Posted 12:55 PM by Sean
According to this post on the Angels message boards, a season-long retrospective is coming out on DVD in two weeks. This is the only mention I've seen of such a thing, but it's cool if it's true. I'm still making my CD, though.

Posted 9:30 AM by Sean
The 2002 World Series DVD is available. I'll get it, of course (probably after Christmas), along with a bunch of other overpriced swag from the Angels' web site. I'd really like to see a full-season retrospective, because some of the games during the season were just amazing. There were probably a dozen times I went to bed grinning like an idiot because they'd managed to come from behind when they looked done for.

Fortunately, I subscribe to MLB's streaming radio broadcasts. This is actually a pretty great deal if you follow a team that doesn't get broadcast in your home market - $14.95 buys a whole season of access to the radio broadcasts of every team. The stream is very slightly delayed (maybe 30 seconds), but how cool is it to be able to listen to any broadcast for any game? This year, I got to listen to Ernie Harwell do a couple of Tigers games, I heard an Expos broadcast in French, and, of course, lots and lots of Angels games (until I subscribed to the cable package for the second half of the season). Plus, they're archived, so you can go back and listen to any game. My favorite so far, I think, has been listening to the Twins' broadcasters react to Adam Kennedy's third home run in Game 5 of the ALCS - the Twins had just taken the lead in the previous half-inning, and Kennedy's shot had Kent Hrbek shouting "No! God, NO!"

So I think that one of my off-season projects will be to find a way to record streaming audio and compile my own damn highlight CD.

Posted 10:03 AM by Sean
The Mets take some steps toward pegging ticket prices to demand. The Cubs announced a similar plan last week. If this keeps up, Fidel Castro will be the very last person on the planet not on a college campus to believe in the labor theory of value.

Posted 9:54 AM by Sean
Has Peter Gammons turned into Andy Rooney? The cranky ol' sumbitch lists 25 things to change about baseball, and it's pretty clear that he's got about 20 too many. Do they pay him by the word? How else to explain the fact that #1 is "Teams that allow public relations to dictate personnel and organizational decisions" and #24 is "we need stricter consequences for an intentional walk?" In other words, "listening to the fans is stupid, except when they want to see someone pitch to Barry Bonds."

Posted 9:16 AM by Sean
I'll go out on a limb and say the new Canadian Baseball League will work, at least for a while. Everything about it seems designed to be a blend of minor-league atmosphere and Canada's famous struggle for cultural identity: salary caps (and floors), games played Thursday-Sunday only, a minimum of Canadian players for each team. It's interesting that they're directly competing with minor league baseball in at least a couple of cities, and I have to imagine they'll draw pretty well just out of national pride for the first season.

Posted 9:09 AM by Sean
Jesse Orosco will pitch for the Padres next year, at age 46. Good for him, I guess. But not so good for the Padres - Orosco pitched a total of 27 innings last year, because the Dodgers used him as their left-handed specialist (much like the Angels used Schoeneweis in the playoffs). Is it really wise to use a roster spot like this if you're not going to contend? I can definitely see a team needing someone like Orosco if they're going to compete this year (and if Orosco can keep pitching effectively to lefties), but this is more like putting a racing stripe on a Yugo.

Posted 8:53 AM by Sean
If you're ever stuck for a party game, try spot the biggest lie in this story about the fight David Wells was involved in last September. Here's my favorite:

"When Wells got up to go to the rest room, Yeckinevich said, the pitcher stopped at the adjacent booth where the men were seated and said, 'Enough is enough. Kindly leave my mother out of this. Say what you want to about me.'"

David Wells, Christ figure.

Posted 9:27 AM by Sean
It's looking more likely that the Expos will play up to 20 home games in Puerto Rico next year. If the article is right, though, there's not much of an impetus to put them there permanently, and beginning in 2004 they'll be somewhere like Charlotte, Portland, or D.C. So what's the point of playing 20 games in Puerto Rico instead of, say, Charlotte, Portland, or D.C. (or all three?). You'd think that after the disaster that is the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, MLB would be careful about where they moved teams...

Posted 3:18 PM by Sean
It looks like the biggest challenge facing Mike Scioscia in 2003 is going to be keeping everyone happy with their roles on the team. Case in point: Fullmer wants to play every day. I can't blame him - up until this year, he's been a solid, if not spectacular, DH as an everyday player. The problem is, Shawn Wooten has hit lefties very, very well, and it seems obvious that a Fullmer/Wooten platoon is the way to go, statistcially speaking. Kennedy and Gil have both also expressed a desire to play full-time, making the second-base platoon unstable as well (actually, Kennedy showed a lot of improvement against lefties throughout 2002 and could probably start full-time, but then Gil would definitely demand a trade and the Angels would lose a great bench player). Toss in the already-discussed Schoeneweis situation, and it starts to look like it's pretty important for Scioscia to defuse all this before it gets out of control.

