Nationals Arm Race

Now that the WS is over, the official off-season begins.  Since a number of key dates related to player movement are based on the end of the world series, now we can officially list the key upcoming dates.

This document is also available in the links section to the right-hand side of the blog (see the 2013-14 MLB Off Season Calendar link).  I’ve uploaded it to Google XLS.  A few of the dates listed here are estimates or based on the day they occurred last year.  The XLS has urls to back up some of these dates.

Miller threw a grand total of one inning in the post season. Photo unk via missourinet.com

The common narrative surrounding the Washington Nationals after their 2012 NLDS exit was, and still is to this day, is a story of “arrogance” on the behalf of Mike Rizzo for deigning to protect Stephen Strasburg and shutting him down prior to the playoffs.  More than a few blow-hard sports writers on local and national stages postulated that the Nationals lost that series “because they didn’t have Strasburg.”

Cut to 2013: St. Louis’ year-long #2 starter Shelby Miller, a guy who had 31 starts with a 3.06 ERA/119 ERA+ and a 15-9 record, was removed from the playoff rotation and tossed a grand total of 1 inning this off-season.  He threw one inning of mop-up duty against the Pirates on October 4th in a 7-1 loss.  Instead the team gave those starts to #5 starter Lance Lynn, who rewarded the team with 2 losses in his 3 post-season starts and a 5.19 ERA in 17 1/3 innings.

For all the grief the 2012 Nationals got for voluntarily sitting Strasburg … why has there not been similar outrage for the Cardinals removal of their #2 starter from their post-season plans?   Where is the outrage facing the Cards’ management that Rizzo took for sitting Strasburg and “costing” his team in the playoffs?

The Cardinal’s excuse for sitting Miller was that he “was tiring down the stretch.”  To which I say B.S.; in five September starts he LOWERED his seasonal ERA.  This was clearly an innings-limit shutdown.  Maybe they’re the smart ones for just never SAYING it was a shutdown.  Miller himself apparently was unaware of the reason, being quoted recently as “not knowing” why he didn’t pitch in the post-season.

Strasburg was shutdown because he was recovering from an injury.  Miller was shutdown because the team subscribed to (in the minds of many critics) an arbitrary and unproven innings limit theory for starting pitchers.   What I don’t understand is why the two situations aren’t being treated as identical issues by those know-it-alls who so eviscorated the Nats for daring to protect a guy coming back from injury.  Is it simply a fame factor?  Strasburg clearly is more famous than Miller, therefore the situation was followed more closely in 2012?  Is it a factor of the Nats and Rizzo being the “new guys” and being ripe for criticism, while the Cardinals “know how it is done” and therefore get a pass in the national media?

I posed this question in a chat on Fangraphs and got the following response, “St. Louis didn’t lose the World Series due to lack of pitching.”  Ok.  Not the point; answer the damn question.  I could say the same thing about Washington’s loss in 2012; they certainly didn’t lose that game or series because of a lack of starting pitching … they lost that game because their bullpen couldn’t hold a 3-run lead and their closer couldn’t hold a 2-run lead at home in the deciding game.   You can play the “what-if-they-had-Strasburg” game for 2012 all you want; the fact is that the Nats were in a position to win the series and their closer blew it.  Can you say the same for St. Louis?   Don’t you think St. Louis would rather have had Shelby Miller on the mound in the pivotal game 4, which with a win would have given them an almost insurmountable 3 games to 1 lead in the series?   Instead Lynn coughed up 3 runs in 5+ innings, the Cards never have the lead, and Boston evened the series and regained home-field advantage.

It just frustrates me, the different treatment of the two franchises in these similar situations.  I readily admit that I’m defensive about pitcher shutdowns in general because I support the protection of young arms, I believe in innings management, and I believe both teams in the end did the right thing.  I talked about this in a post called “Innings Limits and Media Hypocrisy” in this space and (correctly) predicted that Miller would have shutdown issues towards the end of 2013.  I’m also defensive because I feel the Nats got a really raw deal in terms of the narrative, getting killed for trying to put a player’s health ahead of a short-term team goal.

