SB Nation - Billy Buckner

Just desserts? Arizona's starters and their W-L records

Jim McLennan — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 01:00:18 -0000

by Lenny Ignelzi - AP

Josh Geer: the unluckiest pitcher in baseball? And not solely because he has to play for the Padres.

Over on True Blue LA a while ago, Eric Stephen looked at the hard luck experienced in 2009 by Clayton Kershaw, who only picked up eight victories despite an ERA+ of 149. That's the highest ever by a pitcher who made 25 or more starts and got single-digits in wins. Inspired by this - never one to miss out on the chance of a cheap off-season post! - I thought I'd take a look at some of the stats for Arizona's pitchers and see what light they shed on the W-L records they 'should' have got.

After the jump, that's exactly what I'll do. And, why yes, there will be pretty charts and attractively-colored graphs, thank you for asking.

We'll start at Baseball Prospectus, which has a couple of stats of interest. Expected Wins and Expected Losses are "the record for the pitcher, based on how often pitchers with the same innings pitched and runs allowed earned a win or loss historically." They also offer Support-Neutral Wins and Losses, which is "the pitcher's expected number of wins/losses assuming he had league-average support." The sum of the latter wins and losses always equals the number of starts - there's no concept of a "no decision" there, but it's still another number to look at. Here are these for the six Diamondbacks pitchers with a significant number of starts this season.

Name	ERA	W-L	EW-EL	SNW-SNL
Dan Haren	3.14	14-10	15-9	19-14
Doug Davis	4.12	9-14	12-12	18-16
Max Scherzer	4.12	9-11	10-11	14-16
Jon Garland	4.29	8-11	10-10	13-14
Yusmeiro Petit	5.82	3-10	5-7	7-10
Billy Buckner	6.40	4-6	4-6	6-7

Another way you can look at luck and a pitcher's performance in by Game Score. This is a Bill James stat, which combines innings pitched and strikeouts with runs, hits and walks allowed, to come up with a single figure [more or less] between zero and a hundred, which measure the quality of a starter's outing. Over the period 2001-09 in the National League, the first number is the odds of a starter getting a win, loss and no-decision, for various Game Score numbers. As comparison, the second number is the Diamondbacks' percentage from the past year.

GS	W%	ND%	L%
<25	0.63% - 0.00%	15.85% - 0.00%	83.53%- 100.00%
25-29	3.55% - 0.00%	25.27% - 16.67%	71.17% - 83.33%
30-34	6.63% - 0.00%	29.33% - 33.33%	64.04% - 66.67%
35-39	12.55% - 11.11%	32.92% - 44.44%	54.54% - 44.44%
40-44	20.26% - 7.14%	35.04% - 28.57%	44.70% - 64.29%
45-49	25.27% - 13.33%	37.99% - 46.67%	36.75% - 40.00%
50-54	34.46% - 30.77%	36.49% - 23.07%	29.05% - 46.15%
55-59	43.40% - 22.73%	35.88% - 45.45%	20.71% - 31.81%
60-64	52.81% - 29.41%	32.24% - 35.29%	14.95% - 35.29%
65-69	63.44% - 66.67%	27.66% - 27.78%	8.91% - 5.56%
70-74	70.99% - 87.50%	22.85% - 12.50%	6.15% - 0.00%
75-79	77.96% - 71.43%	17.77% - 14.29%	4.27% - 14.29%
80+	87.22% - 100.00%	11.49% - 0.00%	1.29% - 0.00%

For those who prefer things in more visual terms, the graph below plots game score against the three possible decisions - loss, no-decision and win - at various levels of Game Score. As you'll see, the odds of a no-decision remains relatively constant, except at the extreme ends of the performance spectrum.

Comparing the Diamondbacks' numbers to the expected ones, the biggest gap is in the upper middle of performances, something previously touched upon by Diamondhacks. As a yardstick, league average was 50, and Adam Wainwright's mean GS this year was 59, But in 39 games with a GS of 55-64, the Arizona rotation went only 10-13: they would be predicted to go 19-7 in starts of that caliber. The reason for the gulf is simple: in those 39 games, the offense scored more than four runs only eight times, and one or zero a dozen times. We got good pitching - only three of those outings were not quality starts - but the hitters just didn't show up.

On an individual basis, there's a couple of ways you can use the data. The quick and dirty approach is to take a pitcher's average Game Score over the season, see what group he falls into, and multiply by his starts. For example, Dan Haren's average GS was 61, so he's expected to win 0.5281 * 33 = 17.4 games. If you want something a little less granular, take each start and allocate a fraction of W and L accordingly. Haren's first start had a GS of 76 - he took the loss (3-0 vs. Colorado), but by the chart , the performance was actually worth 0.7796 wins and only 0.0427 losses. Do this for each game and add up total wins and losses to get a cumulative number. The chart below gives the numbers calculated by each method (QWL = Quick W-L; CWL = Cumulative W-L) for our starters.

Name	Avg GS	QWL	CWL
Dan Haren	61	17-5	17-7
Doug Davis	51	12-10	12-11
Max Scherzer	50	10-9	11-10
Jon Garland	48	7-10	9-10
Yusmeiro Petit	45	4-6	5-7
Billy Buckner	45	3-5	4-5

There isn't too much difference between the two methods - the quick way tends to give the pitcher fewer decisions, but they're within a couple of each other in all the cases. Carving up the data in another way, we can compare Average Game Score with Win %. It seems reasonable to think that an AGD of 0 would see you lose every time, an AGS of 100 would get you a 100% Win %, and an AGS of 50 would see a pitcher get close to an even record. So which NL starters had the biggest gap between their AGS and Win %? Here are those at both ends of the table (min. 10 starts)

Name	AGS	W-L
Josh Geer	45	1-7
Ross Detwiler	45	1-6
Nelson Figueroa	51	3-8
Felipe Paulino	45	3-11
Yusmeiro Petit	45	3-10
-----------------------	-----	-----
Josh Johnson	57	15-5
Chris Carpenter	62	17-4
J.A. Happ	56	12-4
Clayton Richard	50	5-2
Braden Looper	44	14-7

All six of the main Diamondbacks starters ended up in the top half of the 97 qualifying starters: Petit (#5); Davis (#17); Scherzer (#31); Buckner (#36); Garland (#42); Haren (#45). Kershaw, incidentally, was #26 by this method, with an AGS of 58 and a .500 record. Worth remembering this chart the next time tries to tell you that wins and losses are a good measure of a pitcher's ability. As measured by Game Score, any of the top five pitchers were better than Braden Looper - but mustered only eleven wins between them, with 42 losses, fewer victories in 75 starts, than Looper got all by himself.

For interest, the chart below plots W% against Game Score for every pitcher since 2000 with ten or more starts. Here's the Google spreadsheet with the numbers, if anyone wants to analyze them further - also included are ERA, ERA+, OPS and OPS+ for each starterr. The resulting correlation between Game Score and W%, at 0.61, is actually fractionally better than that for ERA+ (-0.60) or OPS+ (-0.57).

This method of analysis does have some limitations. Game Score doesn't take into account park factors, for example, I'm not overly happy with the bonus points it awards for strikeouts, and for some pitchers, the W-L record can include relief appearances. However, based not only upon it, but other metrics as well, it does suggest that our starting pitching was really not much of the problem last season. Virtually across the entire rotation, from Haren to Buckner, none of them got the W-L record their performances deserved.

Arizona Makes Awful Move in Granderson Blockbuster

Satchel Price — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 23:45:57 -0000

More photos » by Ross D. Franklin - AP

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Within the massive seven player deal that sent Curtis Granderson to the New York Yankees, the Diamondbacks dealt starter Max Scherzer and top relief prospect Daniel Schlereth to the Tigers in order to acquire right-handers Edwin Jackson and Ian Kennedy.

