Archive for Whimsy
An animated take on Hank’s comments
Posted by: | CommentsVia the good folks from Taiwan’s Next Media Animation studio comes the ultimate take on the Hank Steinbrenner/Derek Jeter spat. It includes a great shot of Jeter physically constructing his house, a distracted Derek in the field and Hank Steinbrenner’s literal back-pedaling. There’s nothing left to say; just press play.
Buying out A-Rod
Posted by: | CommentsLate last week, word spread that the Giants would “consider” buying Barry Zito out of the final three years and $64.5M left on his contract. It all turned out to be nothing but speculation, and the team has repeatedly denied the report. It doesn’t make a lick of sense for them either; Zito’s overpaid but not useless. Guys that you can pencil in for at least 180 IP with a FIP in the mid-4.00′s have value, especially when your rotation is a bunch of 20-somethings coming off career high workloads following a World Series run. Anyway, hearing that stuff made me think about the Yankees’ own albatross contract, the one belonging to Alex Rodriguez.
My bank is that-a-way. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
As many of you may know, I’m also a pretty big hockey fan, and unlike MLB, the NHL has a system in place that allows a team to buy out a player’s contract. It’s complicated and I won’t bore you with the gory details, but the general idea is that the player gets two-thirds of the money spread out over twice the years. There’s salary cap ramifications and all that, plus the actual year-to-year distribution of the cash is a little tricky, but the general idea is two-thirds the money, twice the years. If you want to read more about the process, check out the Understanding The Cap page at Blue Seat Blogs.
I wanted to have a little fun, so I applied the NHL buyout rules to the remainder of Alex Rodriguez’s contract. We’re a little too late in the game to buy out the 2011 season, so let’s just assume that this would occur next offseason. At that point, Alex will have six years and $143M left on his deal (yikes), so we’re converting it to 12 years and $95.3M. Here’s the breakdown of the annual payouts and savings, so make sure you click the graph for a larger view…
If the Yankees were to buy out Alex as per the NHL rules in my completely hypothetical situation, it would clearly be a trade of long-term pain for short-term gain. The team would save upwards of $20M in both 2012 and 2013, plus another $14M in 2014 before single-digit savings in each of the next three seasons. That brings us to when the contract is supposed to expire, but per the terms of the buyout, the Yankees would still have to pay A-Rod close to $8M a year for the next six seasons. That’s chump change for the Yanks, but $8M is still $8M.
So with Alex bought out, what would the Yankees do at the hot corner? I suppose they could always give Brandon Laird a shot, but that’s pretty much it for the in-house candidates. There aren’t many third baseman on the free agent market next offseason, with Bill Hall representing the only option that jumps out as affordable and reasonably productive. The Yankees aren’t going to buy out A-Rod only to sign Aramis Ramirez (another older and declining third baseman) to a big contract, so that rules him out.
The smart move would probably involve sliding Derek Jeter over to third and finding a new shortstop. That would open the door for Jose Reyes or J.J. Hardy, two guys scheduled to hit the open market after the season. The end result would be a younger team, certainly, but probably one lacking a big bat in the middle of the lineup, something A-Rod still provides at his age.
Would I do it? Eh, probably not. I guess it really depends on how Alex looks in 2011. If he has a big rebound year, say .290/.380/.530 with 35 homers or so, then I’d keep him. If he continues his slide and puts up something like .250/.335/.475 with 25 homers, I’d probably buy him out and take the savings. What about you?
MLB Experts on Babe Ruth
Posted by: | CommentsAll your favorite MLB writers and analysts and managers and more talk about the awesomeness of Babe Ruth. Enjoy.
Dissecting the Great City Subway Race
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During old Yankee Stadium's final year, somehow, the B won the subway race 26 times. It's a New York City miracle. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)
The between-innings entertainment at Yankee Stadium has largely run its course these days. Most fans who trek up to the Bronx would like to do unmentionable things to the Zales Fan Marquee guy; the YMCA merits an eyeroll; Cotton Eye Joe has been banished to points of the game when fans aren’t paying attention; and the blooper reel still features Montreal Expos and a Tommy Lasorda clip from the 2001 All Star Game.
