The Futility Infielder

My work in It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over was singled out for praise in, of all places, the Christianity Today website in a rundown of spring baseball books (IAO is out in paperback):

Turning from We Would Have Played for Nothing to the latest installment from the high priests of statistical sophistication, 'the Baseball Prospectus team of experts,' and their thick tome It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over: The Baseball Prospectus Pennant Race Book, edited by Steve Goldman, I thought at first that I would be trading the allusive power of story for the hard empiricism of the number-crunchers. Having previously reviewed a book of essays by this innovative squad, I knew that I was in for elaborate formulae, charts and graphs a-plenty, and a Soviet-style panoply of acronyms with strangely affecting phonetics, such as VORP (the crucial measure of a players worth over a completely average replacement player), and WARP (Wins Above Replacement Player, a yet-more-elaborate calculation that gets at the bottom-line: how many wins did the player create?). These are new kinds of numbers, generated by the desire to show real worth, rather than just let us live by the "nutrition-less bread" of Batting Average, RBI, and ERA (all of which delude more than clarify).

Enough said on the numbers racket, because I was wrong about this book! The authors are interested in story, the true story, the deep-down story of reasons, besides (but not precluding) luck and cruel twists of fate, for why several great pennant races in baseball history were great. And whether you go numbers-heavy, digging into the charts and taking stock of the VORPs and WARPs, or numbers-light, skimming the charts and muttering, "This is why I teach English" frequently under your breath, you will be enlightened by this book. These mathematician-writers are able to captivate us with pinpoint moments, exact pitches or managerial moves or mental errors or emotional collapses (or all of the above) that decided the outcomes of entire seasons. Horrible moments for the eternal goats (such as Ralph Branca giving up the "shot heard round the world," or Gene Mauch micromanaging the 1964 Phillies into a late-season collapse, or Fred Merkle's boneheaded play that seemed to sink the 1908 Giants) are shown as only small pieces of much more complex puzzles. Likewise, legendary feats like Carl Yastrzemski's final two weeks of torrid hitting for the Red Sox miracle in 1967, or Tug McGraw's emotional bravado with the "You Gotta Believe" 1973 Mets, are scrutinized and "right-sized"—fine feats, yes, but surrounded always by a broader context. The writers thus walk a fine line between clarification and revisionist demythologizing, and I think they carry the task out with a healthy balance of both love of science and love of mystery. In some ways, their work is more true to Medievalism than to Modernity.

I can only give a few highlights of this elaborate, somewhat diffuse volume, so I'll just trot out my favorite quirky points. Jay Jaffe's essay "The Replacement-Level Killers" reveals how managers sticking it out with certain veteran players during a pennant race can do irreparable damage, all in the name of loyalty and supposed worth. So the Angels use of Bob Boone as their catcher throughout the 1984 AL West race, with his supposed defensive acumen used as a cover for a horrific year at the plate (hitting only .202 and slugging a mere .262!), led to a VORP of -24.1, a pennant-killing formula. Not quite as numerically destructive was Don Zimmer's perverse insistence on playing Butch Hobson at third base for the 1978 Red Sox, victims of the Yankee charge and the "Boston Massacre." We read with fascination this description: "Revered by Zimmer as a gamer, Hobson played the field despite bone chips that locked up his elbow when he threw and—cringe!—had to be rearranged after each play. He made 43 errors, was 21 runs below average, and fielded .899, becoming the first regular to break the .900 barrier since 1916, when gloves were little more than padded mittens." It's just this mix of numerical exactitude and rhetorical flourish that gives It Ain't Over its flair, a combination that gets at baseball's distinctive appeal as the sport of both head and heart.

One of the nicest reviews the book received, and certainly the best review I've received for my work there. That's the value of clean living, folks.

Labels: It Ain't Over, promotion

A few quick links from earlier this week before I head off on my European vacation:

• In Wednesday's New York Sun, I wrote about the demise of the Mariners. A couple of early paragraphs were apparently cut, one for space reasons, the other because the transition kinda sucked. Warts and all, here's the director's cut of the relevant portions, with the excised paragraphs in brackets:

When the sun rose on August 25, the upstart Mariners were sitting pretty. Thanks to a streak in which they won 13 out of 17, they were 73–53, one game behind the Angels in the AL West, and three ahead of the Yankees in the wild card race. According to Baseball Prospectus' Playoff Odds report — which uses a team's run-scoring and run-preventing proclivities in a Monte Carlo-simulation that plays out the rest of the season one million times — the M's held a 29% shot at winning their division, and a 30% shot at the AL Wild Card.

