SB Nation User Blog: jonfmorse

On Our Love Affair With the Base on Balls

jonfmorse — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 09:13:02 -0000

The other night, our man Mitchell stepped to the plate against Eddie Bonine of the Detroit Tigers with the game in a scoreless tie and runners on second and third, two outs. Mitch put together a fine, fine plate appearance, working the count full and fouling off some junk before ripping a base-hit to left which drove in a run before The Human Windmill worked his magic to end the inning.

I realized something during that plate appearance, though; something which really shook my faith in a sort of tenet of sabermetric dogma:

Sometimes, a walk is truly a suboptimal result for a hitter.

Now, in this particular case, it probably wouldn't have been terrible if Mitch had worked the free pass; standing in the on-deck circle was the best pure batter this team has had in ages, and since there were two outs -- and said batter is, well, not fast -- there was no more hazard in an infield grounder than there would be in any base situation.

But I got to thinking that there were plenty of other situations where, despite Average Run Expectancy increasing, not only would a walk have been a problem, but in some game situations, several different kinds of outs would have been preferable to a walk (and I'm not referring to the "productive out" either. Consider:

If there had been zero or one out, a walk sets up a double play, especially with our wonderful yet unfleet young friend William at the plate. Meanwhile, if Mitch hits a grounder in the hole which is problematic but playable it scores a run, and possibly results in a gain of two bases for the team with the runner on second moving to third. A decent fly ball scores the run. A confusing pop foul along the first-base box seats scores the run unless the defense is canny enough to let it go. And if our on-deck hitter is someone who, you know, isn't that good instead of Billy... let's be serious, would you rather Mitch drive in the run yet expend an out, or walk and then sit and watch Saint Willie end the inning with the bases packed?

With two outs, an out is an out, but what if it's not Baconator at the plate, but... say... Olivo? Well, okay, he might park a granny in the upper deck. He might also swing at three pitches in Windsor, killing the inning with the bases loaded, and the odds of that are about 10 times as high as the homer. For that matter, the odds of that with Miggy at the dish are higher than any other outcome, period, which begs the question: does Mitch drawing the walk actually damage the team's chances of scoring rather than increasing them?

I'm not telling any of you anything which you don't already realize, of course; we all know that there is such a thing as situational hitting, even if it doesn't actually mean what the Conventional Wisdom would like us to think it means. But that particular situation, where Mitch was firmly in control of the at-bat and quite clearly could have worked the walk if he wanted to, got me thinking.

Now, I don't think my thought process actually alters the basic truth that "walks are good". A guy with high walk totals is contributing to the offense merely by not making outs, regardless of any other considerations. More importantly, a guy who walks a lot can be safely assumed to actually know where the strike zone is located (or, as Certain Players on this team don't seem to understand, that there is such a thing as a strike zone).

But once one takes into account game situations and the actual opportunity to score runs... we might be overrating the walk when we look at a player's overall batting line. That, in turn, leads to potentially overrating OBP, and thus OPS.

I think, perhaps, that this is where sabermetrics is still falling down on the offensive side of the ledger. Metrics such as WPA sort of try and take this into account, but WPA is a counting stat which only takes into account the game situation at that moment, and it's also obviously skewed toward close games. (One could argue that driving in a run with a groundout in a 7-2 game is worse, in the end, than drawing the walk and increasing the total number of runs you can expect to score that inning, but one can also argue that chipping away at the lead is never a bad thing.) And, you know, the increase in expected runs from drawing the walk in that situation is less than two-tenths of a run; it's not like Mitch drawing a walk would inherently lead to some sort of orgaic run-scoring fiesta.

Put another way, on average, run expectancy increases no matter what when you add a baserunner rather than an out, so much so that the folks at BP insist that the only time it's even reasonable to sacrifice is if it's the pitcher or Tony Pena Jr at the plate. Yet "an increase in run expectancy" is not the same as "an increase in the chance of scoring a run".

Understand, I am not advocating small-ball or one-run strategies. I'm not talking about laying down sacrifice bunts or trying to deliberately hit a ground ball to the first baseman so the runner can move up a base. I'm not talking about throwing away outs. That's almost uniformly a bad idea unless the game really is on the line and you can drastically increase your chances of scoring the go-ahead or winning run. What I'm talking about is trying to do something with the bat rather than "settling" for a free base, and that perhaps we really need some way to properly determine whether a hitter's actually good at doing it; at choosing to hit rather than take in order to maximize the chances of something good happening.

I had another thought as that one was passing into oblivion, too.

