While looking up background on managers and Tony LaRussa, I was surprised to find that his playing career ended with his release from the St. Louis Cardinals in September 1977.  His last game at the major league level was in 1973 with the Cubs, with one appearance as a pinch runner and scored a run.  He then journeyed AAA with the Pirates and then White Sox before he was traded to the Cards in December 1976 for one last year of AAA in exchange for Randy Wiles.

Randy Wiles made a total of five appearances in the majors in 1977, gave up just five hits and managed to "pitch for the cycle."  He gave up one homerun, one triple, one double,  and two singles.  He recorded one win, one loss, and one hold, and ended up with an ERA of 10.12 and a WHIP of 3.00.  He played one season of AAA after that and disappeared.

TLR ended his major league playing career with a BA of .199.  Just thought this an amusing piece of LaRussa trivia.  Clearly he increased his value as a manager.

In 13 seasons of this format, with a total of 52 Division Series played, collective wins/losses is 156-44, an astonishing 0.780 clip.
Of 52 series played, 21 have resulted in sweeps, an equally astonishing 40%.
Of the 21 sweeps, 13 have occurred in the NL and 8 in the AL.
Of the 21 sweeps, 8 have involved Wild Card, and are equally split 4-4 between the NL and  AL.
Of the 21 sweeps, 14 have been won by the team starting the series with the first two wins on their home turf.

The worst thing to me, is that after increasing the hopes of more fans with an 8 team playoff, so many have to end their season in such futility. These series never test the depth of the pitching rosters, and the outcomes are not indicative of season long performance.

So many good days for ball are wasted before and after the DS, that an extra travel day could be stuck in without too much trouble.  The split of games, instead of 2-3, could be 1-2-2. This alone would help the series outcomes be more balanced and in-line according to season projections for play.

I think retaining the best of 5 is better than pushing ball further into November, and potentially including two large gaps between the DS-CS-WS.  But the best of 5 format should be improved, and going to a 1-2-2 series would help.

Anybody else?

We can now easily find sortable databases for player stats, notably pitching, fielding, and hitting.  But I haven't found anything that is useful for managerial stats.  These are the decisions we most like to debate, and we think we hold our field generals accountable, while we scrutinize every  move, and yet nobody is keeping score.  Since much of this is club dependent, it would be best to have graphics like fangraphs to chart any evolution through a career.  But I'm not picky, and any type of sortable tabulation would be better than nothing..

Here are a few of the most obvious stats related to player substitution I would like to see:

Starter IP
Starter Pitch Count
Pitchers per 9 innings
Fielders per 9 innings
Pinch Hitters
Pinch Runners
Double Switches
Rookie Pitcher Games Started
Rookie Fielder Games Started

Then a couple in-game situations called upon the pitchers:

IBB
Pickoff Attempt

Hitting and Base Running situations are more difficult since they may not be executed, or have multiple possible outcomes.  But what is important here is if the manager put it into play:

Sacrifice Bunt Attempt
Hit and Run Attempt
Suicide Squeeze Attempt
Double Steel Attempt

Clearly some of the interests,like defining a manager as having an early hook could be gleaned from team pitching stats.  But it is about time that Manager Stats got their own page, were easy to sort for comparison, and easy to plot year to year.  It could make it easier to show how a given manager adapted over the years to the clubs they've had, or if they generally became more conservative with age, or any other conclusions one might want to assert and use stats to back-up.

If someone knows where to find this now, please identify.  Any other ideas of stats to be included and/or how to get this implemented would be interesting.  Or even if you think this would be useless trivia, go ahead and tee off.

Thanks for the link from veb to Cardboard Gods, Josh's piece referring to Hal McRae was hilarious.  It also sent me through numerous web sites I hadn't been to before, and finally back to the question of hitting coaches and Diedre Pujols.

On the Friday the 13th I posted the following:

Anyone remember when
Albert credited his wife for noticing a change in his stance?  I thought it was concluding a mini-draught before the all-star break in 2005.
It looks to me he is now lower than Bagwell, and trying to leap out of his shoes.  The Toe-Heel movement doesn't look the same.
Last year at spring training I was concerned that he was skying the ball, and the line drives disappeared.  But with the ball going over the wall so often early last year, who gets concerned by that?  Still his ratio of doubles to hr's continues to drop year on year.
This spring the doubles were back, but the long ball absent.  Now neither.  Will somebody please get his wife to compare the videos?

To which Arachnerd replied, somebody should produce a split-screen analysis of this theory, so we can see it for ourselves.

