From the stretch
I’ve been ill the last couple of days. This would be fine except mlb.tv has been at best unreliable, although it did work long enough for me to see one of my favourite things in baseball on Monday night – a Daniel Murphy home run. 
You’d have thought more productive posts would have come out of spending most of my time indoors messing about on the internet, seemingly not so. I’ll write this as a filler now before I post something bigger in the next couple of days.
- This is my new favourite baseball blog. Check out the entries on Dave Kingman, be prepared to get lost.
- I hold the honour of being the first person to comment on Prince Fielder’s first ever blog post. Hours after my comment Fielder was hit by a fastball thrown by former Met Guillermo Mota. Fielder then tried to break into the Dodger’s clubhouse to remonstrate with the opposing players. NTIG’s influence was, once again, felt around the world.
- Wezen-ball bemoans these dog days of summer. August is an especially long month if your team is 9 games out of contention and that trip to Citi Field you planned to watch two games against the Phillies looks like being not such an important series anymore. I blame Adam Rubin.
- Neftali Feliz is here! My fantasy team finds a middle reliever to take over from Latroy Hawkins. Fangraphs is impressed.
- King of bling come to lay down the evidence – L-Millz is back! This time in black and yellow. I used to have such high hopes for Milledge, I still have his baseball card on my wall in fact. Witness this recreation of a Lastings 3-run blast (complete with brilliant call from Gary Cohen) and see how Millz is so good his home runs can make the apple levitate.
- Finally, non-baseball related, but have a read of this superb interview with British cyclist Bradley Wiggins. Mark Cavendish’s 6 stage wins, Armstrong’s comeback, Contador’s dominence in the mountains were all amazing but Wiggo was the true hero of the Tour de France for me.
Right, more soon!
Willinghammer and Washington’s murderer’s row?
Last night baseball saw not one, not two, not three, but four grand slams. Whilst Fernando Tatis’ and Alfonso Soriano’s were the ones that put their games beyond doubt, what grabbed my attention was the two in back-to-back innings by Washington’s Josh Willingham. 
This was particularly brilliant for me, not just because I’ve always kind of liked the Nats, but because I’ve long argued that whilst Washington undoubtedly are terrible (31-68) they have some brilliant hitters that are really fun to watch. After last night the top six of Washington’s order runs like this:
Nyjer Morgan CF .303/.366/.380
Cristian Guzman SS .299/.314/.403
Ryan Zimmerman 3B .284/.349/.483
Adam Dunn LF .278/.405/.554
Nick Johnson 1B .295/.407/.405
Josh Willingham RF.298/.410/.596
Compare this to, say, the top 6 in the New York Yankees batting order:
Derek Jeter SS .325/.402/.459
Johnny Damon LF .278/.364/.504
Mark Teixeira 1B .282/.379/.551
Alex Rodriguez 3B .248/.392/.525
Hideki Matsui DH .252/.358/.485
Jorge Posada C .285/.367/.522
What surprise me is the difference in batting averages between the two. New York sports some good AVGs and some surprisingly low ones. Washington, on the other hand, all sit closer to or above the .300 mark. The Yankees certainly have more power across the board, but could this be due to the fact they play in the home run paradise that is Yankee stadium? The Nats seem to have some impressive OBP numbers with Dunn, Johnson and Willingham being particularly adept at getting on base.