Is there really anything wrong with a player who tends to hit .320 but doesn't walk much, as long as he's got some pop in his bat? For that matter, is there anything wrong with a player who hits .320 and can't reach the warning track, yet does know how to work the count and draw walks? Sure, we'd like to have players who can hit .320, jack 30 homers, and draw 100 walks; that's called "I want it all". But if we look at certain types of players in certain ways, aren't we focusing too much on what they cannot do?

For example, Adam Dunn gets picked on because he's a three-true-outcomes guy, and he hits for a low average. But the other two points on the triangle are just dandy; he gets on base a lot despite not hitting for average, and he hits for power. There was this guy once upon a time who hit for a high average and walked a lot, but didn't have any power although he later developed it; Rickey Henderson was a hall of famer before he figured out how to hit 27 homers in a season, wasn't he?

Yet we focus on OBP and SLG and ignore BA, which is admittedly a fluky and not-entirely-meaningful statistic by itself... but in context? I think we may be looking at a situation where sabermetricians are undervaluing certain hitters simply because they do not walk, without looking at the things they do get done. Which brings us to the third permutation of the examples above; in his best years, Andre Dawson hit a ton and hit them far, and he was pretty damned good despite not understanding how to steal first base. Do we, perhaps, undervalue Andre Dawson simply because we overvalue walks? I think we do. To hear the stat crowd tell it, the only thing that matters is that he didn't get on base enough; well, there's truth to that, and in Dawson's particular case peripheral stats seem to agree with the assessment. (In fact, a hitter with Dawson's power should walk a lot more often than he did simply as a result of pitchers trying to avoid throwing him meatballs.) But as a general rule, I'm not certain that it works.

In the end, I think we may have outsmarted ourselves in the attempt to come up with some grand unifying theory. Baseball is a game of situations, of pitches, of confrontations. Every plate appearance is different, and what might be sound strategy in one at-bat might not be so much in the next. I just wonder if players who know they have a good chance of making something good happen by hitting the ball -- that is, the sort of guys who hit .330 or the sort of guys who slug .500 -- aren't shortchanged when they actually try to do these things, because sometimes it results in not reaching base safely.

And really, let's be honest: if Miguel Olivo steps to the plate with the bases loaded in the top of the first inning with Zack getting ready in the bullpen, do you want him to take ball four, or do you want him to give GMDM yet another reason to consider resigning him? (Well, okay, we want him to take ball four for the novelty factor, and we definitely don't want GMDM to have any further excuses.) But really, we want Miguel Olivo to give Zack a 4-0 lead to work with, yet we don't get upset with him if he flies out to the warning track and only drives in one run. It's a run! Sure, when he strikes out on three pitches in the dirt, we get pissed. When he hits into a double play, we get annoyed. But -- and this is especially important with players who honestly don't seem to know how to take a walk anyway -- don't we want him to try and drive in runs?

Of course we do. It's just that admitting that requires accepting something which runs counter to the Great God On Base Percentage, and that's heretical. Well, maybe we need to examine our dogma and try to be more nuanced about it.

Disclaimers: Although I've already alluded to most of this within the text, let's be clear on some things. I don't agree with deliberately giving up outs. I don't agree with hitters showing a disdain for the base on balls or displaying a complete lack of plate discipline. I am not promoting the concept of "aggressive hitting" as it is commonly understood, nor do I have any truck with the idea of "productive outs" as a plus in and of itself. I still believe that a high walk rate is a positive, not least because it indicates something about the offense above and beyond the value of the walk itself.

Zack Facts

jonfmorse — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 03:28:54 -0000

Zack Facts

At present, holds Royals season record for K/9 (9.7ish)
Now fifth in club history for K in a season
Needs 11 more Ks to move into second behind Leonard (244, 1977)
K/BB now over 5.00, blowing away Sabes' 4.49 in '89
Now has 705 career Ks, 5 away from catching Monty for 7th in club history

An Open Letter to Dayton Moore

jonfmorse — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 22:05:20 -0000

Dear Dayton,

I know it's been a rough season for you. Things just haven't gone the way you planned, and although you can't come out and admit it to the press, I'm certain that you know mistakes were made. Terrible mistakes. Frankly, I'm disappointed both in the team's performance, and in the "process" you're asking us to trust; the former for obvious reasons, and the latter because it certainly seems to be a flawed process. That's what I'd like to talk to you about.

First, let me state that while I grew up on Bill James and believe that advanced statistics can tell us far more about the game than the back of a baseball card, I do not believe them to be the final authority. You can lie with statistics, after all. Scouting is important, and these statistics are not compiled in a vacuum. There are always other factors which I, as a fan, am not privy to which might explain things the statistics cannot. However, at the same time, those factors don't mean the statistics are wrong, nor do they mean that it follows that an analysis of the statistics is inherently wrong. A poor performance is a poor performance. Where these other factors come in is simply in explaining why we might be able to ignore a subset of those numbers, either because the organization has a viable plan to improve them, or because they're injury-related and expected to return to normal.

