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Dodgers a possibility for Wang?
Posted by: | CommentsThe deadline to tender contracts to arbitration-eligible players is December 12, just a few weeks away. The Yankees will have decisions to make on a few players, including Melky Cabrera, Brian Bruney, Chad Gaudin, and Sergio Mitre. Chances are the Yankees will offer arbitration to all four, though I still think there’s a chance they’ll non-tender Bruney. The biggest decision they face, though, is on Chien-Ming Wang. The Taiwanese righty might have already thrown his last pitch in pinstripes.
We learn this morning, via MLBTR, that Wang would consider pitching for the Dodgers. Really, he’ll probably consider pitching for all 30 teams, but the Dodgers have a comfort factor. Wang, always described as shy, would have not only two familiar coaches in Joe Torre and Larry Bowa (Don Mattingly, too), but he’d also have former schoolmate Hong-Chih Kuo. In picking his 2010 team, that will probably play a part for Wang.
Just because there’s a connection, of course, doesn’t mean that Wang is ready to don Dodger blue. If the Yankees do non-tender him, and the prevailing opinion in the NYC media is that they will, Wang and his agent Alan Nero will seek the best possible deal. Familiarity might help in that regard, making the Dodgers a strong possibility. And there’s no ruling out Wang re-signing with New York.
I’ve read opinions that the Yankees have mistreated Wang, though I don’t exactly buy that. They didn’t offer him a long-term deal, instead taking him to arbitration over $600,000 in 2008. It was a wise move by the Yankees. Wang, as we know, had two shoulder injuries before 2008, and the Yankees were proceeding with caution. The team and player then acted quickly last off-season, signing a one-year, $5 million deal before Christmas. Wang’s season-ending injury certainly had something to do with that.
It’s hard to see signs of disrespect in that. Not every pitcher gets a long-term deal from his original club. Some teams prefer to take that route, as the Giants did with Matt Cain. Others like to proceed with caution, especially with pitchers who have an injury history. Such has been the Yankees’ dealing with Wang. Now they’ll have another set of negotiations with Wang, presumably over a lesser contract that will bring him back for 2010.
Most of us, I think, would like to see Chien-Ming Wang back in pinstripes next season. We’ve seen him at his best, and if he can return to that level, or something near it, he can fortify the Yankees’ rotation mid-season. The Yankees have many factors to weigh in this decision, including the cost of keeping Wang around, weighed against the risk that he’ll fail. It’s doubtful Wang makes more than $6 million next season in arbitration, and my guess is that if the Yankees do tender him a contract that they’ll work out a one-year deal before the February arbitration hearings.
I think the Yankees have little to lose by offering Wang arbitration. That ensures that if he does return to form, it will be to the Yankees’ benefit. It’s essentially a $6 million bet on his health, though, and without his medicals in hand it’s impossible to make that decision. The Yankees have seen them, or else will see them. I trust they’ll make the right call.
What to expect from Jorge Posada in 2010
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Catchers tend not to age well. Baseball players typically start to decline physically in their early- to mid-thirties, but for catchers, who spend seven months a year squatting, it can come on earlier and more dramatically. For the past few years, Jorge Posada has defied the typical aging patterns of a catcher. He’s had two of his four best seasons, in terms of OPS, in the past three years, including his best overall two years ago, at age 35. That earned him a four-year, $52.4 million contract in the winter of 2007.
That year in the middle, though, was not good. He spent most of the year on the disabled list with shoulder issues which led to season ending surgery. When he was on the field he wasn’t terrible, hitting .268/.364/.411 in 195 plate appearances, but that’s not the production we’re used to seeing from Posada. At least not over the two years before that. It certainly left his 2009 status up in the air. Reports were that his shoulder would be ready for Spring Training, but there were no guarantees that it would hold up, or that Posada would return to his old form.
Other than a minor injury in May, Posada had a great 2009. His OPS, as mentioned, was the fourth highest of his career. This had a lot to do with power — Jorge’s .522 slugging percentage was well above his carer average of .480. Best of all, his shoulder held up just fine, as he threw out 31 of 80 base stealers, his highest percentage since 2006. But does this recovery signal that Posada will follow it with another good season in 2010?