By now, I mostly ignore the distractions. A few years ago, my dad decided to try to tune out the noise the PA system throws at fans between innings and just focus instead on what the players are doing. I’ll watch A-Rod take a long pass from Teixeira or check out Jeter throwing BBs from beyond third base as the guy on the mounds get ready. But one aspect of the stadium entertainment grabs my attention: the Great City Subway Race which arrives around the middle of the 4th inning.
Once upon a time, the Great City Subway Race had some charm. This guy with a heavy Noo Yawk accent used to announce the contest between the 4, D and C trains, but this was ages ago, when the C ran where the B does today. The DiamondVision screen used to show actual footage from inside the subway system, and the race kinda sorta resembled the real thing. Today, it’s all just special effects and some guy who sounds like he’s from Indiana.
But that’s not important. What really grinds my gears is the portrayal of the trains and their routes. It’s just wrong.
Supposedly, the BMT trains are at Herald Square and the 4 is starting from Grand Central. (Photo by Amanda Rykoff)
I’m not sure where to begin. What stations are these? The announcer claims its Herald Square on the left and Grand Central on the right, but a quick visual glance proves that neither are what they say they are. Meanwhile, the blue D train just doesn’t make sense. Blue is the trunk line color for the 8th Ave. line, and at no point is the D considered the 8th Ave. line. Meanwhile, why are the B and D on separate tracks at Herald Square? Is the B going to Queens? Who killed the F train?
As the trains depart from their mid-route terminals en route to Yankee Stadium, the announcer gets quite excited. We watch the B and D start to pull out, shift to the East Side to catch the 4 leaving and then…zoom past Times Square to get back to the B and D? The B and D never pass through Times Square, and to go from Grand Central to the 6th Ave. line involves a trek through Bryant Park. The camera is lost.
As the trains head uptown, the announcer likes to say they are “neck and neck” as they motor toward the Bronx. There is but one problem: Remember how the B and the D started out on separate tracks at Herald Square? Well, as the 6th Ave. express departs Rockefeller Center and heads into 7th Ave., it’s a single track. The B or D will have to go first, and if the D goes first, the B train — a painfully slow local that makes seven more stops than the D along Central Park — will never catch up. Even if the B goes first, the D will pass it before the Museum of Natural History. Yet, somehow, the two trains seem to draw even somewhere under the park. Some race, huh?
What are these trains doing aboveground? (Photo by flickr user fastlaine)
As we speed to the finish line, something funny happens. All of the trains are magically aboveground and seemingly at grade! These trains are now literally running through the South Bronx. Who needs parks when we’ve got open subway tracks? That’s neighborhood transformation at its finest.
Finally, someone has to win, and while the B in Brooklyn is my lifeline to law school in the morning, every time the B wins the subway race at Yankee Stadium, I die a little inside. The B makes eight stops that the D skips, and the 4 is faster (or if it’s a weekday and rush hour, slower) than either. What the Yanks need is some realism. Give me a sick passenger, an unavoidable delay and the D train making stops along the A from West 4th St. to Columbus Circle, and I’ll be a much happier camper.
I’d be remiss to end this post without mentioning the people who have heard me complain about this the most. Of course, my parents and sister get an acknowledgement as do Amanda Rykoff, Stefanie, Leonora, Jake, Mark Schwartz, Kiersten, and everyone else on Twitter who obsesses over the subway. Don’t forget: There’s always Second Ave. Sagas for all of your transit. Now back to your regularly scheduled hand-wringing over the Yanks’ rotation.
Priorities and Two-Sport Times
Posted by: | CommentsUp until this year, I have always been a one-sport kind of girl, which is basically because I was not indoctrinated to be a fan of any sport besides baseball. Total brainwashing, I tell you. Anyway, recently I moved in with a pair of rabid hockey fans in the bay area, California. It was the perfect rebound relationship: one crying Yankees fan, left deserted by an early, disappointing departure from the playoffs and surrounded by the orange and black success of the home team. Enter: exciting NHL preseason for a hip team with giant expectations, endless possibilities, and a lot of really good players. I was weak! I was sad! I was left with a desolate, depressing offseason (even though I knew the Yankees would obviously – obviously! – get Cliff Lee), and hockey sweet talked me into being a fan like that guy in the leather jacket and the sweet Mustang at the party you were at last night. I woke up the next day and said to myself, “Hannah, you’re a San Jose Sharks fan now. Read a lot of blogs and learn all their names and find out what the heck the blue line means, and don’t forget to uncover the flaws in all the traditional stats.” (Note: +/- is almost as bad as pitcher W/L.)