Your off-season moves weren't as bad as people would like you to believe they were; re-signing Zack was a no-brainer, signing Cruz was actually a good move even though it hasn't worked out well, and with Bloomquist you at least acquired a player who knows the difference between a strike and a ball in the dirt a foot off the plate. I will allow that perhaps you saw something in Coco Crisp in much the same way you saw something in Gil Meche, and Crisp's ability to get on base early in the season despite barely hitting his weight could be a point in your favor... assuming that's the sort of thing you expected him to do. Jacobs and Farnsworth, on the other hand... well, the process surrounding those guys is precisely what I'm going to talk about.

The first problem is the one you keep hearing about: OBP. The thing is, I think it hasn't been explained properly; too many people talk about walks as if you need to go get guys who walk a lot. I'm not one of those guys, Dayton. I don't automatically assume that a guy who doesn't walk 80 times a season is a hacktastic failure at the plate. It's not about drawing walks; rather, it's about being able to judge the strike zone. Put another way, if a guy hits .340 and slugs .500, I don't much care whether he draws walks on the face of it... but if such a player does not, in fact, walk a lot, it tells you about his plate discipline. I mean, we're taught growing up, playing Little League, that a walk's as good as a hit. It's both true and false; a walk is not as good as a hit in most cases, but it's so much better than an out that it may as well be as good as a hit. If there were only one thing that Bill James has universally contributed to baseball, I would hope that it would be the understanding that -- from the offensive perspective -- the only important mechanism toward increasing offense is to avoid making outs as much as possible.

Dayton, you've been in the game long enough to understand that in most cases, a "good hitter" will draw walks; it's not because he's up there trying to take ball four, but because pitchers give good hitters less to hit. I realize that scouts have a tendency to want to see guys swing the bat, and believe it or not I understand that completely. A scout has no idea whether a guy can actually be a successful hitter without watching his swing and seeing what happens when he connects. That's why the cliche with Dominicans is "you can't walk off the island," because they have to show scouts they can actually hit the ball.

But the problem with your process in regard to trading for Mike Jacobs is precisely that your scouts know he can hit, but you ignored the numbers showing he's not a very good hitter. Mike is a good guy. He's clearly got power in spades. But a hitter like Jacobs who doesn't draw walks is simply not a hitter the opposing team fears, or even respects. He's not as bad as Miguel Olivo, who'll swing at anything, but he's most certainly willing to chase bad pitches rather than forcing the pitcher to give him something to hit. And that's why Mike Jacobs, for all his power and desire and good nature, is now mostly sitting on the bench with unplayable numbers.

I've said all this by way of getting to the main point, which is this: you need scouting to tell you what players have the physical ability to do, but you need numbers to tell you how well they're translating that ability to success. You had those numbers with Jacobs, and you ignored them because you thought his potential outweighed his poor OBP. If Mike was a .340 hitter, nobody would care that he doesn't draw walks (well, some people would complain that he'd be an even better hitter if he walked, but that's like saying Tony Pena Jr. would be an even better hitter if he could hit). The problem isn't that he doesn't walk, but that he doesn't get on base. Of course, part of the reason he doesn't get on base is that pitchers know he's unlikely to accept a free pass.

I can't stress this enough. Pitchers won't give guys who swing at everything any pitches to hit. It's that simple. When numbers guys talk about walks, it's not in the sense that walks in and of themselves are a desirable outcome, but in the sense that they are a symptom of a condition. Guys walk because they work the count, and because pitchers are more likely to avoid throwing strikes; the walk is the residue of the pitcher's desire to avoid letting the hitter beat them with the stick. Guys who don't walk have no patience; there is no hitter in history who has a low walk total explainable by the fact that he always got good pitches to hit. Not one. They don't walk because they won't wait for the right pitches. The only guys who've been "good" hitters despite lacking patience have been guys who were simply astounding slap-hitters -- guys like Tony Gwynn or Luis Castillo. (And even Gwynn started walking more midway through his career, because even with little power a pitcher will start nibbling against guys who can hit .380.)

And that allows us to segue; pitchers also won't give in to guys who have no power, which is why Pena couldn't hit as a major-leaguer. Pitchers aren't afraid of the chance that their inevitable ground ball or weak pop fly will find a hole. Obviously, that's why SLG is important as well. But even a decent SLG can be deceiving, especially when your ballclub's primary problem is a lack of baserunners.

Yet you traded away a valuable reliever for Mike Jacobs despite having a monster of a prospect seemingly ready in Omaha -- one who performed better last September than Jacobs has this season, no less. Because of that trade, you apparently felt the need to acquire Farnsworth, compounding the issue. And the ultimate agony of all this is that there is one thing I think you're very good at: picking up players off the scrap heap who turn out to be useful either on the roster or as trade bait.