To contrast the power in these two lineups we can look at each hitter’s Isolated Power (ISO) which (to quote Baseball Prospectus) “measures a hitter’s raw power in terms of extra bases per at bat” the formula they use is ISO = (2B + (3B*2) + (HR*3)) / AB
giving greater value to triples than doubles and home runs over them both, obviously. Here’s the lineups using just the power stat:
Washington:
Morgan .077
Guzman .104
Zimmerman .199
Dunn .275
Johnson .110
Willingham .298
New York:
Jeter .134
Damon .226
Teixeira .269
Rodriguez .277
Matsui .233
Posada .237
The stat illustrates the power in the Yankees lineup and the lack of pop in the Nats’ bats, Dunn and Willingham aside. Could the problem be, again, the ballpark that the Yankees play in? To eliminate this we can look at a player’s equivalent average (EqA), a sabermetric stat that measures a player’s “total offensive value per out”, the EqA is deliberately designed to be approximate to a batting average (eg. 260 is about league average .300+ is very good). The good thing about this stat is that the numbers are normalized to eliminate factors such as the ballpark players are playing in and the the differences of playing in the American League over the National League, putting all these stats in a ‘neutral arena’ regardless of whether the player plays mostly in a hitter’s or pitcher’s ballpark. Let’s look at the how the two teams measure up in terms of EqA:
Washington
Morgan .312
Guzman .247
Zimmerman .287
Dunn .323
Johnson .294
Willingham .337
New York
Jeter .302
Damon .298
Teixeira .309
Rodriguez .310
Matsui .288
Posada .300
Most striking, when viewed in that way, is the consistency that can be found amongst the top of the Yankee’s batting order which isn’t really reflected in their actual batting averages. The EqA numbers show what we might have suspected, that the Yankees power numbers aren’t high because of the ballpark they play in, it’s because they’re just good baseball players. Washington, on the other hand, benefit from the ability of Morgan, Guzman and Zimmerman to hit and get on base, with the power bats of Dunn, Johnson and Willingham (in theory) driving them home. Dunn and Johnson’s high EqA may be helped in part by their excellent batting eyes and the amount of walks both can take, as well as hitting the ball over the fence.
Looking at the numbers in three different ways is, as always, more fun than anything. I’m not trying to say that the Nationals are better than the Yankees, they’re clearly not. What is interesting, though, is the variety of ways that the Nats batting order can help them – Morgan and Guzman are at the top of the order for their speed and hitting, the rest of the bats in the top 6 can kill a pitcher on any given day, as they showed in Millwauke last night. Perhaps the Yankees are the better team (infinitely better pitching aside) because they are the most consistent in their numbers but, with the trade deadline approaching I’d wager that any of Dunn, Johnson and Willingham could be a massive asset for a team looking to increase it’s power output. Dunn’s low career batting average may be off-putting to some but the amount of walks he takes and the fact he’s well on his way to his sixth straight 40+ home run season cannot be overlooked.
I must credit baseballprospectus.com and baseball-reference.com here, who’s stats I’ve used in this post.
Media men in being impartial shocker
A little extra on the Minaya/Rubin story. Before last night’s, frankly, brilliant game (in which Jerry Manuel sent his clean-up hitter up to bunt with 2 on and no outs and then sent in a man to pinch-hit who has hit into double plays 28% of the times he has been in that situation and came away with 4 runs. Jerry 1 – 0 Me.) SNY’s commentary team of Gary Cohen, Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez dissected the whole debacle. 
The Daily News ran a transcript of the conversation today that I can only describe as ‘irritating’. If you can put up with the capital letters and spelling mistakes that leave me to believe that the conversation was transcribed by some sort of rudimentary voice-recognition programme, it’s well worth reading. It’s also worth bearing in mind that SNY is owned by the Mets, in the same way YES Network is owned by the Yankess. You absolutely, positively would not hear this sort of discussion on YES. This is why Gary, Keith and Ron are simply brilliant.
The Daily News have, predictably, gone all out for Minaya today. The Gary, Keith and Ron story, you will notice, comes with a poll asking readers whether Omar Minaya should be “Fire[d], Omar’s cheap shot at Adam Rubin should cost him his job”, “Force[d] to apologize, his wishy-washy mea culpa afterward wasn’t enough” or, added perhaps as a bit of an afterthought, “ignored”. I’d venture the News don’t really want you to chose the last option.
It’s hard to be a saint in the city part 3: Ill Communication
“The stupid continued to be stupid” Steve Somers, WFAN
It’s been a pretty epic day for the Mets. I’ll try and put a cap on all the madness, if only for the sake of my own sanity. Here’s how I believe today’s events happened and the gulf between reality and what Omar Minaya intended to happen.
- All the reports about Bernazard have said that he is friends with Minaya and Mets owner Jeff Wilpon, we can pretty much take this as fact. David Lennon of Newsday said tonight that “a guy who’s best friends with the owner gets a lot of protection”. 
- Minaya and Wilpon were hacked off about the campaign in the media to get rid of Bernazard, especially after the bandwagon really took off and his position became untenable.
