Nationals Arm Race

I keep a little file, periodically updated, that keeps track of “Ace Starters” in the league.  There’s usually right around 20 of them at any one time.  There’s no hard and fast rule as to what defines an Ace; not every team has an Ace.  Some teams have more than one Ace.  Its essentially defined as a guy who, every time he goes to the hill, he is expected to win, a perennial Cy Young candidate, a guy who is acknowledged as being one of the best in the game.

Here’s my list of “Aces” in this league, right now; Strasburg, Gonzalez, Halladay, Lee, Hamels, Cueto, Wainwright, Lincecum, Cain, Kershaw, Greinke, Lester, Price, Sabathia, Dickey, Johnson, Verlander, Hernandez, Darvish and Weaver.    Twenty guys, some arguable with poor 2012 performances (Lester, Lincecum, Johnson, Halladay), some arguable for possibly being one-year wonders (Dickey, Greinke, Gonzalez), but by and large a quick list of the 20 best starters in the league.

How many of these Aces are pitching in the 2013 WBC?  TWO.  That’s it.  Gio Gonzalez and R.A. Dickey are starting for the US.  Not one other US Ace is taking the hill for their country.  The few foreign guys (Hernandez, Cueto and Darvish) aren’t pitching for their teams either for various reasons.

If you asked me to give you the 4 best US starters, right now, the four starters I’d throw in a World Baseball Classic to best represent this country, I’d probably go (in nearly this order) Verlander, Kershaw, Strasburg and maybe Cole Hamels.   If you asked me the NEXT four guys i’d want on the bump i’d probably go Sabathia, Cain, Price and Lee.   After that?  I’d probably still take the likes of Halladay and Greinke before I got to Gonzalez or Dickey.   And that’s only because of the poor 2012 showings by Lincecum, Lester and Johnson; if this was 2011, those three guys are absolutely in the mix for best arms in the league.  So by rough estimates, we have perhaps the 14th and 15th best American starters going for us right now.

Who else does the US team have starting?   Ryan Vogelsong and Derek Holland.  Vogelsong is the 4th best starter ON HIS OWN TEAM, and Holland isn’t much further up on the Texas depth chart.

I’m enjoying the WBC, don’t get me wrong, but you can repeat this exercise for a number of the positional players on this roster too.   Look at the post-season voting last year and look at who is playing on these teams.  No Buster Posey, Mike Trout, Bryce Harper, Andrew McCutchen, Josh Hamilton or Prince Fielder.  There is only one player who got an NL Cy Young vote in 2012 participating (Fernando Rodney for the D.R.).  I think this event needs its best players to play, and I think the league needs to come up with a way of making that happen.  No more injury dispensations, no more excuses for not having the best, most marketable guys out there.

Why in the hell aren’t Trout and Harper playing for the team USA??   This is the best duo of young, marketable players to this this league since the 1998 home run derby.  They’re on the cover of Men’s Health Magazine and Sports Illustrated in the last month.   You use what you have and market the league on the backs of players like this.  Look at the NBA; they market on top of their most recognizable names and they have grown because of it, from Michael Jordan to Kobe Bryant to LeBron James.  Why MLB can’t seem to see the forest for the trees sometimes is just frustrating.  The WBC is growing in popularity; its ratings in Japan eclipsed the TV ratings for the Olympics in that country, and the US games reportedly have gotten the highest ratings for a non-playoff game in TV history).  Team USA needs to catch on.

Mar 12, 2013; Miami, FL, USA; United States pitcher Gio Gonzalez (47) delivers a pitch against Puerto Rico at Marlins Park. Mandatory Credit: Scott Rovak-USA TODAY Sports

(Don’t you hate it when a pro writer totally scoops your blog post, and you find out 5 minutes before you go to post it?  Tom Boswell wrote on this exact topic in today’s Washington Post).

James Wagner of the The Washington Post touched on it in a 3/13/13 article, but I’ll repeat it here; we’re seeing both Gio Gonzalez and Ross Detwiler compete, and compete well, for Team USA right now.  Gonzalez threw 5 scoreless innings in the Round 2 opener against a tough Puerto Rico side, and Detwiler finished up the do-or-die win against surprising Italy by throwing 4 innings of 1 hit ball and earning the save (and the game ball; what a fantastic souvenir).

Now, I’m on record stating that having our pitchers (specifically) in the WBC is bad, both anecdotally from past experiences and statistically (see the linked post for statistical studies showing across-the-board regression among WBC pitchers).  However I wonder if there’s an upside to having (specifically) Gonzalez pitching in this competition.  I wonder if we aren’t getting some free “seasoning” of Gonzalez by exposing him to the same playoff atmosphere that he failed in last off-season.

Gonzalez may not have factored into either decision in last year’s NLDS, but nobody would argue that he pitched well.  In two starts he only lasted 10 total innings, had 11 walks, a 1.70 whip and was just wild.  110 pitches to get through 5ip in game 1, 99 in game5.  Cardinals players were quoted as saying he “looked scared” on the mound.  Is it all because it was his first time in the limelight?  Did the pressure get to him?

Well, the pressure didn’t get to him against Puerto Rico.  If Gonzalez has “grown up” a bit because of the WBC and can go back to being the Ace/Cy Young candidate in 2013’s playoffs, the Nats will be far better positioned to advance.

Following up on the First Round Review post, lets look at the 2nd round, which establishes the 4 teams battling it out in San Francisco for the 2013 World Baseball Classic championship.