And here, you've amassed a roster of guys who either have no strike zone judgement or have no power (or both). DeJesus, Callaspo, and Butler are the current exceptions. (Teahen and Gordon are almost there; they both have particular blind spots where they seem to inevitably swing at certain pitches out of the strike zone and take certain pitches in the strike zone. Gordon is obviously still potentially correctable; Teahen might be past that point, although his versatility means his bat still plays.) Yet it's telling that you're not responsible for most of those guys being here.

Butler and Gordon are still your cornerstones, of course, but you still need another hitter or two that can legitimately drive the ball and get on base for the middle of the order. And then you need to fill out the lineup (and bench) with guys who don't throw away outs.

And, of course, I mean that both offensively and defensively. Dayton, I realize that defensive metrics are not nearly as well-developed as offensive metrics. If you're not on board with OBP (and it's clear you're really not, despite your protestations to the contrary, or you wouldn't be trading for guys like Jacobs and Betancourt), then it must be triply as difficult to place your faith in defensive metrics. But I gotta tell you, when virtually every metric agrees that someone's horrible afield, you have to listen. These guys are all trying to be scientific about this. There are differences in their methods, which is why some players look good in one person's method and poor in another; with those players, you need to rely on your scouting eye to sort out why the metrics differ from method to method, and then make your decision that way.

But when they agree that a player is simply a horrible fielder, as they do with Guillen and Betancourt, you have to pay attention to that. I cannot understand why you acquired Betancourt, Dayton. He doesn't hit, he doesn't get on base, and he's a lousy shortstop. Yes, he's better than Tony Pena, but any number of freely-available AAAA shortstops meet that qualification. You didn't need to give up two pitching prospects and take on what's left of that salary to replace Tony. (That said, if you'd only given up Cortes on the basis of simply being tired of his crap, that might have been justifiable.)

Lastly, the bullpen. Your first mistake, obviously, was giving up two perfectly good set-up men in the off-season, then rushing to replace them with a can of high-octane jet fuel. I wouldn't blame you so much for Farnsworth's performance, since the act of putting him in positions where he was highly likely to fail falls on your manager... except you apparently feel content to continue allowing your manager to mishandle the bullpen without calling him into your office and telling him to pull his head out of his backside. I am not here to tell you that Soria needs to be pitching multiple innings, as so many others do. I frankly don't care whether Soria only gets three outs four-five times a week. What I do care about is Soria standing out in the bullpen in the eighth inning while lesser pitchers desperately try to hold onto a lead with runners on base. He's your best reliever, and he should not be getting held in reserve so that he can come into the game with nobody on and nobody out simply because he can't get a save if he doesn't finish the game. If Hillman would just use him to get out of the eighth-inning jam, the odds of another reliever being able to safely navigate a non-jam situation are quite clearly better than the odds of winning the game after losing the lead in the eighth inning.

Don't get me wrong; your job is to put together the team, and Trey's job is to manage it. However, that doesn't change the fact that you're his boss. If he is continually making the same errors and steadfastly refusing to correct them, you tell me, Dayton -- who bears the responsibility for correcting it?

This is a small-market team, with small-market pressures. You're never going to sign an Albert Pujols (at least not until the team starts winning post-season series), and if you develop one the odds are great you'll lose him. You have to work on the margins, which means not throwing away basics... like outs, like the chance to preserve an eighth-inning lead, like letting a boat anchor play in the outfield because it might make him sulk. This team has to take chances, but they have to be rational chances.

But above all, you can't afford to make decisions which are clearly not going to solve anything. You signed Jacobs because you thought this team needed power. Well, it did need power, but more than that it needed baserunners after a season where on most nights the bottom five guys in the order couldn't find their way to first base with GPS. That has been this team's problem... well, forever, if we're being honest, but at least in the Brett Era we actually had some of those guys who hit .340 but didn't walk much.

The Royals currently have a .313 OBP. They are last in the league. They are also last in the league in runs scored. The Yankees lead the league in OBP, at .357. They also lead the league in runs scored. It's not a coincidence, Dayton. The same is not true of other stats. Boston's fourth in the league in runs scored, but they're below mean in batting average. Cleveland's fifth in the league in runs scored, but near the bottom in slugging. Only three teams in the league have hit fewer homeruns than the Angels, but they're second in the league in runs.

It's OBP, Dayton, and while walks are an indicator, it's not about the walks. It's about getting on base, period, especially with the core of our starting rotation being so adept at preventing other teams from scoring runs. I hope that someday, you'll actually understand that rather than just talking about it once in a while yet making moves which make it clear you don't comprehend it. I don't want you fired, Dayton. I don't want you to quit. I just want you to learn from the very clear mistakes you've made in the last nine months, tell us that you understand them, and move forward with a better process.

