http://www.hardballtimes.com/main Baseball. Insight. Daily. en downstreamtrekker@gmail.com Copyright 2013 2013-05-24T08:08:15+00:00 http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/rick-anderson-and-pitching-to-contact/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/rick-anderson-and-pitching-to-contact/#When:07:08:15 Tom Kelly era, it was pitching coach Rick Anderson who refined the strategy when incoming manager Ron Gardenhire named him to the position in 2002.

The theory of “pitch to contact and trust your defense; throw strikes and minimize walks to pitch deep into games” has become increasingly more prevalent as his tenure has progressed through the years. In fact, in Anderson’s early years with the team, it wasn't really that prevalent at all, with guys like Johan Santana around.

This past offseason, the Twins announced a drastic shift in philosophy regarding their starting pitchers (the strategy had never been applied across-the-board to the team’s relievers). General manager Terry Ryan was all over the media at the Winter Meetings, telling anyone with a microphone and camera about how the Twins had decided to start placing more value on velocity and strikeouts.

On an organizational level, Ryan seems to be staying true to his word, acquiring flamethrower Alex Meyer and strikeout machine Trevor May in trades and drafting Jose Berrios. All three are generating plenty of strikeouts in the minors this year in their first seasons in the organization.

Even Anderson joined in the fun, going so far as to say he would never use the phrase "pitch to contact" again. But the rest of that interview with Anderson is bizarre and cryptic, confusing both the reporter, Tom Powers, and Twins closer Glen Perkins. Perkins pretty clearly demonstrated that he never really had a clue what the phrase meant: “The definition of pitch to contact? Man, I guess throwing quality strikes in the strike zone and trying to induce contact. Weakly. Pitch to weak contact.”

Let’s pause for a moment and talk about Perkins. If you read between the lines of David Laurila’s interview with Perkins for Fangraphs, it appears that the Twins don’t teach their pitchers about advanced statistics at all. Perkins says he was primarily concerned about his win-loss record and ERA until stumbling across a FanGraphs article about Brandon McCarthy in 2010. Perkins doesn't mention any Twins coaches in the interview, but he does drop in some words of wisdom given to him by Greg Maddux at the World Baseball Classic.

Anderson, in his interview with Powers, basically said that he wasn’t changing his philosophy beyond ditching some terminology. He defines pitching to contact as, “Attack. Don’t pick.” In the same interview, he says, “If Alex Meyer is throwing 95 miles per hour—attack! Don’t pick.” Seems to me like somebody’s not going along with the program here.

As I mentioned, it seems that the organization on the whole is sticking to its word and valuing the ability to miss bats more than previously. So now, it’s time to find out whether Anderson is sticking to his word, being a stubborn curmudgeon and not changing a darn thing, or finally adapting along with the front office. As it turns out, Anderson is implementing his famous “pitch to contact” mantra more than ever, and it’s at least partially to blame for the failures of the Twins rotation.

The prototype

Brad Radke
Career (1995-2006, all with Twins):
{exp:list_maker}2451 IP, 5.39 K/9, 1.63 BB/9, 82.7% Contact% (2002-2006), 4.22 ERA, 4.24 FIP {/exp:list_maker}Ahh, Brad Radke, he of the 89 mph heater, devastating change-up, and pinpoint command; the prototypical “Twins starter.” When Anderson arrived in 2002, Radke had already been with the Twins for seven seasons and was the poster boy for the team’s developing pitch-to-contact strategy.

Radke’s contact rate, while a few percentage points higher than league-average in its few measurable years (FanGraphs didn’t start tracking the statistic until 2002), isn’t as high as the rest of the pitchers I’ll be talking about because contact rates in the era he pitched in were a percentage point or two lower than they are today. Also, Anderson wasn’t as extreme in the application of his philosophy until after Radke retired.