I think the Cards had the right solution; shut him down, lie about it to the media, and go on with life.  A good road-map for Rizzo going forward, were he to run into this situation again.

Ortiz is the 2013 WS MVP and drinks from very large bottles. Photo AP via usatoday.com

So, as we wind down the 2013 World Series, one in which Boston star David Ortiz performed at levels rarely seen and earned the WS MVP as a result, a familiar narrative is sprouting up.  Stop me if you’ve heard it;

“David Ortiz is a known PED user.”

And thus his accomplishments (and eventual Hall of Fame case) are forever tarnished.

Here’s the thing: what “proof” exactly is there that David Ortiz used PEDs?

(You know, David Ortiz, who just came in 3rd in the Boston mayoral race).

As far as I can tell, the source for the allegations against David Ortiz is this NY Times article, dated July 30 2009 by writer Michael Schmidt.   Go ahead and read that article and tell me where exactly there is definitive proof of any positive test?  Here’s a couple of salient quotes from the article which encompass the “proof” that compelled this writer to forever trash the reputations of these players:

• “…according to lawyers with knowledge of the results.”   
• “The lawyers spoke anonymously because the testing information was under seal by a court order. “
• “The lawyers did not identify which drugs were detected.”

Hmm.  This sounds awfully thin to me.  Anonymous lawyers who claimed to have “knowledge of the results” of the 2003 surveys, who did not go on record and didn’t identify the supposed substance.  AND, to make matters even worse, these lawyers were knowingly breaking federal laws by disclosing information that was a) supposed to be confidential and b) at the time under seal.

Why would anyone believe this?

In the same story, Ortiz “confirmed the report” but if you read exactly what he said, he didn’t admit to testing positive.  He “confirmed that the union told him that the report was true.”  That’s not an admission of usage of a PED.  That’s just acknowledging that he was told his name was apparently on some list.  And as noted later on (and referenced in the link at the bottom of this blog), MLB and the Union have since stated that some players on “the list” never tested positive; they were just on the list as having being tested.  Or even worse (as is noted in the above link), “… in 2003, legally available nutritional supplements could trigger an initial ‘positive’ test under our program.”   Furthermore, the commissioner of MLB released a statement openly questioning the 2003 results as well in 2016.

Think about that.  Ortiz could have been drinking some supplement that was legal then, is legal now, but which triggered a positive test.  Ortiz has vehemently denied initially or ever using anything illegal whenever it has been brought up since.  Of course, those denials run shallow considering that every PED-suspected user denies in the same way.

Ortiz does not appear in The Mitchell Report; go ahead and search its 409 exhausting pages and there’s no mention of him.  Nor does Manny Ramirez (ed; corrected after the fact; i had written Manny Rodriguez), who was also outed in the 2009 NY Times article.  Ramirez’ reputation has since been sullied through his own stupidity and multiple subsequent positive tests … but I can’t help but wonder if Ortiz wasn’t being unfairly targeted by some faceless “lawyer with knowledge” who could very well have been a die-hard New York Yankees fan (this is the New York Times after all, and these proceedings were all conducted in New York City) with an axe to grind.

You may think this is a cynical approach.  You may have blind faith that the journalist in question took his “sources” to his editors, who should have vetted the information and made the decision to publish based on such anonymous quotes.  And to that I say, you’re a fool if you think that all journalists are prim and proper and squeaky clean in terms of their morals.   You don’t know these people, you don’t know who their sources are, and you don’t know the motivations behind the breaking of federal laws in order to … do what exactly?  Purposely tarnish the career of a player who didn’t do anything to anybody, and who apparently may not have even used the damn PEDs in the first place.

I find it troubling, that a man’s career, legacy and reputation are basically shot because of some unconfirmed report.   If this was in a court of law, the “evidence” against Ortiz would be considered so thin that any right-minded judge would dismiss the case outright before it even began.