- Minaya became aware that, ultimately, the buck stops with him. The team are losing right now, Omar is drawing criticism from all quaters for his lack of a back-up plan and the ineffective players the team are having to field right now. If the media succeed in getting rid of Bernazard and the Mets continue losing, the attention could then turn to the Mets’ General Manager.
- Minaya accepts that Bernazard has to go but decides to use his sacking as a warning shot to the Daily News and the rest of the New York media by slandering Adam Rubin’s conduct and getting him sacked in retaliation for Bernazard. This, in Minaya’s mind, sends a clear “don’t mess with me” message to the rest of the press.
- It could even be Minaya meant to say that what Rubin wrote was true but he had to stop and consider it for a while because, incidentally, Adam Rubin has been asking us for years to give him a job in the organisation, just saying, y’know. This is where Minaya’s offensive fell down, his poor ability at public speaking and the fact that everyone jumped on the “Rubin wrote these stories cos he wanted Bernazard’s job” angle, rather than the “Rubin was right but we had to stop and question his motives” line that he was trying to pull dilluted his original point.
End result: Minaya appears to have made an unnecessary gamble and lost, quite badly. I don’t think he’ll be sacked tomorrow, because I believe Jeff Wilpon was just as annoyed at Rubin and the News for getting Bernazard sacked. What will happen though is that the pressure will continue to mount on the Mets’ GM.
Well, I hope that’s kind of done. Fernando Tatis put a far more pertinent full stop on the whole episode than I ever could by hitting a tie-breaking grand-slam in the 8th inning today to put the Mets on a 3-game winning streak. The first time they’ve won 3 straight since May. This offense that, before the weekend, I would have classified as ‘some AAA guys and David Wright’ has now scored 29 runs in 4 games. Omar Minaya has, unexpectedly, been bought some time by his team winning games
It’s hard to be a saint in the city part 2: Omar comin’
As soon as the Mets stop being so ridiculous I’ll write about something else.
You’re Omar Minaya. Since the initial Tony Bernazard story, follow-ups have been appearing in the papers everyday about other incidents involving Ferocious B. It’s clear his position has become untenable. Your only option is to sack him. Fine. It’s not exactly hard, you call a press conference, tell the gathered reporters what everyone knows already, we all write it off as a ridiculous incident, move on.
What you probably shouldn’t do is to tell the press that Bernazard has gone and then accuse one of the gentlemen of press (who is there in the room) of writing these stories to get Fightin’ Tone fired and take his job. 
The journalist in question is the Daily News’ Adam Rubin and what resulted from today’s press conference is the biggest Mets PR disaster since the 3am firing of Willie Randolph last year.
Rubin called a press conference after Minaya’s and told journalists it was “unbelieveable” the accusations made against him by the Mets general manager. Rubin’s line is that he had asked Mets owners Jeff and Fred Wilpon questions about getting into baseball but had never approached them directly asking for a job.
Whilst it may be that Rubin is not exactly whiter than white in this incident the only person who this is going to really reflect badly on is Omar Minaya. If you go to www.wfan.com and listen to the press conference the whole thing reeks of sheer unprofessionalism. I’ve honestly never seen anything like this, the only comparable I can think of comes from English football (soccer) and the legendary calling out of a local journalist by Newcastle United manager Joe Kinnear.
Whilst not being as x-rated Minaya’s accusations are equally as astonishing and, possibly, ultimately more detrimental. Did Minaya really think that by blaming a reporter the whole issue would be put to bed? Does the guy get no PR advice? Not to mention the possible slander case he may now have landed himself, should Rubin challenge Minaya to prove his accusations.
Perhaps Omar was just so angry that the press had effectively pushed Bernazard from his job (something I suspected in my previous blog post) that he was overcome with bitterness and resentment for Rubin and just went for him in the press conference. The fact he seemingly didn’t consider the consequences of any of this just seems utterly unbelieveable to me.
What will be interesting now is what happens to Minaya. It seems to me he could have just made himself a lot of enemies in the New York press, particularly at the Daily News. Those calling for Minaya to go have just been handed another gift-wrapped set of reasons by the man himself.