Here’s the two semi-finalist “pools” and how they finished up:

Pool 1: Japan, Netherlands, Cuba, Chinese Taipei

Japan cruises through the 2nd round and advances with two quick wins, while Chinese Taipei shows it is a one-trick (or in this case, a one pitcher) pony and gets wiped out by Cuba in an elimination game. Meanwhile the Netherlands continued to surprise, giving Cuba a rare international loss in the opening round and then following it up with a come-from-behind win in the do-or-die game, scoring 2 in the 8th and 1 in the 9th to win 7-6 and ensure their trip to San Francisco.  Nats and former Nats were all over this game, as Shairon Martis pitched, Randolph Oduber played left field and Roger Bernadina sat out after getting a HBP in the previous night’s game).  Still, another huge upset for the Netherlands to advance at the expense of both Cuba and South Korea in this tournament.  In the final seeding game, Japan took care of business and will play the Runner-up of Pool 2 in the WBC semis.

Pool 2:  Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, USA, Italy

Italy gave the D.R. a scare in the first game, but Puerto Rico did not do the same to Team USA, getting dominated behind 5 shutout innings from Gio Gonzalez.  The D.R. then came up clutch in the long-anticipated USA matchup, getting to USA closer Craig Kimbrel and dinging him for two runs in the top of the 9th to steal away a win in a game where neither team really hit that well.   Italy’s cinderella run came to an end at the hands of Puerto Rico, setting up a loser-goes-home rematch with USA.  In that game on 3/15/13, the US team just didn’t show up; allowing journeyman Nelson Figueroa to shut them down on just 2 hits through 6 innings and failing to either hold the rag-tag P.R. team or to score any runs when needed.  Ryan Vogelsong didn’t pitch badly but didn’t shut down the Puerto Rican team, and the USA goes home, losing 4-3.  In the seeding game, the D.R. took care of business (as Japan did against lesser competition) and set-up the semis as follows.

Semis Preview.

Japan goes against Puerto Rico in one semi while the Dominican Republic goes against Netherlands in the other.  At least we have a clear-cut final ahead of us, with the two dominant teams in the world (outside of the US of course) setup to play a potentially awesome final.  I disasgree with those that think it was a “good thing” the US failed to get to the semis; I think viewership and interest would have been much higher had the US team made the semi-finals.  Either way, I’m predicting that the D.R. takes out Japan in the final.

Is Greinke's big new deal going to pay off for the Dodgers? We'll see. Photo Jeff Golden/Getty Images

One of my pet projects of recent years has been to track “major” Starting Pitcher free agent contracts and then to do analysis of how they turned out, on a Dollar per win basis.  This post is an analysis of this work along with some interesting conclusions to determine some of the “best” and “worst” free agent contracts ever awarded.

This is mostly an analysis of past performance; there’s plenty of pitchers right now on major contracts that are just too soon into the deal to really draw any conclusions.  I’ve included in the spreadsheet all the major contracts signed this past off-season and will continue to do so if these guys get significant deals.  But we’ll have to wait a year to see how the first year of the contracts play out.  For all contracts that are in the middle of being played out, I’ve calculated how that contract is faring thus far.

Some caveats to the data:  For ease of analysis, I depend on the Average Annual Value (AAV) of the contracts as opposed to trying to figure out exactly how many wins were earned in which year of a varying contract amount.  Therefore (for example), Gio Gonzalez‘s contract may have only paid him $3.25M in 2012 but I’m using the full AAV of $8.4M for the purposes of the analysis (it would just be far too difficult to calculate each pitcher’s dollar per win on an annualized basis otherwise).  Also, I focus on dollars per Win, despite the known limitations of the “Win” statistic.  I have gone through and added in Quality Starts to the analysis, but that stat is also flawed in some respects (though it does do a pretty good job of indicating whether or not the starter has done his job).  Unfortunately the $/QS doesn’t work out as nicely as $/Win, since Pitcher Wins are still so prevalent in our player analysis.  I mean, after all, the goal of the game is to WIN the game, right?

Here’s a quick cut-n-paste from the spreadsheet (which is also available in the Links section to the right and on Google Docs) of some selected fields.  See the Google xls for everything.  Apologies if this doesn’t present well online.  The table is listed in descending order of $/year AAV.  Blanks in the Wins and $AAV per win indicate that the contract has yet to begin.  I also threw in a couple of non-FA contracts at the end to show what a MLB-minimum successful starting pitcher looks like in comparison.

Here’s some interesting facts, that come out of this analysis (some of these points can also be seen at the amazing Cots Salary database, now at Baseball Prospectus, and are confirmed in my spreadsheet tracking the same):

• Largest total Starting Pitcher Contract ever signed: Felix Hernandez‘s brand new 7 year, $175M extension, beating out the previous record-holder CC Sabathia (7yrs/$161M in 2009).   Zack Greinke‘s just signed 6yr/$147M would be the 2nd biggest ever signed, and Cole Hamel‘s 6yr/$144M contract the third.  Will our own Stephen Strasburg come close to broaching these limits when he hits the FA market?  We’ll see.
• Largest Single-Season AAV: Roger Clemen‘s 1yr/$28M deal in 2007.  The next closest are Hernandez’s $25M/year, Greinke $24.5M/year and Sabathia’s $24.4M figures.

