Right now it appears that the tribe's six best pitchers are starters ( in no particular order: Laffey, Sabathia, Lee, Westbrook, Byrd, Carmona). Suppose the Indians make the post season, with these 6 still thriving. The typical thing to do in the post-season is go with your 4 best and make the 5th a long man, or leave him off the roster. But, as of now, the 5th and 6th best starters are better than *any* of the tribe's relievers, and probably by quite a big margin. So making the worst of these two into long relievers, seems a horrible waste.

Seemingly a better option would be to make two of them into high leverage guys in the post season. But which two? History tells us that Carmona is a bad idea. Westbrook and Laffey don't strike out enough, and Byrd gives up way to many homers. That leaves Sabathia and Lee. To me, CC is suspect under pressure, tending to overthrow the ball. Could, would, or should the tribe make Lee the closer in the playoffs?

Thinking about this, one thing is certain. Adam Miller will be on this team as a reliever later this year.

I read in the local paper this morning about MLB payrolls. I was surprised to find the Tigers second. Here are the numbers of the top teams.

1 (1) Yankees $209,081,579

2 (9) Tigers     $138,685,197

3 (3) Mets        $138,293,378

4 (2) Red Sox $133,440,037

5 (4) Whi Sox $121,152,667 

6 (5) Angels    $119,216,333 

16 (23) Tribe   $78,970,067   

1) the three teams the tribe is competing with for 3 playoff spots are 1,2, and 4 in payroll. 2) It is not just a Yankees-Red Sox duopoly anymore. 3) The Tigers have really jumped; a Tigers fan told me that this is because now there is a salary cap in hockey, so Illitch is spending his cash on the Tigers instead of the RedWings. 4) Even though the Tigers have been the main competition for the tribe the last 2 years, I've never really despised them like the Yankees and Red Sox, as they were kind of in the same boat as the tribe. Not anymore! I can now despise them for their unfair competitive advantage.

As I see it, third base is the biggest concern for the tribe in 08. Blake's defense is horrible and he is not getting any younger. Marte could be good defensively, but I've seen alot of balls eat him up, and he is never going to hit.

The white sox may be looking to dump Crede, and the tigers may want to trade Inge. Both of these guys would be huge upgrades defensively (especially Inge), and the tribe may have 3 groundball starting pitchers. Both haven't hit much recently (and will never hit for average), but they both have power. Is there anyway the tribe can get one of these guys? I think they can be had cheaply, and possibly even cheaper as the season progresses (and one or both of them is stuck on the bench). Probably the best thing to do is wait, hope 3B isn't a disaster, and be ready to act.  

I know teams don't like to deal with division rivals. Have teams ever used another team as an intermediary to get around this (e.g. the tigers trade Inge to the pirates, who turn around and deal him to the tribe)? Poor defense was a big reason for the poor 06, I'd hate to see it again in 08.  

The PECOTA predictions from Baseball Prospectus are out. Here are my few takes on where the computer regressions may differ from conventional wisdom on key tribe members.

Hitters

PECOTA says that Jhonny Peralta is the 2nd best position player on the tribe in terms of WARP for 2008 and has the 2nd best career upside. It has always liked Jhonny partially because the skewed defensive metrics BP has. Still, Jhonny deserves much more love than he usually gets.

PECOTA loves Asdrubal Cabrera. For prospects it likes Carlos Rivero. Grady still has Barry Bonds as his #2 comparable.

PECOTA gives Hafner only 28 dongs. Ouch.

Predicts Andy Marte to be 50 OPS points less than Casey in 2008. Doesn't think much of Marte or Barfield (both with OBPs sub .310).

Pitchers

CC is in the top 5 pitchers, but gives CC a much higher attrition rate (14%) than the other top guys (Santana 3%, Peavy/Webb 8%). Something to think about when talking long term deals. Take this with a grain of salt as PECOTA has a hard time finding comparables for CC.

PECOTA loves Laffey. Basically says he is equal to Westbrook already in 2008.

PECOTA is not high on Carmona; it still thinks he is good, but expects a decent drop off. Only a top 30 pitcher in the majors, not top 10. Maybe it is the innings jump which it doesn't like (which would be reasonable). Laffey, Carmona, and Westbrook all have very high ground ball rates. Infield defense will be very important.