Ortiz commented on this topic in an SI piece recently and I can’t help but agree with his take on the situation.  He felt helpless, he (claims) not to have ever  heard anything about a positive test until his name appears in the New York Times.  He claims that he’s asked repeatedly for additional proof, for the name of the drug he supposedly tested positive for … and has never been told!  Think about that.  The people who hold the evidence that has destroyed his legacy are refusing to give him details about his own test and his own career.

I’m not the only one with this view: Ken Rosenthal discusses many of the same facts in this May 2013 article.

Anyway.  I feel Ortiz may have been unfairly thrown under the bus in the post Steroid-era mania of discovery, and judging a man based on “proof” this weak continues to trouble me.  Feel free to comment if you have better information than I do about his supposed “positive test.”

(Editor note: Ha; I forgot to publish this prior to last night’s game.  I would have been right 🙂

Well, I was 4-for-4 leading up to game 5 predictions … and was wrong.  I thought St. Louis could break out against the weakened Clay Buchholz.  But they couldn’t do anything against a clearly laboring Buchholz, doing nothing against mid 80s fastballs throughout the night.  Wainwright made some mistakes that cost him (0-2 hanging curve in the 1st, then not pitching around David Ortiz being early, simple examples).

In the end, perhaps trying to predict either Game 6 or a possible Game 7 is fools-gold; I think we now see that Boston is the superior team and has worked around its own offensive deficiencies and a stitched-together rotation.  They get Mike Napoli back in the middle of their lineup now that they’re back in the AL park using DH rules, and at some point this will make the difference.

Game 6: Michael Wacha versus John Lackey; Simply put, I think Wacha’s amazing run of unhittable-ness may end tonight.  You have to think Boston’s going to go back to the film, look for a weakness, and try to exploit it.  Lackey probably puts in his typical quality start; 6 innings, 2 or 3 runs.  It just seems that fate is going to go Boston’s way after they clawed 2 of 3 in St. Louis.

I’m going with Boston closing out the series tonight in a memorable night for Boston fans, finally clinching a World Series on home soil.  Oritz is your obvious World Series MVP and bolsters his eventuall Hall of Fame case.

(Spoiler alert if you haven’t seen the film or if you don’t know the story).

We havn’t done a review of a 30-for-30 documentary in a while because, well, it had been since April since one was released.  Now there’s been a whole bunch that premiered this month, and we’re catching up.

Here’s some quick thoughts on Big Shot, the story of John Spano‘s incredible story of financial fraud and duplicity that enabled him to “purchase” and control the New York Islanders hockey franchise for a brief period in the mid 1990s.  This film was directed and narrated by Kevin Connelly, better known as the character “E” from the HBO show Entourage.  Connelly grew up on Long Island, is a lifelong Islanders fan, and had intimately followed this entire story during his childhood.

On the whole, I did not think this was one of ESPN’s best films.  I disagreed with Bill Simmons‘ effusive praise to Connelly when they appeared on his podcast The B.S. Report, though in fairness it could have been a case of “stroking the ego” of the star.  Connelly should have gotten a professional narrator; his voice overs were amateurish and lacked the proper cadence for a serious documentary.  The film was 1.5 hours, probably 30 minutes too long for the story that it intended to tell.  Even with an hour and a half, there are basic details on Spano’s wikipedia page that went uncovered.   On the good side, the fact that Connelly got Spano on film (freshly released from his second stint in federal prison for financial fraud) really helps this story; I think back to the 30-for-30 piece on Allen Iverson that never featured the star player and the film comes of lacking.  Also, the wide list of interviews the film shows (including basically every player in the drama, including the NHL commissioner Gary Bettman) gives the film a lot of credit.  The podcast interview goes into some detail about this: Spano was very hesitant to do the interviews until realizing it was 30-for-30; had this been any other documentary he likelihood of Spano’s character getting completely trashed was high.

