The Hardball Times http://www.hardballtimes.com/main Baseball. Insight. Daily. en jaffechris@yahoo.com Copyright 2009 2009-11-08T16:53:11+00:00 B-ref User Survey http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/blog_article/b-ref-user-survey/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/blog_article/b-ref-user-survey/ click here to take the survey.


Read more great baseball stuff at The Hardball Times.]]> ]]> Chris Jaffe 2009-11-08T15:53:11+00:00 2010 impact rookies: Carlos Carrasco http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/blog_article/2010-impact-rookies-carlos-carrasco/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/blog_article/2010-impact-rookies-carlos-carrasco/ Carlos Carrasco. Carrasco came over to Cleveland from Philadelphia as part of the Cliff Lee trade this past season. The 22-year old Venezuelan native entered the 2009 season as one of the top pitching prospects in the minors. He has a solid 6'3 215-pound frame He projects as a second or third starter starter with a low to mid 90s fastball, an average curve ball and a plus sinking change-up. His change is by far his best pitch and he will use it regularly in any count or situation

Carrasco spent part of 2008 and all of 2009 in Triple-A. In those 32 starts he has averaged 9.07 strikeouts per nine innings. His command has also been improving over that time with 2.71 walks per nine. He was much less dominant in his parts of two seasons in Double-A in 2007 and 2008. He had a combined strikeout to walk rate of 1.74 and a less than impressive 4.69 FIP.

He made five starts in September with Cleveland and had little success. In 22.1 innings he walked 11 and struck out 11 while allowing 40 hits and six home runs. While these results are certainly not encouraging the Indians will likely not be too worried about his brief stint in the major leagues.

His mechanics have been inconsistent at times which has led to periods of struggle. His inconsistency can be frustrating at times, but those flashes of brilliance show the potential he possesses. Carrasco is still young and could use some more developmental time in Triple-A but you can expect to see him with Cleveland by mid-season.

286+306-316/185

Read more great baseball stuff at The Hardball Times.]]> ]]> Alex Pedicini 2009-11-07T17:04:01+00:00 Ranking Yankee World Champions http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/blog_article/ranking-yankee-world-champions/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/blog_article/ranking-yankee-world-champions/ all the cool kids are ranking Yankee title winners, so I thought I would, too. Since it's being done by others, there's no sense in making it a full article, so I'll just dump it in THT Live.

I use league strength as a secondary factor, which is arguably the least honest way of looking at it overall. It's more important than I'm letting on, but I'm mostly interested in how teams dominated their actual opponents. When it's similar, which is frequent, I'll look at league strength to some extent.

Some will disagree, but it's just a fun exercise anyway.

Actual record, with pythag wins in (). Here are my rankings, based on 10 minutes worth of thought:

1. 1998 114-48 (108). If you account for league strength at all, they have to be #1

2. 1927 110-44 (109). A then-league record in wins and a pythag record nearly as good? DANG!

3. 1939 106-56 (111). I know they're pythag is better, but real wins matter, too.

4. 1932 107-47 (99). Might belong lower, but the real key is that there's three teams way above everyone else.

5. 1953 99-52 (101). Not only Stengel's winningest champion, but did so despite being his only one in the five-peat to play less than 154 games.

6. 1937 102-52 (103). Those McCarthy teams were just good.

7. 1936 102-51 (102). I really can't tell the difference between 1937 and 1936.

8. 1961 109-53 (103). A one-dimensional team not nearly as good as their record. But did'ya notice their record?

9. 2009 103-59 (95). Random fact: only six Yankee teams have ever won more than 103 games in a season (and one was the 1964 squad that lost the World Series.

10. 1977 100-62 (99). The team that made Reggie a candy bar.

11. 1978 100-63 (99). The 1977-78 Yanks sure were consistent.

12. 1999 98-64 (96). Not nearly as good as the team the year before, but still damn good.

13. 1941 101-53 (96). The might belong a bit lower, but it had one of the most famous Yankee feats: DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak.

14. 1947 97-57 (100). From 1923 until the mid-1960s, the Yanks never went longer than three full seasons without a world championship. This ended one of those painfully long droughts.