You know, before I'm so senile that I start having trouble remembering sitting in the stands on October 27, 1985.

The 2009 MLB Big Market vs. Small Market All-Star Game

jonfmorse — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 03:57:28 -0000

I made an off-hand comment in the ASG game thread about how I'd like to see the ASG be a game between the big-market and small-market teams, and billybeingbilly challenged me to come up with the rosters.

So, I did.

First, I took everything into account as it was; everyone who got elected got elected, and if the starters for both leagues both happened to be from the same market section, then I got creative; mostly due to laziness and a wonky internet, I used CBS Sportsline's player ratings in cases where I needed to pluck a player out of the pool of players who didn't actually get selected to the All-Star game. Same thing with the player balloting (players got in based on their final player vote totals until I ran out of spaces), and the final five vote.

The breakdown of the markets was based on some older info, but still close enough for government work. The big-market teams are NYY, NYM, LAA, LAD, BOS, PHI, DET, HOU, CHC, CHW, TEX, BAL, WAS, ATL, and TOR; the small-markets are FLA, SEA, OAK, SFG, CLE, STL, ARI, SDP, MIN, TBY, COL, PIT, CIN, KCR, and MIL.

* - injured
ITALICS: wasn't on either real ASG roster

Big-Market All-Star Roster:

MGR: Charlie Manuel, PHI
Coaches: Joe Torre, LAD; Cito Gaston, TOR (I'd guess)

Starters:
C: Brian McCann, ATL
1B: Mark Teixiera, NYY
2B: Dustin Pedroia, BOS*
3B: David Wright, NYM
SS: Derek Jeter, NYY
LF: Jason Bay, BOS
CF: Carlos Beltran, NYM*
RF: Raul Ibanez, PHI

Player Balloting:
C: Jason Varitek, BOS (yes, really; best big-market catcher not already on the roster)
1B: Kevin Youkilis, BOS
2B: Chase Utley, PHI (NL starter, so he gets the nod here, and would start in place of the injured Pedroia)
3B: Ryan Zimmerman, WAS
SS: Miguel Tejada, HOU
OF: Josh Hamilton, TEX (AL starter, bumped by Beltran, and would start in place of Beltran)
OF: Torii Hunter, LAA*
OF: Curtis Granderson, DET
SP: Roy Halladay, TOR
SP: Johan Santana, NYM
SP: Justin Verlander, DET
SP: Chad Billingsley, LAD
SP: Edwin Jackson, DET
RP: Francisco Rodriguez, NYM
RP: Jonathan Papelbon, BOS
RP: Jonathan Broxton, LAD*

Manager/MLB Selections:
P: Ted Lilly, CHC (gotta have a Cub)
P: Mark Buehrle, CHW (gotta have a Chisux)
P: Josh Beckett, BOS
P: Mariano Rivera, NYY
1B: Ryan Howard, PHI (as much flack as Manuel got, he actually was the next-best 1B among big-market teams)
2B: Aaron Hill, TOR
OF: Hunter Pence, HOU
OF: Adam Jones, BAL (gotta have an Oriole)

Final Vote:
OF: Shane Victorino, PHI

Injury Replacements:
3B: Brandon Inge, DET (AL winner, so we'll have him replace Pedroia rather than Figgins, who replaced Longoria)
OF: Nelson Cruz, TEX (replaces Torii Hunter)
OF: Jayson Werth, PHI (replaces Beltran)
RP: Brian Fuentes, LAA (replaces Broxton)

Small-Market All-Star Roster:

Manager: Joe Maddon, TBY
Coaches: Don Wakamatsu, SEA; Tony LaRussa, STL (obviously would get the nod over Trey, and we're all happier that way anyway)

Starters:
C: Joe Mauer, MIN
1B: Albert Pujols, STL
2B: Freddy Sanchez, PIT (next-best small-market 2B, plus we need a Pirate, although we'll get another one after the fact)
3B: Evan Longoria, TBY*
SS: Hanley Ramirez, FLA
LF: Ryan Braun, MIL
CF: Ichiro Suzuki, SEA
RF: Brad Hawpe, COL (top small-market votegetter among OF)