Posted 8:59 AM by Sean
One other thing about the AL MVP race. According to the official results, every one of the 28 voters had Rodriguez on their ballots, and 27 of the 28 put him in the top 4. If the thinking is that he shouldn't win because he played on a team that wasn't in contention, why put him on the ballot at all? Why is it okay for him to be, say, more valuable than Garret Anderson or Alfonso Soriano, both of whom were instrumental in their teams making the playoffs, but not Tejada? If Tejada's numbers looked like Soriano's, would the fact that the Rangers were a last place team cease to matter? The whole thing is so arbitrary. Just give it to the best player and be done with it.

Posted 3:43 PM by Sean
To finally solve a question that came up a few weeks ago, it looks like Adam Kennedy got his 0.2 innings as a center fielder this year in this game, a 10-inning loss at Minnesota. I remember this one: the Angels blew a five run lead and used pretty much everyone on the bench. When the Twins scored the winning run, the defensive alignment was Pote pitching, Molina (replacing Fabregas) catching, Erstad (replacing Spiezio, who replaced Fullmer) at first, Spiezio (replacing Kennedy) at second, Nieves at short, Glaus at third, Anderson in left, Kennedy (replacing Erstad) in center, and Ramirez (replacing Palmeiro) in right.

Posted 3:26 PM by Sean
The ESPN list of top 50 free agents includes nary an Angel. Every one of the everyday guys is coming back. I think the only three free agents are Dennis Cook, who will probably retire, Orlando Palmeiro, and Alex Ochoa. Palmeiro and Ochoa were both valuable off the bench this year, and we'll need them or guys like them, but overall the 2003 lineup will look a lot like 2002. Even the platoons - Kennedy/Gil and Fullmer/Wooten - will remain intact, barring off-season injuries.

On the pitching side, the Angels will almost certainly try to snag some left-handed relief, since Scott Shoeneweis is their only lefty in the bullpen, and he's not happy about relieving in the first place. There are some pretty scary candidates out there (I'm looking at you, Graeme Lloyd), but Mike Stanton, Felix Heredia, and Mike Remlinger are all available. They'll all be multi-million per year guys, though, and I have no idea what management's philosophy on taking on additional payroll will be. Considering that Disney is still trying to sell the team, it's probably unlikely.

Posted 1:52 PM by Sean
AL Gold Gloves announced. The Angels had two: Bengie Molina at catcher and Darin Erstad in the outfield. Erstad is a no-brainer, now that he's gotten some media exposure, but I'm surprised that Molina beat out Ivan Rodriguez, simply because Rodriguez is so much better known. Not that Molina doesn't deserve it - he's been far and away the best defensive catcher in the AL this year - but I suspect that the recent media knock on Rodriguez as being past his prime and injury prone had a lot to do with this.

I haven't seen any vote totals, but I'd be interested to see where Spiezio ended up. His defense at first this year saved the Angels pretty often; one of the reasons they were able to get away with having Eckstein's weak arm at short was Spiezio's skill receiving the ball at first. He also made some amazing plays on line drives that would have gotten past a lot of other guys. Looking at the statistics, Spiezio had a better fielding percentage, range factor, and zone rating than did Olerud, but Olerud played more innings. Plus, when was the last time you heard someone talk about range factor or zone rating? Even ESPN has the range factors screwed up - either all the decimals are in the wrong place or the formula is missing a factor.

Posted 1:35 PM by Sean
Felipe Alou to manage the San Francisco Giants. Kind of a shock - I hadn't heard his name mentioned at all. Then again, I haven't been keeping much of an ear to the ground about this. The total of my thoughts on the Giants' managerial opening has been "Dusty Baker is going to manage the Cubs? To atone for what?"

Posted 2:27 PM by Sean
Last of the awards: Tejada beats out A-Rod. The Dallas Morning News's Evan Grant voted for Tejada, and explains why. Now, I'm not saying he doesn't have good reasons, but it's a wee bit disingenuous of him to quote the first two sentences of the ballot as evidence of the award's lack of guidelines, but leave out the portion that defines "actual value of a player to his team" as "strength of offense and defense."

I forgot who originally suggested it, but I once read an article arguing in favor of an Academy Awards-style presentation of the BBWAA hardware. As long as you're going to give these awards, you might as well go all the way and actually inject some drama into them. It'd also be a great opportunity to recap the season, honor Hall of Famers who've passed away, and just generally promote the sport. So look for it to happen around the same time Barry Bonds buys ice cream sundaes for everyone in the press corps.