This brings us back to the part about catchers not aging well. Posada will 39 next August (though it will be his age-38 season). Not many catchers last that long, and it’s not a great bet that Jorge somehow replicates Carlton Fisk’s late-career run. There’s certainly concern that Posada will drop off, perhaps significantly, in 2010. What some of us want to know is, just how likely is a decline from Jorge?
In The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2010, Bill James writes about the topic of player performance from year. He wants to know how likely a player is to have a better year than his previous one. This is based on factors like the player’s OPS in the past year vs. his career OPS, his age, batting average on balls in play, and other factors. He explains it all in the article. You can download the PDF here, or just check it out in the embed below.
Not only does James think Posada has a poor change of repeating his 2009 numbers, but he thinks that Posada is the least likely player in the league to replicate his 2009. I’m not here to debate the merits of James’s methodology. I happen to think, though, that Jorge isn’t very likely at all to perform nearly as well as 2009. I don’t base my concern on a rigorous system like Mr. James’s, though his is an interesting study. I do, however, find concern in many of the areas James studies.
First, age is certainly a concern. Jorge is old for an effective baseball player, and very old for a catcher. Age catches up to different players in different ways and at different times. Jorge didn’t move behind the plate until he was already in the minors, so that gives him some advantage, but even still he’s been catching for many, many years now. Maybe the late move helped him stave off the typical catcher aging curve, but that won’t last forever. Next year might not be the year, but eventually it will be. I’m certainly concerned that next year will be it.
Second, much of Jorge’s 2009 production was based on power. His Iso was .238, the highest mark of his career (he was, though, at .237 in 2003), and his 17.9 percent home run to fly ball percentage was his highest in six seasons. Power is a skill that tends to decline with age. It’s highly unlikely that Posada will match his 2009 Iso mark in 2010, because he’s only been that high once before in his career — and also, in case it’s not clear, he’s 38 years old and will turn 39 during next season.
Third, Jorge’s walk to strikeout ratio plummeted in 2009. He walked 48 times to 101 strikeouts, which was his worst ratio since 2001. As James notes, some players have good years while striking out a lot and not walking much, but they tend to decline in subsequent years. Posada also experienced a high BABIP in 2009, .335, which was not quite on the level of his .389 mark in 2007, but still well above any of his seasons since 2002. This is a further concern for Posada, again, because of his age.
No one wants to see Jorge Posada’s production decline. He’s been an important part of the Yankees for over a decade, and to lose his bat at the catcher’s position would be a tough blow for the lineup. I really hope that Jorge has another year in him that he can fight off the normal aging curve for a catcher. Given his age and parts of his performance in 2009, however, I’m not that confident. Baseball’s a funny game, though. Maybe Jorge goes on and OPSs .829 at age 42 like Fisk. It’s more likely, though, that he declines before that. I’m just a little concerned that it will start next year.
The cited Bill James article comes from The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2010, which you can buy here. Yeah, it’s a little cheaper on Amazon, but Amazon screws authors. Might as well support the guys who created it.
Photo credit: Jim McIsaac/Getty Images
Open Thread: Just a few more hours…
Posted by: | Comments…until nothing happens. Yes, free agents are free to sign with other teams at midnight EST, but that means little at this point. Maybe we’ll start to see rumors with dollar amounts attached to them, but that’s about it. Otherwise, we’ll continue to play the free agent waiting game.
The main reason we don’t see much activity early on is that teams have yet to make arbitration decisions on their players. That happens on December 1, so there’s still some time left. We sometimes see cases of teams signing a Type A free agent before his former team gets a chance to offer him arbitration, but those cases are rare. Most of the time a signing team wants to see what the former team will do.
The only cases in which you’ll see a Type A player sign before the arbitration deadline is if his former team is sure to make the offer. Torii Hunter, for instance, signed with the Angels before the Twins offered him arbitration, but the offer was a given. There was no way that the Twins weren’t offering Hunter arbitration, so the Angels used that to their advantage and signed Hunter quickly.
Will a team make a similar move this off-season? I’m not so sure. But, with the arbitration deadline still looming, teams will be more reluctant to sign a free agent. Chances are we won’t see a major move until then. In other words, the running of the free agents at midnight is just like pitchers and catchers reporting. We look forward to it, but it really doesn’t mean anything.
This is your open thread for the evening. The Devils play at 8. For the rest of us there’s football, Miami at Carolina. But, more importantly, you can now get all of our posts via Twitter. Just follow @RABFeed. That’s just the RSS feed. The @RiverAveBlues feed will remain the same.