(A couple of quick caveats to the above lists: CC Sabathia subseqently opted out of his 7/161 deal, so it basically got turned into a 3yr/$69M deal.  And, techncially Hernandez’s deal ripped up the last two years of his previous deal to replace it with the 7/175 deal; lots of people are looking at the new deal as a 5  year extension with an even higher AAV.  I don’t see it the same way; I see it as a replacement of the existing contract years).

What are some of the worst deals ever made?

• Worst Ever Starting Pitcher Contract: Kei Igawa‘s 2007 deal with the Yankees, which was 5yrs/$20M but included a $26M posting fee, is the worst $AAV per Win contract ever signed.  Igawa went 2-4 in 13 starts over the life of this 5 year deal, equating to $23M per win for his team.  He spent the last two seasons of this contract buried in AAA.
• Worst non-Posting fee Starting Pitcher Contract: Jason Schmidt‘s 3yr/$47M contract with the Dodgers.  Schmidt made 10 total starts and went 3-6, equating to $15.6M per win.

Other names on the “Worst Starting Pitcher Contract” category include Oliver Perez ($12M/win), Darren Dreifort (6.1M/win), Russ Ortiz (4.7M/win), Carl Pavano ($4.4M/win) and Carlos Silva ($4M/win).   Most of these contracts are well known to baseball fans and are commonly thrown around when talking about the worst historical FA contracts.

How about some of the “Best” Contracts ever signed?  Lots of players have signed small one year deals and won double-digit games, so those really cannot count.   Starting with an arbitrary floor of a $50M free agent contract, here’s the best value FA contracts ever signed:

1. Pedro Martinez: 7yr/$92M, during which he went 117-37 for the Red Sox for a $786k/win total.
2. Justin Verlander: He’s in the middle of a 5yr/$80M contract and for the first 3 years he’s 59-22 for $813k/win.
3. Mike Mussina went 92-53 in his 6yr/$88.5M contract for $961k/win.

Jered Weaver and Yu Darvish deserve some mention here; they’re both in the first year of $50M+ contracts and are easily earning their pay in terms of $/win.

So what does this data mean?  Here’s some conclusions.

1. It used to indicate that if you got about one (1) pitcher Win per million dollars spent on a player in the Free Agent market that you were doing great.  Look at our own Edwin Jackson in 2012: we signed him for $11M, he went 10-11 for us, equating to $1.1M/win.  Good value frankly.
2. If you’re getting anything between $1.25M and $1.5M/win, there may be some complaints about the value of the contract.  Not always, but most of the time it indicates that either the pitcher is underperforming or is overpaid.
3. Anything over $2M/win is usually considered a bust.  Nearly every contract in the $2M/win in AAV and above has been mentioned and criticized as being a bad contract; the list of “worst ever” above starts at $4M/win and goes higher.
4. If you pay a starter anything more than about $18M/season,  you’re really going to have a hard time getting value back.  There’s only been a handful of 20-game winners over the past 5 years or so, but paying a starter $24M like Greinke is getting is almost certainly going to be regretted at some point.  An injury or a lost season completely blows the $AAV/win.
5. It illustrates more clearly than anywhere else the value of a top-notch, pre-Arbitration starter.  Take Clay Buchholz for example; in 2010 he was 17-7 while earning the league minimum of $443k.  That equates to $26,059/win on the same staff that was busy paying Daisuke Matsuzaka $2.06M per win (when adding in the $52M posting fee).  Buchholz has struggled since then, but teams that depend on these pre-arb starters (Tampa, Oakland, Washington to a certain extent) save untold amounts of FA dollars as a result.
6. Lastly, and this is the hard part, this analysis is getting nearly impossible to do across baseball eras because of the general inflation of contracts and especially because of the bonanza of FA dollars being thrown out there right now.  Pedro Martinez at the top of his game signed a 7yr/$92M deal.  Imagine what he’d get today?  It could be twice that.  He was coming off a 1997 season in which he struck out 305 batters, had a 1.90 ERA, a 219 ERA+ and won the Cy Young award.  So perhaps going forward a general $1.25M/win is a more accurate barometer for whether or not a pitcher has “earned” his contract.  But there’s no easy way to draw a line in the free agency sand and say that before yearX $1M/win was a good barometer while after yearY $1.25M/win is a good barometer.
7. A caveat to the $1M/win benchmark; there are different standards for obtaining wins.   If you sign a $3M 1 year deal and then subsequently go 3-12 with a 6.00 ERA … while it looks like you reached the $1m/win threshold in reality you were, well, awful.  This analysis only really holds up for major FA contracts paying in excess of $10M/year.

Lastly, for comparison purposes, here’s the above analysis looks for the 2012 Nationals pitching staff.  Keep in mind that the $/win figures for pre-arbitration pitchers vastly skew the analysis.

The counting figures for Starts/QS/Wins/Losses are cumulative for the life of whatever contract the player is on.  So for Strasburg, he was basically in the 4th year of his original 4 year deal, hence the 45 total starts in those 4 years.  For guys like Zimmermann and Detwiler, the analysis is just for 2012 since they were playing on one-year deals.