Less than three weeks later, the Mariners' ship has all but sunk. A 1–13 skid helped knock them 8.5 games back in the division, and 5.5 back in the wild card, plunging their Playoff Odds down below 2%. In terms of raw wins and losses, they've set a dubious record — no team so far above .500 so late in the season has ever collapsed so quickly. What went wrong?

[In the grand scheme, the Mariners simply regressed to the mean. Studies have shown that run differentials are better predictors of future performance than past won-loss records. At the point when they were 20 games above .500, the Mariners had outscored opponents by just 28 runs, with rates that projected to a far less impressive and contention-worthy 66-60 record. Call their recent plunge a market correction, a brutal one at that.]

In retrospect, it's surprising the Mariners contended at all this year. The team that made the playoffs four times between 1995 and 2000, and averaged 98 wins a year between 2000 and 2003, has fallen on hard times, with four straight losing seasons and a slew of questionable free-agent signings by general manager Bill Bavasi. Back in the spring, Baseball Prospectus projected the Mariners to finish 73–89, last in the AL West, with the third-worst mark of any AL team.

[Even in surpassing that projection, the team has ridden an emotional rollercoaster. Amid an eight-game winning streak in late June, manager Mike Hargrove resigned abruptly to spend more time with his family. Three weeks later, replacement John McLaren navigated the club through a seven-game losing streak that foreshadowed their late August troubles. Stability is not among the 2007 Mariners’ limited virtues.]

More after the jump.

• The Mariners were also the focus of Tuesday's Hit and Run; you'll see some crosover between that and the Sun piece, but the emphasis was on the bullpen's second-half decline. After posting a 3.72 Fair Run Average (accounting for their performance of inherited and bequeathed runners via the good old run expectancy tables; here is a good layman's explanation) in the first half, they've ballooned to a 5.30 FRA in the second half, the fourth-highest jump in the majors. Several contenders have had similar troubles; the Red Sox, Dodgers, Yankees, Brewers, and Padre join the Mariners in the bottom 10, with the Padres dead last, jumping from 2.51 to 5.45.

Also in that Hit and Run is a quick look at Pedro Martinez's JAWS case for the Hall of Fame, and a comparison between his case and that of Sandy Koufax:

Coming into the year, Martinez's JAWS score (113.7 career WARP3/75.3 peak/94.5 JAWS) was well above the Hall standard for starting pitchers (99.0/62.7/80.9). His JAWS score ranks 20th all-time, and his peak score ranks 14th. As I noted in Mind Game, his 2000 season ranks as the best ever in terms of RA+ (293) for any pitcher with at least 150 innings.

Compare that to Koufax; as impressive as the Dodger lefty's stats were, his best seasons were achieved under some of the most favorable conditions of any pitcher, and his JAWS score (70.7/60.3/65.5) is miles behind Pedro, ranking 80th of all time. He was basically a league-average pitcher from 1955-1960 before taking a big step forward in 1961 (the year before the team moved into Dodger Stadium), but he's only got three seasons above 9.0 WARP3. In comparison, Pedro has six. Koufax's best RA+ was "just" 196. But before anybody gets the pitchforks out to either run him out of the Hall (or me out of the field of baseball analysis), as one Schmuck tried to do to BP alum Dayn Perry, let's not forget that Koufax's Hall of Fame case also includes three Cy Youngs, an MVP award, gallons of black ink, three World Series rings, an 0.95 postseason ERA, and the enigmatic glow that comes from retiring while at the pinnacle of success.

Glow aside, Martinez isn't lacking in any of those categories, with three Cys, a ring of his own, and even more black ink in an era where the increased player pool makes it much harder to come by. His JAWS score and other Hall of Fame credentials are so rock solid that he stacks up pretty well with 300-game winning teammate Tom Glavine (129.4/61.4/95.4 coming into the year). He's my lock of the week, and it's a pretty big lock.

• Finally, I'm honored to be the author whose It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over chapter has been chosen for excerpting on the BP site. "The Summer of Loving Carl Yastrzemski" is a supporting chapter for my narrative on the 1967 American League race between the Red Sox, Twins, Tigers, and White Sox, which leads off the book. Here's the intro; you can read the rest at BP, where it's free:

In the simplified narratives that our sports media produce, the notion of one player’s carrying a team is a popular and appealing one. It puts a human—even superhuman—face on a disparate collection of players, emphasizing the strengths of one hitter’s or one pitcher’s accomplishments while glossing over his own weaknesses and those of his teammates. Who cares about Babe Ruth’s lousy baserunning, or who was riding shotgun to Joe DiMaggio in 1941, or even Barry Bonds’s peevishness unless it actually cost his team a game? Can one player carry a team? Performances like Carl Yastrzemski’s final two weeks of September 1967, when he hit a jaw-dropping .523/.604/.955, certainly suggest it’s possible for a short time. In the longer term, the nature of baseball would suggest not. Aside from the obvious—the simple unlikelihood of one player’s maintaining such a high level of performance over a larger time frame—there’s the inherent structure of the game. The best hitter can only bat once every nine times, the most durable pitcher needs a few days’ rest between starts, and even the best fielder (beyond catchers) handles the ball only a handful of times each game, making it extremely unlikely that a team could keep relying on the same player over and over again for that extra boost.