There is no such thing as a stats vs. scouting debate
Posted by: | CommentsI did not make up that headline. I believe it, but other people have said it before me. Stats can tell you some things, scouting a player can tell you others. Some people take either extreme, but I think that for the most part we understand that both are necessary components of the game. Keith Law demonstrated this today. He revealed his Cy Young ballot and presented his rationale for picking Tim Lincecum.
Lincecum led the NL in FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching) and WAR (Wins Above Replacement), both of which normalize a pitcher’s stats to account for the help he received from his defense, and he led both categories by wide margins. He also led the NL in VORP, which adjusts for park but not for defense, by a narrow margin.
Law was trained as a scout during his tenure in Toronto, and continues to act in that capacity today for Scouts, Inc./ESPN. Yet he uses advanced metrics in justifying his ballot. He understands the value of both, because he’s familiar with the benefits of both. I wish there were more writers like that.
Selig talks about a shortened playoff schedule
Posted by: | CommentsAfter 162 games over 180 days during the regular season, baseball slows down for the playoffs. Any given team can play a maximum 19 games in the postseason, which usually last 30 days (plus the days off following the regular season conclusion). That’s quite a change for players and fans, who are used to the every day nature of baseball. Couldn’t baseball do something to shorten the postseason schedule so that they’d get days off at least somewhat comparable to the regular season?
There are a few obstacles in the way of such a playoff layout. Travel days is an obvious one. It’s unfair to make a team, or both teams, travel from the West Coast after a game and play the next day. In fact, during the regular season a team cannot travel from the West Coast to the East Coast without a day off. So preserving some level of off-days when changing venues makes sense, because you never know where the travel will take you.
Another obstacle is the uncertainty of how long a series lasts. Three of four teams swept their opponents in the first round this year, and the other series went only four games. This meant many extra days off for these teams. First because of the unplayed games, but also because of the travel days between them — and in a 2-2-1 system, that’s two game days and a travel day for the sweeping teams, and one game day and a travel day for the four-game team.
Yet the biggest obstacle of all could be the television networks. They pay a lot of money to acquire broadcast rights for the playoffs, and they therefore want to maximize their advertising revenues. This necessarily means more days off. TBS and FOX benefit when they’re the only station with a game. This is why one LCS starts a day before the other, and also why there’s a random day off between Games 4 and 5. It puts each station in an exclusive position, meaning they’ll be able to grab a greater portion of the total audience attention.
On top of the want for extra days off, the networks also request to start the playoffs on a Wednesday. It helps them to get more games in during peak viewership hours. If the playoffs started on a Saturday, the lowest-rated night of the week, they would probably have fewer people watching, and therefore lower advertising revenue.
Commissioner Bud Selig recently addressed this issue, saying that he favors a shorter playoff schedule. In fact, citing an argument from Angels manager Mike Scioscia, Selig pretty firmly says that we can expect a tightened playoff layout.
“We’re going to change it,” Selig said. “I don’t disagree with Mike Scioscia. I think he was right, so we’re going to try and tighten that up.”
He goes on to cite some of the complications listed above, but concedes that some of the off-days — I’m assuming those requested by the networks — are unnecessary. That sounds like a definitive statement from Selig, though I’m not quite as optimistic that much will change next postseason.
I’d like to see some more flexibility in the scheduling, if possible. As we saw with the one-game playoff this season, sometimes there are issues of venue availability. The Twins and Tigers were supposed to face off the Monday after the season ended, but weren’t able to because the Vikings had a Monday night game scheduled for then. Baseball had to wait another day. There won’t be a football-baseball overlap for them this season, but there are still a few teams that play in dual-purpose arenas. And in those cases, flexible scheduling can be an issue.
Will Bud stand by his word on this one? I hope so. The long playoff layout afforded the Yankees an advantage this postseason, but I’d make the trade-off. Players go through a long, grueling regular season with just 18 off-days in six months. I’d like to see a more accurate emulation of that for the playoffs.