The 2012 Nats have $AAV per win values all over the road:

• Detwiler‘s $48k per win in 2012 is an amazing bargain; he got 10 wins while pitching for basically the MLB minimum.  And, Zimmermann‘s 12-win season while on a first-year Arbitration salary also represented about 20% of what those wins would have cost on the FA market.
• Jackson produced almost exactly at the expectations for a FA starter; $11M contract, 10 wins, and $1.1M per win.  In 2013 if we get 12-13 wins from Dan Haren, we’ll be doing alright.
• Lannan provided just on the borderline of bust production, as you’d expect for someone who got paid $5M to give the team 6 starts.
• Wang: $4M salary, 5 starts, zero quality starts, 2 wins and a $2M/win price tag.  Yes; he was a bust.
• Lastly Mr. Yunesky Maya.  The team has now paid him $6M over three years.  In that time he’s gotten 10 MLB starts and has produced exactly one Quality start and one win.  That’s $6M the team has paid for each win, in the range for one of the worst dollar-per-win contracts ever signed.  Of course, the Nats only signed him for $8M (not the $46M contract Igawa got), so the downside is limited.  But it does illustrated just how badly this deal has gone for the team.

Non Baseball post.

Just a quick shout out to my alma mater James Madison University, who won the CAA tournament on 3/11/13 and returns to the NCAA tournament for the first time in nearly 20 years.   To say that JMU has not been an impact school in the basketball world is a slight understatement; they hadn’t even made the CAA tourney final since 1997.  They only managed to win the CAA tournament in 1994 by virtue of a last-gasp 3-pointer to win the game 77-76 by star-turned-states’ witness Kent Culuko.

Since JMU last was in the NCAA tournament, they fired Lefty Dreisell, who was brought in to revolutionize the program with his reputation and give it national credence but managed just one appearance in his 9 years at the school (he clearly could recruit better than he could coach, a statement many old-school University of Maryland fans probably agree with too).  Since Dreisell’s departure JMU has gone through a series of medicore coaches with even more mediocre results.  They are also in the midst of a horrid stretch against their biggest CAA rival, George Mason, who have won 9 straight versus JMU and an astonishing 18 of the last 19 meetings.  This is nearly a complete reversal of the series outcomes for the first decade or so of this rivalry and does a good job of stating just how far the two teams’ fortunes have diverged.

The CAA has grown up in the last decade without JMU’s involvement, with Mason and VCU making final fours and teams like ODU, UNC Wilmington and Richmond (now with the A-10) routinely reaching the tournament and getting marquee wins.  JMU was a great team in the early 80s, making three straight NCAA tournaments AND winning a game in each of those tournaments, but has just one NCAA appearance (in 1994) since.  That’s 30 years, one tournament apperance.

Lets hope they get a decent seeding and can take out a #3 or #4 seed.

The nasty WBC brawl resulted from several breaches of “Baseball Etiquitte.” PHoto topsy.com

We all by now have heard about the Mexico-Canada brawl over breaches of  “Unwritten Rules” of the game.   This brought back into play a post I wrote mostly in May of 2011 on the same topic.

Now, the WBC’s pool play requires Run Differential to be brought into play, so you can kind of understand the “bunting with a huge lead” breach that led to the brawl.  But that fight was simmering all game as one small situation after another (mostly involving the Canadian catcher Chris Robinson, a career minor leaguer in the Baltimore organization) kept raising the level of irritation on the behalf of the Mexican team.  It had all the classic signs of a brawl-to-be: the “better” team (Mexico) was losing while not trying as hard, and was getting more and more irritated with the scrappy team taking the game too seriously and playing too hard.  Take out slides at 2nd base, bunting in non-bunt situations.  Eventually a guy gets hit and a very serious fight takes place.  You had a player in Robinson taking the game too seriously versus a bunch of MLBers for Mexico perhaps not taking the game as seriously.

What did I think of the bunt?  I thought it was in bad form frankly.  Yes the run differential counts … but I don’t believe Canada was in a situation where things would have come down to run differential.  I think Robinson had been “over-playing” the whole game and wanted to get one last dig in.

Back to my original May 2011 article on the topic; ESPN has a feature called “Player X,” wherein an anonymous professional athlete in one of the major sports pens an article from time to time writes an article about topics that may not otherwise be written about.  Because of his anonymity, he can name names and call out fellow professionals without the normal press-overreaction.

In May of 2011, a post was written about “Baseball’s Unwritten Rules” (it may be insider-only, I’m sorry).  Being that this is a topic I’ve written about in the past (see this June 2009 post on my previous blog), I found it relatively interesting.  I wrote the June 2009 post right after a very infamous “unwritten rule” was broken, specifically bunting to break up a no-hitter/perfect-game.  In fact Player X recounts another such situation where Curt Schilling had a perfect game broken up by a bunt single.

Years ago, after a long back-and-forth email conversation related to this same topic with a friend of mine (who wasn’t necessarily a baseball aficionado but did have some thoughts on the issue) I came up with this list of “unwritten rules.”

Unwritten professional Etiquitte rules of baseball

• Don’t bunt to breakup a no-hitter or perfect game in the later innings
• Don’t ever peek at the catcher’s sign or position
• Don’t dive after an outside pitch when ahead by a sufficient amount
• Don’t steal catchers signs overtly from 2nd base.
• Don’t show up the pitcher after hitting a HR (standing there, bat twirl, etc)
• Don’t overly try to break up a double play in a regular season/non-pressure situation
• Don’t purposely turn a double into a single if you are close to a cycle.
• Don’t try to show up a slower player by attempting to throw him out at first on a sharp single to right.