While you would presume that the Diamondbacks were simply making a win-now move, it's pretty questionable whether the team actually make any legitimate improvements for next season. While Jackson should provide Arizona with a solid mid-rotation starter and Kennedy gives them another back of the rotation option along with Kevin Mulvey, Billy Buckner and Bryan Augenstein, giving up their two best young arms capable of contributing in 2010 in order to add them.

While Jackson is under control for two years and Kennedy is under control for six years, Scherzer has five years of team control left and Schlereth still has all six as well. What makes the deal so puzzling is that one could legitimately argue that Scherzer will be the better pitcher not only long term, but in 2010 as well. Jackson posted a decent 4.39 xFIP and 4.28 FIP in 2009, Scherzer bested those numbers with respective marks of 3.87 and 3.88, while posting significantly better contact rates.

I'm still trying to understand how the Diamondbacks improved going forward thanks to this deal. The pitching staff is older with Jackson and Kennedy, it's likely not any better and could very well be worse if Scherzer takes the next step (which he's capable of), and it's not any cheaper, Jackson is by far the most expensive piece among the four pitchers.

Certainly, the Yankees made a brilliant move by landing a star center fielder without giving up any potential stars, all three prospects project more as solid everyday players than legitimate impact players, and the Tigers did manage to land some nice pieces in Scherzer, Schlereth, Austin Jackson and Phil Coke. But I'm still trying to figure out what Arizona got out of this deal.

This Week (and a bit) in Diamondbacks Baseball: Silver Sluggers, relevance and we back Buckner

Jim McLennan — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:23:04 -0000

More photos » by Jae C. Hong - AP

With Jedi mind-tricks like levitation in his locker, Billy Buckner will be a force to be reckoned with in 2010.

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Been a somewhat mad few days - the deadline for our Fear FIlm Festival has meant we've spent most of last week watching indie horror flicks, from the excellent to the...not-so excellent. Fortunately, not a lot happening on the Diamondbacks' front - I should mention that TWIDB entries will appear only on an "as needed" basis throughout the winter. The GM winter meetings proved largely bereft of significant actual Diamondbacks news - and I'd simply have ended up repeating Nick Piecoro's entirely acceptable coverage of the event. Which is what I'm about to do anyway. We're still kicking the tires on Livan Hernandez, but might also be looking at Randy Wolf; the team is interested in bringing back Augie Ojeda; it's not going to be easy to trade Chris Snyder.

Yeah, like I said: not much there worth starting the presses for, never mind stopping them. Still, after the jump, I'll unleash our crack research team, and see if there's anything we might have missed about the Diamondbacks of late.

The Silver Slugger went to Ryan Zimmerman of the Nationals, which probably counts as a mild traveshamockery. You're expecting some passionate plea in support of Mark Reynolds' candidacy for the award, no doubt - and he did have more home-runs. But despite the name, the award is not just about power, but all offensive numbers, an on that basis, should have gone to Pablo Sandoval. His OPS was more than fifty points higher than Zimmerman's, with a higher BA, OBP and SLG. Zimmerman (and, indeed, Reynolds) did have more RBI than Sandoval, but that's mostly due to the San Francisco offense, a.k.a. Pablo and the Seven Dwarfs. Here's the stats for the top five third-basemen in the NL, as measured by OPS+. See if you can work out how Zimmerman was superior.

Rk	Player	OPS+	Age	Tm	PA	R	H	HR	RBI	BB	SO	SB	CS	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
1	Pablo Sandoval	144	22	SFG	633	79	189	25	90	52	83	5	5	.330	.387	.556	.943
2	Ryan Zimmerman	131	24	WSN	693	110	178	33	106	72	119	2	0	.292	.364	.525	.888
3	Aramis Ramirez	131	31	CHC	342	46	97	15	65	28	43	2	1	.317	.389	.516	.905
4	Mark Reynolds	125	25	ARI	662	98	150	44	102	76	223	24	9	.260	.349	.543	.892
5	Casey McGehee	124	26	MIL	394	58	107	16	66	34	67	0	2	.301	.360	.499	.859

As noted in a fanpost, Dan Bickley has returned to flogging the Diamondbacks in his latest column, in part because of the idiotic comments apparently made by Colin Cowherd suggesting the D-backs be contracted [no doubt partly out of spite due to the situation with frequent show guest, Eric Byrnes]. "D-Backs in battle to stay relevant," says Bickley. Well, duh. Hello? It's the off-season? How "relevant" are the Cardinals in April? While there are some good points - an improvement over the usual Bickley nonsense - it still contains nonsense like, "Can we get Orlando Hudson back?" and "Ticket buyers have become scarce. With the Cardinals soaring and the Suns surging, this team better find some competitive traction soon."

Cardinals soaring? The team that requires an endless series of ticket-selling extensions to avoid TV blackouts? Suns surging? Hang on, not even two weeks previously, someone was writing in the Republic, "The way basketball was in Phoenix for the past four years [it] might never be again. With a new season barely under way, the Suns have embraced reality... They already have conceded that their impressive sellout streak will end Sunday.. More than 2,000 seats remain for the second home game of a new season... They likely will return to the playoffs. But will they ever recapture the magic? It will take many more victories...to challenge the football team, the one that painted the town from orange to red." Who was that writer, questioning the Suns' relevance? Ah, yes: Dan Bickley.

"Many more victories"? Try nine. For here we are, the 9-2 Suns are Bickley's darlings, and had a massive lead in the azcentral.com poll to determine the town's favorite team. Well, there's a shocker. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: sports fans in this state are about as loyal as a Van Buren hooker. There are so many front-runners, they could re-enact the Boston Marathon, and possess the sporting memories (plus, too often, the sporting knowledge) of a goldfish. The solution to the Diamondbacks' alleged lack of "relevance" is simple. Win more games. That's all it takes in Phoenix, and the fans will come flocking back, especially after the Suns and Cardinals are both one and done in the post-season. Now, how does the team win more games? Good question...

Andrew Kneeland takes a look at three signings the D-backs need to make to improve in 2010: Russell Branyan at 1B, leftie Jarrod Washburn for the rotation and Mike Gonzalez for the bullpen. Hmmm. Not so sure. Branyan is another left-handed 1B, and we already have that side of things adequately covered, in Brandon Allen and Josh Whitesell. Washburn's 3.78 AL ERA looks very nice, but was based on a .257 BABIP [his career average is .280], so he'll likely be over-valued this winter. He's also an extreme fly-ball pitcher, and we know how that plays at Chase. And a three year, $15m contract for a middle-reliever? Not my idea of where we should be spending the money. The last sentence of the piece, "He is an intern at the Green Valley News," explains a lot. Thanks for playing, Andrew.

Former Diamondback Orlando Hudson = not happy. In particular, not happy about Joe Torre, and the way their relationship imploded as the season went on, with Hudson seeing less and less playing-time. Said O-Dawg, "My teammates talked to me about it more than Joe did, but I never had any answers because (Torre) and I never talked. There was no conversation... I guess he felt I wasn't the man for the job if he wasn't putting me in there." Doesn't seem likely, based on this, that Hudson will be back in Chavez Ravine next season. I'm sure Bickley will be pleased by that.

Brandon Webb was seen at the PIR over the weekend, at the NASCAR races - not too much of a shock, where else would a good ol' Kentucky boy who loves hunting be? Even though the Diamondbacks do have a NASCAR connection - the Hall of Fame racing team is owned by former Arizona shareholders Jeff Moorad + Tom Garfinkel, and Panda Express CEO Tom Davin - we won't be seeing Webb on the track any time soon. He said "It's a little too dangerous for me out there. I'll stick to the mound."

Here's a name from past: Wally Backman. His tenure as Diamondbacks manager was among the shortest in major-league history, after unsavory incidents from his past came to light, and he was fired four days and zero games after being hired - possibly the low point of the nightmare which was 2004. Five and a half years later, he has finally made it back to a major-league organization. He did have a couple of spells in indie ball, but has now been hired as manager of the Brooklyn Cyclones, the Mets Single-A affiliate. I can't think of a more perfect organization for Backman.