Addendum by Ben: Just to hit on a point, the lengthened playoff schedule, as Shysterball so aptly reminds us, was Selig’s doing in the first place. He’s simply trying to undo another bad decision he made when he kowtowed the interests of TV over the flow of the playoffs. Other than for the sake of TV, there’s no reason the ALCS can’t start two days after the last ALDS wraps up, and there’s no reason why the World Series can’t just start two days after the last LCS game is played. If Selig had the best interests of baseball in mind, he would fix this problem.
Is Johnny Damon really that bad on defense?
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Johnny Damon went through a transition in 2007. He left Spring Training pondering retirement. While nothing came of that, he faced many problems early in the season. By the end of April he was hitting .229/.349/.329, a far cry from his impressive pinstriped debut a year earlier. He then battled calf issues in May, eventually missing a few games at the end of the month, but ultimately missing the disabled list. By June, Joe Torre had seen enough. He installed Melky Cabrera as the everyday center fielder, relegating Damon mostly to designated hitter duties — made easier because of Jason Giambi’s foot injury. Damon played just 10 games in center field from June through September.
After spending most of June and July as a one-way player, Damon started seeing more time in left field later in the season. This made sense. Johnny was, by reputation, a good defender in center field. Having to cover less ground in left field, Damon could be a defensive asset to the Yankees. According to UZR, he was. In 271 innings over the season’s final two months, Damon accumulated a 7.5 UZR. That stood in contrast to his numbers in center field, -7.6 in 377 innings in 2007. It also brought to light Damon’s UZR deficiency in center field — he’d been in the negatives since 2003.
When Joe Girardi took over in 2008, it was clear Damon would play left field every day. His bat played well enough for left field, and his range at that position would give the Yankees a boost on defense. Sure enough, Damon posted another great defensive season according to UZR, posting a 6.7 mark (11.6 per 150) in 659.1 innings in left field. Because the team struggled to score runs, and because they demoted Melky Cabrera in August, Damon slid over to center for 285 innings, and again posted a negative UZR figure, -7.8. Damon clearly wasn’t a good center field option for 2009, but it stood to reason that he’d once again be an asset in left.
The plan didn’t work out how the Yankees expected. From the start Damon looked shaky in left field. That he dropped a few balls early in the season, including in a June game against the Red Sox, did him no favors with the fans. Soon after the drop against the Sox Damon revealed he was having eye trouble, a “fluttering” issue that doctors connected to his caffeine intake. Still, fans tend to remember players who drop fly balls. No one forgot Damon’s infractions.
Not only was there visual evidence of Johnny’s deficiencies in left field, but the go-to defensive stat, Ultimate Zone Rating, ranked Damon among the worst left fielders in the game. After posting a 11.6 UZR/150 in 2008, Damon fell into the negatives in 2009. He ended with a -12.1 per 150 mark in 2009, which seems to confirm the eyeball test. Damon just wasn’t that good in the field in 2009, and at age 36 it’s difficult to project an improvement for 2010.
Still, it’s possible that Damon wasn’t as bad in the field as fans and UZR say. A fan’s opinion is often skewed by a few standout memories, and nothing stood out about Damon’s defense more than his dropped balls and “happy feet” as he got under fly balls. That will leave a negative impression for sure. And while it might be the best known measure of defense — at least of those publicly available — UZR has its shortcomings as well. For instance, it rated Juan Rivera, Carlos Lee, and Raul Ibanez in the positives this season. Those aren’t three players generally considerd good defenders.
I haven’t seen many scouts comment on Johnny Damon’s defense, and even so I’m not inclined to believe an anonymous scout quoted for an article. We’ve seen that too many times, and it often seems like the opinion offered is not of a consensus, but rather just the quote that best fit the writer’s article. The closest thing I’ve seen is Tangotiger’s Fan Scouting Report. The idea is to get a good feel for a player’s defense through a huge sampling of fans. Yet that system seems flawed, though that could just be from underexposure. Damon ranked fairly low on the left field scale, ahead of only the players with terrible defensive reputations: Ibanez, Alfonso Soriano, Manny Ramires, and Delmon Young, etc.
There is one more defensive statistic to consider, and it’s a bit more kind to Damon than UZR. Revised Zone Rating, developed by John Dewan. Like all defensive stats it has its ups and downs, but Dewan did some hard work concocting this metric. There are two aspects to consider. First is the straight RZR, or how well a fielder did on balls hit into his zone. Damon’s mark in 2009 was .906. For context, Carl Crawford, tops in UZR, was at .914. The top left fielder in the league was David DeJesus, at .927. Of course, criticism will flow because Ryan Braun, considered a poor defender by scouts and by UZR, ranked second at .919. Damon ranked fourth in the majors.