With a comfortable lead (a sliding scale; 10 runs or more at anytime, perhaps 7 runs in the late innings, fewer runs in the Majors):

• Don’t bunt for a hit
• Don’t steal
• Don’t attempt to break up a double play
• Don’t advance on a passed ball
• Don’t take any extra bases that you can’t jog to.
• Don’t swing for the fences on a 3-0 pitch
• Don’t swing for the fences generally

Apri 2018 Update: after a curious complaint from the Minnesota Twins about a bunt attempt against their shift while down 7 runs, former Oriole’s closer Gregg Olsen had a great set of tweets about his interpretation of the unwritten rules of the game.  Going through them one by one, here they are (with duplicates of those above noted).  Olsen keeps adding more throughout the month  via his twitter account.

1. There is no bunting for a hit in the 9th inning (only 9th). If the shift is deployed, then this rule is void.
2. Thou shall not say “No hitter” in the midst of a no hitter. Really becomes taboo after the 5th inn., when you start to see teammates avoiding said pitcher like the plague.
3. If you hit one of mine, I hit an equal or greater one of yours.
4. Unless you are the pitcher, do not set foot on the mound.
5. Do not make the first or third out at 3rd. Yer already in scoring position, don’t be greedy.
6. If you are hit intentionally, after your pitcher hit 1 of theirs OR you have an idiot who showboats a HR, don’t start a fight. Just run down to 1st base, take 1 for the team
7. Do not run up the score on an opponent. This means halting all stolen bases, it does not mean to stop hitting/pitching/playing defense. “Calling off the dogs” happens at the manager’s discretion. EVERYONE has a different threshold.
8. Stealing signs is OK, just don’t get caught. Some books say sign stealing is taboo but it’s not. If your signs are easy enuf to steal, it’s YOUR fault.  If you get caught sign stealing, someone gets hit. If you get caught, it’s YOUR fault.
9. Do NOT stand in the home plate circle (Dirt area surrounding home plate) when a pitcher is warming up! Do not even get w/in 10 feet of said circle.  You may get hit during warmups if you are on the dirt
10. Nothing that happens in the clubhouse, leaves the clubhouse. These signs are posted in every clubhouse.  “What you see here, what you hear here, what happens here, STAYS HERE!”
11. Do not show up the other team or a player. This means admiring HR’s, doing happy dances after K’s.  “Act like you’ve done it before”.
12. If your pitcher gives up a bomb (long HR), make an effort to appear like you are trying to chase it down. Don’t just stand there and watch it fly over your head.
13. Don’t touch other people’s stuff. Do not try on someone else’s glove. Do not mess with people’s personal clothes, game spikes etc.
14. Do not eat or drink (alcohol) during the game. The alcohol part seems obvious. That’s a big NO-NO.  Don’t eat during the game – take care of your business before the game. No one wants to see you eating a sandwich in the 5th inn (snacks OK).
15. Under no circumstances are you to ever try to injure an opponent. No matter what has happened, NOTHING is worth jeopardizing another player’s career.
16. Honor other’s superstitions. Do not mess with peoples superstitions. You don’t have to agree with them but don’t mess with them.
17. Do not play catch on the infield, any part of it. Warmups or catch is done in the OF or near the dugout. This one is truly unwritten. You will never hear it discussed but all baseball people know it.
18. Do not peek in to the catcher’s signs if you are hitting. Do not even try to see where he is set up.  This will result in an immediate HBP.
19. Always take a strike in the 9th inning until the tying run comes to the plate.
20. There is no stealing on 3-0 counts.
21. Rookies are to be seen, not heard. This game owes you nothing. Don’t act like you’ve been there cuz you haven’t. No one is entitled to be a Big Leaguer.
22. Rookies don’t pay for anything. No one wants to hear them but like them or not, some vet took care of you. Pass it on.
23. As a pitcher that is getting pulled from the game, always HAND the ball to your manager while you wait for him ON the mound.
24. As a coach that has to cross the field to get to his coaches box, please don’t run across the field to get to your position. Run behind the catcher and umpire. And DON’T hold up the inning because you’re late.
25. Don’t not swing so hard that you fall down (literally) or fall across home plate.
26. Do not look at the umpire for an explanation of a ball or strike.  Bad things happen, man. Bad things.
27. Do not step on the chalk. You will see all kinds of non chalk steppers; the stride overs, the hop overs and the defiers. The Defiers step on the chalk just to freak everyone out.
28. No matter how bad you pitched, a pitcher MUST stay in the dugout until the inning ends. You have to wait to snap.
29. Respect the game. Respect your elders. Respect your coaches. Respect your opponents.  Bottom line is, this game has been played for 140 years (Let that sink in). The game will be played with or w/out you tomorrow.

Most of these “unwritten rules” fall into two main categories:

1. Don’t embarrass the other team if you already have a big lead.
2. Don’t embarrass another professional at any point.

In the Canada-Mexico game, we saw several of these rules being broached.  But would you classify a WBC game in the same manner as a playoff game?  If so, then hard take out slides at 2nd and catcher-collisions at home ARE warranted.  But I get the impression that these MLB-heavy teams are still struggling whether to treat WBC games as exhibitions (it is Spring Training after all) or as serious competitions.  Certainly nobody wants to get hurt and cost themselves a roster spot or significant time off the season.  Meanwhile for a team of lesser players/career minor leaguers, the WBC is their shot at the title, their chance to face Major leaguers for perhaps the first, last and only time.  Guys for spain who have never pitched about AA suddenly are throwing to MVP-calibre stars.  That has to be a rush … and leads to situations where more “unwritten rules” may be broached.

By the way, Baseball isn’t the only sport with “unwritten rules.”  Think about an NBA player purposely trying to get a triple-double when his team is up by 20 late in a game.  Or an NFL team going for two points in the fourth quarter with a 4 touch down lead.  Or a soccer player trying a “Paneka” penalty while already leading by 3 goals.  All of these are broaches of each sports’ etiquitte and may end up causing repercussions.