The recently departed

We’ll start out examining a couple of the Twins’ more prominent starters from recent years, then look at two veteran pitchers whose brief encounters with the Anderson Effect were less than pleasant. One quick note: I know I’m cherry-picking a bit here. It’s a necessity of a project like this; some guys were never really any good no matter what, plus the Twins haven’t acquired many starters with major-league experience in the last several years. What I’ve done here is try to pick the pitchers who best illustrate the Anderson Effect as it has developed in recent years.

Carl Pavano
Career Pre-Twins (1998-2009):{exp:list_maker}1209 IP, 5.81 K/9, 2.41 BB/9, 81.4% Contact%, 4.45 ERA, 4.20 FIP {/exp:list_maker}Career with Twins (2009-2012):{exp:list_maker}579.2 IP, 4.83 K/9, 1.57 BB/9, 84.5% Contact%, 4.27 ERA, 4.05 FIP {/exp:list_maker}For Pavano, the Anderson method worked quite well. Not a huge improvement in ERA/FIP, but it’s more significant when you consider that this was during his age 33-36 seasons, and also after his four injury-plagued age 29-32 seasons. Actually, look at Pavano’s numbers with the Twins and compare them to Radke’s career numbers above. Pretty much the same.

It makes plenty of sense in Pavano’s case too, seeing as he, like Radke, was a pitcher with an 89-90 mph fastball whose change-up was his best pitch. You win this round, Mr. Anderson. Pavano was the perfect candidate for Radkeization.

Francisco Liriano
Career with Twins (2005-2012):{exp:list_maker}783.1 IP, 9.05 K/9, 3.72 BB/9, 71.7% Contact%, 4.33 ERA, 3.69 FIP {/exp:list_maker}Career post-Twins (2012-2013):{exp:list_maker}74.2 IP, 10.00 K/9, 4.58 BB/9, 69.7% Contact%, 4.34 ERA, 3.70 FIP {/exp:list_maker}In 2012, mere days before Liriano was traded to the White Sox, Anderson gave the following unceremonious response when asked about his time with Liriano and how he would feel if Liriano was traded: "We've had a lot of good times, a lot of frustrating times.”

The relationship between the two was always rocky, with examples ranging from Anderson questioning Liriano's work ethic to Anderson’s near-constant tinkering with Liriano’s delivery. A simple Google search for “Francisco Liriano Rick Anderson mechanics” turned up countless articles from 2006-2012 regarding Anderson “improving” or “refining” Liriano’s mechanics and the way he threw his slider. I couldn’t possibly link them all, so do the search yourself if you want to go through the history on that one.

Then there was Gardenhire and Anderson’s very public battle with Liriano regarding his refusal to follow the team philosophy. It will be interesting to track the next couple years for Liriano and see if he can develop a better relationship with Pirates pitching coach Ray Searage than he had with Anderson. It’s looking great through his first three starts in Pittsburgh, but it’s a miniscule sample, and don’t forget that Liriano can implode at any time.

Livan Hernandez
*Italics indicate a career-low mark, boldface indicates a career-high
Career (1996-2012):{exp:list_maker}3189 IP, 5.58 K/9, 3.01 BB/9, 84.5% Contact% (2002-2012), 4.44 ERA, 4.40 FIP {/exp:list_maker}With Twins (2008):{exp:list_maker}139.2 IP, 3.48 K/9, 1.87 BB/9, 90.9% Contact%, 5.48 ERA, 4.68 FIP {/exp:list_maker}With Rockies (2008):{exp:list_maker}40.1 IP, 2.90 K/9, 3.12 BB/9, 93.0% Contact%, 8.03 ERA, 5.86 FIP {/exp:list_maker}Full Season (2008): {exp:list_maker}180 IP, 3.35 K/9, 2.15 BB/9, 91.3% Contact%, 6.05 ERA, 4.94 FIP {/exp:list_maker}Based on my research, I believe Hernandez’s 2008 season to be the first sign of how extreme Anderson’s philosophy would become. By this point in his career, the 33-year-old Hernandez’s fastball was sitting around 84 mph, and while he certainly did minimize his walks with the Twins, he paid quite a price for it.