The other aspect of RZR is OOZ, plays made out of the player’s zone. This is an important aspect. Players might be able to make all the plays within his zone, but it takes a very good fielder to make plays on balls outside his zone. Crawford is king in this stat, making 105 plays outside his territory. DeJesus follows, and Braun ranks fourth. Again, this will open the number to criticism. In any case, Damon ranks 11th in this stat, making 46 plays out of his zone. The only players below him with 1,000 or more innings in left field are Garret Anderson, Raul Ibanez, and Chris Coghlan.
It appears that any way we look at it, Johnny Damon was not a good fielder in 2009. This came as a surprise during the season, since Damon was so good in left field just a year before. We know, however, that certain skills decline with age, and by most measures Damon’s fielding range dropped off a cliff. This is no guarantee that he’ll continue to patrol the outfield poorly in 2010, but given his age it’s not wise to predict a turnaround.
The best we can hope for, I think, is that some component of UZR unfairly judged Damon, and that fan sentiment towards his defense was skewed by a few egregious plays early in the season. RZR didn’t think that poorly of Damon in 2009, and I thought that while his range wasn’t quite what I remembered it, it wasn’t as bad as the general perception. Damon is no longer a superior defensive outfielder, but I think that given an opportunity to start 75, 80 percent of games, he can patrol his position serviceably in 2010.
Photo credit: Associated Press
Heyman: Yankees ‘have a real reason to believe’ they can land Halladay
Posted by: | CommentsOver the past three winters we’ve seen big name starting pitchers on the trade block. The Twins made clear their intentions to trade Johan Santana in the winter of 2007-2008. Last year, Jake Peavy dominated headlines for months, as the Padres fruitlessly dangled him in November. This year it’s Roy Halladay. Unsurprisingly, the Yankees have been connected to each player. They passed on both Santana and Peavy, but could it be different this year? SI’s Jon Heyman seems to think so.
What has changed between July, when the Yankees didn’t make a serious run at the available Halladay, and now? The Blue Jays’ general manager situation. They’ve since fired J.P. Ricciardi and have replaced him with Alex Anthopoulos. Learning from his predecessor’s mistakes, Anthopoulos has a different stance on Halladay than Ricciardi. The latter was hesitant to trade Halladay within the division, and also would not grant a trade partner a window to negotiate an extension. As we learned this morning, a Anthopoulos could allow an extension window. In his column this morning, Heyman notes that Anthopoulos will be more willing to deal within the AL East. Says the Jays’ GM:
“This isn’t the NBA where you’re talking about one of five guys on the floor at all times … If you have two trades that are identical, and one is in the division and one is outside, then it’s easy to go outside the division. However, if the trade is better inside the division, I think you have to take a look at it. We have to do what’s best for our organization.”
Another factor that has changed is Halladay’s price tag. As Heyman notes, the Red Sox made a large offer for Halladay in July, consisting of Clay Buchholz, Justin Masterson, Michael Bowden, and Nick Hagadone. From the Yankees, Heyman reminds us that the Blue Jays wanted a package centering around both Joba Chamberlain and Phil Hughes. The Blue Jays won’t get anything close to that this winter. They still should trade Halladay, but will have to accept a lesser package of prospects. That will make him more attractive to both the Yankees and the Red Sox.
Still, I’m not sure the Yankees will be serious players in this sweepstakes. They have their top two pitchers locked up for four and six more years, and they also have a number of promising young arms to complement them. Adding Halladay would be a good move for any team, but considering the price they’d have to pay, they might opt to stick with their guys and wait to see if Halladay reaches free agency next winter. I say this because even though Anthopoulos will deal more openly than Ricciardi, the Yankees have shown that they’re not keen on paying twice for a player.
Anthopoulos’s willingness to deal within the division will clearly open an avenue for the Yanks. All things equal he’d deal Halladay elsewhere, but if the Yankees have the superior offer he’s not going to spurn them. That means, however, that the Yankees would have to top any offer from another team, and the other team in question probably needs Halladay more than the Yankees. Unless the market is truly limited to just the Yankees, Mets, and Red Sox (which I doubt), it stands to reason that another team would be willing to offer more for a player they need, and who would be a luxury for the Yankees.