So this morning I find myself enjoying a scroll down GasHouse Graphs (I've usually just been at Fangraphs), when I spot this entry from Erik's line on Game 11 of April 15th:

Pujols may not be out of the woods yet, but it certainly was a step in the right direction. Apparently his wife is owed some credit, who's sending Albert text messages regarding areas on which he can fix his swing. Behind every great man there's a great woman. Soon he'll be lashing liners around the park off of good pitches as well as pounding mistakes a long way.

The link goes to Strauss' P-D story of April 16th:

En route to Busch Stadium, Pujols received a text message from his wife, Deidre. The reminder said his hands had fallen too low and his crouch at the plate too pronounced.  Once Pujols reached the park, hitting coach Hal McRae pulled him into the video room to offer proof that he had become "jumpy" at the plate.

Both of Pujols' advisers were proved right.

"He showed me, and I saw the difference," Pujols said. "I know I've had trouble being that consistent this season, but I think it's just a matter of time. Hal showed me. I know. It's going to come."

Pujols erased a 2-0 deficit with a three-run blast off

Brewers starter Ben Sheets in the first inning, then followed with a solo blast off reliever Elmer Dessens in the eighth. A bases-loaded grounder accounted for his fifth RBI, giving him three more Sunday than he had managed in 48 previous plate appearances.

So a few question arise:  Does Deidre read veb?  If McRae and Albert are constantly studying video, why did it take a message from Deidre to look at the salient features?  Can I take any credit for prompting Deidre to tell them what to look for to get Albert's swing back?

With the MLB.TV blackout the other day, it saved me a screen split while I watched the game on TV.  So I decided to make another annual comparison of Gameday competitors including the rudimentary awful espn gametracker and the overcharged small print cbs sportsline gamecenter.
Re-sizing windows for each, I could have a good setup with veb on the right, and toggling between either mlb.tv or gameday on the left.
Last year I had liked the cbs gametracker best for content, but found the type too small, and generally stuck with gameday.  It seamed that the frequency of lock ups was about the same for each, while espn was generally the slowest with least detail of each play.
This year, as many have noticed, gameday has improved for the worse, and the dimension change has made split screen use not very good.
In contrast, cbs has definitely improved gamecenter, making it easy to shrink the width by a column, so I can fit the window and just slide sideways to see either home or away roster info.  What is new is having pitch speeds for most, and even a guess at pitch type.  This has sorely been missed, until now.  

What is amusing is to check out the hitting zones by color for each batter, dividing the strike zone into 9 sectors.  The "Black holes" are "Cool Zones" in Blue by accumulated season batting average.  If you check out the Card's roster right now, it's not pretty.  The shocker was seeing 8 of 9 in blue for apu. It seams that he's been getting out on soft tosses, but I hadn't guessed that it was for every part of the plate too.  This thing makes some of the line-up look like there is no zone where a "mistake" pitch might occur.

Otherwise, there are lots of other screens for accumulated ab's per hitter and easy access to situational stats.  Gameday has been replaced for 2007.  And the boys from the Extra Small Penis Network can keep their trivia toy for themselves again.

Now that fangraphs has win probability charting live, which can also be conveniently resized for split window I can toggle fangraphs, gamecenter, and mlb.tv while keeping veb open.

Now if sb nation could let us have veb auto update could be nice.  And it could also be interesting if they could setup splits home and away, we could out pace cubbie blue in the upcoming series.  (obviously it would've been tough for Charlie to keep up the bucco posts as we saw, but the home/away splits could help generate new interest for the sb nation laggards).

If anybody has a better screen set-up, short of multiple monitors, I'd love to hear it.

I went to Fangraphs to compare some of the most recent trade prospects rumored as interest to Cardinals including Dellucci, Burrell, and Conine.  I also compared them to our current lot of platoon players splitting time in Left.  Trying to estimate if an upgrade might result is not at all obvious.

It is clear that Dellucci epitomizes platoon as it looks like he couldn't hit a lefty with a Tennis Raquet with a K% off the charts. But his BABIP suggests that even his new found prowess off the right-handers should not be counted on as indicative of future performance.  Burrell strikes out too much to my liking, and Conine may just be too old and tired.

If star full time players mentioned like Abreu and Soriano are just untouchable by cost of contract or trade demands, then it appears we are destined to continue the platoon.  Looking at the L/R Split graphs for pitchers it is very convincing that using match-ups is an effective way to put statistics to one's advantage.  Clearly TLR & Dunc assemble and use a Bullpen on this basis, and this is often done in concert with the double-switch for those fielding positions that are platooned, in our case LF and to a lesser extent 2B & RF.  I happen to like the NL, and the game strategy that goes with the double-switch, and if records were kept I'd bet that TLR leads in its use by a very wide margin.