As superficial as the notion of one player’s carrying a team may be, our ability to quantify the contributions of each player via an all-encompassing value metric like wins above replacement player (WARP) lends itself well to exploring the limitations of this concept as it applies to a full season. WARP measures each player’s hitting, pitching, and fielding contributions against those of a freely available reserve or waiver-wire pickup. The metric calculates these contributions in terms of runs and then converts those runs into the currency of wins. Park and league contexts are built right into WARP, so that, for example, a player in a barren offensive environment such as mid-1960s Dodger Stadium and another player in a bountiful one such as turn-of-the-century Coors Field can be measured on the same scale. With WARP in hand, we can answer questions such as the following:

1. How much impact does the presence of one great player have on a team’s chances?

2. How much impact does the presence of one great player have on a team’s chances if he’s head-and-shoulders above all his other teammates?

While I could quibble with the choice of chapters -- this wasn't my personal favorite even among the ones I contributed, but nobody asked me -- I'm honored to be chosen to represent BP for this. The findings here aren't revolutionary, but they do quantify some answers to questions that are often debated on a more abstract level.

I actually applied a couple of the take-home lessons to this chapter in other BP work, one for the Angels' entry here, countering the notion that they lacked enough star power in support of Vlad Guerrero, and the other to answer a Keltner Test question -- If this man were the best player on his team, would it be likely that the team could win the pennant? -- on Jeff Kent. Yes, the Keltner is largely qualitative, not quantitative, but I like to ground my Hall of Fame arguments in numbers and facts before tackling the more subjective elements.

Anyway, I'm off to Switzerland and Austria for the next two weeks, leaving Marc Normandin in charge of the Hit List and my bobblehead collection in charge here. Here's hoping the Yankees can hold onto their playoff spot and that the Dodgers can mount a great comeback while I'm gone.

Labels: Hit and Run, It Ain't Over, JAWS, New York Sun

Exhilarating and exhausting week here at Futility Central, full of travel, deadlines, and media:

• On Monday (Labor Day), I worked from home and watched most of Pedro Martinez's comeback outing, which I then discussed with Joel Blumberg on WGBB SportsBreak, which aired later that afternoon. As I said during the discussion, I was quite impressed to see Pedro grit his way through five innings; even with less stuff than he had before, his mastery of the mental side of pitching will serve him well and will certainly help the Mets down the stretch.

• Tuesday morning, I headed down to Washington, DC, for an evening bookstore appearance to promote It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over. Around 30 people came out to Politics and Prose bookstore to hear what Clay Davenport and I had to say about the book, not a bad showing given how little advance publicity we were able to give it at BP. Several readers old enough to remember the races I wrote about had nice things to say about my chapters, particularly the 1967 one, which meant a lot to me; it's always good to know not only that you've brought something memorable back to life but that you've provided some new insights along the way. I'm not sure I could ask for a higher compliment than that when it comes to my work.

• Tuesday also saw publication of my latest Hit and Run piece at BP. This one took a close look at quality starts and at BP's Support Neutral metrics to evaluate the work of starting pitchers. Both individually and on a team level, there's a great deal of overlap when comparing what the two types of stats are telling us:

As defined by [Philadelphia Inquirer columnist John] Lowe, a quality start is one in which a pitcher goes at least six innings and allows no more than three earned runs. It's a simple and elegant stat that suggests a pitcher did a reasonable job of keeping his team in the ballgame. And while it's possible for a pitcher to earn a quality start with a game ERA of 4.50, such instances are rare. In the aforementioned ESPN column, [Rob] Neyer found that in 2005, the average quality start featured a game ERA of 2.04, a non-quality start 7.70 -- that's not a misprint, it's Boeing's next jet -- and the 6 inning/3 earned run/4.50 case constituted just 9.2 percent of all quality starts.

Based on this year's numbers, a team getting a quality start wins 68.0 percent of the time, on par with the 67.4 percent Neyer reported based on 1985 and 2005 data...