It’s hard to be a saint in the city
Working on a new remit of writing about things in baseball that bring a smile to the face of this increasingly dispondant Mets fan I was surprised to run into some Mets related genuine funnyness so quickly. (I probably shouldn’t have been that surprised, to be honest).
Tony Bernazard is not a man who was really on my radar until yesterday when the New York papers and blogs were alight with the story of Fightin’ Tone and his challenge to the Binghampton Mets to fight him. If anyone thought that this season, which is fast turning into a Seinfeld episode, was limited to amusing onfield incidents they were mistaken. Mets fans are no strangers to executive incompetence, witness Omar Minaya’s laughable contracts given to Oliver Perez and Luis Castillo, coupled with forgetting to sign a left-fielder last off-season and trading for a professional baseball player who blogs about Delta airlines. However, making bad signings and giving old/bad players loads of money is one thing – coming out shirtless and trying to fight 19-year-olds is a whole other infinitely more awesome-and-funny-cos-it’s-actually-pretty-bad-or-at-least-weird type of deal.
But, who is Tony Bernazard and why was he so angry?
The Furocious B, prior to becaming Mets assistant GM, was a major league ball-player with an average-to-good mustache. During his 12-year-stay in the majors (punctuated by a brief stint in Japan, where I can only assume he had a life that was a bit like Tom Selleck in Mr. Baseball) he hit .262 with 75HRs and 391RBIs. Fairly unremarkable, in fact the only vaguely interesting thing I could find about him on wikipedia was that he tied a major league record hitless streak for a non-pitcher in 50 years, going hitless in 44 plate appearences for the Indians in 1984. He also was “famous” for eating only chicken during hitting streaks, apparently. Give me Keith Hernandez any day.
So did the Notorious BERN just lose his temper on that day in Binghampton or is he on a one-man fighting crusade? (and if he is going to fight anyone else in the organisation can he deliver punches to Jerry Manuel’s face whilst shouting “bunting with no outs is rarely productive”?) Other stories are now beginning to circulate about Bernazard having a row with KROD and various minions in the Mets front office which suggest that the guy is, at the very least, a bit of a loose cannon.
It may, however, be sensible to stop now and consider who Bernazard is fighting. Is he fighting the Binghampton Mets? Is he fighting his own frustrations at just how bad the Mets have been this season? Possibly. My suggestion would be that right now Bernazard is actually fighting the New York media. Running storys about Bernazard is great, it’ll sell papers and get people phoning in to call-in shows cos it’s just so damn ridiculous. Perhaps someone, somewhere has for whatever reason decided that they want Tony Bernazard out of the organisation, perhaps Bernazard will be sacked after this whole debarcle (I’m surprised he hasn’t already to be honest). What the Bernazard story serves to do is distract from how poorly the team are performing on the field and Minaya’s ludicrous assertations whilst in the commentary box with Gary Cohen and Keith Hernandez on Tuesday that the Mets have ‘the best medical staff’ and are still in contention in the wild card race (all of this being said whilst Ollie Perez issued another walk and Francoeur dropped a ball in right field). I’ve rambled a bit but I guess what I’m saying is the Bernazard story is funny as hell but it won’t make the Mets play any better and it won’t make injured players come back quicker and all it really serves to do is take some of the attention away from MInaya. If Bernazard does get sacked it may placate some of those calling for Minaya’s head and change in the direction of the organisation. What it won’t do is have any actual impact.
Gearing up for the second half
I feel bad I haven’t written anything since pop-up-fly-gate, I keep coming back to the blog and 
feeling a slight sense of guilt that there’s been nothing new for ages and the last entry features a possibly oversized picture of Luis Castillo looking stupid. I guess to some it must look like the Mets’ run of form since that Friday night in Yankee stadium has made me hang up the keyboard and call it a day on this season. This is, I suppose, partially true. Every time I feel like writing something I hold back the urge, lest it turn into a boring rant about the Mets’ inadequacies and the various ruminations and turning of brain-cogs that leave me sitting agog as I watch Daniel Murphy leave the game to be pinch hit for by Argenis Reyes.
Anyway, this is a blog about baseball, not just the Mets. That’s why I have the snazzy MLB logo instead of a Mets one as my enforced background.