There seems to be a direct correlation between Hernandez’s increased usage of his fastball and his decreased walk rate with the Twins. He threw his fastball more frequently (72.4 percent of all pitches) in 2008 than in any of his 16 other seasons in the majors. In fact, his career fastball percentage is just 59.4.

Couple that information with the fact that Hernandez threw more pitches in the strike zone than in all but one of his 16 other seasons, and you’ve got an explanation for that decreased walk rate. You’ve also got an explanation for why he was such a catastrophic failure in 2008.

Believe it or not, it wasn’t the greatest idea to have a guy with an 84 mph heater not only throw more fastballs than he ever had, but also throw them in the zone more often. Apparently, Anderson still doesn’t understand this; in his interview that I linked in the introduction, he says “Even if you’re throwing 83, just attack and pitch ahead in the count.” Okay, Rick.

Hernandez was placed on waivers by the Twins in August of 2008 and spent the last part of the season with the Rockies. Perhaps because he had spent all spring and most of the regular season with Anderson, he wasn’t immediately able to shake the philosophy and was even worse in his brief stint with Colorado. However, from 2009 on, Hernandez’s contact, strikeout and walk rates returned to near his career averages. His ERA and FIP were never worse in his 16 seasons as a starter (he pitched in relief in 2012) than they were in 2008.

Jason Marquis
Career (2000-2013):{exp:list_maker}1858.1 IP, 5.31 K/9, 3.46 BB/9, 83.9% Contact%, 4.56 ERA, 4.83 FIP {/exp:list_maker}With Twins (2012):{exp:list_maker}34 IP, 3.18 K/9, 3.71 BB/9, 91.1% Contact%, 8.47 ERA, 7.33 FIP{/exp:list_maker}With Padres (2012): {exp:list_maker}93.2 IP, 7.59 K/9, 2.69 BB/9, 76.6% Contact%, 4.04 ERA, 4.28 FIP {/exp:list_maker}Full Season (2012): {exp:list_maker}127.2 IP, 6.42 K/9, 2.96 BB/9, 80.9% Contact%, 5.22 ERA, 5.09 FIP {/exp:list_maker}Marquis didn’t spend as much time getting Andersoned as Hernandez did, as the Twins gave up on him in May. By June 7, Marquis was in San Diego, pitching like he was trying to push the memory of Anderson as far from his mind as possible. Sure, that sample size with the Twins is very small (only seven starts), but the difference in the way Marquis pitched with each team, and compared to his career marks, is still eye-popping and is the perfect segue to our next case study.

The newcomers

This past offseason, the Twins acquired three veteran starters to shore up their disaster of a starting rotation. These are all still small samples, of course, but when everyone’s small sample is screaming the exact same thing, it’s time to take notice. Why don’t you step right up and take a look at what Anderson is up to this year...

Kevin Correia
*Italics indicate a career-low mark, boldface indicates a career-high
Career Pre-Twins (2003-2012): {exp:list_maker}1066 IP, 6.01 K/9, 3.22 BB/9, 84.3% Contact%, 4.54 ERA, 4.51 FIP {/exp:list_maker}2013 with Twins: {exp:list_maker}57.2 IP, 3.43 K/9, 1.40 BB/9, 88.5% Contact%, 3.90 ERA, 4.37 FIP {/exp:list_maker}Well, gee whiz, what have we here? A strikeout rate more than 2.5 K/9 lower than his career mark, a walk rate less than half of his career rate, a career-high contact rate—and, so far, it’s working. Correia’s ERA and FIP are both below his career averages, but I can’t imagine either being sustainable when Correia is striking out fewer than 3.5 per nine. No way. But, hey, at least it’s working for now, and that’s worth something, right?