I've been playing about with the enhanced Play Index feature over at Baseball-Reference.com, which now allows you to search in a variety of new ways. For instance, I found out that twice last season, the Diamondbacks used ten players in a game who were aged 25 or younger, on June 26 and July 4. [This week's trivia - how many of those young gentlement can you name? Between the two contests, there were a dozen in total] That's a number unmatched by any team in the majors - only the Padres and Braves managed more than eight - and is more evidence for the ongoing youth movement of the roster.

Speaking of B-R.com, in the past, we have sponsored various Diamondbacks there. These have included such illustrious names as Chris Snyder, Miguel Montero and Chad Tracy, as well as the not-quite-so illustrious ones of Dustin Nippert and Jailen Peguero. The departure of Yusmeiro Petit for pastures Pacific Northwestern means we had to look at putting our name on another page, and keeping ourselves in the ranks of supporters of this splendid reference site, alongside a couple of other posters here. But who should we pick? The ones available were somewhat limited, especially among the position players - we could get John Hester for $15, and that was about it.

Fortunately, things were a little more open on the pitching side. Though all the big names were locked up, we could still get Kevin Mulvey ($10), Bryan Augenstein ($5), Leo Rosales ($5), Blaine Boyer ($10) or Esmerling Vasquez ($5). However, in the end, we went for Billy Buckner at $10. He has a good chance to be in the rotation next year, and is also cheap. We like cheap. Something temporary has been/will be stuck up on the page as a placeholder, but I am entirely open to suggestions as to the text to go on the page. 255-character limit, so get your thinking caps on, folks. Mind you, this has likely condemned Buckner to injury, trade or abduction by aliens between now and Opening Day. Sorry, Billy.

[Answer to the trivia question: On June 26th, the ten players used by the Diamondbacks who were aged 25 or younger were: Montero, Upton, Reynolds, Parra, Young, Romero, Buckner, Zavada, Vasquez, Gutierrez. On July 4th, Petit and Scherzer (as a PH!) replaced Buckner and Vasquez.]

The 2009 Diamondbacks Season, Part VI: Defense

Jim McLennan — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 06:33:06 -0000

More photos » by Ross D. Franklin - AP

One of three AZ errors in a nightmarish inning against Anaheim in J.U.N.E. - as in Justin Upton's Newest Error. But was he really that bad?

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Few losses were more spectacularly painful for the 2009 Diamondbacks than the one which we endured in Seattle on June 21st. With the game tied in the bottom of the ninth, Clay Zavada loaded the bases with two down. Enter Chad Qualls, who got a ground-ball to Mark Reynolds, who made a perfect throw across to Tony Clark at first, for the last out of the inning, to send the game into extras. Except, Clark muffed it, dropping the ball and the winning run cantered across home-plate. That was one sad example of what seemed to plague Arizona for much of the year - just a week later, another inter-league game, against Anaheim, turned into a meltdown with three Angels batters reaching on D-backs' errors in the same frame.

Looking at some defensive stats, it would seem very clear that it's an area in which the Diamondbacks need to improve significantly, if they are to have any hope of challenging next season. However, as ever, after the jump, we'll be taking a look at a broader range of numbers and whether they can add any depth to the picture. We'll also see who they say was the best defender on the team this year. You might be surprised by the answer.

By just about every basic metric, our defense was undeniably among the worst around. With 124 errors, the Arizona Diamondbacks were ahead of only the Washington Nationals (143) - and that's in all of major-league baseball, not just the NL. At 68.0%, their defensive efficiency - the percentage of balls in play which e converted into outs - was better than just the Astros (67.6%) in the National League. We turned only 132 twin-killings (ok: technically, it was 131 and a triple-play), fifteen below league-average and ahead of one team, the Marlins (129). If there's any hope, it's that we had significantly fewer errors over the last 81 games (fifty) than the first 81 games (seventy-four). Let's start by breaking down the errors to see what positions were the source of our problem.

2009 Arizona errors
Pos	Err.	NL Av.	Rank
C	9	8	=5th
1B	15	10	=2nd
2B	11	13	=10th
3B	27	19	3rd
SS	16	18	9th
LF	9	6	3rd
CF	5	5	=5th
RF	13	5	1st
P	19	13	2nd

While Mark Reynolds may have made more individual errors than anyone else, third-base was not an especially problematic positions for us. First-base, right-field and - perhaps surprisingly - our pitchers, all made 45% or more errors above NL average. Whatever Doug Davis's merits, his fielding wasn't apparently one of them, as he was tied for the league-lead in errors, with five. Jon Garland was just behind, committing four, but especially notable was Blaine Boyer, who had three errors in only nine chances. At the other end, Dan Haren was one of four NL pitchers to be perfect when given more than 40 chances (Wainwright, Josh Johnson and Livan Hernandez were the others).

For right-field, I don't think I need go into specifics - I could just post Justin Upton's baseball card as an explanation there. At first-base, things probably weren't helped by the lack of a regular man at the position. Chad Tracy (56) started most there, but we had six other names written into the line-up, ranging from Brandon Allen (29 games) down to Rusty Ryal (five). Mark Reynolds was responsible for one-third of the 1B errors, despite starting only 24 games there. The vast majority (21) were before the All-Star break, and I doubt we'll see much of him there in 2010. For the next chart, we break down the E's into catching, fielding and throwing errors, and compare to NL average.

Error by type + position
Pos	Cch	Fld	Thr
C NL	11% 4%	0% 18%	89% 78%
1B NL	27% 22%	60% 54%	13% 24%
2B NL	0% 11%	71% 53%	29% 37%
3B NL	0% 1%	48% 54%	52% 44%
SS NL	6% 7%	38% 49%	56% 44%
LF NL	0% 0%	33% 74%	67% 26%
CF NL	0% 0%	80% 75%	20% 25%
RF NL	0% 0%	77% 80%	23% 20%
P NL	0% 8%	5% 22%	95% 70%

We are dealing with pretty small numbers, especially in the Arizona sample, so caution should be exercised. However, a couple of numbers do stand out as worthy of mention. The pitchers' problems mentioned above seem to be almost entirely on the throws, and the same goes for left-field - that ties in with my memories of the Parrazooka mis-firing in that position. Also worth mentioning is the change in numbers between 2008 and 2009 for Mark Reynolds. He made half as many errors at third on throws last season as in 2008 (18-9), on almost the same number of total chances. His fielding errors were also down, (15-10), but it's Mark's throws that really improved.

There's no doubt the errors tell a sorry tale of the problems in Arizona, but as we saw (in some depth!) earlier this season, they are far from the whole story as far as defense is concerned. There's a whole raft of numbers which go beyond the simple error, and some don't cast the Diamondbacks defense in such a bad light. Leading the pack would be Fangraph.com's UZR - see the above link for more info on it. As measured by that, the Diamondbacks' defense overall were at +22.0, which was fifth-best in the National League. WTF? Shome mishtake, shurely? Well, here's the breakdown of UZR by position. Yes. Another table... [Note: UZR isn't calculated for catchers or pitchers]

2009 AZ UZR by pos.
Pos	UZR	NL Rk
1B	-7.0	15th
2B	14.0	2nd
3B	-3.7	=9th
SS	7.2	2nd
LF	14.1	5th
CF	-13.1	14th
RF	10.4	2nd

There are some radical differences here, though UZR does concur with Errors that first-base was our worst position or thereabouts. Second-base comes up as a strength too - it has to be said, Felipe Lopez far from disgraced himself there this season, and we find ourselves in the same place as we were last winter, with a big questionmark at the spot. However, it's the contrast at CF and RF which are most striking. If you looked purely at errors, you'd think Chris Young was about average, while Justin Upton was the worst in the majors, commiting more by himself than the entire outfield of eight teams. However, UZR strongly disagrees, rating Young at -7.4, ninth of 11 qualifying fielders, while Upton was at +6.3, tied for Jason Werth as best in the league.