Player Ballot:
C: Yadier Molina, STL (no, really; he got five more votes than Victor Martinez, mostly because the NL has no catchers. We can put Martinez here and I'm fine with it, just following my own rules.)
1B: Adrian Gonzalez, SDP (beat Morneau by two votes, and I'm perfectly okay with that.)
2B: Ben Zobrist, TBY (god only knows who led small-market 2B in the balloting since the top two in both leagues were from big-market teams. Zobrist is the 2nd highest-rated small-market 2B in CBS's ratings.)
3B: Pablo Sandoval, SFG (really! and he gets to START with Longoria hurt!)
SS: Jason Bartlett, TBY
OF: Carl Crawford, TBY
OF: Justin Upton, ARI
OF: Shin-Soo Choo, CLE (highest-rated OF not on the roster, plus we need an Indian if we don't have V-Mart anyway.)
SP: Zack Greinke, KCR (he's still the only Royal.)
SP: Tim Lincecum, SFG
SP: Matt Cain, SFG*
SP: Josh Johnson, FLA
SP: Felix Hernandez, SEA
RP: Joe Nathan, MIN
RP: Heath Bell, SDP
RP: Francisco Cordero, CIN

Manager/MLB Selections:
P: Andrew Bailey, OAK
P: Dan Haren, ARI (hey, better him than Wakefield)
P: Jason Marquis, COL
P: Ryan Franklin, STL
1B: Justin Morneau, MIN
2B: Brandon Phillips, CIN (there really weren't many other IF options here)
OF: Justin Upton, ARI
OF: Matt Holliday, OAK (next-best OF by CBS ratings)

Final Vote:
1B: Carlos Pena, TBY (I can only guess here, of course.)

Injury Replacements:
3B: Mark Reynolds (replaces Longoria)
P: Zach Duke, PIT (replaces Cain)

Who got knocked off the rosters?

Wakefield
Victor Martinez (or Molina, take your pick)
Michael Young (too bad, so sad)
Prince Fielder (victim of numbers)

Arguments and accusations of snubbery may now commence!

Managerial Incompetence, Revisited

jonfmorse — Wed, 20 May 2009 06:45:59 -0000

So we've all been over the same rocky ground before; Trey this and Trey that, stupid or just normal, fire him or get a grip. It's all good discussion, regardless of what our Eternal Hero might slur on the local news; we're fans, and when you get right down to it that's our job. We all know that letting The Professor pitch to ~~Babe Ruth~~Jim Thome was a bad idea, but this isn't about rehashing that.

No, this is about why we overreact.

Yesterday, Rany posted a new entry discussing some recent moves, as well as alluding to the Golf Course Incident. There was a paragraph in there discussing not Hillman's errors, but Dave Trembley's foolish decision to walk Jose Guillen to load the bases -- in order to pitch to Alberto Callaspo, who had about a 33% better chance of getting on base period and driving in a run that Guillen had to get a hit and drive in a run.

While reading this, it hit me: we all saw (or at least "saw") this happen, but we don't have 38 fan shots posted here, roaring about what a blithering idiot Dave Trembley is, do we? Obviously Trembley's blunder was arguably even more egregious than Hillman's mistake with Farnsy.

Now, I'm not suggesting we should have had a rash of "Ha-ha, Trembley's an idiot" posts, and realistically we should all wish for Trembley to have a long, fruitless career managing the Orioles so that the Royals have a better chance of stealing a game or two a year from them. But there is a decided difference between the rancor we express toward our own manager as opposed to the level of discussion, period, we engage in regarding the gifts given us by other skippers.

The reason, of course, is obvious when you think about it: as fans, any bad decision by the Royals manager is magnified, while bad decisions by opposing manager -- since they usually work out in our favor as fans -- are seen as good things. We see Dave Trembley do something stupid, and the Royals end up scoring a couple of runs as a direct result, and presto! Things went our way. Man, that Callaspo is awesome, coming through for us like that. (And that in itself is more fan bias on our parts, because Alberto driving in two runs is more important and more fulfilling to us as fans than a stupid decision which gave him the opportunity in the first place.)

Interestingly, there's a reverse thing in order here as well: I think that when Trey makes a good managerial decision, we're again more impressed by the players executing the plan; conversely, when another manager makes a canny decision against the Royals, we do discuss it at length but seem more often than not to chalk the result up to that decision rather than focusing on the "failure" of whatever Royal player got victimized by it.

Now, this is all observation, mind you. The basic rationale is obvious: we react differently to one set of circumstances precisely because it is "our" team rather than, well, not "our" team. The underlying thing, though -- the question of why we behave that way -- is beyond my ability to explain.

I do know one thing, though. While I still question the basic qualifications of a manager who'd let a right-handed power pitcher with a propensity for the long ball pitch to a left-handed power hitter who's victimized my team more than any other player in the entire history of the franchise... I've come to accept that we really could do worse.

And this is why "managers don't have that much impact" in the long run, because for every dumb move Trey might make there's some other manager who's going to give a game back to us with his own stupid moves (Baltimore's eventual win in that game notwithstanding).