Anyway, today is the first day free agents can negotiate and sign with teams. Jim Thome is expected to go to the Phillies or re-up with the Indians fairly quickly. Tom Glavine and Greg Maddux are the other big names out there, but they'll both probably take a while to make up their minds.

Posted 3:01 PM by Sean
Interesting tidbit from this Jim Caple story at ESPN: if you turned all of Bonds's hits into strikeouts (or any kind of outs for that matter), his on-base percentage would still be higher than Alfonso Soriano's.

Posted 2:55 PM by Sean
"Duh" moment of the year: Bonds is NL MVP.

Posted 9:36 AM by Sean
Barry Zito wins the AL Cy Young. Mike Wells, of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, is quoted as saying that "Pedro cashed it in by not playing the last week of the season," referring to Martinez's seeming refusal to risk injury in what he called "meaningless games." I'd forgotten about that. At the time, the Red Sox were still mathematically alive, and the Angels were struggling. A good argument for Zito, I'd say, especially since a good chunk of the difference in their innings pitched was at Pedro's option, rather than because of injury or circumstance.

Posted 12:05 PM by Sean
Matt Szefc makes the case for Barry Zito as AL Cy Young. This one's weird: Szefc argues that, because Zito pitched more games against over-.500 opponents, he should get the nod over Pedro Martinez. But then he presents numbers demonstrating that Zito was substantially worse against those opponents than Martinez (Zito 18 starts, 3.66 ERA; Martinez 13 starts, 2.14 ERA). Zito is clearly the beneficiary of starts against bad teams here. Granted, he had five more starts in which to be roughed up by good teams, but Martinez's ERA against good teams was actually slightly better than his ERA against the sub-.500s. I think that's kind of a wash, then - sure, Martinez might have had worse numbers if he's pitched the same schedule, but there's absolutely no evidence for it.

Lowe, meanwhile, does show a benefit from pitching against weaker teams. Given that his ERA and IPs are very similar to Zito's, and his strikeouts are substantially less (and yes, okay, I admit strikeouts should be a factor too since they're the only form of out that the pitcher gets unassisted by his defense), I can't see voting for Lowe over Zito.

So it comes down to Zito or Martinez. Zito's ERA was 2.75, about 22% worse than Martinez's 2.26. Zito's IPs, however, were 229.1, 15% more than Martinez's 199.1. Martinez had a 31% edge in strikeouts, 239-182. The question is, how do we weigh these? Would you rather have a guy who pitches very well for a little longer, or a guy who pitches brilliantly for a little less?

It's very close. Durability is important because it provides consistency and doesn't require much juggling from the manager. But let's say Zito pitched well enough to win an expected 20 games in 230 innings, while Martinez pitched well enough to win an expected 20 games in 200, then broke down and had to be replaced with the biggest scrub in the bullpen, who threw the next thirty innings with a 7.50 ERA. You've got to figure that there's at least some chance that, during that stretch, the Red Sox will pick up a win or two, right? So after 230 innings, the Red Sox would actually be +1 or +2 compared to the A's.

The problem is applying this to the current question. I don't know if I've ever seen a study correlating ERA to expected wins, although I'm sure one exists. I don't have time at the moment to look for it, but I will in the next few days. I suspect, however, that when all the math is done, Martinez's 22% advantage in ERA outweighs Zito's 15% advantage in innings pitched, or, at the very least, it's close enough that Martinez's higher strikeout total would provide the tiebreaker. So, if I had a vote, I'd...well, I'd have thought about it in time to do the math. Provisionally, though, I'd say Martinez.

You won't hear me complain if they pick Zito, though, and I expect they probably will based on durability, his performance over the past two years, and his team making the playoffs.

Posted 11:25 AM by Sean
The L.A. Times says the Angels have offered contract extensions to the entire coaching staff. I wonder how long they're for? Obviously, I hope they all re-up, but Roenicke, Black, and Griffin have all been mentioned as prime candidates to manage their own teams in the near future.

Posted 1:35 PM by Sean
Mike Scioscia is the AL Manager of the Year, and rightly so. Bringing a team back from a 6-14 start to finish 99-63 is pretty impressive, moreso considering that they were picked to finish last by almost everybody.

In the NL, Tony La Russa gets the honors. Makes sense to me - it seemed like he had to do a lot more managing than most this year, with deaths, disablements, and other assorted disasters going on in St. Louis.

Posted 2:54 PM by Sean
Randy Johnson wins his fourth straight Cy Young Award. Talk about your no-brainers. There are exactly two statistics that really matter when you talk about starting pitchers: ERA and innings pitched. How well the guy pitched, and how often.

I think a lot of people still look at strikeouts, walks, and opponents batting average, but to me those are just indicators of how a pitcher goes about compiling a low ERA; voting on those is like saying that "Dogs Playing Poker" is a superior painting because the paint is durable.