Before we anoint J-Up as unjustly robbed of the Gold Glove, we should probably do some checking. There has been some interesting work done lately on the accuracy possible by the hit-tracking systems, on which metrics like UZR depend. These are still human-powered - there's no version of PITCH/fx, which uses multiple cameras to objectively record location and speed. As a result, the 95% confidence level is +/- eighteen feet and four degrees of direction. That's a significant margin for error. If we contrast the Baseball Prospectus stat, Fielding Runs Above Average, it gives Arizona a combined total of -38. That seems to sit closer to what we'd intuitively expect. But even here, we see Chris Young in the basement at -13 and Justin Upton leading the way at +9.

Let's check one more. Bill James just released his Fielding Bible Awards for 2009, which combine votes from a number of sources. You won't be surprised to learn that no-one on the Diamondbacks won anything, but the following players were mentioned - note that these do not separate AL and NL, so the ranks are among all major-league players. Miguel Montero (13th, C); no-one at 1B; Ryan Roberts (13th, 2B); Mark Reynolds (16th, 3B); Stephen Drew (13th, SS); Gerardo Parra (19th, LF); Chris Young (10th, CF); Justin Upton (4th, RF); Jon Garland (P, 6th). So maybe Upton really was the best fielder on the Diamondbacks last year.

A couple of other things to note. Not all Arizona pitchers saw balls in play converted into outs at the same rate. If you look at the Defensive Efficiency figures for those who pitched 40 innings or more, there's a wide gap between the conversion rate for Leo Rosales (73.9% of balls in play became outs) and Billy Buckner (63.2%). Now, while these numbers need to be broken down more - it could just be that Rosales induced more infield flies, and Buckner more line drives - one would tend to expect both numbers to regress towards the team's overall mean (68.0%). Might be another reason to give Buckner a shot in the rotation next year.

Finally, let's take a look at the outfield: how were they at holding runners, and stopping them from taking a base. There are a lot of different scenarios involved here. Runner on first and a single; do they go to third? Or if they're on second, do they go home? What about advancing on a sacrifice fly? You can break down the numbers for each situation: here they are for our LF, CF and RF players. In total, however, the "hold rates" for the positions, the National League average and the number of "kills" - runners thrown out - were as follows. LF: 66.8% (63.3% ave, one kill). CF: 37.6% (44.0% ave, three kills). RF: 52.7% (50.5% ave, four kills). This is more evidence Young's 2009 defense wasn't up to much - not least because all three kills were by Parra...

Overall, there is a huge amount of room for improvement in this team's defense. Not necessarily in their range, which seems not to be the issue. It's more in the "fundamentals" side, such as hitting the cut-off man, knowing where about you have to be on a play, and not making mental mistakes. The raw talent and skills on view in the field were sometimes very impressive in 2009: however, too often, there was a problem with converting that into outs. And as Mark Grace said, if you habitually give a major-league team four outs in an inning, they will eventually bury you. Sound basic baseball needs to be the focus of this team in spring training next year, and if the players aren't on board with that, they should get familiar with the bench.

I was going to talk about our baserunning as well, but I've already gone on longer than expected, so that will have to wait for part...er, seven. I hope to have this series finished in time for Opening Day. Mind you, I'm not saying which Opening Day...

This Week in AZ Baseball: prospects injury news, winter ball report and a "to-do" list.

Jim McLennan — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 01:00:20 -0000

We ate at Mrs. White's Golden Rule Cafe last night - it's the one on Jefferson, almost diagonally opposite the NE corner of Chase Field. First time we've actually ever been, even though I've driven past it on the way to work every day for almost three years now! I believe it was one of Orlando Hudson's favorite places to eat when he was with the Diamondbacks, and do have to say, the Chicken Fried Steak was phenomenal, a deliciously-moist concoction which has supplanted the previous best in Phoenix, that of the Texaz Grill on 16th Street. The walls are covered with signatures from previous famous diners; a lot of sports people in general, though I'd hardly have called the food part of a nutritious diet. Junior Spivey's signature was just above our table.

Anyway, leading off the news this week is that our 2007 first-round draft-pick, Jarrod Parker, will have Tommy John surgery on Wednesday. We also take a look at the performances of our players in winter ball, and paw over some suggestions for what the Diamondbacks need to do over the winter. Join us after the jump for all that, and more

The Diamondbacks first-round pick in 2007, Jarrod Parker, will be having Tommy John surgery on Wednesday. The team had initially hoped to avoid surgery for the problem, which first cropped up at the end of July, but the issue didn't appear to resolve itself, so an operation has been scheduled. It means he will miss the entire 2010 season, and it's likely that 2011 will largely be spent learning how to pitch. According to Tom Gordon, who had the surgery in 1999, "It takes a good two years to really have a good feel again." Still, Parker is young enough - he doesn't turn 21 until next month - that time is on his side. There'll be more on this next week, as I'm writing one of my medical pieces, detailing what the procedure entails, the rehab and Parker's future chances.

He wasn't the only Arizona prospect to suffer an injury setback this week. While Roque Mercedes may have one of the coolest names in the Diamondbacks organization (just ahead of Tyson van Winkle and Vincent Bongiovanni), the pitcher won't be taking the mound for a bit. Nick Piecoro reports our prospect was hit in the face by a line-drive, down in the Dominican Republic his injuries resulting in surgery which will keep him out for about six weeks. To add insult to injury, it was one of his team-mates that was responsible, as Mercedes was throwing batting-practice at the time. I bet that Roque-d him...

As the above paragraph suggests, Winter League ball is under way, with the Dominican and Mexican leagues now joining the Arizona Fall League. I've got a useful link for you, which allows you to see all the D-backs' winter ball statistics in one convenient location. The one line which jumps out is Conor Jackson, who has apparently turned into the Incredible Hulk following his encounter with Valley Fever, and is hitting .533/.682/.933. At this rate, major-leaguers will be queuing up to inhale some of our good ol' Arizonan fungal spores - right up until Bud gets around to banning them as an illegal PED. Which, based on how long he took with steroids, will probably be around the year 2027...

It certainly increased the chance of him being offered a contract by the Diamondbacks. I believe the rules are, that for arbitration-eligible players such as Jackson, we can't offer less than 80% of his previous salary, which for Conor would be $2.4m. If he was still unable to do anything more than become acquainted with Judge Judy and her daytime TV companions, that might not be worth the risk But going 8-for-15 with seven walks? Yeah, I think we'll see a contract with his name on it being drawn up by the front-office. [As an aside, Mrs. SnakePit wonders how Conor is coping there - after all, he's not the most Hispanic of players. She wonders if the team sent an interpreter with him]

Also enjoying his time in the Dominican is Tony Abreu, who is 9-for-22 with an OPS of 1.026. Daniel Cabrera had a solid first outing, throwing four innings and allowing only one run - perhaps more importantly, he also walked only one batter. As we saw during the regular season for Arizona and Washington [42 walks, four hit batters and 11 wild pitches in 51 innings of work], control is by far Cabrera's biggest issue. Jose Marte and Jordan Norberto have barely got started, but have combined for two scoreless innings out of the bullpen for Estrellas de Oriente

Not so much success for AZ pitchers in the hitter-friendly Arizona Fall League. Our four hurlers - Bryan Augenstein, Tom Laine, Scott Maine and Cesar Valdez - have combined for 11.2 innings of work and thirteen earned runs, on seventeen hits and ten walks. Maine and Valdez in partiocular seem to have been infected with Cabrera-itis, having handed out a total of eight free passes in 3.2 frames. At the plate, Brandon Allen has struggled, hitting .211 (8-for-38), though has ten walks, resulting in a respectable .375 OBP. Cole Gillespie is impressing, going 8-for-20 with five walks and only one K. Pedro Ciriaco is also doing well: 9-for-21 with an OPS over a thousand.