What do you think?  About the Canada-Mexico situation, about unwritten rules in general?  I know many people are flat out against them, others think they’re completely understandible.  Did I miss any “rules” in my list above?

I have to admit: I’m much more interested in the World Baseball Classic this year than in the first two iterations.  I don’t know why; perhaps its because I’ve become much more interested in prospects over the past few years, and the WBC rosters for the lesser teams are filled with minor league prospects.  I’m definitely watching the games though and have been really enjoying the competitions.  Here’s a quick review of the first rounds in all the pools (note that in the Far East the 2nd round is well underway; we’ll talk about that in a subsequent post).

These Pools are listed in their order of finish.  Here’s a Fangraphs.com summary of the two Far East pool first rounds.  And here’s the overall bracket for the tournament.

Pool A: Cuba, Japan, China, Brazil.

No real surprises here: the Brazilian team was expected to finish dead last while international powerhouse Cuba and two-time defending champion Japan advanced relatively easily.   Cuba continues its stellar international record with a head-to-head win against Japan to win the group (and as discussed here previously, could be a juggernaut if the defected Cubans could participate as well).  The bigger surprise here was China beating out Brazil for the automatic spot in the 2017 classic.

Pool B: Chinese Taipei, Netherlands, South Korea, Australia

A rather big upset here: South Korea finished 3rd and 2nd in the first two WBC tournaments, but fell behind the Netherlands on Run Differential after all three teams finished pool play 2-1.  Some have complained about the seedings; clearly by the results of the first two WBC events putting South Korea, Cuba and Japan in the same bracket seems unfair.  The Netherlands is filled with players from baseball-playing Dutch colonies such as the Netherlands Antilles, Curacao and Aruba, though it also has a number of players from the Dutch professional league Honkbal Hoofdklasse; either way it was not expected to advance against a traditionally strong Korean team playing so close to home.  Former Nat Chien-Ming Wang pitched well for Taiwan, bolstering his attempts to make a comeback after several disappointing seasons with Washington.  Our own Roger Bernadina started and played well for the Netherlands as they played their way into the 2nd round.

Pool C: Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Spain

There was no surprise who came in dead last (Spain), but I for one was shocked that a stacked Venezuelan lineup couldn’t come out on top of the Puerto Rican team.  Meanwhile the starting lineup for the D.R. looked closer to a MLB all-star lineup, and their dominance showed.  They’ve under-achieved in every tournament thus far and I look for the D.R. to go far in this tournament.  It was nice to see former Nats farm hand and prospect-watching favorite Christopher Manno pitching for Spain, even if he didn’t fare that well.

Pool D: USA, Italy, Canada, Mexico

For a while on Sunday, it looked like the USA was closer to finishing dead last (and having to qualify for the next tournament) than winning it, but that’s the surprises involved in pool play.  After getting completely out-played by Mexico in the opener, the USA squeaked by Italy on the strength of 4 scoreless, nearly flawless innings from Ross Detwiler before turning it on late to beat Canada.  Meanwhile, the “Italian” team (I put that in quotes since i’d challenge someone to find more than a handful of the Italian team that actually speaks the language) surprises everyone by finishing second.  Meanwhile, Mexico finishes dead last behind a surprisingly good Canadian team (whose 3-4-5 hitters batted something like .450 for the tournament) and faces qualification for the next tournament.  An interesting pool all around, which could have looked very differently with just a few runs here or there.

Brackets for the Semi final rounds (some of which have already started as of the time of this writing):

2nd Round Pool 1: Netherlands v Cuba, Japan v Chinese Taipei

2nd Round Pool 2: Italy v Dominican Republic, USA v Puerto Rico

Pool 1’s favorites have to be Japan and Cuba, while Pool 2’s favorites have to be USA and the Dominican Republic.  But, the Netherlands and Italy have played far above their supposed skill level thus far and we could be in for more shocks.

Yes, I’d like to see more DHs like David Ortiz in the league. Photo wiki/flickr user Toasterb

Every once in a while, during a period of time where there’s a relative dearth of topics I’d like to blog about, I scroll through dozens of draft posts and starter topics I’ve got saved and find one worth expanding on.  And sometimes one of these random drafts written months or years ago suddenly becomes topical because two hard-ass old-school managers decide to one-up each other in a meaningless spring training game.  Further, seeing this random post on Beyond the Box Score, referring to a Joel Sherman article in the NY Post on the topic spurred me into action to dust off this post and put it up for your perusal and criticism.

Summary: Despite mostly considering myself to be a baseball purist, I support going to using full-time Designated Hitter in both leagues.  Here’s a few reasons why:

1. Standardize rules between the leagues.  It is rather ridiculous that in 2013 half of a major US professional sport plays by such vastly different rules than the other half.  It would be as if the NFC in football was forced to attempt 2-point conversions after every touchdown while the AFC forced the use of a point-after attempt instead.

Here’s another interesting observation; i’m pretty sure that the National League is the ONLY baseball league in the country that requires its pitchers to hit.  The DH is in use in the minors, in college ball, in HS and AAU ball, and even in lower-level youth leagues (not that anyone would actually use it down that low, when your pitcher is usually your best hitter).

