While my personal performance enhancing drug (often used to counteract the effects of my other personal performance enhancing drug) worked its magic this morning, I did quite a bit of lazy web surfing, lazy TV watching, and lazy emailing. Sounds like the makings of a great blog post right?
Wait! Don't touch that mouse, and if you already have, if you can still hear me, hit the "back" button. Seriously, I believe readers will find this stuff interesting.
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On the Web
My brother and I recently discovered that subscribers to ESPN the Magazine can also have access to ESPN.com's Insider content [maybe this is common knowledge and we are just a bit slow, but if not, here is how you go about setting up your account]. In my opinion, the cost of the magazine's subscription is marginally worth it and the cost of Insider content is marginally worth it, but unacceptable based on principle. But if you can get both for the same price...well, why not?
I've finally gotten around to catching up on Rob Neyer and John Kruk columns, and I found some of it to be interesting from a Phan's point of view. Recently, Krukker wrote:
It's becoming clear the Phillies are starting to become the Colorado Rockies of the NL East...Much like the Rockies, the Phillies play lights-out at home, but get killed on the road. That's due in large part to the fact that the Phillies have a bunch of fly-ball hitters who are trying to score runners, but aren't trying to move runners along...It's going to be difficult for the Phillies to change that mind-set because they are pretty much locked into what they have. David Bell, Jimmy Rollins, Bobby Abreu and Jim Thome are all locked into long-term deals, so this team seems stuck with its squad and mind-set.
He's got a point. The Phillies are 23-14 at home and 16-21 on the road. Additionally, the Phillies are scoring 5.49 runs per game at The Bank, while scoring only 3.92 while on the road. That's quite a disparity.
And the Phillies do seem to be a group of players who hit the ball in the air, as a team, they are one of the most air-oriented teams at a groundball-to-flyball ratio of 1.19. Only seven teams in all of baseball have a more airborne ratio.
Somehow this approach has to change or the team needs to bring a Citizens Bank ATM with them on every road trip and set it up in the locker room.
On the bright-side, the Phillies do have five players with a line-drive percentage over 20%, a great statistic for determining who is hitting the ball hard and who is getting by on well-placed bloop singles.
If the Phillies line-up truly is dysfunctional, Kruk isn't the only one that has noticed how difficult it is going to be to change that over the next few years. Writes Neyer:
...the Phillies have a lot of money tied up in long-term deals. In addition to Thome, the Phils also owe many millions to Pat Burrell and Bobby Abreu, and just this week they added Jimmy Rollins to the list. Add all those contracts together, and from 2006 through 2008 the Phillies owe $128 million to those four players alone, which works out to $43 million per season. This wouldn't be so bad if Thome wasn't old and Rollins wasn't merely adequate.
Thome, at least, earned his salary in 2003 and 2004. But Rollins' $40 million extension looks silly from the get-go. I mean, he's a decent enough player, but we're talking about a shortstop with a .323 career on-base percentage who's just fair with the glove. Rollins is the sort of player you enjoy until he gets expensive, at which point you look for a replacement who's maybe not quite as good but a lot cheaper.
Instead, the Phillies will, barring a trade, be paying Rollins through the 2010 season. And through 2008 they'll also be paying Abreu, Burrell and Thome huge salaries on the down sides of their careers. I picked the Phillies to win the National League East this season, and they've still got a decent chance of doing that (particularly if Thome remembers who he is). But the franchise's next general manager is going to spend a lot of his time trying to dispose of ugly contracts. And this season might be the Phillies' best for a while.
That's a difficult pill to swallow. As a matter of fact, I'd prefer if it came in a cream or a clear, because I'm not sure if I can get it down. But the fact of the matter is, several of these players, particularly Rollins and Burrell, had to be locked up to long-term contracts. After all, can anyone find their replacement in the Phillies farm system as it is now constituted? Other than Jim Thome, their replacements are all heirs unapparent.
In the same column, Neyer links to a both interesting (to general baseball fans) and depressing (to Phillies phans) article from September 2003 in the Cleveland Plain-Dealer. First, the interesting:
Helping to separate head from heart, and gut instinct from statistical reality, is the role of the Indians' confidential computer database, DiamondView. Consider it a kind of truth machine, whose function is to temper, or even override, subjective measurements with objective ones.
[Chris] Antonetti, the Tribe's best analytical mind, oversees DiamondView's use in team decisions such as the Thome negotiations. The database is believed to be among the most sophisticated in baseball. The Indians are so protective of it, they copyrighted it.