PECOTA hates on Sowers and Byrd. It doesn't like pitchers with what it considers no stuff.

Anyway, these are my takes on the numbers. It will be interesting how things shake out.

Nate Silver at Baseball Prospectus has put up the leaders in his "secret sauce" for 07. http://baseballprospectus.com/unfiltered/?p=548 . Historically, what matters in the playoffs is having a) a pitching staff that throws alot of K's, b) a good defense, and c) a good closer. These relative quantities make up the "secret sauce".

How does the tribe make out? Not so well, but I think 2 of the tribe's quantities are misrepresented in a short series, and the third can be adjusted. For a) the tribe has power starters in 4 of the 5 games, so there short series staff is much more powerful than the regular season staff. For b) the tribe defense isn't that great, but pitchers like Byrd don't make it look much better and his pitching frequency will go way down in the playoffs.

As for c). Borowski's relatively low WXRL (wins above replacement) give the tribe a low number. But Betancourt is 2nd in the majors in WXRL. If he was the tribe's closer, they would jump to second in the AL playoff teams in this metric. Instead they are last.  

Metrics are metrics, and don't determine winners. But Betancourt and Perez need to pitch the highest leverage innings in the playoffs. If the high leverage innings are the 7th and 8th, I am fine with seeing Borowski in the 9th. But if they are the 9th, one of those two will hopefully be out there.

The question was going around on which teams will play in which AL Division Series. Apparently the AL team finishing with the best record gets to pick whether they play in series A or series B.  

http://www.nypost.com/php/pfriendly/print.php?url=http://www.nypost.com/seven/09112007/sports/yankee s/playoffproblem.htm

The importance is that in series B, a team can use three pitchers on regular rest, as there is an extra rest day. For series A this cannot be accomplished.

It seems to me that one of the least mentioned but perhaps most important part of the Indians success recently is keeping their pitchers healthy. When was the last time you saw a Indians pitcher with an arm issue? It seems like every other team has 3-4 guys on the DL with shoulder/elbow issues. I guess Matt Miller has had elbow issues the last couple of years, but he is not exactly held a big role. Wickman before that. But there has been no problems with the starting pitching besides abdominal issues (which I will take all day over elbow/shoulder issues) since I don't know when. They've even managed to keep reclamation projects like Howry, Wickman, and Elarton healthy.

Is the tribe just better than everyone else, or are they just lucky? If it is the former, this is HUGE, and in my opinion the most important thing that Shapiro and is staff have accomplished.  

I hope I'm not jinxing anything by mentioning this, but in my mind it is a big deal, and I never see it getting any play in the media.

As far as I am concerned, it is never to early to scoreboard watch. But sometimes I get confused on which teams to root for (or, more importantly, against). For instance, if the Yankees are playing the Twins, who do we want to win to improve the Tribe's chance of making the playoffs?

Luckily, the postseason odds at baseball prospectus
give us some insight. Using them, I have created this handy dandy list, that can be referred to as necessary. As we want the tribe to make the playoffs, this list is in descending order on who we wish to lose the most.

Tigers
Yankees
Twins
A's
Mariners
Angels
Red Sox
Blue Jays

For instance, the A's are about to play the Yankees. In this series, we want the A's to win as they are lower ranked than the Yankees. Note that the White Sox have been so bad, they are not even on the list anymore! (The Red Sox and Blue Jays are barely on the list, and probably can be ignored).  

Finally, as the standings change, the list changes, and I will update it periodically.

3 months for a young baseball player can make a huge difference in the perception of a player. Consider Aaron Laffey and Jeremy Sowers. Last offseason Laffey was not even in the discussion about top 20 prospects in the indians organization, and Sowers just came off a superb second half with the tribe. At that time clearly they shouldn't be mentioned as comparables, but InfiniteMonkeyTypists did (see http://www.letsgotribe.com/comments/2007/2/1/161345/5869/6#6) and this was not warmly regarded.

But in the last 3 months Laffey has outpitched Sowers (and Stanford and Lofgren), especially the last month, when he has been very good at Buffalo. He is also 2 years younger than Sowers.