Vance Worley
Career Pre-Twins (2010-2012): {exp:list_maker}277.2 IP, 7.71 K/9, 3.14 BB/9, 86.5% Contact%, 3.50 ERA, 3.58 FIP {/exp:list_maker}2013 with Twins: {exp:list_maker}48.2 IP, 4.62 K/9, 2.77 BB/9, 90.6% Contact%, 7.21 ERA, 5.52 FIP {/exp:list_maker}I probably should’ve labeled Worley’s numbers as “Not Safe For Work.” They are so repulsive that they could offend even the most casual of baseball fan walking past your desk and, for that, I apologize. Just like with Correia, Worley has career lows in strikeout rate (by more than three K/9, which is just insane) and walk rate, along with a career-high contact rate. Also of note is that Worley is throwing more fastballs than ever before.

Unlike Correia, Worley has been getting absolutely pounded all season long and now finds himself in Triple-A after being the Twins’ Opening Day starter.

Mike Pelfrey
Career Pre-Twins (2006-2012): {exp:list_maker}896.1 IP, 5.15 K/9, 3.19 BB/9, 86.5% Contact%, 4.36 ERA, 4.20 FIP {/exp:list_maker}2013 with Twins: {exp:list_maker}38.1 IP, 4.23 K/9, 2.58 BB/9, 88.1% Contact%, 6.57 ERA, 4.31 FIP {/exp:list_maker}He's coming off Tommy John surgery, so there was some instability in the expectations for Pelfrey and his numbers could have a lot of TJ rehab-related noise in them. Still, his results so far line up with what we’ve seen from Correia and Worley, and his pitch selection and velocity are pretty comparable to his career averages. Pelfrey is the least extreme of these three examples, but his numbers are trending in the same direction.

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On the whole, the argument I’ve laid out here is advanced further by this article Bill Petti wrote for FanGraphs. Not only are the Twins pitching to the corners of the plate more frequently than other teams on those all-important 1-1 counts. They also throw the fourth-fewest pitches outside the zone on 1-1 counts.

Consequently, the Twins have reached 1-2 counts by virtue of the called strike more than any other pitching staff. The problem is that their new starters aren’t used to pitching this way, and it’s producing some serious negative results. Yes, the Twins have been acquiring low-strikeout, command-and-control starters over the last several years in the first place, but the Anderson Effect makes them even Twinsier. Until this year, it had only been intermittently damaging and even occasionally helpful, but now it’s a glaring problem across the board.

Anderson’s downfall as a pitcher was partially attributable to his lack of ability to generate strikeouts (5.2 K/9 in 1,050.2 innings in the minors, 3.91 K/9 in 96.2 IP in the majors), so it’s understandable that he harbors some resentment toward strikeouts in general. They eluded him all those years; perhaps this is his way of getting back at the baseball world by doing everything he can to eliminate strikeouts from the game. Unfortunately, baseball has entered an era of increased strikeouts, leaving Anderson and his outdated philosophy in the dust.

Read more great baseball stuff at The Hardball Times.]]> Scott Strandberg 2013-05-24T07:08:15+00:00 http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/visualization-handedness-through-history/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/visualization-handedness-through-history/#When:07:50:15

Read more great baseball stuff at The Hardball Times.]]> Dan Lependorf 2013-05-23T07:50:15+00:00 http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/defense-and-rbi-opportunity-uncertainty-and-the-problem-with-regression/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/defense-and-rbi-opportunity-uncertainty-and-the-problem-with-regression/#When:07:56:15
We also know that defense consists of more than just limiting mistakes, or errors. If a player just stands in one spot and waits for the ball to come to him, he will probably have a fantastic fielding percentage. But, of course, he will not be a good defender, because he will only turn a very small percentage of balls hit in his direction into outs. Long story short: defense is more than just errors and fielding percentage. Again, I think we can all agree on that.

So, what is defense, and how do we measure it? Let’s ignore errors, and fielding percentage, UZR and DRS and all of that crazy stuff for now. Because defense, when it is really reduced to the core, is about two simple goals: turning balls in play into outs, and limiting the advancement of baserunners;mostly, turning balls in play into outs. Players that are good at turning balls in play into outs are good defenders. Players that are bad at this are bad defenders. It’s really that simple.

