On June 24, 2007:

The Phillies were 39-36 and 3 games behind the Mets.
The Rockies were 38-37 and 4.5 games behind the Wild Card leader.
The Yankees were 36-37 and 6.5 games behind the Wild Card leader.
The Cubs were 35-39 and 7.5 games behind the Brewers.

Bye Bye, Willie.

I don't have much to say on the Willie firing. I've never been a big fan of his, but I don't think the team is going to suddenly play much differently for Manuel. The whole situation was handled poorly and seemed to be a distraction, so I'm glad it was finally resolved. I don't know much about Jerry Manuel, but it seems that he's a laid back, non-excitable manager like Willie. Seems to me that if you really wanted to shake things up, you'd go in the opposite direction.

For a much better and much longer take on the whole situation and the general state of incompetence in Mets management, read Faith and Fear in Flushing.

I'm skeptical, but Nate Silver does some fancy simulating and concludes that Chipper Jones "has about a 12-13 percent chance of finishing with a .400 average."

I'm glad someone in the press is taking the Mets to task for the Church concussion fiasco. Seriously, the way the team handled the situation is inexcusable.

On May 20, Ryan Church suffered his second concussion of the year. Despite the fact that he was still symptomatic, he pinch hit in a game two days later, then flew from Atlanta to Colorado, pinch hit in two games there, flew back to New York, and pinch hit in a game the next day (the 26th).

Now, I'm no doctor and I don't know much about concussions. But, based on the little bit I've read, it seems that the general advice is to avoid any strenuous activity (including jogging and flying on an airplane) until all symptoms subside because such activity can exacerbate the problem. That was obviously ignored in this case - if Church wasn't feeling up to starting the game, then he shouldn't have been used at all. And he shouldn't have been flying. After the 26th, the Mets finally decided he needed some time off. After five days off, despite still being symptomatic, Church returned to the starting lineup, then flew to California and started three more games. Now, after all that, he's still symptomatic and the Mets finally put him on the DL.
Hopefully, after 15 days, Church will be all better. But, there's a chance that all this activity has made his situation worse and that his whole season could be fucked.

The Mets' handling of this situation is inexcusable and shows just how poorly run the team is. The Mets are a business. Ryan Church is an asset worth millions of dollars to the business. As soon as Church suffered the concussion, Omar Minaya should've had someone on his staff contact multiple experts in the field and get their opinion on how the situation should be handled. That's what Alan Schwarz did and the answer was clear: he shouldn't play until he's been symptom free, preferably for a couple of days. If a reporter could find these experts, why couldn't the Mets? If a reporter could find a player (Corey Koskie) whose career was curtailed due to concussions, why couldn't the Mets? I assume the Mets have greater resources for finding medical experts than I do, but how about just doing a Google search for "concussion experts?"

Now there's a manager.

http://idiotsonsports.blogspot.com/2008/06/happy-anniversary-bobby-v.html

Draft Day

Exciting day for the Mets, right? After two straight years with no first round picks, the Mets have two today. And with an early supplemental pick, they have 3 of the first 33 picks. Sorry, I'm still not excited. The Mets pick at 18, 22, and 33. What can we expect from pick #18? Well, the Mets had the same pick 7 years ago and nabbed Aaron Heilman. He's not a superstar by any means, but he's been a solid member of the bullpen for the last few years, so that's not bad. If they wind up with another Heilman at 18 today, I guess I'll be happy. Heck, maybe they'll do better, maybe Heilman is just a mediocre 18, maybe the sky's the limit!

Unfortunately, history hasn't been kind to players picked at 18. In fact, Heilman is probably the best 18th pick since... Joe Magrane in 1985? Magrane was a pretty good starter for a few years, but Heilman still has a decent shot at having a better career. The only clear cut superior player is the 18th pick in 1974, Willie Wilson. Here's the entire list of notable (and I'm using that word loosely) players taken with the 18th pick:

2004 Josh Fields
2001 Aaron Heilman
1985 Joe Magrane
1978 Rex Hudler
1974 Willie Wilson

Fortunately, players taken with the 22nd pick have done a little better. Here's that list:

2004 Glen Perkins
2002 Jeremy Guthrie
1996 Gil Meche
1992 Rick Helling
1987 Craig Biggio
1985 Rafael Palmeiro
1976 Bruce Hurst
1972 Chet Lemon

Biggio has a strong Hall of Fame case and Palmeiro would've if it hadn't been for the steroid issue. Still, there hasn't been much in the last 20 years.