Finally in this area - though I'm not quite sure if this counts as "winter ball," since it's actually their summer - the Australian season is about to get under way, naturally featuring our own Trent Oeltjen. Here's a piece on baseball down under, and it looks like this could become another off-season destination for players. "The MLB and the Australian Baseball Federation have joined in a unique partnership to unveil a competition that will seek to attract US stars keen to tune up ahead of their home season. The MLB, buoyed by the success of its joint venture Australian academy on the Gold Coast, which has seen 126 players graduate to pro leagues around the world since 2000, will bankroll 75 per cent of the competition."

A potential financial cloud on the horizon for the team. The Phoenix Business Journal says " The next shoe to drop in the legal fight over special tax breaks and subsidies for developers could be over the 100 percent tax exemptions ponied up for high-profile projects. That action could come after the Arizona Supreme Court decides whether a $97 million tax break for the CityNorth mixed-use development in northeast Phoenix is constitutional under state law... A lawsuit [is] expected to be filed over government property lease excise taxes, or GPLETs. These funding mechanisms allow government entities that own land to lease it back to private developers and businesses, which then pay lower-than-normal property taxes." Currently, the Diamondbacks pay no property taxes because they lease Chase from the Maricopa County Stadium District. Insert rant about taxpayer-funded pro sports facilities here.

Billy Buckner was the winner of the 2009 Diamondbacks' award for Minor-League Pitcher of the Year. That may seem a bit of a surprise, given his lackluster performances early in the season with the big club, but when pitching for Reno, he went 9-3 with a 3.32 ERA. Looking at the other numbers, a couple of other candidates include Berling Cruz, who had a 2.23 ERA in fourteen games (thirteen starts) for the Diamondbacks in the Dominican Summer League, and Michael Belfiore's 2.11 ERA over 58 innings with Missoula. But I'm sure Zephon and IHSB will talk more about these guys in their end-of-season reviews.

Nick Piecoro has come up with his to-do list in the off-season for the Diamondbacks. Not too much to argue with there: little doubt we need a starting pitcher, a first-baseman and a couple of arms in the bullpen. However, I would question the amounts allocated by Nick, of the $28m we have to spend, especially given the names he mentions. I don't think $7m will be anywhere near to get someone like Jason Marquis, who earned close to ten million this season, and won 15 games with the Rockies. I doubt a 30% pay-cut is anywhere imminent in his future. The other suggestion, Brad Penny, who made only six starts, is more likely for the cash: $7m will only get you someone whose 2009 was marred either by injury or their performance.

I'd be surprised if we end up spending more, as Nick thinks, on the bullpen - especially as we don;t need a closer, or even probably a set-up man. Eight million dollars therefore seems a bit high. I think in Chad Qualls, Juan Gutierrez, Esmerling Vasquez and Clay Zavada, we have the makings of a fairly-solid bullpen, and you can add Blaine Boyer, who was very impressive in his time with us, or possibly even Daniel Schlereth to the mix. I think we just need a couple of reliable middle-inning guys, nothing spectacular or too expensive. Overpaying for relievers is not something I'd say the team needs to do - we have more significant needs.

The 2009 Diamondbacks Season, Part III: Starting Pitching

Jim McLennan — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 16:00:21 -0000

More photos » by Matt York - AP

Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death. In 2009,. score one for the gazelle, species Maximus Scherzerii.

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If someone were to make a movie based on the Diamondbacks' starting pitching, it would probably be titled The Good, The Not Bad, and the Ugly. The team lost Brandon Webb, who had won more games in the league than anyone else from 2005-08, after one ineffective outing, and his absence was felt the rest of the season, thanks mostly to the poor performances provided by the revolving door of replacements.

However, particularly in the first half, Haren stepped up and delivered some very ace-like outings. Garland and Davis, despite some road-bumps, proved to be the reliable innings-eaters expected, each cracking 200 innings on the season. Scherzer became a full-time member of the rotation for the first season, and finally picked up his first win, as well as going deeper into games than previously. After the jump, we'll take a look at our men on the mound in 2009.

1. Dan Haren. 229.1 IP, 3.14 ERA
Over the first half of the season, Haren was probably the best pitcher in the National League. In eighteen games, he had seventeen quality starts, an ERA of 2.01 and a K:BB ratio of better than 8:1.He certainly deserved a better record at the break than 9-5, and wasn't helped by receiving a total of three runs support over the defeats - his ERA in those five outings was 2.45. Oh, and did we forget to mention that he hit his first career home-run, off Bronson Arroyo in Cincinnati on June 30th?

Haren had always had a reputation for slipping in the second-half; we saw this in 2008, when his post-ASG ERA increased from 2.72 to 4.18. This year, it was even more pronounced, Dan's ERA ballooning from 2.01 to 4.62. Some of this was perhaps not unexpected, given his BA on Balls in Play during the first half was .233: That's unsustainably low, and regressed back to .315 in the second half. [Oddly, this has been consistent in Haren's seven-year career, with a BABIP 63 points better before the break] However, his other peripherals also collapsed: Haren's K:BB ratio nearly halved and his HR rate increased from 0.83/nine IP to 1.36. Whatever Dan is doing at the All-Star break, can he please stop it?

2. Doug Davis. 203.1 IP, 4.12 ERA
The idea of clutch hitting as a significant skill may have been largely debunked, but is there such a thing as clutch pitching? Doug's performance this year would seem to suggest it, but studies on this topic are less impressed: "pitchers don’t appear to have any special skill over other pitchers in performing in RSIP situations." Doug Davis scoffs at this: with no-one on base, batters facing him had a line of .308/.392/.507 - with runners in scoring position, it was .216/.322/.347. This is an extreme version of what he's been doing his entire career, where his RISP OPS is 79 points lower than when pitching

Over on Beyond the Box Score, Cyril Morong has a formula for estimating ERA based on OBP and SLG. Based on Davis's numbers, his ERA this year should have been 4.77. FIP agrees, putting Davis at 4.84, and it's true to say that discussion of re-signing Davis in Arizona would be more muted if his actual ERA was around those numbers, not 4.12. Now, there are any number of reasons why a pitcher's ERA can be below his FIP, but Davis had the biggest gap of any Arizona pitcher last season. Since his free-agent value is more likely to be based on his ERA than his FIP, worth thinking hard about whether you want to gamble on Davis repeating the feat for the next few seasons.

3. Max Scherzer. 170.1 IP, 4.12 ERA
While discussion over whether to move Max to the bullpen or leave him as a starter rumbles on, there wasn't much to dislike about his performance in the rotation during 2009. Only five qualifying pitchers his age in the NL had a better ERA+ than Max' (109). At 5.7 innings per start, he was in the middle of the pack with regard to his durability - league average was 5.8 - and Scherzer ended the game with seven straight starts going 100 pitches or more. Of course, that's part of the problem: at 4.14 pitches/PA, Max had the second-highest number of any qualifying pitcher in the majors (Clayton Kershaw was at 4.31).

On the other hand,. he was more effective the third time through the order, with an OPS 31 points better than the second time; the NL avg is 51 points worse. It did seem like he was going to run out of steam after he posted a 6.47 ERA in August, but rebounded nicely, with a 3.48 ERA in his five September starts, before being rested for his final outing, having hit 170 innings on the year. He was also the first qualifying starter for the Diamondbacks to strike out more than a batter per frame, since Randy Johnson in 2004. Scherzer is only the third such pitcher in franchise history, alongside the Big Unit (who did it five times) and Curt Schilling (three).

