitchel Lichtman has posted his fielding statistic, Ultimate Zone Rating, for the first two months of the year (as well as the last three years). Lichtman created UZR several years ago, and it remains at the cutting edge of fielding metrics today. Justin converted the UZR data into NL team fielding rankings, and compared them to THT's team fielding stats, which are less sophisticated than UZR. It's good to see the THT stats hold up relatively well, but it's better to see the actual UZR. Some of the things I learned from UZR:
Win Shares leadersLast Friday, I posted Win Shares stats for the first two months of the year. We've been posting Win Shares on our site for four years now, and I figure at this point I don't have to introduce them anymore. If you're new around here, you can read more about them in this article. I have been meaning to further modify Win Shares, but I keep hearing rumors that Bill James has been working on a new version so I haven't bothered. I may revisit the underlying structure of Win Shares someday but, for now, I prefer to use Win Shares Above Bench as my preferred metric. Through last Thursday's games, Vlad Guerrero had 12 WSAB, three more than the next-highest total. Vlad is on an MVP tear, and he's even +2 in UZR so far this year. Other players of note among WSAB leaders:
The all-times leaders in defensive substitutionsBrandon Isleib recently parsed the Retrosheet data (1957 to the present) to derive the following list of all-time leaders in defensive substitutions at each position: POS Player Subs C Rick Dempsey 291 1B Mike Jorgensen 415 2B Al Weis 205 SS Rafael Belliard 291 3B Garth Iorg 220 LF Greg Gross 298 CF Paul Blair 350 RF Jim Eisenrich 152Yes, the all-time leader in defensive substitutions is the man who was born the same day that Babe Ruth died, Mike Jorgenson. In 1978, Jorgenson pinch-ran for Mike Hargrove a lot and would up replacing him at first base 61 times, the single season record since 1957. Overall, he appeared in 96 games and had 97 at-bats. I love lists like this. Who was drafted when by whom.Jorgenson was the 61st pick in the 1966 draft. The year before, Ken Holtzman was the 61st pick. Since 1965 was the first year of the major league draft, you wouldn't be wrong to conclude that the first two 61st draft picks have been the best 61st draft picks in the history of the major league draft (other contenders are Craig Swan, Joe Magrane and Jesse Crain). Stuff like that used to take a long time to figure out, but no more. Thanks to Baseball Reference's latest addition, you can cut draft data all sorts of ways. For instance, David Price of Vanderbilt is widely considered the likely first pick in today's draft. In the first 16 years of the draft, there was only one college pitcher taken with the overall first pick. Since then, there have been three or four every decade. Here's the full list: Year Team Pitcher College Record ERA 2006 Royals Luke Hochevar University of Tennessee 2002 Pirates Bryan Bullington Ball State University 0-0 13.50 1997 Tigers Matt Anderson Rice University 15-7 5.19 1996 Pirates Kris Benson Clemson University 68-73 4.34 1994 Mets Paul Wilson Florida State University 40-58 4.86 1989 Orioles Ben McDonald Louisiana State University 78-70 3.91 1988 Padres Andy Benes University of Evansville 155-139 3.97 1983 Twins Tim Belcher Mount Vernon Nazarene Colleg 146-140 4.16 1981 Mariners Mike Moore Oral Roberts University 161-176 4.39 1976 Astros Floyd Bannister Arizona State University 134-143 4.06There are a lot of fine pitchers on this list, but there are a lot of broken dreams too. By the way, Baseball Prospectus ran a great study of high school vs. college pitchers in the draft last year, and Justin did a nice job of summarizing the results in this post. What those sabermetric terms meanWe've put a lot of work into our statistical glossary, but we were recently outdone by Pizza Cutter. Back to work... References and Resources As one reader pointed out to me, Luke Hochevar wasn't pitching in college at the time he was drafted number one overall. He was pitching in an independent league. Still, that doesn't change the concept of the list: #1 overall draft picks who had already pitched in college. Dave is the manager of the Baseball Graphs website. and a regular contributor to Heater, a PDF fantasy magazine for the digital age. Comments about this article can be sent to him through the miracle of e-mail. Do you have a general question or comment for one of THT's writers? Send it in to our weekly mailbag We also welcome unsolicited op-ed pieces of approximately 500 words for consideration. We reserve the right to edit for length, clarity and consistency of style. Please include your whole name and location to be considered. If you have a comment about this specific article, please email the writer. Next Article: Drafting high school pitchers>> <<Previous Article: One Month Late? |