33rd picks? I wish I hadn't bothered to look:

2000 Dustin McGowan
1998 Brad Wilkerson
1987 Dave Burba
1968 Milt Wilcox

Comforting fact from Twins blogger Aaron Gleeman:

"[Johan Santana]'s made a dozen starts for the Mets and is 7-3 with a 3.20 ERA. On average from 2004-2007, he went 5-4 with a 3.93 ERA through a dozen starts. In fact, seven wins and a 3.20 ERA are both the best marks Santana has ever had through 12 starts."

Quick question: Is Willie trying to get fired? It's almost like he didn't know what the NY media was like before he got here. Either that, or he's sabotaging them from the inside for the Yankees.

Piazza officially retires.

In five years, Mike Piazza will enter the Hall of Fame. What team's hat will be depicted on his plaque? It's a tough call; I don't think there's a clear answer.

The case for the Mets:
1. Piazza played longer for the Mets. He came to bat 924 more times in a Mets uniform. Because of that, he had more hits, runs, rbi, doubles, homers, and walks as a Met.

2. His teams had greater postseason success in NY. Piazza's Dodgers made it to the postseason twice, but never won a single game. Piazza's Mets reached the NLCS in 1999 before suffering a heartbreaking loss to the Braves. The following year, they reached the World Series.

The case for the Dodgers:
1. Piazza played better as a Dodger. Piazza's avg/obp/slg/ops
as a Dodger: .331/.394/.572/.966
as a Met: .296/.373/.542/.915
Even if we eliminate his decline phase and only look at 1998-2003 with the Mets (which results in about the same number of plate appearances as his LA career), he still wasn't quite as good with the Mets:
.307/.382/.573/.954
And the real difference is greater than that reflected by the 12 point edge in OPS because he played in LA during a slightly less offensive era.
So, his overall offensive performance was better as a Dodger. Furthermore, the best two seasons of his career were 1996 and 1997, his last two full seasons with the Dodgers. Also, while Piazza was always pretty atrocious at throwing out runners, he was a little better at it in LA (26% vs. 22%).

In the end, I don't think there's any "correct" way to balance these factors. He was a Met longer than he was a Dodger and he seems somewhat more identifiable as a Met because his teams had greater success. He achieved a higher level of greatness when he was a Dodger.
But, both franchises are close on all three measures: he only played about a season and a half's worth of games more with the Mets; his Mets teams never won a World Series and were far from a dynasty; he was still playing at an elite level with the Mets, even if it wasn't quite as impressive as his time with the Dodgers.

In the end, I think it's a tossup. In recent years, the Hall has taken the choice away from the players being inducted. I think this choice is so close that they should just leave it up to Mike.

Nice little tribute to Piazza on Yahoo.

A couple of posts last week by the fine writers over at Me and Pedro got me thinking about stolen bases. Through the 90s and the first half of this decade, a combination of sabermetric influence and an increase in power has lead to a greater awareness of the negative consequences of stolen base attempts (getting caught). Over the last couple years, it seems to me that teams are starting to run a bit more, but have also gotten smarter and aren't making as many foolish outs on the basepaths. Is it true? I decided to take a look at the trend for two stats over time: stolen base attempts per game and stolen base %. I looked at all the data going back to 1951, the first year that MLB kept track of times "caught stealing."

Here's the average stolen base attempts per game per team across MLB:

The blue dotted line is the average for every season from 1951-2007. The purple line is a five year trailing average, which helps smooth out some of the random year-to-year fluctuations, so we can focus on the long-term trends. Basically, there was a steady, slow growth in the 50s and 60s, followed by a huge increase in the 70s. I won't try to speculate on what the cause was. The rate remained high through the 80s, but then fell slowly through the 90s, followed by a steeper drop from 2000-2005. Over the last two seasons, stolen base attempts increased slightly, possibly signaling an end to the long decline phase. That makes sense because overall offensive levels are down a little.

This next chart tracks the success rate of stolen base attempts over the same time period:

Interesting. Generally, it's considered that the break-even success rate in today's game is around 70%, but it varies a little based on the offensive level at the time (in other words, if homeruns are common, the cost of losing a baserunner is higher). This chart shows a surprisingly consistent upward trend over the last 50+ years. The 5-year average takes a few dips, but the general trend has been steadily ticking upward since 1951. Very interesting. One question this raises is whether this can continue to climb indefinitely. The rate has been pretty steady since the late 80s, at around 69-70%. In 2006, a new record was set at 71.4%. But, 2007 was almost literally off the chart, with a 74.4% rate. That's a huge increase! So far this year, the rate is 72.7%. It's a little early in the season to draw any conclusions, but it seems likely that there will be a bit of a contraction this year.