...As a metric, SNLVAR [Support Neutral Lineup Adjusted Value Above Replacement] certainly has its advantages over quality starts. It adjusts for ballpark and opposition strength, strips out things a pitcher can't control like run support and bullpen support, and expresses the result in wins above replacement level. For my money, it's the best metric in the BP toolbox with which to measure starting pitchers, and as such, I use it every week in the Hit List, along with its bullpen sibling, WXRL. However, you can't eyeball SNLVAR over a cup of coffee and a page full of box scores, nor can you impress mixed company with such an unwieldy acronym, one which brings to mind that old Serak the Preparer line: "To pronounce it correctly, I would have to pull out your tongue." The humble quality start is perfect for just such occasions.

Then again, the quality start metric does lack the zazz we at BP like to apply to things, so it's worth passing along a little tidbit from Keith Woolner: our Support Neutral family can provide a sophisticated approximation of quality start rate if we untether ourselves from replacement level and turn towards league average via the per-game stat SNLVA_R (Support Neutral Lineup-adjusted Value Added Rate). Simply put, a pitcher's SNLVA_R + 0.5 is the percentage of the time his team would win a game given average offense and bullpen support. So for Jake Peavy, who's got an SNLVA of 5.3 in 28 starts and thus an SNLVA_R of .189, his team can be expected to win at a .689 clip. That's tops among pitchers with 100 or more innings this season.

The piece was accompanied by an Unfiltered entry which clarified my decision to use a definition of quality starts that excluded unearned runs, which generally isn't how we roll at BP.

• Back from DC on Wednesday, I attended that evening's Yankees-Mariners game with an old college friend named Ben (readers may remember him from my wife's fabulous 2003 Game Seven story). After leaving his law practice, Ben has spent the last two years traveling around the world. "Since I last saw you, I've been through 25 countries," he told me. With the desire to catch up and the stresses of the week -- which included arrangements to close on my apartment at the end of the month -- weighing on me, I didn't even bother taking my scorebook to the game. Ben and I simply kicked back in our seats in Section 601 of the upper deck, right behind home plate, and concentrated on baseball and beer, hootin' and hollerin' and just having a good time.

We watched Philip Hughes, who'd been torched for 15 runs in 16.2 innings over his last three starts, overcome some early trouble to give the Yankees six solid innings with six strikeouts. After yielding two walks and an HBP in the first two innings, he surrendered a two-run homer to Raul Ibañez in the third inning -- it could have been a three-run job had the umps not blown a call at second base, when Ichiro Suzuki was out stealing after a single -- and when he yielded a leadoff double to Ben Broussard to start the fourth, it looked like he might be in for another quick exit.

But from that point on, Hughes faced the minimum number of hitters to get through six. Broussard was moved over to third on an infield grounder, but Hughes struck out Jose Lopez and got Yuniesky Betancourt to pop out to end the threat. The only other baserunner he allowed was Ibañez, who was nailed stretching a single into a double to lead off the sixth, though apparently the umps had also victimized Ichiro in the top of the fifth when they called him out on a bang-bang play at first base. Still, it was a good outing from the kid. In light of the injury concerns regarding Roger Clemens (my nickel, based on his comments, says he's got a bone spur) and the ineffectiveness of Mike Mussina, they'll need more where that came from if they want to play into October.

The Yanks could do almost nothing against Seattle starter Jarrod Washburn. In the bottom of the third they got their first hit, a solo homer by #9 hitter Jose Molina. His next turn at bat, he collected the Yanks' second hit, leading off the sixth with a single and boldly -- or foolishly, given how slowly he runs -- taking second as Lopez dropped the relay throw. Seriously, you could time the guy with a sun dial.

That hit went for naught, and following an 11-pitch, 1-2-3 inning from Joba Chamberlain (first time I'd seen him in person), the M's were still ahead 2-1 in the bottom of the seventh, when Alex Rodriguez, who'd been doubtful before the game after banging up his ankle in a collision with Adrian Beltre the previous night, bashed a solo homer to leftfield, his 47th of the year. When Robinson Cano reached on another error by Lopez, Washburn's night was done even though he'd allowed just three hits.

In came George Sherrill to face Shelley Duncan, a hacktastic over-age rookie whose swing is all-or-nothing. We watched in amazement as Duncan squared around to bunt. Ben was sure he was going to get one down; I was in total denial. "Attempting to bunt and getting one down are two different stories, and this guy doesn't have it in him to complete the job." One pitch later he'd done just that, sending Cano to second.

At this point, Sherrill lost the plate, walking Jason Giambi and Wilson Betemit, who was playing third base while A-Rod DHed. With Molina looming on deck as Betemit worked the count in his favor, I saw Jorge Posada don a helmet and move to the edge of the dugout. "Watch," I told Ben, "if Betemit gets on to load the bases, Posada's going to pinch-hit for Molina."

"But he's got two hits!"

"Yeah, and he also just got his bell rung." Molina had taken a foul ball off the mask in the top of the inning. "Posada's going to pinch hit because Torre knows he's good at working the bases-loaded walk."