15. 1956 97-57 (98). Mickey Mantle won a triple crown that year, not that anyone thinks of that when they see this team. They're famous for Don Larsen's perfecto.

16. 1950 98-56 (96). Stengel's teams really don't rank that high overall, which might seem odd at first, but makes sense if you think about it. He didn't have better talent than any of the other managers, he just had the knack or good fortune to produce titles from teams anyway.

17. 1951 98-56 (94). The first four years of the five-peat under Stengel produced teams that were all about the same as each other . They won 95-98 games every year, with 94-96 pythag wins each season. Good luck separating that bunch!

18. 1949 97-57 (95). See what I mean?

19. 1952 95-59 (95). They had the fewest wins of any Stengel champion.

20. 1938 99-53 (97). This might be better than the Stengel five-peat, but I felt obligated to put those last four teams in one solid block because they feel similar, and I didn't want to put this squad above them all.

21. 1928 101-53 (95). Worst 100-game winning Yankee title winner ever. Man, what bums.

22. 1923 98-54 (95). The first Yankee world champs. While we always think of the Yanks as a heavy hitting team, aside from Ruth their offense was pretty pedestrian. (Yeah, I know that's a big thing to aside, but still - their offensive wasn't as good as you might guess).

23. 1996 92-70 (88). They're .568 winning percentage is the 62nd best in franchise history. In other words, it was a below average regular season for them. Jeebus.

24. 1962 96-66 (94). They struggled to win as many games as a Stengel-era team despite playing 8 more times. Lucky for them so many of the fast-integrating teams were in the NL.

25. 1943 98-56 (92). With WWII, they had "only" two Hall of Famers in the starting lineup: a 36-year-old Bill Dickey (who played half the season) and Joe Gordon.

26. 2000 87-74 (85). On the bright side, their pythag record was better than the 2006 Cardinal world champs. On the down side, that's the bright side.

27. 1958 97-62 (96). Here's a controversial pick, for which my explanation comes in a column I once wrote for THT. Short version: they were great early in the year, but then their pitching went kaput. They were an average team (in the lesser league) the next two months. The pitching problem wasn't a fluke - it remained an issue all of 1959, causing them to barely finish .500. They didn't improve until 1960, when a new crop of pitchers developed. At the time of the 1958 World Series, this was just plain and simple not a good team, in the inferior league. The other teams that won were at least good compared to their competition, but in October 1958 I'm not sure I can say that about these Yanks.

Read more great baseball stuff at The Hardball Times.]]> ]]> Chris Jaffe 2009-11-06T21:24:55+00:00 Great Moments in Plagiarization http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/shysterball/article/great-moments-in-plagiarization/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/shysterball/article/great-moments-in-plagiarization/ ESPN plagiarised -- and then un-plagiarised and apologized for plagiarising -- a story on my NBC colleague Mike Florio's Pro Football Talk blog. Best part of it is the first comment on ESPN's article after the correction was made:

Jesus... at least plagiarize a legitimate site... you're now poaching off of a failed lawyer's sports blog

That works for me on so many levels.

Read more great baseball stuff at The Hardball Times.]]> ]]> Craig Calcaterra 2009-11-06T20:24:13+00:00 The Nats lay people off http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/shysterball/article/the-nats-lay-people-off/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/shysterball/article/the-nats-lay-people-off/ From Washington Business Journal:

The Washington Nationals, which finished its 2009 season with the worst record in baseball, recently laid off several people in the team's executive offices, according to sources close to the team. Two former employees, who asked not to be identified, admitted to being laid off by the team.

One former employee, who worked as an account executive in the sales department, said he was let go last month. “There wasn’t much to it,” he said in a phone interview on Friday. “If you lose that many games there’s going to be changes to any organization, on and off the field. I think I was just part of that downsizing.” He said he was “definitely one of several” laid off in his department, which he said was made up of about 15 people. “We were told they were just downsizing and they basically left it at that . . . it was almost like a last in, first out kind of thing.”

So I guess that means the other person let go was Strasburg?