Its advantage, they say, is its speed, accessibility and depth.
Every morning at 6:45, DiamondView electronically collects game statistics, injury reports and updated roster information for the nearly 6,000 major- and minor-league players in professional baseball. This allows Indians executives and coaches daily access to detailed player information.
The rest of the article goes into a great deal of depth about how the Indians use DiamondView and how it is used to factor into personnel decisions. Fascinating.
And now the depressing:
Antonetti said a key question the Indians needed to answer before making an offer to Thome was: How long could the team "reasonably" expect him to stay at his current production level?
To do that, Antonetti turned back to his hitting analysis. Again, he used the OPS statistic and identified every player 31 years and older who had an OPS 30 percent better than league average during the season. Why 30 percent? Because that was essentially Thome's average performance since 1995 and Antonetti felt it was a fair comparison.
He found that as players aged into their 30s, fewer and fewer were able to sustain or improve on their elite level of performance. At age 31, for example, 17 players had an OPS that was at least 30 percent higher than the league average. At 34, just six did. At 35, there were only three.
At 36 and 37, only Bonds performed at that high level.
While Antonetti acknowledged that Thome could turn out to be an exception like Bonds, he concluded it was more "reasonable" to expect his performance to decline, especially into the fifth and sixth years of a contract, when Thome would be 36 and 37.
My first question is, did the Phillies do this type of analysis when they offered Thome the six-year $87 million contract? It's possible that the Phillies have their own set of facts that support their offer -- we are only getting one side of the story here -- but if they do have such deep thinking going on behind the scenes, why do we never hear about it? Either the media decides to neglect such stories, or, what I am afraid is more likely the case, is that the Phillies do not use all of the information available to them in this day and age -- something that places them at a severe disadvantage to other clubs.
Perhaps if the Phillies had realized Ugueth Urbina had a groundball/flyball ratio of 0.50 (something several Phloggers -- a group with far less available data and money than a major league baseball franchise -- pointed out at the time of the trade), they would not have traded for him. Perhaps they would have, who knows.
It seems to me that if the Phillies are interested in acquiring a stathead or two for their staff, their is plenty of talent in the area. As a newcomer, it seems that there are about 95,438 institutes of higher learning in the area, maybe they could tap into that pool. Penn grad Doug Glanville is in need of a job.
One Philly area resident they will surely not turn to for statistical wisdom is former manager and player Larry Bowa. Last weekend, while on the road to play a round of golf with my father (I shot 38+46=84, consistent as the Phillies!) I caught a replay of XM Radio's Morning Show, which features Bowa.
In the portion I happened to listen to, Bowa became incredibly angry when the subject of Moneyball and sabermetrics casually came up. I was completely amazed at how someone could be so closed-minded. "I don't need to read the book!" bellowed Bowa when a caller suggested he read Moneyball before derailing it. And just for good measure, Bowa called Bill James "a jerk". I promise you, Bowa was a hair's breadth away from uttering, "Stop telling me the facts, I've already made up my mind!"
Don't misunderstand, I don't have a problem with Bowa not buying into sabermetrics and Moneyball, that is his (or anyone's) prerogative. Heck, I don't buy into all of it either. My problem was that he didn't care to even listen to the other side of the story. Frankly, he sounded like someone who is feeling a bit insecure because the things that made him a valuable ballplayer in the 1970's and 80's might not be as valuable in today's game as they where then.
I thought I was the only one that caught the segment, but as I surfed the web this morning, I realized that other bloggers had as well. For more of Bowa's diatribe, see Redleg Nation and Can't Stop the Bleeding.
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In the Email E-bag
Traded several emails this morning...one with a Boston-area, Red Sox rooting in-law talking trash about Friday night's outcome (to which I replied something to the effect of "simmah down nah").
But two other emails concerned future interviews I've managed to line up for Balls, Sticks, & Stuff. One is with a Philadelphia-area media member, the other with a national media member. I'm looking forward to doing the interviews and posting them here. Stay tuned.
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On the Tube
I finally got around to watching the HBO special, Making the Cut, which chronicles Ray Romano and Kevin James as they attempt to make the tournament cut at the 2005 Pebble Beach Pro-Am.
A perfect description of the special comes from the website, which says, "It's funny how serious golf can be." I don't have any tattoos, but I think if I ever get one, that's what it will be.
If you enjoy golf and/or male camaraderie veiled as sharp sarcastic jabs, then Making the Cut is for you. Go forth and watch.