And wins, of course, are irrelevant. Giving up three earned runs per nine innings does not suddenly become more impressive if your teammates score four. It's an individual award, and statistics that depend on how the rest of the team does shouldn't be evaluated. Somewhere, someone is looking at a pitcher's low ERA and so-so won-lost record and thinking, "that guy pitches just well enough to lose, he doesn't know how to get it done." That person should take up watching football.

In a related vein, we're being treated yet again this year to a discussion of what the "Most Valuable Player" means. Here are the instructions from the Baseball Writers Association of America:

Dear Voter:

There is no clear-cut definition of what Most Valuable means. It is up to the individual voter to decide who was the Most Valuable Player in each league to his team. The MVP need not come from a division winner or other playoff qualifier.

The rules of the voting remain the same as they were written on the first ballot in 1931:

1. Actual value of a player to his team, that is, strength of offense and defense.
2. Number of games played.
3. General character, disposition, loyalty and effort.
4. Former winners are eligible.
5. Members of the committee may vote for more than one member of a team.

You are also urged to give serious consideration to all your selections, from 1 to 10. A 10th-place vote can influence the outcome of an election. You must fill in all 10 places on your ballot.

Keep in mind that all players are eligible for MVP, and that includes pitchers and designated hitters.

Only regular-season performances are to be taken into consideration.

Okay. The controversy stems from the argument that the best player in the league, who everyone pretty much agrees is Alex Rodriguez, is not necessarily the most valuable player in the league, because he played on a last place team, and if you took him away, they would still have been a last place team, so how much value did he add?

I used to argue that "Most Valuable Player" didn't necessarily refer to the player's value to his team, but rather to the league - value was defined as how much better he made his team, plus how much better the other teams would be if that person played for them, too. But after seeing the actual instructions, it's clear that you're supposed to vote for "the most valuable player in each league to his team." Well, fine. But then the instructions go on to define value as "strength of offense and defense," which sure sounds a lot like "best player" to me.

In any event, the AL MVP will be announced on November 12.

Posted 9:32 AM by Sean
Mets owner Fred Wilpon is thinking of terminating Mo Vaughn's contract because Mo is overweight. Dude, he just came off six months of playing professional baseball! If he's overweight now, what's he gonna look like in February?

Posted 9:29 AM by Sean
The Yankees are raising ticket prices, and blaming the new labor deal. It's become increasingly in vogue among baseball writers to argue that using increased costs as an excuse for raising ticket prices is a sham. The argument goes like this: fans only care what they're spending for a ticket, not how much profit the team makes. Therefore, teams charge what people are willing to spend, which is completely independent from whatever it might cost the team to produce their product. To put it another way, teams would never lower their prices if their costs went down, so why should it work in reverse?

This is a pretty argument. It's also wrong. For starters, it assumes that baseball teams are completely rational economic actors, which, to make an understatement, they are not. Baseball teams' attitudes toward the law of supply and demand needs no better illustration than their ticket prices for various games. By and large, most teams charge the same price for a particular seat regardless of demand; seeing a mid-week game in Wrigley Field against the Padres is going to cost you the same as seeing a Saturday afternoon game against the Cardinals (assuming you sit in the same place, of course), despite the fact that the former won't be sold out and the latter will be. While some teams (including the Yankees) discount some tickets, so far they've made only baby steps toward pegging price to demand.

Secondly, regardless of what should be true in theory, cost is almost always included in pricing models anyway. When you run a red light and hit some little old lady in her Stutz Bearcat, your insurance rates go up because the insurance company suddenly has to pay on your account, and isn't making as much profit (and yes, I know that this argument can be turned around to say that what's really happening is your willingness to pay has increased, but in the case of insurance you HAVE to pay at all times because the law says so). When your wife tells you she's pregnant, you start thinking about asking for a raise, or finding a new job. Most baseball teams are owned by conglomerates of very rich men who have bought baseball teams not because it's a great monetary investment but because it adds to their prestige, but they DON'T want to be hemorrhaging money. The important thing to them is not making wheelbarrowsful of cash, but having a predictable bottom line. So when costs go up, ticket prices also go up.

All of which is not to say that the owners aren't weasels. They are. They're even weasels on this issue, because they manipulate costs like there's no tomorrow, such as paying themselves huge "consulting fees" so that they'll show losses. It's just that the true weaseling occurs at a deeper level than this "rising costs have nothing to do with rising ticket prices" stuff.

Posted 4:17 PM by Sean
My Game 7 post is complete. Damn, it's long.

I'll be getting back to blogging now, as opposed to the journal-style entry about Game 7.

Posted 9:14 AM by Sean
I've reinstated the archives (minus most of the posts from before the playoffs started), because it turns out I'm a wordy dude when I want to be, and I don't want more than 20 posts on the front page.