I think the most interesting thing about these two graphs is that they don't seem to have any relationship. It seems natural to assume that there's a relationship between how often players try to steal and how often they'll get caught. This certainly seems true on the individual level. Carlos Beltran has always had a high success rate, but that's because he chooses his spots wisely. I'm pretty sure that if you asked Beltran to double his steals, he'd respond that he could, but he'd get caught much more often. But, on the macro level, this hasn't happened. SB% has consistently risen whether teams are attempting steals more often or less often. From 1971-1976, there was a huge 64% increase in stolen base attempts, but those attempts were apparently no more risky than they'd been in the past - the success rate actually went up. I guess the explanation is that the change in attempts is mostly explained by the abilities of the players at the time, not by a shift in strategy. It seems that the players were just faster (or the catchers had worse arms), so they were able to steal more bases, while maintaining the desired success rate.

That doesn't answer the question of why the success rate has consistently gone up over time. I'm not sure what the answer is.

Out of Order
Kudos to Gary Cohen, who seemed to be the only person at Shea yesterday who understood what happens when a team bats out of order. For those who weren't watching, in the ninth inning of the Mets' blowout of the Reds, the Reds accidentally switched their #8 and #9 hitters. Dusty Baker was confused. Willie Randolph was confused. The umpires were confused. Lots of time was wasted as they all convened multiple times to figure out what was supposed to happen. Cohen, on the other hand, immediately understood what was supposed to be happening and was baffled as to why the umpires didn't. He also correctly pointed out that Willie screwed up by not waiting until the Reds got a baserunner before notifying the umpires.

Retrosheet has a history of past occurrences of players batting out of order. Assuming the Retrosheet list is complete, there have been 8 occurrences over the last ten years. Amazingly, Dusty Baker's teams have been responsible for three of the eight. That's pretty sloppy.

New documentary about Bobby V in Japan:

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2008/04/bobby_valentine_on_his_new_tri.html#more

Interesting article on stadium subsidies:

http://www.american.com/archive/2008/april-04-08/a-closer-look-at-stadium-subsidies

If I was the owner of the Toronto Blue Jays, I'd have already called GM J.P. Ricciardi into my office for a bit of a screaming session, starting out with "Why the hell did you throw away $8 million on Frank Thomas?"

During the offseason, the Blue Jays re-signed future Hall of Famer Frank Thomas. The contract called for Thomas to make $8 million in 2008 and contained a $10 million option for 2009 that would automatically vest if Thomas amassed 304 plate appearances this year. This past weekend, the Blue Jays released Frank Thomas. They're still on the hook for the full $8 million, but no longer have to worry about him playing enough to earn the 2009 salary.

There are three possible explanations for this situation:

1. J.P. Ricciardi made a stupid decision during the offseason.
2. J.P. Ricciardi made a stupid decision this weekend.
3. Something significant happened in between those two points in time so that the contract made sense in the first place, but now seems so bad that it's not even worth giving Thomas a little more time to turn around his season.

And if I'm the Blue Jays owner and I'm out $8 million, I need to hear Ricciardi make a convincing case for #3. I don't see it. Was Thomas bad over his first 16 games? Definitely. But, Thomas has always been a slow starter; his career stats in April are significantly worse than for any other month. Over the last few years, he's been particularly bad. Before his release, Thomas had 72 plate appearances this season. Here are his stats through his first 72 plate appearances of each of the last three years:

year H 2B HR BB SO avg obp slg ops
2008 10 1   3 11 13 .167 .306 .333 .639
2007 12 2   2 10 13 .197 .319 .328 .647
2006 11 2   4   7 10 .169 .250 .385 .635

Those three lines are virtually identical. After a horrible start in 2006, he went on to have a very productive season, finishing with a .926 OPS and 39 homers, good enough for fourth place in the MVP voting and a contract from J.P. Ricciardi. After that horrible start in 2007, he went on to have another productive season, finishing with a .377 obp and a .480 slugging percentage, good enough for a new $8 million contract from J.P. Ricciardi. Now, after a virtually identical start, that same J.P. Ricciardi has decided that Frank Thomas is worthless?

This article on Slate makes it clear that the only reason I'm not in the major leagues is because I was born in May instead of August.

Jokes aside, this article actually contains some really interesting findings.
"Since 1950, a baby born in the United States in August has had a 50 percent to 60 percent better chance of making the big leagues than a baby born in July."
The reason for this is that July 31 has been the cutoff for "age" in little league, so kids born in August are the oldest in their leagues. It makes sense, but I'm surprised. I assumed that all future major leaguers would've dominated in little league even if they were a little young for their "age."