So is Laffey better than Sowers now? Or is 3 months of data not much to get worked up about? Does Laffey now slot in after Lofgren as the 3rd best pitching prospect? Laffey and Sowers are both junky lefties who don't strike many out, but Laffey has always gotten more ground balls.  

I guess this is another example of why you get a large quantity of arms. You never know who will all of a sudden "lost it" (Sowers), and who will "find it" (Laffey). Of course, this can switch just as quickly.

Now that Jared Goedert is the new wonder boy, I have a question.

Did anybody even know this guy was drafted, on the tribe's minor league roster, was potentially a prospect before this season etc.? Did anybody know he was a third basemen?

Just a silly poll on how hard core some of us are.

Filler. Filler. Filler.

I saw the pre-season posts about BR home run derby (http://www.letsgotribe.com/story/2007/3/30/164732/504), and my brother convinced me to make some picks. I'm always terrible at these things, if I'm over the 10th percentile in the NCAA basketball tournament picks, I'm happy.

Anyway, the current standings are at

http://brderby.com/

As you may have guessed, I'm here to talk smack as I'm currently sitting 10th. It's a long season, but I'm hoping that if you play enough of these things you bound to get lucky once. C'mon Ensberg and Wright! Hit some dingers so my kids can get a Wii.

As pointed out by Deadspin, Vernon Wells is a funny guy with good handwriting.

Check out this story on a ball he threw to some Indians fans at the game that were heckling him.
http://torontosun.com/Sports/Baseball/2007/05/08/4162470-sun.html

He is now clearly my second favorite center fielder.

There has been many comments about grit and grinding recently, with many of them being quite funny. But I have one problem with this. Mainly that the white sox fans were on this bandwagon well before the tribe fans. See for example their opening day thread. http://southsidesox.com/story/2007/4/2/133123/7927#commenttop

Personally, I do not wish to follow white sox fans on any topic. How can they be ahead of tribe fans? Should we shut down the grind and grit remarks? Or, being as the tribe is in first place, we can expropriate whatever we like, and just chuckle a winners chuckle?

If the tribe can extend Westbrook for a deal similar to this Vazquez 3/35 extension, I'd be all for it. I'd say Westbrook and Vazquez are pretty comparable players. Looks like Kenny Williams got himself a deal.

If I new how to cut and paste better, I would not have to add all of this filler to get it posted.

Who do you believe has more value coming into 07, Jhonny Peralta or Andy Marte? Peralta has hit better and plays a more difficult position, but according to the front office, plays it poorly. Marte had a tough year with the bat last year (and still has yet to top .285 any year or any level, something Peralta already did in the majors), but his defense is supposedly good at 3B.

I'm interested in peoples opinions, and the reasons given. For example "If peralta played 3B he'd be better defensively than Marte" (I have no idea if this statement is true or not).

Nate Silver and his buddies over at Baseball Prospectus have looked into statistically what makes a good postseason team. The only 3 things that were above the noise were 1) power pitching, 2) elite closer, and 3) good defense. Observationally this makes sense.

Nate Silver called this combination "the secret sauce", and the rankings can be found here  http://www.baseballprospectus.com/statistics/sortable/index.php?cid=122718 . Well the 06 tribe isn't within a jet ride of the playoffs, but still as a team they are dead last in the overall secret sauce category. Dead last in defense, next to last in closer (they count Bob Wickman), and 2nd from last in K/9 of the staff. Yeesh! Almost a triple crown.

We all know that the tribe is trying to upgrade these areas, but this makes me think they are doubly important. Going forward, Sabathia looks like a great post season pitcher, but another hard thrower would help (this gives credence to the "don't trade Adam Miller for anybody" folks). Closer? Who knows? Defense? We'll see what happens this offseason. They were not bad last year, but pathetic this year.

Vernon Wells is not happy in Toronto, and they may be shopping him. Can or will the indians make a play for him? He'd definitely fill the corner outfield / bopper role more than adequately. If the tribe was able to work out an extension for him along with the trade, I'd be happy sending Miller, Kouzmanoff/Marte, plus another arm. Yeah, that is alot, but Wells is worth it.  

Christina Kahrl at BPro said something interesting in her transaction column yesterday. Basically (I am paraphrasing here), she believes that it is unlikely that Blake's option will be picked up. This seems surprising to me as a tribe fan (the other in-house corner outfield options are not that inspiring), but maybe I am missing something. The only way I see them not picking it up is if they make a big acquisition (through FA or trade).