I’d like to introduce an analogy that I have found helpful in understanding defense: RBI. As much as I believe the RBI to be both a misused and useless statistic, it is based in a very real and simple concept: turning baserunners (and the batter) into runs. Which, when you think about it, is the ultimate goal for an offense: score runs.

And yet, while both RBI and BIP-turned-into-outs measure the core of what we care about in offense and defense respectively, they are also both incredibly and obviously flawed when applied to individual players. Why?

Opportunity.

Let’s start with RBI. Say we have two players with 100 RBI at the end of the regular season. Traditional analysis may say that they contributed equally to the team (all else being equal), but then we learn that Player A had 800 potential RBI—that is, 800 baserunners plus himself that he could have driven in—while Player B only had 700 potential RBI. All else being equal, Player B suddenly looks much better because he was able to drive in the same number of runs given lesser opportunity.

We can do the same thing with defense. Say Players A and B both made 300* outs, either putouts or assists, in center field. However, while Player A made these outs in 1,000 “chances”—that is, balls hit to the outfield—Player B only had 800 chances to make these plays. All else being equal, Player B was more valuable on defense.

*Keep in mind that these numbers are entirely fabricated and probably very unrealistic.

You probably see what’s wrong with both of these situations. While we now have the core measure along with the number of “opportunities” each player had to accumulate them, we have very little sense of the quality of these opportunities.

Let’s go back to RBI. Remember that we had two players, A and B, the first of whom had 100 RBI in 800 opportunities, and the second of whom had 100 RBI in 700 opportunities. If we take that at face value, we assume that all of those opportunities were created equal. Even if we remove the own batter from the RBI opportunities, we are left with many different situations in which an RBI was a possibility.

Driving in a runner on third with less than two outs is much easier than driving in a runner on first with less than two outs. And yet, they are treated the same when we simply group all opportunities together. In order to truly understand how well a player drove in runs given their opportunity to do so, you can see that we have to look at each situation separately and somehow determine the number of runs that we expect them to drive in, compared to how many they actually drove in.

Luckily, we have a statistic that does almost exactly that, though few people know of it: RE24. In RE24, we look at how many runs we expect the entire team to score in the inning before the play, and compare that numbers the number of runs we expect the team to score in the inning after the play. In this sense, it’s not exactly like RBI, because RE24 rewards advancing runners and getting on base. However, in the sense that it measures run production relative to quality of opportunity, it gets at the same core goal as RBI.

Can we do the same with defense? Well, sort of. Remember that we have Player A making 300 outs in 1,000 opportunities and Player B making 300 outs in 800 opportunities. Now those “opportunities” aren’t quite the same as the corresponding RBI opportunities because they probably include many, many, balls that the centerfielders simply could not have reached.

Nevertheless, like RBI, in our pool of opportunities we have a range of difficulty and likelihood of turning the ball into an out, albeit to a much larger extent. A lazy fly ball straight to the centerfielder may have a 99% chance of being caught, but a line drive in the gap may have literally no chance of being caught. We can’t just give the two fielders the same credit for every opportunity, just like we can’t give every batter the same credit for an RBI opportunity.

Can we do the same thing on defense that we did for offense with RE24? Sort of. See, the problem with doing this is twofold. One, quality of opportunity in defense is not discrete; no two batted balls are the same, and there is no way to know the probability that any given batted ball will be turned into an out. Two, even if we could know the “quality” of each defensive opportunity, we have no way of measuring it. Theoretically, if we had FIELDf/x, or some other tool in which we could measure the exact trajectory of every batted ball, and we had a reasonable estimate of the probability of each of those balls turning into outs, then we could measure defense with relative accuracy.

But we don’t. And if the situation is even possible, it probably won’t happen for a long time. So we can’t do with defense when we do with offense and RBI and RE24. Unlike with RBI opportunities, we can’t accurately measure the quality or difficulty of each fielding opportunity.