2. Improve the fan experience. As has been more eloquently stated elsewhere, fans would rather see a power hitter batting in the middle of the order than see a feeble .180-hitting starting pitcher batting 9th flail at a 95mph fastball for the 3rd out of each inning.  Scoring would rise, and more offense means more excitement for the fans.  Forcing pitchers to bat (and, more often than not, bunt) forces managers into a small ball mentality that is counter to most advanced metrics that advocate never trading an out for a base.

3. Let NL fans see more AL Stars in Interleague play.  Related to #2; right now in interleague games AL DH’s mostly have to sit, or if they do play another starter has to sit.  As an NL home city fan when the Red Sox come to town I don’t want to see Jon Lester hit; I want to see David Ortiz hit.

4. Artificially limiting NL Starting Pitchers.  Lack of DH in the NL means that managers are forced to remove starters too early, too often, in order to continue rallies in the middle innings.  I’ve even seen people advocate starters getting yanked in the 2nd or 3rd innings of games in certain situations.  I’d rather see my starter go as long as he can instead of having the one-out matchup styles of some bullpen managers start in the 5th inning of an (inevitably) 4 hour game.

5. More hitters get longer careers as their defensive skills wane.  Right now there’s a number of halfway decent hitters who are older and thus defensive liabilities who have basically been forced out of baseball that could fit in nicely with one of the 15 NL teams that don’t use a DH.  If you don’t think the player’s union wouldn’t mind 15 additional jobs for career-twilight veterans (who are mostly at the upper ends of the pay scales), you’re crazy.  This is essentially why I think the players union would support a universal DH.

6. Double switches juggled lineup spots is overrated.  Purists love it of course, but purists also want baseball to still have the pennant winners immediately advance to the World Series and cringe at divisional play, wild cards and the expanding post-season.  But expanding and increasing popularity of the sport means reaching out and appealing to the masses, and the masses interests are the same as purists.  One of the big reasons purists maintain support for the DH is because of the notion that these double switches and earlier pitcher man management makes for a better managed game and forces NL managers to be “better.”  That’s great and all … but I buy tickets to watch the players play, not to watch some overweight aging manager waddle out to the mound in the 5th inning so he can get a lefty-lefty matchup.

7. NL Teams are at a disadvantage in every inter-league game right now, because they build their rosters for the NL style of play while AL teams are afforded a blank line-up spot for a no-defense slugger all season.  AL teams are also allowed to “rest” players and just bat them over the course of the greuling 162-game schedule by virtue of the DH, while NL players get no such luxury, meaning you can make the argument that AL teams have a slight advantage in the World Series against their NL counterparts (not that we actually see this advantage … but in theory it exists).  You can make the counter-argument that AL pitchers are ill-prepared to bat as compared to their NL counter-parts, to which I’ll say that a .180 hitting pitcher is only slightly better than a .120 hitting pitcher.

8. Interleague every day means that the #7 issue is exacerbated.  This is the gist of the Sherman post; now that Houston is in the AL and there’s 15 teams in each league, there’s inter-league games every day.  Which also means that NL teams are even more disadvantaged since they can no longer do roster-maintenance just ahead of known interleague stretches.  Likewise, AL teams now have to have their pitchers take BP all throughout the season.  Its just a bad strategic situation all around.

9. Pitcher Specialization leading to worse hitting Pitchers.  Related to Point #1 (where the MLB NL is the sole league in America that “forces” pitchers to hit), we’re in the midst of an obvious shift in pitcher specialization, both in the majors (bullpen specialized roles) and during development.  More and more, kids are identified as superb pitchers early in their amateur careers (in many cases early in high school) and literally stop hitting.  At age 15-16.  If you’re a grade-A pitching prospect, do you think you want to jeopardize your draft status or your full-ride by screwing around on the base-paths in some meaningless AAU game?  I think not.  So these kids who havn’t worked on their hitting since their sophomore year in HS then get drafted or go to college, play years of Div-1 or minor league ball, maybe make it to the majors at age 24-25 …. and they havn’t faced live pitching regularly in a decade!  Is that what *anyone* really wants?

10. Baseball needs to spur offense: every one knows that the proliferance of upper 90s bullpen arms and the cracking down on PEDs has inevitably led to less offense in the game.  Joe Sheehan had a fun stat that pointed out that fans in 2014 were less likely to see a “ball put in play” than at any point since the dead ball era, thanks to the massive spike in strikeouts in the game.  Adding a DH and eliminating a position that league-wide bats about .122 would help.

Its time.  End the DH.  I was hoping for a resolution in the last CBA, but we have to wait a bit longer.

post-publishing edit: for context here was the 2019 slash lines for Pitchers in baseball: Here’s the link: Major League Total Stats ” 2019 ” Pitchers ” Dashboard. they slashed a collective .128/.160/.162 with a staggering 43.5% strikeout rate and a -18 wRC+. 43% strikeout rate! Why do baseball fans advocate to keep this, at the same time when they’re probably complaining about … how often baseball players strike out right now. By way of comparison, here’s the DH slash line for 2019: .252/.339/.467 for a wRC+ of 110.

Team Cuba looks good so far; imagine them with Cespedes and all their other MLB stars. Photo wiki/flickr hj_west

I just finished re-reading The Duke of Havana, a great book about the back story of Orlando “El Duque” Hernandez, his rise to the top (and subsequent political fall from grace) in Cuban professional baseball, his escape from his home-land, his rise with the 1998 New York Yankees, and the general politics/life of typical Cubans in the post-USSR era.  Despite the crushing effects of the Fidel Castro regime in Cuba over the last 40 years, the island continues to produce MLB-quality baseball players.  Of course, thanks to the lack of diplomatic relations between the two countries, when it comes time for the World Baseball Classic, we can’t see a unified Cuban team.   Cubans who have escaped to play in America can never go back, and (as detailed in the book), often times leave behind wives, children and family who are subsequently pressured politically by Castro’s hacks.