The negotiation window also makes Halladay more attractive, though I’m not sure it’s a tipping point for the Yankees. Heyman talked to a GM who thought that Halladay could get a “Santana or Sabathia deal.” Halladay will be 33 early in the 2010 season, so I’m not sure any team will be willing to offer him a six-year extension, especially if it comes at $23 million per season. Maybe the Yankees would be willing to offer a four-year, $92 million extension (so they’d have him for five years), but again, that would mean paying a bounty in prospects and then doling out $23 million per season. That just doesn’t seem to fit the team’s M.O.
No one can rule out the Yankees acquiring Roy Halladay. He’s clearly available, and the Yankees have already been connected to him. Given the team’s past behavior, though, I doubt they get too far in negotiations with the Blue Jays. They seem more apt to make a deal for John Lackey, who will just cost money, or to take a chance on a high upside player like Ben Sheets. That’s the way Brian Cashman has operated, and unless something drastic changes in the Halladay situation, I think he’ll pitch 2010 elsewhere.
Don’t expect Ben Sheets to be a bargain
Posted by: | CommentsEvery year there are a few free agents who were once good, but who have succumbed to injury. They’re a baseball fan’s dream. We imagine the best of all possible worlds, an incentive laden contract that protects against loss and maximizes reward. If only the front office were smart enough to understand that, they’d have a great pitcher. Alas, only one team gets the player, and it’s usually not our favorite one.
This year’s free agent class features three of these pitchers. Erik Bedard, Rich Harden, and Ben Sheets should all be fine for Opening Day 2010, but each had trouble staying healthy in 2009. At their best they’re all very good pitchers, but because of the health questions they probably won’t cash in this off-season. That is, unless there’s a reason to believe that the injury concern isn’t too great.
Ben Sheets is a familiar name to Yankees fans. He was one of the top free agent pitchers last year, and therefore was on the Yankees radar. Before he revealed the severity of his elbow injury, Sheets was considered an alternative to A.J. Burnett — and he might even have been the better choice. After surgery to repair a torn flexor tendon in his right elbow, Sheets played the waiting game, but ultimately did not pitch in 2009.
This could be a good thing, says Keith Law.
The year off may do him wonders, as he’s had a lot of non-arm injuries that have limited his workload for the past few years, and he was never terrible when pitching at less than 100 percent. So as this type of pitcher goes, he’s a pretty good value; not much downside with the upside of a No. 2 starter who might give you 160-180 innings.
In comparing Sheets to Burnett last off-season, Mike listed Sheets’s injury history. Law is right that Sheets has suffered many non-arm injuries, including a viral and ear infection in 2005, a torn lat in the same year, and a sprained middle finger in 2007. His most serious arm injury was a right shoulder strain in 2006, which kept him on the DL barely more than the minimum, but which also came up a month later, causing him to miss more than two months.
The latest injury is of concern, of course, raises concern because it was an arm injury. A torn flexor tendon isn’t considered as serious as a torn ligament, but it’s still an arm injury. Some teams just can’t afford to take that risk, even for a pitcher like Sheets. That will depress his market value a bit, but I’m not sure he’ll be a true bargain. There are plenty of teams that could use a pitcher like him, and I think it might mean a higher base salary and fewer incentives.
Even if other teams aren’t offering a high base, the Yankees might have to. As Tyler Kepner notes, the price on Sheets “would probably be low enough that the Yankees could afford to outbid other teams.” That’s the way things usually work with the Yankees. They have money and everyone knows it. So when the Yankees want a player that other teams want, they sometimes have to pay a premium. It’s one reason why the Yankees payroll is so high, but that’s a topic for another day.
Ben Sheets would be a great addition to any team. His injury history, and especially his latest one, make him a bigger risk than others, but his upside is perhaps the best on the free agent market. The Yankees liked Sheets when they met with him last off-season, and could certainly pursue him again this year. He’d be a gamble, and the Yankees might have to pay a premium for him, but if it works out the 2010 staff will be greatly strengthened.
Open Thread: Unbiased, you say?