Sure enough, that's exactly what happened. Posada took four balls in a row after fouling off the first pitch, and we exchanged high-fives as Ben laughed, "That's why they pay you the big bucks!"

Mariners manager John McLaren, who'd already endeared himself to the crowd by arguing over both Ichiro calls, came out for the second time of the inning. This time he summoned Eric O'Flaherty, who yielded one run when Johnny Damon legged out an infield grounder to prevent a double play, and another when Melky Cabrera singled to rightfield. Brandon Morrow came on and instantly yielded a two-run double to Derek Jeter, bringing up A-Rod again.

"Come on, A-Rod. Two in one inning!" howled Ben. Boom! Another shot to left centerfield for Rodriguez's second home run of the frame and his 48th of the year, tying his own Yankee record for righthanded batters. It was the first time I'd ever seen a player hit two in one inning, and the first time a Yankee had done so since Cliff Johnson in 1977. Amazing!

By the time the dust settled, McLaren had made four pitching changes as the Yanks scored eight run on four hits, four walks and an error to make the score 9-2. Just like the night before, the Yanks had broken open a close game in the seventh. They would add one more run and win going away. Good stuff.

• Thursday found me back on the Amtrak, headed to Philadelphia to make a TV appearance on Comcast SportsNet's "Daily News Live" show with host Neil Hartman and panelists Rich Hofmann and Mark Kram from the Philadelphia Daily News. On a 90-minute show that alternated between baseball and football in a 30-30-15-15 format, I had the final segment, but at virtually every commercial break, the host plugged the book and my appearance, showing the cover and mentioning my name.

Finally, after some time in the makeup room to keep me from looking as sweaty and disheveled as the week had made me feel, I was on. I did somewhere between eight and 10 minutes, answering Hartman's questions about the methodology which determined the races that made the book, explaining their relevance to the current races (the Phils, after blowing a six-run lead the night before in gut-wrenching fashion, were down to about a 25 percent shot at the playoffs according to BP's Playoff Odds report), kicking around the Phils' 1964 collapse and discussing my 1959 chapter. It was difficult to provide too much detail in such a short time, but I think I used what I had pretty well, and made the most of my brief moment in the spotlight. I'm hoping to get a clip to put up on the site soon.

• Finally, having gone to Philly and back on the same day, I returned home to finish this week's Hit List, one that featured a no-hitter, a near-perfect game, an imperfect game, Network, Old School, C. Montgomery Burns, a poorly-timed look at Troy Glaus' turnaround, and a whole lot of season-ending injuries. I always like the Hit List to feel like a wrap-up of a full, rich week, but this one only scratched the surface of my adventures. Still, given the chaotic circumstances under which it was produced, I'm proud that it went up more or less on time. Aside from the season-ending list, it's the last one I'll be writing given an upcoming trip to Europe. I'm ready for that vacation.

Labels: game reports, Hit and Run, Hit List, It Ain't Over, promotion, Yankees

The D.C. appearance was great, last night's Yankees game -- first time I've been on hand for a player homering twice in one inning, as Alex Rodriguez did -- was even better. Tonight I'm headed to Philadelphia for a TV appearance to promote It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over. At 6:15 PM, I'll be on "Daily News Live" on Philly's Comcast Sports Net. Hopefully the segment will be added to the network's multimedia page and I'll be able to pass it along.

We'll catch up soon...

Labels: It Ain't Over, promotion, TV

Just a quick and somewhat overdue note here to publicize a rapidly approaching talk and signing to promote It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over: the Baseball Prospectus Pennant Race Book. With our editor Steven Goldman on the 15-day DL with the Dreaded Gamboo (get well soon, Steve), Clay Davenport and I will take the ball for an appearance at a site of many a frequent Washington, DC BP soirée:

Tuesday, September 4, 7:00 PM
Politics & Prose Bookstore
5015 Connecticut Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20008

More details after the jump...

Labels: It Ain't Over, promotion, Unfiltered

Very briefly, amid what's already shaping up to be a crazy and somewhat stressful week full of deadlines and mortgage agita (the closing process on my apartment has finally begun, at precisely the wrong time):

• A quick trip to Barnes and Noble's Astor Place branch in New York City revealed a pleasant surprise: It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over: the Baseball Prospectus Pennant Race Book is actually on the shelves, consistent with the previously announced August 13 publication date. In the company of BP colleagues Steven Goldman (who edited the project), Clay Davenport (who devised the methodology by which we selected the best races), John Erhardt, Kevin Goldstein, Rany Jazayerli, Christina Kahrl, and Nate Silver, as well as special guests Kevin Baker, Allen Barra, Alex Belth and Cliff Corcoran, I'm proud to say that I have six chapters totaling somewhere around 60 pages in the book, including the two top-ranked races:

* "1967 American League: To Fight the Unbeatable Foe" - in which the Red Sox shook off decades of indifferent management and institutional racism, joined the 20th Century, and beat out the Tigers, White Sox, and Twins

* "The Summer of Loving Carl Yastrzemski" - the impact of Triple Crown winner Yaz and superstars in general on their teams' pennant chances

* "1959 National League: Alston's L.A. Confidential" - in which the impressively flexible Walter Alston helped the Dodgers score their first triumph on the West Coast by beat out the Giants and Braves, the latter in a best-of-three playoff

* "The Braves Dynasty that Wasn't" - how a team with future Hall of Famers Hank Aaron, Eddie Mathews, and Warren Spahn won just two pennants and one World Series during an eight-year span in which they won more games than any other NL team

* "The Replacement-Level Killers" - a recurrent theme of great pennant races is one team blindly sticking with an unproductive player when better options exist, thereby dragging its performance down and sometimes making the difference between winning and losing

* "The Say-Hey Savior: Rookies and Pennant Races" - timely contributions from the new kids on the block

That represents my biggest contribution to any book thus far. I'm damn proud of this one, and hope you'll take the time to check it out.

• Last week's Hit List is here. Once again, the 2nd-ranked Yankees are closing the gap on the Red Sox, but there's a reason:

Hot Knife, Meet Butter: the Yanks finish the easy portion of their post-break schedule having played themselves into the Wild Card hunt by going 19-8 and scoring 7.8 runs per game off .328/.401/.556 hitting, with Jorge Posada (.395/.511/.711) and Robinson Cano (.416/.479/.693) leading the way. The road ahead gets tougher; just two of those 27 games were against teams above .500, but 17 of their next 20 are against contenders. Alex Rodriguez becomes the youngest player to reach 500 homers, Jason Giambi returns, and 2006 supplemental first-rounder Joba Chamberlain arrives to aid a bullpen that's only eighth in the league in WXRL.

Many other outlets have claimed that all of those 27 games were against sub-.500 teams, though your eagle-eyed correspondent here took note of the Blue Jays poking their heads above .500 a couple times in that span.

The Yanks do look a great deal better than they did six weeks ago, when I shoveled dirt on their graves by noting they would need to play at a .690 clip the rest of the way in order to reach the 95-win plateau that the last two AL Wild Card winners attained. They were 37-41 then and have gone 29-10 (a sizzling .744) since, including the completion of that suspended game against Baltimore which is retroactively considered to have been completed on the date started. Even without that game, they've been far and away the best team in the AL since that point. From Baseball-Reference.com:

AL      W   L    GB      WP      RS      RA
NYY    28  10     -    .737     285     168
BOS    21  16   6.5    .568     210     159
TOR    20  15   6.5    .571     160     128
SEA    20  17   7.5    .541     178     175
BAL    19  16   7.5    .543     171     168
LAA    18  16   8.0    .529     178     164
KCR    17  17   9.0    .500     171     159
CHW    19  20   9.5    .487     200     242
DET    18  19   9.5    .486     196     212
TEX    17  19  10.0    .472     150     172
MIN    16  21  11.5    .432     138     167
CLE    16  21  11.5    .432     159     173
OAK    14  23  13.5    .378     163     199
TBD    12  25  15.5    .324     166     239

Thanks to slumps from Cleveland and Detroit, they've gained 11.5 and 9.5 games, respectively, on their two most likely Wild Card competitors at the time, not to mention 6.5 games on Boston. Furthermore, they've gained 10.5 on Boston since May 29, with a record of 45-22, as compared to 34-32 from the Red Sox.

While the Yanks still need to play at a searing .644 clip to get to the 95-win level, the Wild Card-leading Mariners (who are just percentage points ahead of the Yanks, owing to a pair of snowed-out games in hand) are only on a 91.5-win pace. And with six games left against Boston, the division now appears back in play. The Baseball Prospectus Postseason Odds report gives them just a 12.5 percent chance on that front but a 57.5 percent chance at the Wild Card, for a cumulative 70 percent shot at October -- about double what their chances were 10 days ago and quadruple what they were less than four weeks ago. Things are definitely looking up for the Bronx Bombers.

Labels: Hit List, It Ain't Over, Yankees

It's a big day here at Futility Central. Those of you who are regular readers of the Hit List may have noticed that last week's edition weighed in a bit lighter than normal, which is to say that for once it was of manageable length. There's a reason for that. After two and a half seasons of ever-lengthening weekly roundups, the powers that be at BP have encouraged me to tame the unruly beast and channel my energy into a more traditionally organized (and less HTML-intensive) weekly companion piece. Consider it a 2-for-1 stock split, or maybe the variety-show spinoff.