Advanced defensive metrics like UZR, DRS, and FRAA try to solve this dilemma through a variety of methods that I’m not going to outline here. But each is forced to make assumptions about the quality of fielding opportunity. And because each must make said assumptions, each must be regressed significantly in small sample, and moderately in larger sample.

This regression is smart, and if we want to be as accurate as possible, we absolutely should regress defense. But, there’s a caveat, and it’s a caveat that I don’t often see made. When we regress defensive metrics to the mean, we reduce the overall range of runs saved.

In other words, say UZR, at this point in the season, is distributed normally—that is, a bell curve—over all fielders such that 99 percent of players will have a UZR between -10 and 10. And, while these numbers aren’t accurate on an individual level, I think it’s reasonable to assume that they are somewhat accurate as far as representing the true distribution of defensive runs saved (not to be confused with DRS). What I mean is, though UZR, in a short sample, is very inaccurate when looking at each player individually because of the uncertainty of measuring quality of opportunity, it is still likely to have a relatively accurate range of defensive value.

But, if that is in fact the case, then regressing UZR (or another defensive metric) will necessarily underrate great defenders and overrate bad defenders. Because now, by UZR, all those 7-10 run players are now 4-7 run players, even though 7-10 run players do exist. We just don’t know who they are.

Why is this important? Not for the sake of accuracy, for regression helps us become more accurate, but for the more practical sake of understanding what we are measuring, and what we know. When we regress defensive metrics to make them more accurate, those players that truly are elite—or, I should say, have performed at elite levels thus far—are penalized (assuming their UZR was positive), and our new assessment of them reduces their contributions in our eyes.

But they exist, and we have to remember that they exist, because we have to remember that even with drastically regressed defensive numbers, WAR is not a perfect representation of a player’s contribution to the team. If two players, like Mark Reynolds and Elliot Johnson, for instance, have a difference of, say, eight runs or so before we consider defense, then it is likely that Reynolds has been better. And if we regress UZR or DRS or whatever, WAR will tell us that Reynolds has been better. But if Johnson has actually been an elite defender and/or Reynolds has been an awful defender, then they may have actually been equally valuable. We don’t know, and we probably shouldn’t assume, but it’s a possibility that we must take into account.

Here’s the short version of all those words that I just wrote. Defense measures outs, in the same way that RBI measures runs. But unlike what RE24 can do with RBI opportunities, our current defensive metrics cannot accurately measure the likelihood that balls in play will turn into outs. So we must base our metrics on assumptions. In doing so, we sacrifice accuracy, so in order to get that accuracy back, we regress our defensive metrics. But when we regress our defensive metrics, we also penalize those players that shouldn’t be regressed. We don’t know who those players are, but they exist, and we must remember that they exist. If we remember that they exist, but that we don’t know who they are, then we can both agree with people like Jon Heyman that some WAR values seem fishy, but disagree with him in his assumption (an assumption that I am admittedly assuming) that they must be wrong.

Thanks to Tom Tango and the discussion over on his blog for the inspiration for this article.

Read more great baseball stuff at The Hardball Times.]]> Matt Hunter 2013-05-23T07:56:15+00:00 http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/currently-historic-a-plethora-of-new-stuff/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/currently-historic-a-plethora-of-new-stuff/#When:07:05:15
It is very early in the season, still. For evidence of that, we need look no further than Yu Darvish. Last week, he was on pace for 334 strikeouts. This week, he struck out six in his one start and now he's on pace for 315. He is still absolutely worth tracking, but at this point in the season, there can still be wild swings in a player's pace.

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Speaking of wild swings, last week, Bartolo Colon walked three batters, and thus quadrupled his walk total. He's now only a few hundredths ahead of Adam Wainwright for the lead league in walks per nine innings and not especially close to the record. I'll certainly keep an eye on him and probably track him for a few more weeks, but if he has another week like this, his time in this column will come to an end.