Posted by: | CommentsIn theory, reporters are supposed to be our objective lens. They’re supposed to cast aside fan biases and tell us what happened. Yet as we enter awards season it becomes clear that reporters cannot hide their biases. No one can, really. We are human, after all, and part of our humanity is that we all see the world differently. Still, for a group that touts objectivity, I’d like to see them at least feign it when voting on awards.
This is not an indictment of all reporters. Some of them have an excellent sense of the game and can put their own teams aside when voting on awards. As has become clear over the past few years, though, some just can’t help but vote for the hometown team — or, in a case last year, against the rival player. It usually doesn’t have a huge effect on the outcome, but it does speak to a biased viewpoint.
In 2007, Alex Rodriguez won the MVP in a near unanimous decision. His 54 home runs and 156 RBI led the league by wide margins, and since those are the numbers writers tend to focus on the most, it’s no surprise that he got all but two first place MVP votes. The problem wasn’t that two writers voted for Magglio Ordonez over Rodriguez — Magglio had a great season, leading the league with a .363 batting average. No, the problem was that both writers were from Detroit, and that their reasons reek of bias.
Said Jim Hawkins of the Oakland Press in Pontiac, Michigan: “I saw Magglio play every day. What I saw was a player having an MVP year. I have no quarrel with anyone who voted for A-Rod. He also had an MVP year. But with the injuries the Tigers had and the effort and performance I saw from Magglio, there’s no question he had an MVP year.”
Said Tom Gage of the Detroit News: “I went with what I saw. So many times, you have to vote off the stat sheet. I fully expected A Rod to win. He had a great year. But I saw an MVP year. There were stats to back up the impression that I came away with from the regular season.”
So they voted for Magglio because that’s who they saw during the season. That’s about as biased as it gets. They could have cited Magglio’s superior batting average, on base percentage, and doubles, but instead focused on their bias — which they are not supposed to have, being “objective” reporters.
Last year, Mike ranted about Tom Haudricourt’s ballot. Haudricourt covers the Brewers, and that bias seemed to have shown on his MVP ballot. He voted Albert Pujols, clearly the NL MVP last year, seventh. Seventh place. It wouldn’t have been so bad if Haudricourt hadn’t placed three Brewers on his ballot, and also three first basemen ahead of Pujols. It looks like Haudricourt voted on his NL Central bias.
This year brings us back to Detoit, where Steve Kornacki used his Cy Young vote on Justin Verlander. Verlander had a good season for sure, but he wasn’t at the level of Zack Greinke and Felix Hernandez. Yet Kornacki voted for Verlander anyway, with the following justification:
Verlander received my first-place vote because nobody was tougher on the mound with the season on the line for his team.
Verlander threw at least 120 pitches in six of his last eight outings and won his last three starts, forcing a one-game playoff against the Minnesota Twins with his final victory.
He was an inspirational ‘horse,’ using Tigers manager Jim Leyland’s term for him, on a fading team.
This pretty clearly falls victim to the base rate fallacy. It also looks like a case of confirmation bias. The decision looks even worse because Verlander pitches in the same division as Greinke, so even if Kornacki wanted to discount Greinke’s accomplishments because of a weak division, he couldn’t honestly vote for Verlander instead.
All that said, these are subjective awards, and we should expect the voters’ biases to play a role. My problem is with the facade of objectiveness. Reporters are not some select class who can set aside their biases and deliver down the middle news. They’re just as subject to cognitive biases as you and me. That might not be as clear during the regular season, but as we enter awards season, their biases come out front and center. I just wish they’d admit to them more, rather than continuing to feign objectivity.
If you don’t feel like talking about how reporters vote for awards, you’re in luck. This is your open thread for the evening. Have at it.
Coaching staff remains unsettled for 2010
Posted by: | CommentsJohnny Damon, Andy Pettitte, and Hideki Matsui have dominated headlines over the past two weeks, but they’re not the only Yankee free agents. The Yankees face decisions on most of their 2009 coaching staff, and according to Brian Cashman, the team is “nowhere” in those talks. Manager Joe Girardi and hitting coach Kevin Long are under contract for 2010, but the contracts of all other coaches have expired.
Cashman did add that the team “would love to have all of them back under the proper circumstances,” which likely mean one-year contracts with a salaries similar their 2009 figures. The coaches include pitching coach Dave Eiland, bench coach Tony Pena, third base coach Rob Thomson, first base coach Mick Kelleher, and bullpen coach Mike Harkey.