It was a good choice. I like hockey. But now it’s time for baseball and I’ve reached a terrible point in my life that I have never had to deal with before: which sport do I watch? On one hand, I have the love of my life playing games which are totally meaningless. I already knew (and it was proven to me yesterday) that the games will vary from boring to an absolute comedy of errors with only the occasional bright spot. It’s nice to take in baseball without having to worry about the actual games, but at the same time, getting into the game is just a little harder when they don’t matter. It’s not that I’m not excited about watching the pitchers and catchers and bench guys fight for their spots. It’s not that I’m not excited to see Jesus Montero and Manny Banuelos become big leaguers or I don’t want to see Derek Jeter rebound. It’s just that, like I wrote yesterday, the games simply do not matter.
On the other hand, the NHL season is barreling towards the playoffs. The trade deadline is tomorrow, and the Western Conference (where the Sharks play) is especially tight. Every game matters. Maybe we’ll pick up another player. Maybe not. Maybe our exceptionally hot (game-wise, not attractiveness-wise) goalie will break under the stress of playing twenty games in a row – that’s a lot. Will our superstars plagued by down years pick it up when we need them? Can we continue to be the amazing San Jose Sharks, or will we return to our pre-All Star Break inconsistency issues? It’s these kind of pressing questions that watching the games would answer. Like baseball, hockey highlights and stat reels don’t ever tell the whole story. What kind of fan would I be if I didn’t watch every minute of nail-biting, second-half hockey?
Football fans have an advantage over us hockey and basketball people – your season is over before baseball even begins, so there’s no stress to worry about now, though your collective problem comes in September when football starts up again. I guess in the end, it’s all a matter of priorities. I’m certain that my hockey-loving household is going to give me absolute piles of crap when I tell them I’ll be turning off extremely important Sharks games to watch meaningless Yankees games. I’m also pretty sure that I’ll miss some important Sharks moment and catch some unimportant (but amazing) Betances pitches and Montero bombs.
I guess it’s all about priorities. I’m sure there are some Yankees fans who put more value in their Knicks, Giants or Rangers, and are paying very little, if any, attention to these beginning games where all we’re doing is swooning over prospects and rolling our eyes as Ryan Howard pulls a Bill Buckner. Likewise, I’m sure there are people who are clapping their hands in glee over NFL preseason while we’re pulling our hair out over the end of regular season baseball. For me – and this should come as no surprise – I’d much rather watch a meaningless baseball game than a meaningful hockey game. All I can hope for is that the Yankees play in one time zone and the Sharks play in the other. That way I can watch both at the same time. And what’s better to a two-team sports fan than to watch both games on the same day?
Easy question: for a baseball person like me, it’s regular season baseball. Sorry, Sharks.
Cubs using the Yanks to sell tickets
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If you’re driving down a highway in the Chicago area, I’m guessing you wouldn’t expect to see Derek Jeter on a billboard. Yet, there he is. A reader of Tremendous Upside Potential caught this, and I’m guessing most fans — Yanks fans, at least — find this more than a bit odd. Sure, the Yanks do play in Chicago this summer, but is Jeter really going to help them sell tickets to the other 78 home games? Apparently this isn’t too uncommon, but it does seem especially odd coming from Chicago and the Cubs. But hey, if it works it works, right?
Via Big League Stew.
The NRI Team
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The staff ace. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome)
One of the many fun little sideshows of Spring Training is the non-roster invitees, or NRI’s. Usually these guys are just trying to hang on for another year, or are prospects getting to strut their stuff, or sometimes they’re guys with a legitimate chance at making the big league team in some capacity. The Yankees have 27 NRI’s in camp this year, and I thought it would be fun to see how those players would do as team in 2011.