In any event, the Prospectus Hit & Run debuts today, with a look at some of the trends and tools which help shape the weekly Hit List. In the debut edition, I look at team Support Neutral pitching rankings, the difference between BP's two flavors of relief stats (Win Expectation above Replacement, Lineup-adjusted and Adjusted Runs Prevented), team records in one- and two-run games and their relationship to the aforementioned reliever stats, hitting streaks, and a piece of reader mail. Here's a taste:

My customized team WXRL report reveals which bullpens have most of their oars pulling in the right direction. Rather than dissect those rankings in parallel to what we did above, we'll look at things a bit differently. When Keith Woolner introduced it a few years ago, WXRL pushed another fine stat, Adjusted Runs Prevented, into the shadows. Whereas ARP accounts for the base-out situation in which a reliever inherits runners by treating them equally regardless of inning or relative score, WXRL incorporates leverage and the team's expected chances of winning into the mix (once again, Derek Jacques has your brush-up). Often the two stats are more or less in agreement, but sometimes they're not; a team may be doing a decent job of dealing with inherited runners as a whole, but a few high-leverage failures can throw their WXRL out of whack. Here are the teams' respective rankings (1-30) in both categories:

Team      WXRL  ARP Difference
D'Backs     4   14  10
Tigers     17   25   8
Indians    11   18   7
Brewers     8   15   7
Braves     15   21   6
Pirates    16   22   6
Cardinals  13   19   6
Angels     12   17   5
Astros     23   26   3
White Sox  27   29   2
Phillies   25   27   2
Nationals   7    9   2
Red Sox     1    2   1
Dodgers     5    6   1
Mets       10   11   1
Mariners    3    4   1
Reds       28   28   0
Devil Rays 30   30   0
Twins       6    5  -1
Padres      2    1  -1
Royals     14   12  -2
Rockies    26   23  -3
Marlins    20   16  -4
Athletics  24   20  -4
Orioles    29   23  -6
Rangers     9    3  -6
Blue Jays  18   10  -8
Cubs       22   13  -9
Yankees    19    7 -12
Giants     21    8 -13

For just about half of the teams (14 out of 30), the difference between the two lists is trivial; they're no further than three spots apart. What the list is saying for the rest is that relative to their overall bullpen performance, the teams at the top have done a better job of rising to the occasion than the ones at the bottom; they've especially taken advantage of their high-leverage situations. Note the lead here is held by the Diamondbacks, who are an NL-best 7.4 wins above their third-order projection, and that nine of the top 10 teams—all but the Braves—are ahead of their own third-order projections. At the other end of the scale, we've heard plenty about the bullpen failures of the Cubs and Yankees at various times this year, but the Giants? Between the minute-to-minute updates on Barry Bonds, the zombie lineup around him, and the solid but ill-supported rotation (including the fascinating Tim Lincecum), the bullpen has been pretty low on the list of things to pay attention to out by the bay. Then again, there's a reason Armando Benitez was banished to Florida, and it ain't the dominance of his replacement, Brad Hennessey.

You can expect a similar assortment of stats, analysis and Simpsons references when the piece rolls around next Tuesday, and of course, the regular Hit List will continue to run on Fridays.

• • •

Speaking of the Simpsons, not only have I already got my ticket for opening night of the long-awaited movie on Friday, but last Sunday we paid a visit to the 42nd Street 7-11, one of a dozen in the country which has been converted into a Kwik-E-Mart as a promotional tie-in. So I picked up a talking beer mug, a couple cans of Buzz Cola, and a box of KrustyO's (jagged metal prize not included), sampled a toothache-inducing donut, and cursed the failure to stock the Radioactive Man comic and the Dufffman bobblehead (to say nothing of the failure to produced Duff Beer). I resisted the call of the Blue Squishee, the giant PEZ dispensers, the Simpsons lunch box, and a few other items, but I feel sufficiently souvenired up.

The signage in the store was great. The trash can had a price tag, the hot dogs were touted as "rich in bunly goodness and were offered "3 for the price of 3," and an oversized visage of Grampa Simpson's friend Jasper Beardley was painted in the freezer in reference to the episode where he takes up residence there. "7 lb bag, Jasper extra," read the sign. Fun stuff.

• • •

Also at BP recently is an introduction to the forthcoming It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over: the Baseball Prospectus Pennant Race Book and the first look at its cover:



Certainly better looking than the hideous Mind Game cover, at least. As to the contents, quoth editor Steven Goldman:

On August 13, the Baseball Prospectus family will proudly debut our newest book, It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over: the Baseball Prospectus Pennant Race Book. For the first time, we’ve taken our nifty statistical tools and the insights gained from years of studying baseball and applied them to the pennant races of the past. Not only did we get to revisit some of the great players, personalities, and events of the past and look at them from a new vantage point, but in doing so we were able to find new insights about the game of today. As Shakespeare wrote, what’s past is prologue. That’s true even in baseball–you could look it up.