The story itself is amazing; Spano got an $80Million loan with almost no due diligence on the bank’s part.  $80 million.  Think about how much paperwork you went through the last time you bought a house or a car or a business loan.  And, it is amazing to think about this story and see how close Spano really came to pulling it off; he was within a couple of days of finding someone to make his first $17M payment, and you’d have to think with a year to make the next payment he could have found a way to continue the charade.  Also amazing to think is this: he *owned” the team; the papers were signed despite the money not showing up.  Its like the analogy in the film; if you sign over the title of your car to some other guy … that’s HIS car, whether or not you got any money for it.  Spano could have made this really, really ugly for the league when push came to shove, despite Bettman’s hollow statements that “the league never would have let” Spano continue to hold the team.

The funny thing is this; if you leave out the clear fraud, the phony documents, etc; this transaction was almost like an old school leveraged buyout.  You get loans covering nearly the entire purchase price of a company, using that same company as leverage, and then make the loan payments from the coffers of the newly acquired company.  Think about how Malcolm Glazer obtained control over Manchester United: a very similar deal.  He “bought” his portion with tons of loans, put those loans on the books of the club, and financed the payments on the backs of the club’s profits.  Spano himself was halfway to a completely leveraged buy-out already, and came pretty close to taking at least the first step towards the next phase.

The team has never come close to returning to its early 1980s glory years; it has just one division crown since 1985.  It hasn’t advanced in the playoffs since 1993, and in the last 15 years had streaks of 8 and 5 straight playoff-less seasons.  Whether that has anything to do with the ownership snafus, bad luck with players, or (more likely) due to difficulties working with Nassau county officials over the years (a fact only alluded to in the film) getting needed stadium upgrades remains arguable.  As for Spano (as detailed in his wiki page), he got out of prison and was soon back for repeated financial fradulent behaviors.

All in all; a great story.  But the documentary left a bit to be desired.

Why isn’t Carlos Gomez getting the same attention for MVP that Mike Trout is getting? Photo Denis Poroy/Getty Images via zimbio.com

Simple question.

Brewers break-out star Carlos Gomez led the NL in bWAR.  Gomez played for a non-playoff team and augments his 24-homer/.506 slugging bat with speed on the basepaths (40 SBs this year) and plus defense in center (he was just named to Bill James Fielding Bible Team as the best defensive Center Fielder in the game).  Yet Gomez will likely lose out on the MVP voting to Andrew McCutchen, a player who trails him in the bWAR standings but who played for a playoff team.

Sounds an awful lot like the Mike Trout/Miguel Cabrera comparison, doesn’t it?

Why is nobody talking about Carlos Gomez for the NL MVP?  In fact, in the litany of post-season award review columns not only do I not see his name prominently mentioned, I’m not seeing it even mentioned in the list of top 5-6 candidates.  You hear about McCutchen, Clayton Kershaw and Paul Goldschmidt as the likely top 3 NL candidates, then you hear about guys from the other playoff teams (Yadier Molina or Matt Carpenter from St. Louis, Joey Votto from Cincinnati, or Freddie Freeman from Atlanta).  Where’s Gomez on this list?

If you are a critic of the Miguel Cabrera pick and maintain that Mike Trout deserves the MVP in the AL and use “WAR” as a basis for your argument … then are you similarly arguing that Gomez should win in the NL right now?

I think the entire Trout-Cabrera argument is tired; i’m tired of hearing it and I’m sure people are tired of talking about it.  The critics of those who support Cabrera for MVP like to talk about the “narrative” of the MVP, how the award criteria definition on the ballots seems to imply that the winner “should” come from a playoff team.  But I’m of the opinion that those who blindly live by the WAR stat and support Trout but do NOT similarly demand support of Gomez are falling victim to their own “narrative” as well.

Ask yourself; if you think Trout is the AL MVP (this year or last year) … then what’s your argument that Gomez is NOT the NL MVP this year?

Four games into this World Series, and we’re tied up at 2 games a piece.  Boston got their must-win victory last night on the strength of the unlikely Jonny Gomes (former Nat) and on 85mph fastballs from Clay Buchholz.  Lance Lynn didn’t pitch badly; in fact his stuff looked pretty good early on.  But one bad pitch to Gomes and the game was over.