I fully intend to dwell on the things in baseball that make me smile over the next few entries on this blog and to be a better blogger in general.
SOME THINGS I’VE BEEN DOING SINCE LUIS FORGOT HOW TO CATCH:
- Watching Ken Burns’ Baseball on DVD, which was bought for a mere £8 used from amazon.co.uk. Nearly 1000 minutes documenting the story of baseball from 1846 to 1994, this is clearly the bargain of the century.
- Reading John Feinstein’s Living on the Black. A book about Tom Glavine and Mike Mussina’s strangely similar 2007 seasons. I’m only 150 pages in but it’s pretty good so far. I might post a fuller review when I’ve finished it.
- Making my own spreadsheet where I can work out player’s WAR and then realised I could just look it all up on fangraphs.com
- Discovered www.retrosheet.org and looked up the box scores for the Major League games I’ve been to. Turns out I’ve seen Ty Wiggington start a game as a lead-off hitter and players with the surname Wolf have featured in 60% of games I’ve attended!
- Awaiting a letter of thanks from Toronto 2B Aaron Hill after this blog laid out the various scenarios that would await Hill depending on if he was voted into the All-Star starting lineup and encouraged fans to vote him in. Hill did, indeed, start the game and NTIG’s influence was felt around the world.
More stuff coming soon, I promise. Thanks for reading – if anyone still is!
New Kinds of Amazin’: Can’t anybody here play this game?
“I made a mistake, I feel bad, I feel bad” Luis Castillo
“If ever there was a manager who’s dying on the inside, it’s Jerry Manuel…” Vin Scully
Let’s not get into the debate over the relative merits of interleague play, neither shall I get into criticising Jerry Manuel’s truly beguilling managerial decisions (“get me…Jon Switzer!”) all of these debates could have been saved for another day, too busy would Mets fans be celebrating a much craved win. If only Luis Castillo could catch the simplest of pop-up flys,
I don’t generally like to do the ranting/raving tubthumping kind of fan blog but sometimes there’s an event in baseball that sticks with you throughout the next day and beyond. We all have our teams that make us feel this way, mine is the New York Mets.
The funny thing is, I’m not sure I was entirely surprised. I would never have turned the game off when Alex Rodriguez popped that ball up in the air, expecting Castillo to make the catch and the Mets to win. You don’t do that if you’re a Mets fan. Already this season we’ve experienced Carlos Delgado making an identical mistake (fortunately in a game we went onto win) and Ryan Church’s homage to hero of this blog Marv Throneberry, not to mention Daniel Murphy’s numerous rum outings in left field. Just once you’d like things to go according to plan though.
It shouldn’t surprise you that the culprit was Luis Castillo. Luis was also part of something that took my breath away last weekend, a running error that resulted in him running back to first being over taken by Emil “one time only” Brown and both runners being called out at second in a double play that I didn’t previously know existed.
Nor shold I be surprised that this mistake was against the Yankees, the slick professional Yankees capitalising on a little league error by those loveable Mets. New York, New York rang out as Jeter and co. mobbed Alex Rodriguez and I tried to make sense of what happened, none of this should have surprised me.
One of the oft-repeated mantras about baseball is it’s capacity to redeem, there’s always tomorrow. Tomorrow is now today and the Mets and Yankees get back at it in 7 hours with Andy Pettite taking to the mound against…erm Fernando Nieve (“who?”, was my Dad’s response). Luis Castillo is going to have to do one hell of a job of redeeming himself and yet, as I write that, the optimistic Met fan in me can suddenly see Luis batting left-handed against Mo Rivera in the 9th and taking a swing for that Home Run vortex that is the new Yankee Stadium’s right field. Let’s go Mets.
“They have always shown me ways to lose I never knew existed.” Casey Stengel.
Draft Day Special
Welcome to my preview of tonight’s 2009
MLB draft. I’ve tried to collect together a few bits and pieces, from
rumours to cold hard facts, to wet everyone’s appetite for the big
event.