I used mostly PECOTA projections to sort everything out, though I had to fill in the gaps with Marcel and CAIRO. No need to be exact, this is just for fun. Once I had the data, I calculated each player’s WAR using Sky Kalkman’s calculator just to get a nice, uniform number for everyone. Unsurprisingly, this team is very bad. How bad? Let’s find out…
Lineup
Clearly, the anchor of the lineup is the same guy will anchor Triple-A Scranton’s lineup to start the year. Montero is projected to lead the team in AVG (.285), OBP (.331), SLG (.471), hits (125), doubles (25), and RBI (66) while ranking second in homers (18), and moving him to first should theoretically keep him healthier and in the lineup. The second best offensive “threat” on the club is Vazquez, who obvious does it with power an not on-base skills. He’ll swat the most homers on the club but also strikeout the most (128 K) while drawing the fewest number of walks by far (just 18). His defensive ratings were so bad that he almost has to be the DH by default.
(AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
Offensive production drops off considerably after those two. The average catcher hit .249 with a .381 SLG last year, so Romine’s right on track there. Problem is that he lags significantly in the OBP department (.287 to .319 avg). Belliard isn’t far off from a league average second baseman (.264/.330/.388), but the production at short, third, and all three outfield spots is basically non-existent. The best of that lot is Parraz, whose .325 OBP and .369 SLG closely matches Chase Headley’s from last year (.327 OBP, .375 SLG). That’s pretty awful for an outfield corner.
If we run that lineup through Dave Pinto’s Lineup Analyzer, we see that this team would score an average of 3.644 runs per game. The best possible lineup (Parraz, Montero, Brewer, Vazquez, Belliard, Romine, Chavez, Krum, Bernier, in that order) would score a little bit more than that, 3.923 runs per game. Just five teams scored fewer than four runs per game last year – Indians (3.99), Orioles (3.78), Nationals (3.77), Astros (3.62), and Mariners (3.17) – so yeah, it’s a terrible offense. Maybe not the worst (thanks Seattle), but it might as well be.
Surprisingly, this regular cast of characters is not terrible defensively, just 11 runs below average over the course of the season. Oh sure, that’s bad, but it’s not that bad. Bernier is the only legit shortstop option on the team, so we’re stuck with him. Krum is the only guy on the club that would steal double-digit bases, but his ten swipes are essentially negated by six caught stealings. For shame.
Rotation
Every team needs a sixth starter at some point, so I included him in here. Unfortunately, we’re still 51 starts short of a full season, so we’re going to have to assume some exactly replacement level guys fill in.
Surprisingly, the rotation isn’t dreadful, merely really bad. Warren projects to be the most valuable of the bunch despite throwing just a hundred innings, and that’s because PECOTA expects tolerable strikeout (6.6 K/9) and walk (3.4 BB/9) rates combined with a stellar 49.5% ground ball rate. Phelps’ strikeout rate is a full whiff behind Warren’s, but his walk and grounder rates are almost identical. Mitchell is the staff workhorse, leading the club in starts, innings, and ground ball rate (52.5%).
The two veterans are unsurprisingly unspectacular. Garcia does it with few whiffs (5.6 K/9), fewer walks (2.7 BB/9), and a meh ground ball rate (43.8%). Colon rises from the dead for a baker’s dozen starts and strikes out 6.27 men per nine innings while walking 3.14 per nine. Banuelos is essentially the swing man, projected to make a 12 starts and five relief appearances. His strikeout rate is highest of the bunch (7.2 K/9) but so is his walk rate (4.9 BB/9).
The end result is a rotation worth just 5.6 wins above a replacement level gang, which would have bested only the Pirates (4.9 WAR) in 2010. I figured this group would be below replacement level, so color me surprised.
Bullpen
The relief corps is the team’s strong suit, and they’ll need it with that rotation. Their combined 3.3 WAR is just a touch worse than the bullpeners the Yankees featured last year (3.6 WAR), and overall they would have ranked 11th in baseball. Carlyle looks to be the relief ace, if you could call him that, rattling off multi-inning appearance after multi-inning appearance with a 7.2 K/9, 3.3 BB/9, and 44.6% grounder rate.