However, it's one thing to platoon starting players by their L/R splits, and another to have them handicapped as pinch hitters and subs accordingly.  This is where the platoon game breaks down, and issues that may be covered by a 162 game season, become glaring shortcomings in a 7 game series.  Player substitutions that have more to do with differentiating defensive specialists from sluggers, probably plays better that L/R splits.

So here is the question of the day:  Can anyone find the statistics to show through the play-offs or WS alone, if Corner Outfield Platoons perform anywhere close to as well as every day Corner Outfield Players?  And, If there have been any particularly productive playoff platoons, can they be characterized as based upon L/R Splits or Offensive/Defensive substitution?

Or perhaps more simply:  Of the Play-Off bound teams of 2006, which ones are using Corner Outfield Platoons?  And, is this strategy more common to the NL where it may appear to be acceptable during the season, and then leaves us handicapped in the WS?

I'm new to the blogosphere, and have been touring the baseball sites since the off-season trading began.  I have found Viva El Birdos to be the "Best of the Birds", and the off-season has been far more interesting for it.  I really appreciate the statistically based leads of lboros, and the many intelligent and good spirited follow-on comments that also make it the most active.  Enough praise then; I thought it necessary to provide a reasonable hypothesis for discussion before just jumping on the rest.  So here it goes:

Despite the many statistics that can be used to chart careers, and so many different career tracks from single season wonders, to late bloomers, and steady perennial producers, there is no real tracking of the term "career year."  Furthermore, among the undocumented intangibles of a winning clubhouse, is the notion that championships come to the team that had some miraculous coincidence of several "career years" which may include an intriguing combination of core stars, revitalized veterans, and surprising rookies.

Determination of a "career year" is not as obvious as first thought, and for the intent here it serves to use a very liberal judgment that allows for any individual to have multiple career years.  This is due in part for consideration that a rookie season may be particularly inspiring to the team of that season, although subsequently eclipsed by either improved averages or total output in a later year.  The positive influence of that rookie season can not be diminished by a future performance to be judged independently year-by-year.  Likewise, even a season that is somewhat less than absolute peak, can still be considered a career year if it adequately meets the expectations as reasonably indicative of that player's performance, or still achieves league leading levels of performance.  For example, a season with 100 RBI's could be considered a career year for anybody, even for someone that once had as many as 140.

Alternatively, a player that repeated with great stat averages, but missed too many games to injury that significantly reduced their accrued output, clearly doesn't qualify.  Also, a rookie that clearly disappointed with unacceptably low standards by any measure does not qualify either.  The judgment is most difficult to make for pitchers that have had their role changed from starter to mid-relief.  In this context, there must still be the possibility to provide a career year perhaps by an exceptionally low era, despite not having the innings or wins to match earlier career performances, thereby accounting for the revised role and achievement in that capacity.

Undaunted by all the caveats, I started by looking through the records of the Yankees from their three successive championships ('98-'00) and including three successive 100 win seasons ('02-'04).  I also checked the other championship teams since, plus the Cardinals of the last three years.  Lastly, I tried to make some plausible projections for the Cards of '06.

While counting the number of players that could be credited with "Career Year" status, it is clear that the mix of what roles these players have must be considered.  Using individual salaries as a way to pro-rate their respective value, and to test the notion of whether or not the "money players" were producing, I then summed the salary of the CY Players and calculated the percentage of total salary of the club.  I used the roster and salary listings from Baseball-Reference.com and thank Viva El Birdos again for sponsorship of pages there.

Below is a graph of just the player count.  (Well the graph couldn't be inserted for some technical reason, and I can't get the table to tab correctly.)

Career Year Tracker by Player Count                                       
        2006    2005    2004    2003    2002    2001    2000    1999    1998    Avg.

Yanks            6    8    13    13    11    11    12    17   
BoSox            4    12                           
ChiSox        12                               
Marlins                17                       
Angels                        15                   
Dbacks                        10               
Cards        11    13    13    8                       
Cards +    13                                   
Cards ++    14                                   
WS Champ        12    12    17    15    10    11    12    17    13.3

By my judgment, all championship teams from '98-'05 had at least 10 players recording "career years" and the average was above 13.  The Yanks of '98 and the surprising Marlins of '03 hit the peak of 17 players.  The drop-off of the Yanks of the last two seasons, and the precipitous fall of the Bosox in one season is also evident.  The Cards looked expectedly formidable by this measure, with 13 players accorded career year status for each of the last two years, but there is clearly a basis of doubt for the forthcoming season.