The Basics
The
draft takes place, for the first time in it’s history, at the MLB
Network’s studios in New Jersey tonight. The draft order is chosen by
team’s regular season record in 2008 after being rejigged slightly by
the awarding of compensatory draft picks after the signing of free
agents (for instance, the Mets weren’t actually the second best team
in baseball, they just lost their first round pick to the Angels
after they signed Francisco Rodriguez in the off-season). The draft
order in full is available on MLB.com’s draft coverage.
What we know
Stephen
Strasburg
The
best player in the draft, by near across the board consensus, is
20-year-old San Diego
State right-handed pitcher Stephen Strasburg.
This year he posted an eye popping record of 13-1 with an 1.32ERA,
65H, 16ER, 19BB and 195Ks in 109 innings. The hype machine has gone
into overdrive with Strasburg, with some describing him as a once in
a life-time sort of pitcher. Whilst his college coach, the Hall of
Famer Tony Gwynn, has advised caution some have speculated that his
100mph+ fastball and control of his off-speed piches could be good
enough for him to enter a major league rotation this year. The only
sticking point is the asking price that he comes at. Agent to the
stars (and Oliver Perez) Scott Boras is allegedly asking 6 years and
$50m. Despite this it is still thought that the Washington Nationals
will take Strasburg with the first overall pick.
Dustin
Ackley
After
Strasburg there is a perceived drop in talent. Most people are
picking 21-year-old first baseman/outfielder from the University of
North Carolina Dustin Ackley as the second best talent in the draft
and the best hitting prospect. Ackley has gained admirers for his bat
speed and control, alongside his baserunning. Question marks have
been raised over his fielding arm after having Tommy John surgery in
the off-season and how much power he will have in the big leagues.
Providing the price tag doesn’t put them off the Mariners are
expected to take Ackley with the 2nd
overall pick tonight
Elsewhere
Outside
of the top two (and even that’s not nailed on) the rest of the picks
are pretty much anyone’s guess. The main two stumbling blocks of
injury-risk and signability mean that we’ll have to wait until
tonight to see exactly what route teams like the Padres, Pirates and
Orioles are willing to take.
Writer
Jonathan Mayo offers
his first round predictions and gives an overview of the remaining
potential first round picks.
The Risks involved
Signability
The
draft is something that I really, really like about baseball. I’m
almost excited for the Nationals to see how they can build their
ballclub with players like Strasburg and whoever else they take in
the first round. It seems an admirably fair system where the worst
teams are given the best chances to rebuild. The obvious example of
this is, of course, the Tampa Bay Rays’ appearance in the World
Series last year, thanks in no small part to them having four 1st
overall picks in the June draft in the last ten years.
After
last years prolonged signing of Pedro Alvarez for the Pirates and the
$50m price tag on Strasburg this year it seems a legitimate concern
that the rising cost of signing college and high-school players,
combined with the current economic climate, may eventually price
smaller teams out of the market and let the better players fall later
in the first round to the bigger teams who can afford them. This
would obviously completely debase the whole idea of the draft.
Obviously,
whether a player actually wants to sign for the team that has drafted
him is another draft risk factor. Baseball can offer a far less
glamorous trip to the big time than, say, basketball or hockey. A
young player taken in the draft may be more tempted by that football
scholarship than working for three years in the minor leagues before
being given a shot at the bigs.
Injuries
Michael
Lewis’ book Moneyball
made famous (amongst other things) Billy Beane and the Oakland A’s
strategy of drafting only college ballplayers despite the amount of
talent in high schools. Perhaps the main thinking behind this was
obvious; college ballplayers were closer to their major league
counterparts in physicality. A 17 or 18-year-old arm is obviously
very different to that of a 21-year-old arm that has been through the
rigours of the college season and has seen the player’s physique grow
more into that of ‘a man’. The risk for teams drafting high school
players is that that fastball pitcher gets injured and never regains
his velocity or cannot cope with the adjustments made in his
mechanics in order to better control his off-speed pitches. Dayn
Perry, in his article ‘What Happened to Todd Van Poppel?’ in Baseball
Prospectus’ excellent Baseball
Between the Nnumbers
quotes Rany Jazayerli’s study of every draft from 1984 to 1999 and
his findings that between 1984 and 1991 41% of high school draftees
went on to reach the major leagues compared to 60% of college
players. Fans of fantasy baseball will probably recognise a certain
high-risk/high-reward sort of thinking as regards drafting highly
touted high school prospects.