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Last week, I dropped Joey Votto because his walk totals were falling off. Then I noticed that he's on pace to reach base 352 times this year. Do you know how many times a modern player has reached base 350 times? Five. Babe Ruth three times, Ted Williams once, Barry Bonds once. That's the list. Even 330 has been done only 21 times, so Votto could fall of his current pace a bit and still be in pretty historic territory. We'll see, of course, but at this point in the season, I'll track just about anything, and this is a neat number.

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Speaking of tracking anything, you may recall that someone, I think his name is Miguel Cabrera, won the triple crown last year. As I write this, he leads the league in batting average and RBIs and is fifth in homers. Long way to go, certainly, but that would be very cool.

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Strikeout tracking, week 4...

Chris Carter, 66 Ks, 238 K pace: He just keeps on missin'. It's early, of course, but he might break the all-time single-season record (223).

Rickie Weeks 51 Ks, 192 K pace: Weeks picked up his rate a bit this week and continues to be a part of the Brewers' disastrous start to the season.

Adam Dunn, 54 Ks, 203 K pace: Adam Dunn has really turned it on lately. Good news for his playing time and our list.

Will Middlebrooks, 49 Ks, 176 K pace: Middlebrooks seems to be finding his way a bit. Unless he picks it up, this is the last you'll see of him.

Pedro Alvarez, we are done with you. You just aren't striking out enough.

Rick Ankiel, 42 Ks, 151 K. Ankiel is having such an interesting season. He's latched on with his second team now, he actually seems to be playing a bit more and he's striking out nearly half the time. I don't have a good read on the rest of his season, yet. But in a month or so, I might have to spend some real time on him. This may be a singularly unique season, as he's providing enough power to be an above average hitter despite the absurd strikeout level.

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The Astros, now several weeks without the aforementioned Rick Ankiel, are striking out a little less. Still, their 1,566 pace looks to put the record of 1,387 to shame.

Something I haven't mentioned yet, but probably should, is that the Braves are also striking out a ton. Their pace is for 1,476 strikeouts. We may well see the two teams with the most strikeouts ever this season.

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The weekly list has grown a bit...

Doubles:
Listen, Todd Helton, you have 573 doubles. 574 will put you in the top-20. Come on, man, just give us one more already.

Adrian Beltre needs 26 to reach 500. I thought his chances were borderline to start the year, but he's put himself in a good position and I like his chances.

Last year, I initially missed David Ortiz's pursuit of 400 homers and this year, it seems, I've missed his pursuit of 500 doubles. I really enjoy Ortiz, so there's no prejudice here, just bad luck. Anyway, he has 491 and should cross 500 soon.

Home runs:
Albert Pujols needs 18 to reach 500 and 31 to get into the top 20. And you know what's odd? I can imagine him not even getting to 500 this year. I mean, he probably will, but it wouldn't be shocking if he finished a few homers short, would it? Since 2009 his homer totals have declined steadily: 47, 42, 37, 30. A 25-homer season would put him right at 500, and it seems like a real possibility that this won't happen. Time catches everyone.

Prince Fielder hit one homers this week and needs 31 to reach 300.

THT editor-in-chief "Sockless" Joe Distelheim brought Torii Hunter to my attention this week. Hunter has 298 homers and should reach 300 any moment, despite his lack of power thus far this season.

Extra-base hits:
I'm going to stop tracking Todd Helton's quest for 1,000 extra-base hits. Sometimes, I find it amazingly hard to change my view of certain players. When I started the column this season, the idea that Todd Helton might not manage the 30-odd extra-base hits he needed to get to 1,000 seemed absurd. Todd Helton rolls out of bed and hits a double. He has six seasons of more than 70.

But, you know, there just doesn't seem to be much left in the tank. If he goes on a tear and gets close, I'll pick him back up, but for now, it's time to let it drop.

Runs batted in:
Albert Pujols now needs 41 to reach 1,500.

Stolen bases:
Juan Pierre now has 604 steals. He is currently 18th all-time. George Davis is 15 away, but certainly reachable in the next few months. He still needs one more failed attempt to reach 200.

Michael Bourn is just going for it. A couple of steals this week and now he needs only 19 to reach 300.