It is clear that everyone knows what has cost this team an incredible amount of wins. The question is it the talent in the bullpen or just their performance.

My guess is that the talent level in the current bullpen is not bad. Why does a team like the Twins get great performances out of guys like Reyes (he sucked the last 2 years with other teams, now he is very good), Nathan (he was average with the Giants, now he is lights out), Neshek, and Rincon? Are these guys really any more talented than Carmona, Cabrera, and Davis?  Does anybody doubt that as soon as the tribe gives up on one of these three (through a trade) any of them could be a great set-up man or closer for a team like the Twins?

With this thesis, what is the strategy for next year?

1. Buy some relievers.  - This will cost players or money.  It is easy to overpay for relievers, and you are not going to get someone as good as Howry for Howry money now. What is to keep any of the new guys being sucked into the whirlwind of ineptitude called the bullpen?
2. Make the performance of the current players better.  - How does one do this? Shapiro/Wedge certainly can't seem to figure it out. Gardenhire never seems to have a problem.
3. Hope. - I think this will be the main strategy. Maybe they will win some close games at the beginning of next year, and it will snowball. It hasn't worked for three years, but who knows? What else can they do besides a change in management?

My kids went to their first Indians game last week. My oldest (8 yrs old) who never showed any interest in baseball is now a big fan of the tribe and Casey Blake in particular as he saw him hit an inside the park home run. Luckily enough, he usually has to go to bed before the game is over. Anyway, am I being a bad father by subjecting my offspring to a lifetime of this?

Now I've been arguing that the tribe's bullpen is their main problem, but I'm sure glad that the Indians have learned their lesson of trading everday outfielders for relievers. There are better ways to improve a pen.

I was hoping that the tribe would have acquired Kearns this offseason, and he has been doing quite well this year. I'm pretty shocked by this deal.

Link - http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2518314

Watching MLB GameCast, I noticed Giambi's HGH enahnced head takes up the whole panel. It makes me wonder who on the tribe is on stuff like this. Here are my guesses from most likely to least likely.

Definitely- Hollandsworth, Betancourt

Likely - Peralta, E. Perez (if not traded)

In between - Hafner, Martinez, Michaels, Boone, Broussard, Byrd, Belliard, Cabrera

Least likely - Sizemore, Blake, Gutierrez, Lee, Sabathia, Wickman (just brats)

This may look bad, and/or I may be cynical, but compare them to the yankees

Definitely - Giambi, Sheffield, A-Rod

Likely - Jeter, Cano, Posada

In between - Rivera, Williams

The tribe looks OK. Anyone who should move up or down on the list?

My thesis here is that Wedge's style makes his players likely to press and choke in key situations/games. Consider how the indians and white sox have outperformed their respective runs scored/runs against ratio since 2002. The data are in actual wins above expected wins determined from the run ratio.

Year  Tribe  white sox
2002  2.7    -5.6
2003  -3.8   -2.8
2004  -1.1   -1.2
2005  -3.4   7.6
2006  -3.4   2.1

Guillen took over in 2004, Wedge in 2003. Since then the tribe has consistently underperformed and the white sox have consistently overperformed (after underperformance under Jerry Manuel). This is through good pitching and bad, good offenses and bad. This does not even take into account the team runs underperforming their base stats (for the tribe at least, the white sox are the other way), another form of choking.

Is there something to this? Is it the managers, or a function of the experience of the players, or just plain luck? This cost the tribe a playoff spot last year, will it again this year? I'm concerned.
 

This was brought up before in a regular post, but I am not as convinced about what is "true" for the defensive capabilities of the tribe's infielders as the rest of letsgotribe. Since the defense seems to be playing a large part in teh tribe's current woes, and their successes (we'll just consider 93 wins a success and leave it at that) last year, it is extremely topical. To whit, here is my take on the consesus from different outlets (+ above avg, - below avg, 0 avg),

Baseball prospectus
Boone -; Peralta +; Belliard -; Broussard 0;

Letsgotribe posters
Boone -; Peralta +; Belliard -; Broussard 0;

Pinto's probabilistic model of range
Boone +; Peralta -; Belliard +; Broussard 0;

Tribe's front office
Boone +; Peralta -; Belliard 0; Broussard +;

The last is my inferences on Shapiro's comments in the offseason. The last two were based on last year's performance.