As I write this now the rumours continue to fly around about who’s being taken in the first round, who’s asking for a big contract and who the best players actually are. It will probably be a year at the very least before we can properly evaluate this draft and see who the bargains and busts were. There could well be someone who gets taken outside the top five rounds who turns out to be the steal of the draft. Only time will tell, and that’s what’s brilliant about baseball.
Enjoy the draft tonight, thanks for reading.
All-Star Voting: National League
I’ll turn my attention now to the National League in my heart-stopping double-header of June All-Star blogs.
This side of the ballot was always going to be the more controversial set of votes due to the
public’s keeness to see a steroid-user who sat out the first half of the season take part in the mid-season classic. I’m being a little harsh there, despite his flaws Manny is obviously a terrific ballplayer and someone that fans understandably love to see play the game. Common sense does seem to have prevailed though and Ramirez has now slipped out of the voting for the top three outfield positions.
Anyway, here’s how the teams would look, using the batting average/VORP splits I used in my American League voting round-up.
Public lose interest in baseball, taking fleetingest of glances at boxscore, still vote
Your solely BA-based 2009 National League All-Stars:
C. Brian McCann (ATL) .303
1B. Albert Pujols (STL) .344
2B. Orland Hudson (LAD) .318
3B. David Wright (NYM) .338
SS. Miguel Tejada (HOU) .350
OF. Juan Pierre (LAD) .367
OF. Carlos Beltran (NYM) .353
OF. Brad Hawpe (COL) .346
Enough power there to make things exciting alongside plenty of speed. Things are never easy with the National League, however. It wasn’t an issue selecting the AL AVG All-Stars but with the NL I was sweating over my decisions as though I was Bud Selig himself. Do Juan Pierre and Brian McCann have enough plate appearences to justify their selection? I think McCann’s a fairly easy choice, despite having missed some playing time this year (besides, the next choice was Ramon Hernandez with his .272) Pierre, on the other hand, has only started playing everyday since Manny’s suspension but has exceeded expectations and actually leads the league in AVG (using baseball-reference.com‘s 3.1PA/g lgavg). Anyway, if I’m filling in my ballot using just batting average I’m probably not too bothered about 50-or so less plate appearences. To sum up, Manny’s not even there but he’s already messed things up by getting suspended and making Juan Pierre’s overachieving bat an issue.
Proof of a Baseballprospectus.com subscription is required before being allowed to submit All-Star ballot
Your 2009 National League All-Stars selected solely on VORP:
C. Yadier Molina (STL) 4.6 VORP
1B. Albert Pujols (STL) 37.9 VORP
2B. Chase Utley (PHI) 26.9 VORP
3B. David Wright (NYM) 23.5 VORP
SS. Hanley Ramirez (FLA) 27.1 VORP
OF. Raul Ibanez (PHI) 32.7 VORP
OF. Carlos Beltran (NYM) 30.3 VORP
OF. Justin Upton (ARI) 22.6 VORP
Clearly more of an All-Star team, this bunch has exactly the same infield and catcher as the actual NL All-Stars would if voting ended today. The only real surprise (aside from the dearth of VORPy NL catchers) is Justin Upton’s inclusion, who doesn’t feature currently in the top 15 in voting for outfielders. Manny is much less of an issue for the VORP All-Stars, his 18.5 VORP only being good enough if he was willing to convert to catcher (which we can’t rule out).
As I wrote in my AL blog, more of a bit of fun than hardcore baseball analysis, but it’s interesting to see how the two teams look using different sort of stats. I think in the case of both the AL and the NL the teams made using VORP are the stronger teams, however, neither really reflect the current voting (although, as pointed out, the NL VORP All-Stars are close, Upton aside). One thing the stats can’t account for is fan sentimentality and how many of these players people actually watch with any regularity. It seems that players like Derek Jeter ultimately have the edge over players like Elvis Andrus and Jason Bartlett due to who he is and the team he plays for.
Thanks again for reading (if, indeed, you have bothered to read both parts) and stay tuned to see what kind of blog I can write from the ideas buzzing around my head in preperation for Tuesday’s Draft Day Special.
longballtactic
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