Sean Berry has cancer surgery

jonfmorse — Sat, 09 May 2009 05:42:37 -0000

Sean Berry has cancer surgery

Astros hitting coach Sean Berry underwent surgery today to remove his kidney after a cancerous tumor was discovered Wednesday.

Berry, of course, was drafted by our beloved Royals in the first round of the secondary phase of the 1986 draft, and made his debut in 1990. He didn't do much as a Royal before being sent to Montreal in 1992 in order to treat us to the smooth stylings of Chris Haney, but had himself a nice little career afterward.

Here's hoping he makes a full recovery.

Postseason Odds, May 6

jonfmorse — Wed, 06 May 2009 19:37:46 -0000

Postseason Odds, May 6

For those few, you unhappy few, who are not familiar with BP's postseason odds reports, they're generated by a program which plays the remainder of the season a million times a day to get percentage results.

As you can see, the Royals now have a 43% chance to win the division, and even a 10% chance to win the Wild Card -- primarily due to the fact that the Royals' average win total after a million sims is the second-best record in the AL.

At any rate, as of today (which marks the 1/6 point of the season, believe it or don't) KC's playoff odds are now over 50%. The Royals began the season at 22%, around the same odds as everyone else in the Central, with virtually no chance of the WC. It's still early, of course, but the results of the sim are promising.

Another thing which won't jump out at you if you're not used to checking the report: the average win total to take the AL Central is now at 94 wins, and since KC is the champion in 43% of those simulations, I reckon Clay's computer now has the Royals winning in the mid-90s an awful lot of the time.

Goldman: Even Small Markets Should Be Buying

jonfmorse — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 20:45:48 -0000

Goldman: Even Small Markets Should Be Buying

(BP Premium content)

Discussing the glut of high-quality unsigned free agents and the potential impact on ticket revenues they can create, Goldman says:

"Whatever his limitations, Dunn trumps a Mike Jacobs at first base or any corner outfielder or designated hitter the Twins might deploy, for example. He beats using a Nyjer Morgan or Austin Kearns or Cody Ross or Nelson Cruz. As the season goes on, as the economy continues to struggle, and as these players continue to make outs, the dedicated fan will ask, 'Why are we watching these guys when we could have been watching those guys?' The casual fan will simply stay home."

Sheehan Says Aviles May Deserve RoY

jonfmorse — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 23:27:14 -0000

Hey, guys! Still busy moving, but saw this and nobody else has posted (probably because I think it's BP Premium content, so sorry about that).

Sheehan: AAR and IBA

American League Rookie of the Year

   1. Evan Longoria
   2. Mike Aviles
   3. Joba Chamberlain

Longoria's VORP edge on Aviles is tiny, and what's surprising is that his defensive edge, at least in the plus-minus system, doesn't exist. Aviles was +15, Longoria +11. I had no idea Aviles had sustained his hot start, and there's a pretty strong case for him ahead of Longoria, based largely on him being a better defensive shortstop than was advertised. Chamberlain pitched very well in both his roles, and could have won had he stayed on the mound all year.

Sheehan gives the AL MVP and Cy Young to Cliff Lee (with honorable mention to the Mexicutioner for the latter), and AL MoY to Madden. NL, it's Pujols, Santana, Geovany Soto, and Fredi Gonzalez.

I'm not sure whether they're restricting the IBA to premium users, but if not be sure to vote when they go live in a few days. Maybe we can push Aviles over the top.

Nice to see the Tigers all alone in last place -- now go Twins!

Were We Just Not Trying Hard Enough?

jonfmorse — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 16:37:28 -0000

The Royals all got the message loud and clear from general manager Dayton Moore: Change is coming.

There was Moore’s public pronouncement Sept. 2 in The Star. And there was the more private meeting, shortly thereafter, in which he bluntly informed the players that (a) he was coming back; (b) manager Trey Hillman was coming back; and (c) not all of them were coming back.

Those paragraphs open a piece by Bob Dutton in today's Star. And it gets you wondering, given the timing of both the private meeting in question and the beginning of the team's recent tear.

The Royals were floundering, having stumbled along, sleepwalking as it were, through a 7-20 August and beginning September 4-4. Nothing was going right, and while it seemed that 100 losses was still off the table, the mid-90s were beckoning with the skeletal hand of the anthropomorphized version of Death Incarnate.