Game 5: Jon Lester versus Adam Wainwright.  a repeat of the Game 1 matchup, though this time the tables are reversed in terms of road team/home team.   In four career home playoff starts Wainwright has conceded exactly four runs.   Lester had a .500 record and a 4.21 ERA on the road this season.  Despite St. Louis’ inability to hit lefties, I don’t think Wainwright is losing tonight.

Expect a close game, with St. Louis perhaps coming out on top with a 2-1 victory.  And since we’ve already had two rather rare game-ending baserunning mishaps (an obstruction call and a pick-off), i’m calling for Game 5 to include something like a running out of order, or a missed base being called out on appeal or something random.  Maybe we’ll just get a hotly contested balk.

So far, the World Series has played out the way I thought; St. Louis up 2 games to 1 (albeit on rather odd circumstances last night) and heading into the most difficult match-up to predict: game 4.

Starters: Clay Buchholz versus Lance Lynn.  Neither guy has pitched well this post season (both have identical 5.40 ERAs this post-season).  Neither guy looks like he’s going to be able to keep the opposing offenses down.  And I sense this game is going to be a 4.5 hour marathon going deep into each team’s bullpen and likely featuring early appearances for 5th/neglected starters for Boston such as Ryan Dempster, Felix Doubront.  Meanwhile St. Louis’ forgotten man Shelby Miller has thrown a grand total of 1 inning this off-season; against the Pirates on October 4th.  Could he possibly now feature more than three weeks later in a pivotal situation?

For all the grief the 2012 Nationals got for voluntarily sitting Stephen Strasburg … why has there not been similar outrage for the Cardinals removal of their #2 starter all year from their post-season plans?  If the Red Sox bomb Lynn tonight and end up taking the series, is there going to be similar outrage facing the Cards’ management that Mike Rizzo took for sitting Strasburg and “costing” his team in the playoffs?  Because clearly Lynn is the Card’s #5 pitcher, the starter that normally wouldn’t even be on some post-season rosters and clearly wouldn’t be getting a post-season start.

How much will Buchholz’ “shoulder fatigue” play in to tonight’s game?  How much will Lynn’s hittability factor in?

I see a slugfest, and I see Boston coming out on top tonight.  Which is good for Boston, because I can’t see them beating Wainright tomorrow night and they need this game to get the series back to Boston for games 6 and 7 (where Wacha looms for a possibly classic Game 7, if they can get there).

The series heads to St. Louis after the teams split in Boston.

However, the predicting gets harder from here on out, as each team gets deeper into its rotation and has to rely on lesser starters.

Game 3: Jake Peavy vs Joe Kelly.   Kelly was pretty good in September, lowering his season ERA from the 2.80 range to the 2.60 range, and Kelly pitched a nifty 6ip/2ER home start in the NLCS.  Peavy was not good in September, leaking runs left and right.  Peavy got hammered in the ALCS in Detroit.

All signs point to St. Louis jumping up 2 games to 1 in this series and putting a lot of pressure on the Game 4 starters (perhaps Clay Buchholz and Lance Lynn).  Boston obviously needs to take a game in St. Louis or they’re done.  And unless they want to take their chances beating Michael Wacha in a game 7 back in Fenway, they want to get two.  Kelly’s no pushover; he may look like an accountant but he throws some serious cheese: 94.4 average two-seam velocity with a peak of 98.8 this year.  Boston has its work cut out for them.  Meanwhile Peavy hasn’t been good, and I think the Cardinals jump on him quickly.

Because they’re in St. Louis, Boston has had to choose between sluggers, and Mike Napoli misses out.  This takes away a slugger in the middle of Boston’s order and puts a severe defensive liability at first in David Ortiz.  I think this and the return home to the charged up St. Louis crowd spells a Game 3 victory for the Cardinals.

Lincecum cashes in for 2 more years. Photo via SD Dirk flickr via wikipedia

One of the more intriguing FA situations for the coming off-season was resolved incredibly early, with Tim Lincecum signing 2yr/$35M deal to stay with the San Francisco Giants for two more years.  Lincecum also gets a full no-trade thrown in.