Don't Tase Al Reyes, bro!

There's an article on CBSSports about how amazing Bob Gibson's 1.12 ERA in 1968 was.

Don't get me wrong, it was a great season. One of the best in the modern era, maybe the best. Gibson had a 1.12 ERA. He pitched over 300 innings. If he had thrown 1.3 more innings, he would have averaged 9 per start (he went over 9 on multiple occasions).

But, the 1.12 ERA mostly looks so amazing because of the depressed offensive levels that year. In the NL that year, the entire league had a 2.99 ERA; the AL had a 2.98 ERA. Just for a point of reference, the league ERAs last year were 4.43 and 4.50. If you make a list of the top ERA seasons since 1920, 9 of the top 50 seasons occurred in 1968, maxing out with Bob Veale and Stan Bahnsen at 2.05.

Baseball Reference has a statistic called ERA+, which adjusts ERA for league conditions and park effects. Gibson's season only ranks 4th in the modern era. Here's the top 6:

Pedro 2000 - 291
Maddux 1994 - 271
Maddux 1995 - 262
Gibson 1968 - 258
Pedro 1999 - 243
Gooden 1985 - 228

Pedro tops the list. In 2000, he had a 1.74 ERA. The league ERA was 4.91. Adjusted for Fenway, it's 5.07.

Gibson supporters will point out that he pitched far more innings than those other pitchers. But, he pitched in an era when everyone pitched more innings. In 1968, the average NL starter pitched 6.8 innings per game. In 2000, the average AL starter pitched 5.8 innings per game. Here's how the pitchers above did compared to their league (and how many games they started):

Pedro 2000 - 29 gs, 29% better than average ip/gs
Maddux 1994 - 25 gs, 33%
Maddux 1995 - 28 gs, 26%
Gibson 1968 - 34 gs, 32%
Pedro 1999 - 30 gs*, 23%
Gooden 1985 - 35 gs, 26%

Gibson does well here, the only pitcher who beats him on ip/gs% is 1994 Maddux, and it's very close. But, his edge against the rest of the pack seems a lot less significant than it does when you just look at the raw totals. Pedro also deserves to be knocked down a notch for his lack of durability. He only started 29 games in 2000, and had 29 starts and 2 relief appearances in 1999. Maddux's GS look low, but those were strike-shortened seasons. Does he deserve less credit? It's hard to say. It's not his fault that the seasons were shorter, but it's somewhat easier to deviate from the norm over shorter periods (in other words, if the season was only 1 day long, someone could have a 0.00 era).

In conclusion, Gibson clearly had one of the greatest pitching seasons of all time. There's a very good argument that it was the best. But, there's also an argument for 2000 Pedro or 1994 Maddux. Gibson had one of the best seasons ever; he was also lucky enough to have it during an incredibly favorable year for pitching statistics.

Why No Pedro?
I realize part of the blame goes to Delgado for his error, but what the hell was Willie thinking in the 7th inning? Why is Scott Schoeneweis his go-to lefty specialist? Where's Feliciano?
Then in the 8th, Utley and Howard came up again in a critical spot, this time against a struggling Heilman. And Willie still doesn't use Feliciano?

Here's everyone's OPS against left-handed hitters along with K/BB ratio over the last 2 years:

Feliciano ----- .541 - 74/16
Schoeneweis - .659 - 36/22
Heilman ----- .698 - 67/33

Feliciano has clearly been better against lefties. Why isn't he the one to face Utley & Howard in a critical spot? Isn't it an obvious decision?

[UPDATE - as indicated in the comments, it turns out that Feliciano went to PR on Monday to attend to a family emergency and a delay on his return flight caused him to miss the game. Sorry Willie, all is forgiven.]

This doesn't solve the short-term pitching problem, but I'm still glad to hear this news from Ken Rosenthal:

Come June or July, the Mets still figure to be the No. 1 choice of free-agent right-hander Freddy Garcia, who is recovering from major shoulder surgery. Garcia is good friends with Santana, a fellow Venezuelan, and they share the same agents. When Garcia visited the Mets camp this spring, Pedro Martinez grabbed a piece of paper, waved to Garcia and jokingly demanded that Mets GM Omar Minaya give him a pen, saying, "Here's the contract, here's the contract."

Credit to The MZA for finding this gem from 2001, in which Mets pitching coach Charlie Hough lavishes some- in hindsight- outrageous praise:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9400E5DA1639F93BA15755C0A9679C8B63&scp=2&sq=mike+piazza+hair&st=nyt