4. Jon Garland. 167.2 IP. 4.29 ERA [for AZ only]
Speaking of him, the impeccable one of last winter's front-office decisions, was signing Garland instead of Johnson; while RJ got #300 for the Giants, he was largely ineffective or injured. There's a fascinating thread over on DBBP, including an azcentral.com poll showing more than 70% of voters thought letting him go was a bad move. See also the crap I got (pg. 18 on) for pointing out that only four 45-year olds since the 19th century had pitched 150 innings at an ERA+ above 100. Johnson ended up doing neither, and Fangraphs.com puts his value this year at only $1.9m - below even what he was offered by Arizona and far from the $8m plus bonuses paid by SF.

Beyond "I told you so about Johnson," Garland proved a solid mid-rotation pitcher. He gave us a quality start in two-third of his outings (league average is 55%), though his numbers were bloated by a couple of horrendous outings. The main factor in his performance was walks: in starts for Arizona when he walked three or more batters, his ERA was 6.35; when two or less, it dropped to 3.53. His greatest contribution to the Diamondbacks may be yet to come, though this will depend on whether Tony Abreu proves to be the second-baseman of the future for us. If so, then it will be another way Garland has provent to be a superior signing to Johnson.

5. Everyone else. 197 IP, 6.26 ERA
This covers 38 starts made by six different pitchers - I tried to find a picture of a six-headed beast, but Google Images proved no help. Seven-headed, not a problem, but six? Sorry. Anyway, the great bulk of them (30) were by Yusmeiro Petit and Billy Buckner: Petit was vulnerable as ever to the long-ball, with eighteen home-runs in 83.1 innings as a starter [it was "only" the fourth-worst rate in the majors this year though; Baltimore's David Hernandez allowed 27 in 101.1 IP], yet also took an extremely-unexpected no-hitter into the eighth inning. All told though, I'd say he's teetering on the edge of not making the 25-man roster next season.

Buckner is likely on stronger ground. After being sent to Triple-A, he came back with a new cut fastball and was a great deal more effective. Over the 36.2 innings after his return, he had a very credible 3.93 ERA - it had been more than double that (8.63) in his first 40.2 innings of work. With three spots in the 2010 rotation undecided, he seems to have the inside track on the #5 position at the moment, but he may still have to compete with the likes of Kevin Mulvey, Daniel Cabrera and Bryan Augenstein for the job. However, after what happened this season, I think we'd all be a lot happier if our credible starting pitchers required more hands than one to count them.

Poll

How much would you pay for Doug Davis next year? [2009 salary: $8.75m]

$10 million or more

3 votes

$9 million

24 votes

$8 million

23 votes

$7 million

37 votes

Less than that

48 votes

135 votes | Poll has closed

The 2009 Diamondbacks: what the heck happened?

Jim McLennan — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 02:00:17 -0000

Worst Case Scenario… Arizona battles with Colorado for third place.
-- Baseball Digest Daily Team Preview, March 15, 2009

The above is a measure of how badly things went for our team this year: the "worst case scenario" suggested, would be something for which we would now be more than happy to settle. It's comforting to realize that I am far from the only person to have seen their high expectation for the 2009 Arizona Diamondbacks mercilessly dashed. Virtually every pundit I could locate online predicted us to have a winning record - the respected Baseball Prospectus PECOTA projections had the team all the way up at 88 wins, and they weren't alone.

Other sites predicted 86 wins; 85 wins, 84 wins, 88 wins, 83 wins for Arizona, and even CHONE, the most pessimistic I could find at 79 wins, had us finishing only three games back of the Dodgers. From a more fan-based perspective, in our pre-season poll, of approaching three hundred participants, only 12% predicted the Diamondbacks would have less than eighty victories, never mind struggling to reach seventy. Not quite the same realm as the chairman of DEC saying "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home," but why were so many people - neutral observers, with no vested interests or rose-colored fandom glasses - so completely wrong? Why was there such a gulf between expectations and reality? After the jump, we'll break down some numbers - here are Josh Byrnes and AJ Hinch talking about the season that's just finished.

Audio courtesy of KTAR 620

Injuries
Let's not kid ourselves. The loss of Brandon Webb was a devastating blow to the Diamondbacks in 2009, as much because it was completely unexpected to us. After all, over the previous five season, he had never made less than 33 starts per year. To be reduced from that, at an ERA+ of 140 to a single, ineffective outing was clearly a huge factor in the team's underperformance. How much?

Let's look at Webb's record in 2005, 2006 and 2008, when the total number of runs scored by the team (696, 712 and 720) were close to this year, when it's exactly the same as 2008, at 720. In those three years, Webb's collective ERA was 3.31 - one tick above the number posted last season - and his average W/L record was 17-9, with the team going 19-14 in his starts This seems a reasonable estimate for what we "should" have got from Webb this year, assuming run support approximately matching those hundred starts, and an ERA consistent with last year.

Instead of him, there was the Quadruple-headed Beast of Webb-Replacement Suck: Bryan Augenstein, Yusmeiro Petit, Billy Buckner and Kevin Mulvey. While Buckner has, of late, looked a semi-credible back-end candidate for 2010, this has been the exception, rather than the rule. In their first 33 starts, that quartet had an ERA of 6.24, went 5-18 and the team posted a record of 9-24 - ten games worse than that we could realistically have expected from 33 Webb starts. Even using a more conservative estimate - Fangraph.com's Wins Above Replacement (WAR) - we find that Webb in 2008 was worth six wins to Arizona - the four-pack of replacements plus Webb in 2009 rated only 0.3 wins in 33 starts, 5.7 less. I'd split the difference between the two methods and say Webb's injury cost us eight wins

We should also consider the unfortunate loss of Conor Jackson to valley fever, which basically meant he had the entire season written off. No real way to measure his input except by using WAR. This tells us there's a difference of 4.5 wins between what we got from the SnakePit MVP in 2008 and his sub-replacement output for the team this season. So, between the loss of him and Webb, we're probably looking at a cost to the team around twelve games. That's a massive difference by itself, almost enough to have put the team into contention for the wild-card, and is not including anyone else - I believe Arizona's players missed a total of almost 800 player-games on the DL. But wait! There's more...

Trades
After it became apparent that this team was not going to be in the post-season hunt, several deals were made, sending useful pieces to other teams, generally in exchange for players who might help the team in 2010 or beyond. The players we lost would likely have helped the Diamondbacks to several more victories - albeit meaningless ones - had we retained their services for the rest of the season. From WAR, we can see what the ex-Diamondbacks did for their new teams - production which could have been in Arizona.

Of course, we need to balance against this, the production provided to Arizona this season, by what we received in return. The chart below shows the four main trades, with the WAR values given to their new teams after the trade, on both sides of the deal:

Left Arizona	WAR	To Arizona	WAR
Jon Garland	0.6	PTBNL	0.0
Felipe Lopez	2.6	Cole Gillespie Roque Mercedes	0.0
Tony Peña	0.5	Brandon Allen	-0.6
Jon Rauch	0.3	Kevin Mulvey	-0.1
TOTAL	4.0	TOTAL	-0.7

Ugh. I hope those trades work out better for us in the long-term than they did this season, because they provided absolutely nothing of value to the 2009 team. While it would be simple just to say that we would have approached five wins better, simply by hanging on to the players with whom we started the season, it probably isn't as simple as that, because of the positional changes. The replacement at second for Lopez was mostly Rusty Ryal, who was a credible +0.6 WAR in his time here. While still well short of F-Lo, who hit .320 for the Brewers over 66 games, it's enough to make me reduce the overall impact to four wins.

Almost as significant a weakening were the Peña and Rauch deals, not just for what they would have done in the 'pen but the negative impact of the players received in return. After the way Allen tore up AAA pitching, an OPS+ of 70 in more than thirty games was still disappointing. I think we'll be taking Reno numbers with a larger pinch of salt next season. Mulvey lacked control, issuing 14 free passes (a dozen walks and two hit batters) and five home-runs in only 23 innings. He'll need to do better than that, if he wants even to be our sixth starter next year - a spot at which, as noted above, Arizona blew chunks. We'll discuss the moves more in due course, I think; both Mulvey and Allen will only be 24 on Opening Day 2010, so that's in their favor.