$17.5M a year for a guy whose last two seasons looked like this:

– 2012: 10-15, 5.18 ERA, 1.468 Whip and a 68 ERA+.  -1.7 bWAR

– 2013: 10-14, 4.37 ERA, 1.315 Whip and a 76 ERA+. -0.6 bWAR

His fastball velocity, once a strength, rank him 62nd out of 81 qualified starters in 2013.  He was averaging 93-94 with a peak of 99 earlier in his career; now he’s averaging 90.2 and peaking 94.3.  That’s a huge, significant velocity loss that hasn’t been accompanied by any D/L stint or time off.   He’s 29, he’s got incredibly weird (lets call them “unique” to be nice) mechanics and he’s coming off of two seasons where he’s pitched like a 4-A pitcher, well below replacement value.  I’m sorry, but why would anyone believe at this point that he’s got any shot of returning to his Cy Young glory?

Now, you can argue that his more advanced numbers (Fip, xFIP, Siera) aren’t as damning as the traditional numbers I posted above (this is exactly what Dave Cameron does in one of the reaction links located at the bottom of this post).   And you’d be right to a certain extent.   By xFIP for 2013 he’s ranked 29th of 81 qualified starters.   By FIP he’d be ranked 45th, and by SIERA 35th.   None of those are elite placements for the year.  It still don’t make Lincecum a $17.5M/year arm.  And, that’s putting an awful lot of faith in the xFIP, if that’s your argument.  Because we’ve seen plenty of pitchers whose xFIPs always trail their FIPs (and Lincecum pitches in SF, where homers go to die).  And we’ve seen pitchers whose FIP is improved because they get more K’s than ground ball outs (and Lincecum is still a high strikeout pitcher, so his FIP will always look better).   And one final rebuttal; xFIP is an estimator of future performace, not a guaranteer of it.  Look at Lincecum’s career and his xFIP-next year’s ERA link is all over the place.  To blindly look at his 2013 xFIP and predict that he’s returning to form is, well, foolish.  And none of these arguments apologizes for his negative WAR values the last two years; hey Sabre-nerds; you can’t pick and choose stats to approve this and leave out your favorite one.

I wouldn’t have given him half the guaranteed money the Giants just did.  I wouldn’t have even given him a Q.O., because its hard for me to believe someone out there would have given him even $14M guaranteed for 2014.

Here’s another stat line to consider:

– 2013: 10-14, 4.67 ERA, 1.238 WHIP, 81 ERA+, -0.1 bWAR.

Comparing this stat line straight up with Lincecum’s 2013, you’d clearly think this pitcher would be more in line to get paid than Lincecum, right?  This stat line belongs to none other than Dan Haren.  Who thinks Haren is scoring a 2 year/$35M deal this off-season?  Who here thinks Haren even gets a 1 year/$8M deal?  Certainly Haren’s not going to get a Qualifying Offer out of the Nats this fall.

Other opinions on the deal: Hardballtalk advised not to “freak out” about the contract, that there’s so much money in the game and blah-blah.  Sorry, this isn’t about salary escalation (if you wanted to talk about that, lets talk about the Hunter Pence deal … a clear example to me of salary escalation for a good but not great player).   Dan Symborski at ESPN hates the deal with pretty good points about the timing, the lack of a Q.O., the lack of a market for him, etc.  Keith Law points out that the contract seems like a “thanks for the memories” contract, not one that will actually help the Giants win.  Gwen Knapp on SportsonEarth points out the sentimentality of the deal.  Dave Cameron points out that Lincecum’s xFIP makes him actaully more valuable than his traditional numbers appear.  Maybe we’re the dumb ones and the Giants are the smart ones.  Rob Neyer tries really hard not to be harsh about the contract.  And lastly unabashed SF homer Grant Brisbee chimes in.

Giants GM Brian Sabean has long had a bad rap in the blogosphere as being one of the poorest GMs in the game.  And then his team went and won the World Series two years out of three.  But moves like this bring back questioning of his competence.  Unless he throws his owner under the bus and washes his hands of the deal, if that’s indeed the case.