Read more great baseball stuff at The Hardball Times.]]> ]]> Craig Calcaterra 2009-11-06T20:05:46+00:00 McCourt Update http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/shysterball/article/mccourt-update/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/shysterball/article/mccourt-update/ you have Josh to tell you all that has happened. Obviously the most notable thing in all of this is that the person who will be overseeing the case is named Commissioner Gordon.

It's nice to see him back to work after what happened to Barbara.

Read more great baseball stuff at The Hardball Times.]]> ]]> Craig Calcaterra 2009-11-06T19:43:09+00:00 Twins strike for J.J. Hardy http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/blog_article/twins-strike-for-j.j.-hardy/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/blog_article/twins-strike-for-j.j.-hardy/
Hardy, acquired by the Minnesota Twins in exchange for Carlos Gomez, leaves Milwaukee after five seasons. Debuting as a 22-year old, Hardy had quickly established himself as a top-tier shortstop in quick order until 2009 brought in a caving of his offensive numbers.

As soon as a year ago, the Hardy/Gomez swap would have been unthinkable: Hardy was coming off a .283/.343/.478 line with 24 home runs. Defensively, he was one of the strongest shortstops in the bigs, and the sky seemed the limit.

Cubs-Brewers
How quickly a year changes matters. Hardy struggled to a .659 OPS, earning himself a late-season demotion to Triple-A that robbed him of his ability to become a free agent after the 2010 season. What Hardy struggled with particularly was his contact rate, not all that surprising given his career batting average pre-2009 was .270.

You can call it karma or the regression to the mean, however, given the fact that Hardy was unlucky in 2009 and similarly lucky in 2008.

Take BABIP as compared to xBABIP (read more on the birthing and reasoning behind xBABIP here) over the years for Hardy. In Hardy's rookie season of 2005, both BABIP and xBABIP remained the same. From 2006-'07, Hardy's BABIP -- the actual result -- trended lower than his xBABIP -- the expected result. As far as BABIP was concerned, Hardy's 2006-7 was unlucky (but not terribly so).

In 2008, things changed. Hardy's xBABIP actually dropped to .279 from .286 after consistently rising -- a mark of a hitter improving. This .279 xBABIP from 2007 ended up being Hardy's BABIP in 2008 -- what Hardy was expected to perform at in 2008 mirrored his actual production in 2007. Put it yet another way. Hardy's .277/.323/.463 line from 2007, strictly from a BABIP/xBABIP perspective, should have been his 2008 line as opposed to the high-water mark he achieved. His 2007 should have been duplicated in 2008.

It wasn't. Why? Because while the 2008 xBABIP mirrored the 2007 BABIP, the 2008 BABIP rose to .305, or roughly a 20-point spike in BABIP. Not coincidentally, his batting average rose 20 points over this time span.

In 2009, Hardy got a rude awakening in BABIP, as it sank all the way down to .264, the lowest since 2006 when he had a .242 batting average. Any wonder, then, that his batting average was .229? When you're looking at a .283 average (what he maintained in 2008) and compare it to 2009's .229, it's an obvious dropoff. But when you look at how precipitously BABIP dropped off and compare it with like BABIPs from previous years, it's not that far a dropoff.

Ah, but would you believe Hardy was actually just as good in 2009 as in 2008? The final numbers may not bear it out, but his 2009 xBABIP ended up at .306... meaning that his 2008 final numbers from a BABIP perspective should have been repeated in 2009!

Instead of his statistics following a consistent 2007-9 progression, his last three years were dicated by luck. Here's the visual evidence below, using actual numbers to simplify matters and placing them where the BABIP/xBABIP correlations command:


































Year Actual Expected BABIP xBABIP
2007 .277/.323/.463 Slightly better than ‘07 0.279 0.286
2008 .283/.343/.478 .277/.323/.463 0.305 0.279
2009 .229/.302/.357 .283/.343/.478 0.264 0.306




It looks from this table that Hardy's actually been rather consistent over the last three years: luck has simply gotten in his way (in both directions). Given these numbers, it comes across as if Hardy's true offensive talent lies around his 2007 totals -- at least, looking at the last three years. Entering his age 27 year, he could be primed for another leap forward as he did so from 2005-6. At the very least, however, his poor 2009 shouldn't give anyone any pause at all in evaluating what he can bring to the table. Expecting a line similar to 2007 is the way to go.