Showing up:
Mariano Rivera (1,070) is now tied with Hoyt Wilhelm for the fifth most appearances ever. He should be fourth by next week.

Andy Pettitte (499), CC Sabathia (393), and Bartolo Colon (383) continue to pitch every five days or so.

Wins:
CC Sabathia is still hanging out at 195.

Saves:
Jonathan Papelbon needs 35 to get to 300. That's going to be a tall task, but it's certainly possible. Especially if Boston keeps winning like this.

Strikeouts:
Ryan Dempster got on the horse this week. He now needs only 19 strikeouts to reach 2,000. That should happen sometime in the next few weeks.

Walks:
Andy Pettitte is just two walks away from 1,000 now.

Team accomplishments:
Pittsburgh continues to come on strong. The Pirates won five games this week and now need only 13 to reach 10,000. It's looking like that will happen sometime in early-to-mid June.

Thanks for reading. As always, stats are through Monday's games. Tell me if I'm missing anything.

Read more great baseball stuff at The Hardball Times.]]> Jason Linden 2013-05-22T07:05:15+00:00 http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/bob-owners-meeting-update/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/bob-owners-meeting-update/#When:07:01:15 Owners’ meeting rundownLast week, major league owners held their quarterly meeting. There was a lot of speculation about instant replay, but what actually happened was anti-climactic. In a great piece by Danny Knobler, he writes about how it looks like replay is now on the way. The big question is how long it’s going to take. MLB executive vice president Joe Torre and his committee on instant replay gave a presentation but said they had no recommendations at this time.

There was also a lot of speculation that team personnel pensions would be cut in a vote last week but that never happened. There was a discussion on pensions at the meeting, but MLB executive vice-president Rob Manfred said pensions for non-uniform personnel weren't going anywhere. It looks like one of the ideas on the table was to give teams more flexibility to have a pension system that works best for each team.

Wrigley Field renovation PR machine in full force

Now that there’s the framework of a renovation deal in place, the Chicago Cubs have ramped up their public relations efforts to try to procure some major changes to historic Wrigley Field. Their latest attempt is setting up WrigleyField.com and under the title “Restore Wrigley Field,” fans will be able to view artist’s renderings of the changes to the ballpark and sign a petition so everyone can see how many people support the renovations.

There’s also a section that outlines the $500 million in stadium renovations and the new hotel that’s planned near the ballpark. There’s also a “Frequently Asked Questions” section that covers everything from the economic impact on the city (at least what the team thinks) to what the Cubs will do while the renovations are taking place.

One of the renovation concerns has been parking. The team commissioned a traffic study to help come up with a plan. Right now the Cubs have just 4,785 parking spots within a mile of the park.

MiLB has banner merchandise sales

Minor League Baseball had its third best year in 2012 with $54 million in licensed merchandise sold for the year. That’s the third best mark ever, topped by only 1994 and 2008. In 1994, Michael Jordan's time with the Birmingham Barons resulted in close to $60 million in sales. The next best year was 2008 with $54.7 million, which was also the best year attendance-wise for Minor League Baseball—and it was the year the economy fell through the floor.

The $54 million sold in 2012 was a 3.3 percent increase from the year before. MiLB's director of licensing said that having so many stores in a unified front on MiLB.com has played a big role in growing the brands of individual clubs and the league as a whole.

Attendance update

Attendance has been dominated by the National League, with the top three marks held by senior circuit teams. At the top are the Los Angeles Dodgers—although if they continue to flounder you wonder how long that will last. The top American League team is the Texas Rangers, with the New York Yankees coming in at number six.

The Cleveland Indians are still at the bottom but you wonder with their current hot streak whether they’ll pass the second-to-last-place Tampa Bay Rays. The bottom National League team is the Miami Marlins at 28th.

My favorite place to check out the attendance numbers is at ESPN.com’s resource page.

Read more great baseball stuff at The Hardball Times.]]> Brian Borawski 2013-05-22T07:01:15+00:00