"Bad luck"
Yeah, this may sound like a Cubs-esque cop-out, but there's some evidence to suggest the team was unlucky, and I don't just mean the lodging of fungal sports in the lungs of one of our best 2008 hitters. Baseball is a chaotic, in mathematical terms, game - in the sense that a tiny change in circumstances can have a massive effect on results. For example, a couple of millimeters difference on where the ball hits the bat, far beyond what any hitter can control consciously, may be the difference between a grand-slam and an inning-ending can of corn to the outfield. However, that requires a good deal more space, and this piece has already gone on long enough, so I'll carry any detailed analysis there forward for another day... But it's probably worth at least another three wins.

Conclusions
That brings us to a total of 19 wins lost to the Diamondbacks by factors more or less outside their control - the trades would likely not have happened had the team still been in contention, which in turn was the result of a combination of factors, including injuries and the whims of the baseball gods. It's enough to explain the entire gulf between performance and expectations, and then some.

This does not absolve the front-office from responsibility for their part in the disappointing season. Given the known issue with Webb's shoulder - which was apparently a big enough concern to stop the two sides from agreeing on a contract extension - it was particularly reckless to have no credible backup available in our pitching rotation. First-base continues to be a major black-hole of offensive production, and with the honorable exception of Dan Haren, the contract extensions awarded over the past few years have yet to bear fruit (and that's putting it mildly). Those outside the lines certainly have their share of blame.

However, even with all the self-inflicted wounds, the Diamondbacks as formulated on Opening Day 2009 would, if fully healthy and getting anything approaching normal luck, have been over .500, at the very least. Indeed, thanks to a number of everyday players surpassing expectations (Montero, Upton, Reynolds), 90 wins could conceivably have been achieved had the breaks gone minorly our way. Again, I'll analyze our actual performances more in the coming weeks, but you might find some surprises there too [here's a tidbit - the 2009 bullpen was, by at least one advanced measure, better than in 2008].

Diamondbacks 12, Cubs 3: Can we play Chicago every day?

Jim McLennan — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 23:41:20 -0000

More photos » by Paul Beaty - AP

Spookily, the number on the jersey of a Cubs outfielder and the sign in the Wrigley ivy combine to show the number of games the Cubs will play before their next World Series.

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Record: 69-91. Pace: 70-92. Change on last season: -11.

This was a game full of surprises. Not the least of which being that it was a Friday day-game, which therefore managed to get underway before any of us had noticed. I could grumble about the unnaturalness of it all, and how unfair it was for Arizona to have to play a day-game immediately after flying in from San Francisco, etc. But going by the results today, maybe we should do it more often. For the Diamondbacks' pounded out their highest number of runs on the road since June 18th, highlighted by - and you may want to sit down for this - four-hit games from Eric Byrnes (season OPS+ 57) and Chris Young (76). They combined for three homers and seventeen total bases.

Yeah, "surprising" may not quite cut it. Been a while since I've had to look that one up in the SnakePit thesaurus, but follow me after the jump for details of the arresting, distinguished, exceptional, extraordinary, impressive, noteworthy, noticeable, outstanding, phenomenal, preeminent, singular, smashing, solid, striking, super, uncommon, uncustomary, unusual, unwonted, weighty and wonderful victory.

Seems the Cubs are even keener than us for 2009 to end. The announced figure was the second-smallest crowd of the year at Wrigley - trailing only the game on Wednesday night -and BCB's Al estimated the actual number present as only 15,000. Though who can blame them, with a game-time temperature in the forties, and a firm breeze? [Yes, folks: now is the time when it's pleasant to live in our state. We finally get our reward for enduring the hell of the past four months] But it wasn't just the fans: if Arizona have mailed in performances of late, then as mentioned in the GDT, the Cubs today appeared to be using a network of bonfires, semaphore flags and galleys, having been outscored 24-5 over the past three games, all losses against the mighty powers of Arizona and Pittsburgh.

At one point, it looked like we might be on our way to the first double-digit shutout inflicted on the Cubs at Wrigley since May 2003. That wasn't to be - in part because of what can only be described as Zavada interference - but the nine runs by which we won was a margin not surpassed there since the Diamondbacks clubbed six homers during a 15-4 win in July 2006. We scored three runs before anyone even noticed - certainly, before I noticed there was a game on - thanks to a Stephen Drew single, Mark Reynolds sacrifice fly and Young solo homer. We then piled on four more in the third, Rusty Ryal unclogging the bases with a double, and scoring on a Byrnes hit.

As a general rule of thumb, I don't mind games where our Win Probability is north of 95% by the middle of the third inning, and it helped that Billy Buckner was delivering another solid outing. Through six innings, he had allowed three hits - all singles - and three walks, displaying probably the best form of the season. He tired in the seventh, giving up three straight hits including an unusual ground-rule double. While I didn't see it myself, it appears Clay Zavada was protecting a colleague as he warmed in the visitors' bullpen [which at Wrigley, is open to play, in foul territory]. A fair ball hit down the line headed towards them, and Zavada reflexively grabbed it. Two bases for everyone.

A walk to load the bases with one out signalled the end of Buckner, and it was still a quality start, even though his replacement Blaine Boyer gave up an RBI single and RBI groundout. Buckner's final line was a credible 6.1 innings of work, resulting in three earned runs on six hits and four walks, with five K's. Behind him, Boyer, Scott Schoeneweis and Zavada - pitching in front of a number of family and friends - retired the final eight batters they faced, throwing only 29 pitches. The Cubs players were clearly in no mood to hang around: hard to say which was chillier, the weather or the reception from their fans.

Meanwhile, the Diamondbacks had continued to add on. Byrnes homered in the sixth. Ryal had a sacrifice fly in the seventh and, later that same inning, Byrnes singled in another run, making the score 10-0 at that point. Finally, with two ours in the ninth, Young singled - he needed a triple for the cycle - and Byrnes completed the rout of Chicago with another home-run. It's been a long time since Eric has his last multihomer game: the best part of three seasons, in fact, since his last came on May 30th, 2007, against Philadelphia.

Chris Young continues to smack the ball about, with four hits and a walk today. In the past month, with over 100 PA's, his line is now .299/.382/.567, with seven home-runs. That's a good month by anyone's standards, and if the tail-end of the season has had any bright-spots, today was a showcase for them. We've seen the possible resurrection of Young, and the potential conversion of Buckner into a credible member of the 2010 rotation [if he can just stretch out his stamina a little further....] Drew, returned to the two-hole, responded with three hits, and lead-off man Ryan Roberts had a couple as well.

All told, a fine performance, even against a Cubs line-up missing most of its biggest stars for one reason or another e.g. Soriano and Lee. It's been a while since the Diamondbacks have managed such a convincing victory. Indeed, the last time we won by more than three runs was SnakePitFest, thirty games ago on August 29th! Even exclusing the 2007 post-season sweep, it runs Arizona's franchise record against the Cubs since 2004 to 22-13- the best we have against any NL side. We're also the only visiting NL team with a winning record at Wrigley, having gone 22-20 lifetime there.

[Click to enlarge, at fangraphs.com]
Master of his domain: Billy Buckner, +13.5%
Honorable mentions: Ryal, +12.1%; Young, +10.2%
God-emperor of suck: John Hester, -1.3%

Curiously, despite a four-hit, two-homer, five RBI day, Eric Byrnes' contribution was only worth 1.8% to our Win Probability. That's because he made an out his first time up - by the time he got a hit, we were already six runs up, and there was only about 5% of Win Probability left to be earned over the entire rest of the game. Seemed to be some technical difficulties in the GDT: it never auto-refreshed for me at all. This and the unexpectedly early start may help explain the low turnout: 177 comments, among 15 people. I pipped pygalgia, and we were the only people to pass twenty. Also present, however: kishi, snakecharmer, GuruB, piratedan7, older fart, Turambar, 4 Corners Fan, AJforAZ, hotclaws, soco, emilylovesthedbacks, asteroid and Wailord.