For Minnesota, that's a tremendous value coupled with his defense: the Twins will boast one of the top shortstops in the league and have him under control through his age 28 year.

All they had to give up was centerfielder Carlos Gomez, the centerpiece of the Johan Santana swap. Gomez has been a poor hitter, but is still just 23 with plenty of possible fruitful years ahead of him. The cachet here that the Brewers liked was his defense, which should help the Brewers and their flyball pitching staff. A leap forward offensively may be a long shot to ask for, but perhaps Doug Melvin is hopeful Gomez can experience a Michael Bourn-type breakout.

At first, I was incredulous over this deal, believing Hardy should have been shopped for a pitcher. While I still feel the Twins come ahead in the deal, I've come to realize that shipping Hardy out for a bat is actually rather logical. It's far easier to get a position player in a deal than a pitcher, especially ones of like talent. Even if Gomez is the equivalent of a 5.00 ERA pitcher, the latter comes with a higher price tag. Heck, look at the salaries the Brew Crew paid/is paying Jeff Suppan and Braden Looper. By doing this deal, the Brewers have signaled that they will not bring Mike Cameron back. Milwaukee can use that saved money and go after a free agent pitcher, a situation that gives Milwaukee better control over what pitchers come to town and at what cost.

Read more great baseball stuff at The Hardball Times.]]> ]]> Evan Brunell 2009-11-06T19:52:40+00:00 My Morning in Exile http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/shysterball/article/my-morning-in-exile110609/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/shysterball/article/my-morning-in-exile110609/
  • The Indians name the Pride of Mt. Gilead, Ohio their new pitching coach. Why they want the late Tom Poston as their pitching coach is beyond me, but given what he has to work with there, being alive wouldn't make much of a difference.


  • Your offseason calendar. It's kind of like your work calendar: filled with pointless meetings.


  • Joe Girardi may change his number to 28. Hold firm, Shelly Duncan! I mean, c'mon, what are they gonna do if you don't give it up? Release you? Wait, don't answer that question . . .


  • Seventy nine players filed for free agency yesterday. The rush to sign Eric Milton to a multi-year deal begins.


  • You'll be shocked to hear that Curt Schilling has an opinion about Pedro Martinez.


  • Finally, at least a Dairy Queen has Dilly Bars. What's Houston got?


    • It may be quiet this afternoon. I have all manner of administrative hooey I need to deal with. I've been leaving jobs at a fairly regular clip for 20 years now, and the paperwork just gets more arduous.

    Read more great baseball stuff at The Hardball Times.]]> ]]>     Craig Calcaterra 2009-11-06T14:39:19+00:00     In the backwater swirling http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/blog_article/in-the-backwater-swirling/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/blog_article/in-the-backwater-swirling/
    "There's an American League joke which has a gag line: 'Switch to the National League and add five years to your career.'"

    Although it could describe modern baseball well enough, the quote is from May 1947. Apparently, there is something that will never change.

    Read more great baseball stuff at The Hardball Times.]]> ]]>     Brandon Isleib 2009-11-06T12:56:09+00:00     Deep Thoughts: Tim Lincecum Edition http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/shysterball/article/deep-thoughts-tim-lincecum-edition/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/shysterball/article/deep-thoughts-tim-lincecum-edition/ I'm sure you've all seen this by now:

    An officer approached Lincecum's 2006 Mercedes and smelled marijuana as the pitcher rolled down his window. Schatzel said Lincecum immediately complied with a request to hand over the drug and a marijuana pipe from the car's center console.

    Lincecum pitched a two-hit shutout last June 29th, but this was his first career one-hitter.

    Congratulations, Tim!

    Read more great baseball stuff at The Hardball Times.]]> ]]>     Craig Calcaterra 2009-11-06T11:23:41+00:00