The disconnect is obvious. Is there a reconciliation in these viewpoints, or are we just stuck with blaming all of the defensive woes on Boone?

Found a fascinating site on players "win probability" this year. I think the basic concept is that at any point of a game your team (the indians) has an equity or probability of winning the game. The equity changes after every at bat and the positive or negative changes that take place are ascribed to the pitcher, the hitter, and the fielders (though I'm not sure how this division takes place). For example, if a player hits a home run with his team up 10-0 in the ninth, he only helps his team's chance of winning the game a miniscule amount (it was almost 100% to begin with), while if the same player hits a 2-run homer in the bottom of the ninth with 2 outs so his team wins by 1 run, that is an enormous equity change (from large chance of defeat, to a certain win). These are added for all of a players plate appearances.

Anyway, the site can be found here - http://fangraphs.com/ and the tribe's numbers here - http://www.fangraphs.com/winss.aspx?team=Indians

Not surprisingly, Martinez, Broussard, and Hafner have meant the most to the team for hitting equity (this is in the WPA column, values are in percentages and every 100% equals 1 win). But there are surprises. Namely Michaels (.600 OPS) has produced positive equity and Sizemore (.800 OPS) has produced negative equity (this is mainly for hitting, who knows if defense is adequately represented). The worst hitters have been Boone and Hollandsworth (he has hit into some DPs at the wrong time and made important outs).

For pitchers the worse starting pitcher has been Byrd (if your team scores 9 runs and you lose, it is all the pitchers fault), and the worse reliever has been Davis (his stats are OK compared to other relievers but that loss to Texas was basically all on him). Wickman is the only major positive pitcher. Graves(!) has been the second best reliever behind Wickman and the only other positive one.

Anyway, interesting stuff, and something to watch throughout the year.
 

David Pinto has an interesting take on a defense metric. He uses a probablistic model based on how hard the ball was hit, and the vector it was hit at. From this he calculates how many plays the players should have made compared to the number of plays he did make.  More can be found at http://www.baseballmusings.com/

Anyway, here are how the tribe's defenders stack up, with the number being the number of extra outs their defense provided over average (not replacement) defense. This us using the smoothed model.

1B - Broussard - saw avg before, can't find now
2B - Belliard - +9
3B - Boone - +40! (one of the best)
SS - Peralta - -28! (worse than Jeter, ecchh)
RF - Blake - +9
CF - Sizemore - +4
LF - Crisp - not posted yet

Michaels grades out better than Sizemore in CF (+10 in half the playing time) so he looks like an improvement over Crisp in left. 40 extra outs by Boone may expalin why Wedge stuck with him (or the lack of other options). Peralta made plenty of plays, this may be why he grades out fine in other systems, but this study says it is because he had many more opportunities (Westbrook anyone?). Or did Boone take some of Peralta's balls? (this may make more sense) By the way, Vizquel was not much better at SS. Third base is now not available in the future, so let us hope that Peralta can stay close to average.

Overall the tribe is 5th best in the majors, saving the pitchers roughly 120 outs. The previous year they were just average. Presumably, these improvements were from Boone replacing Blake who replaced Lawton (two for the price of one), and Sizemore allowing Crisp to shift to left. Peralta/Vizquel seems to be a wash defensively.

Tribe fans,

It appears Coco is on his way out. However you feel about this, who would you prefer the tribe fetches for him, Andy Marte or Austin Kearns? I know I am going to lose this vote (my opinion is already on record), but I am interested to know by what margin. Finally, as a bonus to the readers, this will be my last post on this subject, only to be revisited at the end of 06.

The Crisp for Marte discussions will not die (at least in the boston media). While this deal would have been a no-brainer for the tribe a year ago, now the tribe is in position to contend, and losing a productive position player could really hurt. Deal or no deal, it all comes down to how well Marte will perform in the majors. Everyone has their own opinion (I'll try not to tip my hand on mine), what is your opinion in where will he fit into this (arbitrary) spectrum of third-basemen?