Think I just might watch the replay of this one tonight, and amaze Mrs. SnakePit with my astute predictions of good games for Byrnes and Young... Right up until she starts to wonder why it's still daylight in Chicago!

Cubs, Gorzelanny Lose Ugly To Diamondbacks, 12-3

Al — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 22:05:49 -0000

More photos » by Paul Beaty - AP

"Oh, brother," says Gorz, "I should have asked to start last night."

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If you missed the FanShot I posted, the Cubs announced this afternoon the policy for refunds for yesterday's rainout:

All paid tickets for the Oct. 1 game are eligible for a refund. Refunds are available by sending the tickets to the Wrigley Field Ticket Office at 1060 West Addison Street, Chicago, IL, 60613. All refunds must be requested before Dec. 31, 2009. Tickets will not be eligible for exchange for 2010 or any future seasons.

Refunds will be made by check. Please allow four weeks for delivery. The original purchaser of the ticket or tickets will receive a refund to his/her credit card instead of a check if that was the original method of payment.

Also, word around the ballpark today was that the reason the umpires waited so long to call last night's game was some sort of edict that had come to teams from the MLB offices that they wanted "all games" to be played this season if at all possible. Only a call directly from Bud Selig finally got the game to be cancelled.

That's about the only good news I can bring you from Wrigley Field today; certainly, the Cubs' depressing 12-3 loss to the Diamondbacks didn't have any. Tom Gorzelanny got hit, in fine Chicago fashion, early and often; Chris Young, who seems to have hit about half of his career homers against the Cubs (in reality, only five of 70), smashed a ball that the wind carried onto Waveland with two runners on in the first inning. By the time Rusty Ryal hit a three-run double off Gorzelanny in the fourth, it was 7-0 and if the umpires or the MLB offices had had any sympathy for the (approximately) 15,000 who showed up today (tickets sold: 33,786), they'd have called it after the fifth inning with the score still 7-0 and the Cubs with only three singles.

Instead, a parade of five Cub relievers gave the visitors from Arizona (who had some very chilly-looking fans wearing their garb walking around outside Wrigley this morning) five more runs. Only Justin Berg, who threw two very nice innings, and John Grabow, who struck out two in a scoreless frame of his own, pitched well. I can't imagine we'll see Jeff Stevens back next year -- he got hit hard -- nor should David Patton, a waste of a roster spot, return in 2010. Aaron Heilman, who had actually gotten his season ERA under 4 (3.97) before today's game, gave up a HR to Eric Byrnes, his second of the game, a two-run shot, and Heilman's (perhaps) farewell to Cubs fans shows him with a season ERA of 4.16. I like Berg, incidentally, a lot, and I think he will be a significant contributor to the 2010 bullpen in middle relief.

The Cubs managed three consolation runs off Billy Buckner and reliever Blaine Boyer in the seventh, but that was all on a day when some off-and-on showers that didn't even show up on radar screens dotted the ballpark. It seemed a fitting way to say farewell to a rainy season. Rain may dot the area tomorrow, so be prepared for another postponement. It'd somehow feel appropriate.

Some Thoughts For 2010: Cubs vs. Diamondbacks Preview, Friday 10/2, 1:20 CT

Al — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:30:15 -0000

The bleachers during Thursday night's rain delay, about 9:15 pm. (BCB photo by David Sameshima)

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We have, at times this season, debated whether the Cubs should have traded Mark DeRosa and whether he would have helped the club through its various injuries and lack of production. I don't want to rekindle anything... oh, what the heck. Yes, I do.

During last night's rain delay, the Tribune's Paul Sullivan asked various Cubs, including Aramis Ramirez, Ryan Dempster, Carlos Zambrano and Ted Lilly, what their wish lists are for 2010. Though all of them made good points -- and I think Dempster's wish of upgrading the facilities will come true, though maybe not for another year -- Lilly's were telling:

Lilly's wish is for the Cubs to re-sign Reed Johnson, who becomes a free agent in November. But he also said it would be prudent to consider bringing back Mark DeRosa, who left a void in the clubhouse when he was traded to the Indians last winter.

"I love Mark as a player, a person, a clubhouse guy," Lilly said. "I could say he's probably the best teammate I've ever had. All around, he really cares a great deal about everybody, and that's the kind of person he is. I think he also leads by example -- the way he plays. He's a special individual."

"The best teammate I've ever had". This, from someone who played more than two years for the Yankees when they were playing in World Series every year and had guys like Paul O'Neill and Scott Brosius, reputed to be great team leaders, not to mention Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada and Mariano Rivera, all class acts and fine players. Ted says DeRo was "the best teammate I've ever had".

Now. Mark DeRosa is going to be 35 years old in February and hasn't produced this year as he did in his two Cub seasons -- although, that is partly due to a wrist injury he suffered in his first week with the Cardinals, plus his career numbers at Busch Stadium (.182/.251/.315 in 200 career AB) are pretty bad; compare that to the .305/.394/.464 he posted in 528 lifetime AB at Wrigley Field, neither of which can be dismissed as "small sample size". The Cubs could do worse than signing DeRosa to play right field or second base or a combination thereof, even if they have to have him share time with other players. For the right price -- I would NOT overpay -- I would be delighted to have Mark DeRosa back in Cubs uniform #7 in 2010.

Let the flaming -- or cheerleading -- begin.

Today's Starting Pitchers


Tom Gorzelanny Cubs	vs.	Billy Buckner Diamondbacks

7-2	W-L	3-6
4.70	ERA	6.59
44	SO	59
16	BB	25
5	HR	12
vs. Ari	--	vs. Cubs

NOTE: Tom Gorzelanny's stats below are with the Cubs only. See the pitcher box above for his full-season stats.

	W-L	G	GS	CG	SHO	SV	BS	IP	H	R	ER	HR	BB	K	ERA	WHIP
2009 - Tom Gorzelanny	4-1	12	6	0	0	0	0	35.1	32	18	18	5	12	37	4.58	1.25

	W-L	G	GS	CG	SHO	SV	BS	IP	H	R	ER	HR	BB	K	ERA	WHIP
2009 - Billy Buckner	3-6	15	12	0	0	0	0	71.0	88	54	52	12	25	59	6.59	1.59

The last time a player named Bill Buckner appeared at Wrigley Field was May 24, 1984, when the former Cubs first baseman pinch-hit (and popped out) in the first game of a doubleheader against the Braves, just before he was traded to the Red Sox. This Billy Buckner, no relation, has never started against the Cubs (he made one relief appearance against them on July 23, 2008 in Phoenix). He has actually been fairly decent since he returned to the Arizona rotation in September (3.86 ERA in five starts, although he has also posted a 1.35 WHIP).

Tom Gorzelanny is slowly putting together a good record that he can bring to next spring training with a real chance to make the 2010 rotation. He has made six starts for the Cubs, going at least five innings in five of them (and getting pounded by the Rockies in the other one). His combined numbers as a starter: 28.2 IP, 28 H, 13 ER, 9 BB, 33 K, 4 HR, 4.13 ERA, 1.31 WHIP. Not bad, and if you throw out the one horrendous start, the other five are decent-to-outstanding. He has made three career starts vs. Arizona (1-0, 3.15). Stephen Drew (3-for-10) and Justin Upton (3-for-6, a HR) have hit him well in small sample sizes.

Today's game is on WGN and FSN Arizona. For other games today see the MLB.com Mediacenter.

MLB.com Gameday

Baseball-reference.com game preview

SB Nation game preview

Please visit our SB Nation Diamondbacks site AZ Snakepit. Jim, the proprietor, is a good guy and runs a well-done site. And he's originally from England.

Overflow comment threads will post again today at 2:15 and 3:15 pm CDT, although last night's had a combined five comments.

Discuss amongst yourselves.