Using a method developed by Clay Davenport that compares the closeness and volatility of each pennant (or divisional) race, we ranked every race in history and wrote about the top 14 on the list, pausing here and there to explore related subjects from the greatest deadline-day trades of all time to what would have happened if Branch Rickey had been the general manager of the Yankees instead of the Dodgers.

Steve goes on to mention a couple of my contributions (Jay Jaffe on the Dodgers race to beat the Braves in 1959 and why a Milwaukee dynasty that had every reason to happen didn't") but he leaves out not only my favorite titled chapter of the book ("The Replacement Level Killers," on teams dragged down because of their failure to adjust their lineups)) but also my chapters on the 1967 race in which the Red Sox beat out the Tigers, White Sox, and Twins (oh my!), and the impact of Triple Crown winner Carl Yastrzemski and other superstars on their teams' pennant chances. Still, it's exciting that the book is just a few weeks away from hitting the streets.

Labels: Hit List, It Ain't Over, Simpsons

My annual All-Star break edition of the Hit List is up at Baseball Prospectus. The Yankees hold the #5 spot, but even with their win last night to return to .500, I remain unconvinced, consistent with my recent ranting:

Don't kid yourselves, Yankee fans--despite the high ranking and the upcoming soft schedule, it's all over but the shouting and pouting, not to mention the laying of bets on whether Joe Torre, Brian Cashman, or Alex Rodriguez will be around for the next step. The team's worst first half of the three-division era has left the Yanks needing to play .684 ball the rest of the way to reach the 95-win level of the last two AL Wild Card winners, not to mention a .737 clip to match Boston's 99-win pace. Injuries, age, and overpriced underachievement are the predominant themes here, and neither Torre nor Cashman deserve a pass for building a weak bench, forgetting first base, or the puzzling bullpen management which has contributed mightily to a 6-14 record in one-run games. For all the finger-pointing, Cashman's efforts to rebuild the organization's pitching depth may pay off down the road, and keeping his head at the trading deadline should merit sparing his neck come October.

Of course, even the news of the Yanks reaching .500 has been trumped by the fact that the team's overtures to extend A-Rod's contract have been rebuffed both by uber-agent Scott Boras and by Rodriguez himself; he'll exercise the opt-out clause in his contract and become a free agent at the end of the season. Say what you will about the odiousness of Boras, he's the best in the biz because he has the foresight to protect his clients with such loopholes in addition to prising the most money out of teams in the first place.

Rodriguez took the high road: "I think it would be selfish on my part to talk about my contract status when our team desperately needs wins... My goal is to win as many games as we can, focus on my teammates and really play at a real high level in the second half. That sort of thing I leave to the people upstairs. My only concern is to play baseball and play at a high level."

Of course, what A-Rod could have said is that the team and its fans deserve to sweat a bit for the shoddy treatment they afforded him last year; he owes them no discount for the times Joe Torre, Derek Jeter, unnamed front office officials (you think that Post cover happened naturally?) and a certain segment of the fan base (to say nothing of the rabid media) have thrown him under the bus. I'm reminded of the great Simpsons "Trash of the Titans" episode, where Homer's stint as sanitation commissioner ends with the re-election of the man he deposed, Ray Patterson. Upon returning, Patterson tells the crowd, "You know, I'm not much on speeches, but it's so gratifying to leave you wallowing in the mess you've made. You're screwed, thank you, bye."

As it is, even without the verbal dis, Rodriguez's dealing the team a painful enough blow by invalidating a contract to which the Texas Rangers are still contributing some $21 million over the next three years, plus another $3 mil a year (unclear for how long) in deferred payments. If the Yankees want to re-sign A-Rod, they'll be paying all the freight next time around. Payback is a bitch.

As for the rest of the Hit List, there's more Simpsons to be had, along with nutritional information, robot overlords, Harvey's Wallbangers and other fun stuff. Enjoy!

• • •

On a separate note, I just got word that the first copies of It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over: the Baseball Prospectus Pennant Race Book--to which I contributed six chapters, including the book's first two narratives, on the 1967 AL and 1959 NL seasons--have made their way into editor Steven Goldman's hands, which means I'll hopefully have my copies in hand next week. Both Basic Books and Amazon lists August 13 as the publication date, and the latter is pre-selling the hardcover for $17.13. It's never too soon to reserve your copy!

Labels: Hit List, It Ain't Over, promotion, Simpsons, Yankees