Moreover, the Cards ranking is diluted relative to other teams when the curves are plotted according to Salary percentage of Career Years.  As we have witnessed, the Cards have been able to get very good performances from among the lesser paid.  When converted to percentages, the above championship teams averaged above 60% of the salary going to players having career years.  The upside was again lead by the Marlins of '03 and also the Angels of '02 at a staggering 79%, and the anomaly on the low side was attributed to the DBacks of '01 at only 42%.  The Yanks have proved to be incredibly consistent at getting career years from the top of the salary pool until the drop-off of the last two years.  But the Cards only just got up to 42% and 43% for the last two years, and may have a high probability for seeing this decline in `06.  On the other hand, the magical season that includes a couple more money players recording career years, could put them over the top.

Below is the graph, or table of Career Year by percentage of club salary.

Career Year Tracker by Percentage of Club Salary                                       
        2006    2005    2004    2003    2002    2001    2000    1999    1998    Avg.

Yanks            40%    43%    64%    68%    65%    58%    58%    69%   
BoSox            7%    50%                           
ChiSox        57%                               
Marlins                79%                       
Angels                        79%                   
Dbacks                        42%               
Cards        32%    43%    42%    37%                       
Cards +    48%                                   
Cards ++    60%                                   
WS Champ        57%    50%    79%    79%    42%    58%    58%    69%    61%

So who are we talking about, and what does anybody else think.  For the Cards of '05, counting from the top, I attributed career years to Pujols, Edmonds, Izzy, then Suppan, Eck, & Carp, followed by Nunez, and then the last six on the salary totem pole of Taguchi, Reyes, Molina, Flores, Luna, and J-Rod.  That's just 4 of the top 10, plus 6 of the last 6, with 3 in the middle.

For the Card's of '06, it is easier to start from the bottom, and I think it's a fair bet that we get another five in a row at the bottom from An. Reyes, J-Rod, Mateo, Thompson, and Luna.  If Hector can find his bat, I think he beats Miles out for the spot, and his versatility gets him more playing time for an upside year.  Moving up in the money, but not far, Molina is a sure thing for a career year.  After that, I thought for the basis of the exercise, and maybe with just some hope that they do play to best of their respective careers, I put both newcomers Bigbie and Spivey in for career years.  In a similar vein, I think it's fair to believe that Jaun Enc, can at least match his best, and even Looper could get comfortable and put in a great year in the role of mid-relief.  If to that crowd I add the steadies of Eck and Pujols, the list is up to 11 players.

Unfortunately, that is only 32% of the salary, and means that I didn't tap any of the 2 thru 8 salaries for career years.   Of that group, we could all make some good guesses, and a lot more wishful thinking.  Thanks to Hummingbird for his great piece on Edmonds.  My great fear is that jed of '06 may end up too much like Sanders or Walker of '05, so I couldn't count him in.  The extended power alleys may mean less wall-jumping saves, and more DL Dives.  Rolen for full recovery and career level production may be too much wishful thinking as well.  The next five salaries are all hurlers, and it's also hard to guess from that group.

While I may not be as hard on Mulder as some, it will now be five years since his career year of '01, and from the trend documented by others, there seams little chance to peg him for one now.  Marquis is literally the wild-card, and somehow it seams too much to ask Sup to again be every bit as good or better than his previous year.  That leaves Carp and Izzy, who for me stand the best chance of notching another solid season.  Adding them gets the number up to 13 players, and the salary percentage up to 48%, corresponding with Cards + on the charts.

Despite all that, which many would say is already asking way too much, it may still not qualify as championship caliber.  Something less may leave more room for clubhouse grumbling than over achieving satisfaction.  This takes me back to reconsider either Edmonds or Rolen.  If just one of those two could do it again, and more likely it might be Scotty, the salary percentage jumps to 60% for a total of 14 players, corresponding with Cards ++.  If that group were actually all on their respective games, there would no doubt be a lot of joy in Mudville.  There would even be some allowance for some of those lesser salaried players to not rise to the list, and it wouldn't make any one feel too down trodden.  The intangibles in this is the feel of the clubhouse when that much is performing well, and the extent that it's not bemoaning the injuries, or the lost stroke, or lost velocity of some.  Not every one can have a great year, but championship teams are made of an often surprising confluence of career years.

Jockety has assembled a team with a good possibility for putting together a magical season, and TLR and Dunc are proven at being able to extract the best from many.  The hard part is guessing who that's going to be.  Clearly, even if each of the newcomers have career years, it will take more of the top end of the staff playing well for a full season than has happened each of the last two years.  It could be interesting just to try to set up a pole, letting us readers and participants assign a career year or not for each of the players.  Moreover, I think we're all dying to get to ST to get a first glimpse of how this might look.  It would be interesting to do the same poll before and after ST.

I enjoyed wasting a lot of time on this, and at the least hope this was interesting for some of you, and potentially corroborating bs for a like minded few.  I'd be happy to email the graphs for inclusion if I knew where to send them.