The middle innings will have three regular faces all season. Sisco’s another multi-inning guy, and his 8.1 K/9 is the best on the team, dead sexy for a lefty. Unfortunately, his 5.14 BB/9 is also the highest on the team. Cott’s is another high strikeout (8.1 K/9), high walk (4.6 BB/9) guy, and based on his appearances-to-innings ratio, it seems like he’s more of a lefty specialist. Madrigal allows to team to meet its fat guy quota, joining Carlyle as a serviceable arm from the right side (7.1 K/9, 3.1 BB/9, 43.2% grounders).
The rest of the bunch is basically up-and-down guys. Prior has the best peripherals on the planet (9.00 K/9, 0.00 BB/9), but unfortunately not even the projection systems like his chances of staying on the mound. Luis Ayala (7.14 K/9, 3.1 BB/9) and former outfielder Brian Anderson (6.39 K/9, 3.19 BB/9) do some grunt work in limited action, and Wordekemper is the designated “go get the crap beat out of you for an inning or two” guy (5.82 K/9, 3.44 BB/9). I guess the slack is picked up by some spare replacement level parts.
Bench
The bench is … um … limited, featuring four players, three of whom are catchers. Gustavo Molina (no relation to the other Molinas) is projected to hit .218/.258/.348, Kyle Higashioka just .225/.284/.318. Those two are going to have to learn how to play third base and the corner outfield spots. We don’t have projections for Jose Gil and Bradley Suttle, but I suspect they wouldn’t be fun to look at. No big loss.
Wrapping It Up
So all told, we’re looking -1.1 WAR (lineup) plus 5.6 WAR (rotation) plus 3.3 WAR (bullpen). Let’s be kind and call the bench exactly replacement level. That works out to 7.8 wins better than a club made of career minor league leaguers and the like. A team of 25 replacement level players would be expected to win something like 46-48 games at the big league level, so we’ve got a 54 win team on our hands. Maybe even 56 or 57 with some lucky breaks. That means they’re about as good as the 2010 Pirates, except instead of watching Andrew McCutchen 162 times a year, you get to watch Montero.
‘I wanna be where the fans are’
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With apologies to Bruce Springsteen for the headline, take a look at this map. Not quite an accurate survey of the landscape of baseball fan-dom, CommonCensus has mapped the baseball landscape through online surveys. The result is a rough approximation of where fans of the 30 clubs live. Red Sox fans have clearly taken to voting as they seem to possess a territory in western Connecticut and eastern New York far greater than the club’s reach.
Anyway, kill 15 minutes on the high-res version and start voting here to help reshape the Yanks’ share of the country. For what it’s worth, Montana doesn’t seem to be a hotbed of people, let alone baseball, and for another excellent if inexact map of the baseball landscape, check out the United Countries of Baseball.
Late-night reading: Levine messes with Texas
Posted by: | CommentsIf you’re done arguing about the relative merits of Freddy Garcia on a minor league deal and guaranteed money for Justin Duchscherer, take a read through this gem from Jon Heyman. Shortly after Rangers owner Chuck Greenberg took credit for keeping Cliff Lee away from the Yanks, New York’s own club president Randy Levine fired back. “Chuck’s delusional. He’s been in the game for a few minutes and yet he thinks he knows what everyone’s thinking,” Levine said. “I think he should let Cliff Lee speak for himself. He could really impress us when he keeps the Rangers off of welfare and keeps them from receiving revenue sharing the next three years.”
As Heyman notes, Levine is picking up on the fact that the Rangers, playing in the large Dallas/Fort Worth market, collected revenue sharing checks in each of the past three years. While I know some sports talk radio voices have been critical of Levine for engaging with Greenberg, I love these ownership spats. Levine is sticking up for his club and showing that the Yankee brass still isn’t thrilled with Greenberg’s attempts to cast the Yanks as his spunky club’s villain. Let Levine and Greenberg battle it out off the field. On the field, I think the Rangers needed Cliff Lee even more than the Yanks did, and they were left empty-handed on the mound this winter.