I wondered what could an all-Cuba team really look like, if MLB players and other expatriots were allowed to re-unite with the current set of known Cuban amateur stars?  Using some of the same methods as in my “All Virginia” post, by searching for those born in Cuba along with some well-known Cuban Americans (per the politics link above), here’s a possible WBC roster of maximum strength for Team Cuba:

Manager: Fredi Gonzalez of the Atlanta Braves.  We’d get Cuban hall-of-famer Tony Perez out of semi-retirement (he was coaching at a small college in Georgia recently).

Positional Players:

• C: Yasmani Grandal or J.P. Arencibia
• 1B: Kendrys Morales or Gaby Sanchez
• 2B: Yunel Escobar or Sean Rodriguez
• 3B: Yonder Alonso
• SS: Yuniesky Betancourt or Alexei Ramirez (2006 WBC Team Cuba member)
• LF: Yoenis Cespedes (2009 WBC team member)
• CF: John Jay (parents born in Cuba, emigrated to US before birth)
• RF: Leonys Martin (2009 WBC team member) or Dayan Viciedo

Reserves: Yasiel Puig, Jorge Soler, Alberto Castillo, Jose Iglesias, Juan Miranda, Adeiny Hechavarria, Brayan Pena, Eddy Rodriguez

Best Cuban amateurs (aka, the leading defection candidates): Alfredo Despaigne (just named MVP of round 1 of pool play), Alexei Bell, Yulieski Gourriel,  Jose Abreu (the consensus #1 Cuban amateur prospect right now).

Thoughts: There’s some talent in this lineup; Cuba has developed some power hitters over the past few years but seems to specialize more in middle infielders (most of these reserves are middle infield prospects).  But a potential 3-4-5 of Morales-Cespedes-Alonso is nothing to shake a stick at.  I think this team could score some runs and would be excellent defensively.

Starting Pitchers

• Gio Gonzalez
• Jose Contreras
• Livan Hernandez
• Yunesky Maya (2006 and 2009 WBC team member)
• Orlando “El Duque” Hernandez we’ll get him out of retirement; i’m sure he can still throw)

Relievers

• Aroldis Chapman (2009 WBC team member)
• Francisely Bueno
• Raul Valdez
• Danys Baez (retired in 2011)

Thoughts: So, we’re a little light on pitching, it seems.  We make use of Gonzalez’ first generation in USA status to steal him away from Team USA.  But after him the starting pitching gets light (even if you push Chapman into a starting role as Cincinnati is looking to do in 2013).   Contreras is a career 101 ERA+ guy, Livan may not have a job in 2013 and all nats fans can speak to what Maya brings to the table at this point.  I threw in El Duque despite him probably being close to 50 at this point (B-R lists his birthday in 1965); he was always in great shape and probably could throw a few junk balls up there right now.

Miscellany: Here’s links to Cuba’s 2006 WBC roster, their 2009 roster and their 2013 roster.  And here’s as complete a list of Cuban defectors as I can find on the internet.

Is Abad in line to make this team? Photo Houston 2012 official via espn.com

By and large the entire 25-man roster is mostly set for this team.  Only an injury is likely to change the names of our bench or our rotation.  The biggest spring training competition remains the name of the 7th man out of the bullpen.  And we got some interesting notes this week that may illuminate who that name may be.

Just for review, I’m considering these 6 guys locks to make the team, either due to their contract, their option status or their earning the spot: Soriano, Clippard, Storen, Mattheus, Stammen and Duke.

The leading candidate for the 7th spot has always been Henry Rodriguez: he has no options, the GM loves his arm and when he’s on, he is the embodiment of “unhittable.”  But there’s a slew of possible issues with Rodriguez, not the least of which is the fact that he’s not yet recovered from his off-season surgery.

I had been advocating (partly out of fond memories, partly for self-interest since I know his cousin and think I could swing some free tickets) for Bill Bray to make the team as a 2nd lefty out of the pen and a LOOGY-focused guy.  However, he struggled in his ST appearances and he was sent to minor league camp yesterday (3/3/13).  Davey Johnson was quoted as saying that Bray’s mechanics are still not right, and it seems more likely now that he’ll be working in Syracuse for at least the beginning of the season.

Meanwhile, Christian Garcia has succummed to yet another injury, this one a “partial tear” in his forearm that (so far) won’t be treated surgically.   For a guy who has already had 3 arm surgeries, you have to wonder if he’ll ever be healthy enough to pitch for this team.  For what its worth, apparently the words “partial tear” are the same thing as “strained tendon” in this case, so perhaps it isn’t as bad as it sounds.  In any case, i’m guessing this little setback makes it certain that Garcia is not going to be the 7th guy out of the pen.

Meanwhile, out of nowhere Non-roster/Minor league signing Fernando Abad has looked pretty good so far; in 3 appearances he’s given up just 1 hit and 2 walks against pretty decent competition (B-r rates his opposition as an 8.3, where 10=all major leaguers).  Abad doesn’t have the greatest MLB numbers (5.09 ERA for Houston in 2012), but has looked decent in small samples so far this spring.

We’ll see how things play out from here.