But suddenly, Dayton Moore steps into the clubhouse and informs the team that jobs are on the line -- and since then, virtually every member of this team has suddenly begun to Not Suck. Over the last fourteen days, the team OPS is .877. That's right, the TEAM. Let's look at the lineup over the last two weeks, by OPS:

C  Buck:       .406/.481/ .888
1B Shealy:     .364/.620/ .984 (with 5 HR)
2B Callaspo:   .436/.543/ .979 (.543 SLG?  CALLASPO?)
3B Gordon:     .391/.595/ .987
SS Aviles:     .375/.566/ .941
LF Guillen:    .370/.388/ .758
CF DeJesus:    .500/.703/1.203
RF Teahen:     .314/.429/ .742
DH Butler:     .385/.458/ .843 (1.489 OPS over the last week)
    Gathright: .750/.667/1.417 (only 8 PA)
    Ka'aihue:  .400/.538/ .938 (only 15 PA)

Maier has 24 PA with a .573 OPS. Olivo: 20 PA, .500; Pena: 13 PA, .558; German: 17 PA, .527. Gload has had 2 PA, and who cares.

Does this tell us anything? Well, small sample sizes hardly ever do, but I think we can at least tell who's decided to fight for their jobs, and who just doesn't give a damn. Guillen and Teahen have failed to step up. Of course, we're pretty much stuck with one of those unless Dayton finds a sucker. Everyone else in the starting lineup, though, grabbed their bootstraps and hauled. This streak has been a total team effort on the part of the offense (which, not coincidentally has scored a ridiculous 81 runs in two weeks).

On the mound, meanwhile, the staff has compiled a combined 2.31 ERA in the last fourteen days. That's just sick. Young Hiram has, of course, been a key to this, going 3-0 over that span, averaging exactly 7 IP per start, and coughing up all of 2 ER. Meche has provided 19 IP, going 3-0, 2.37, while Zack's gone 2-0, throwing 14 innings of shutout baseball. That's 1-1-2 performance right there. Duckworth went 1-1, 3.75, which isn't bad at all but doesn't matter in the scheme of things.

Bannister, on the other hand... well, he DID provide two wins, but that's 2-1 5.29 for our boy genius. He'll be around next year, but he needs to figure out what he's doing.

Soria's thrown five scoreless innings and picked up five saves. Ram-Ram's tossed 3.2 innings at 2.45. Nunez, 6 scoreless. Peralta's pitched in with two scoreless. Yabuta, 3.1 scoreless. Jimmy Gobble has provided four scoreless innings. Bale's tacked on another five.

Indeed, the only problems in the bullpen have been Wells and Lowery each throwing one inning and allowing 1 ER (9.00 ERA, but nothing to sweat over really), Robinson Tejeda allowing 2 ER in 1.2 IP, and... Mahay, whose three-run inning the other night sums up his contribution over the last two weeks. (He did have another 1/3 inning appearance last week, scoreless.)

I don't think we learn much from the pitching staff, except perhaps that Dayton's meeting had some impact on Davies. The relievers simply didn't get enough innings to determine whether they've stepped it up; any one of them could have had a balloonish ERA by coughing up a two-run homer.

“We should have been playing this way all year long,” pitcher Zack Greinke said. “We’ve just underachieved. I guess by the end of the year, the numbers aren’t terrible. But we expected more than this.”

Yeah, Zack... that's exactly right. With the screws put onto them, almost every member of this team stepped it up, which means they could have done better the entire season. (You, however, get a pass, my young friend, as you have done everything asked of you and more.)

Small sample size... doesn't mean much, but when the boss is looking to slice fat off the payroll in order to go all-in on the next set of building blocks, tanking the last two weeks of the season after being told the layoffs are coming? Bad plan. Teahen, Maier, Olivo, German... you've probably written your tickets out of here. Guillen's probably put himself on the trading block (if that's even possible). Butler's actually done well over the last two weeks, but in comparison with his own teammates he's not made a big impression, and may find himself as trade bait.

But Buck may have saved his job. Gathright certainly hasn't hurt his cause, although 8 PA isn't enough to put any weight on even if you're deliberately considering small sample size. In the pen, Gobble and Bale have asserted themselves, while Davies has probably earned his spot in next year's rotation, while Bannister's put himself at risk of a visit to Omaha.

But I don't see a big trade. The only real chips are true keepers: Grienke (Dayton's allegedly in the hunt for a starter as it is), Soria, and DeJesus. DeJesus isn't the chip he could be, either, because his injury situation severely decreases his value.

And now, we prepare for game 162, and a crucial off-season. It'll be interesting to see what Dayton does -- and whether the team's performance (good or bad) truly influences his decision-making. If Teahen's not wearing Royal Blue next year, you'll know the answer.

And on that note, after today's game, I bid you all adieu for a few days, as I load up the truck and move to... well, not Beverly Hills. Grapevine, TX, where I'll be forced to endure the Texas Rangers as my local team. It's okay; I've done it before, for almost 8 years. But, you know, the Royals were actually still very good then, so it wasn't quite so painful.