Category: Baseball

Major League and fantasy baseball

Impending Baseball Milestones

The other night while the Yankees were routing the Red Sox, Alex Rodriguez hit his 522nd career home run, moving into 15th place on the all-time home run list. Combined with an article in this morning’s paper, I realized that there are actually a cluster of career stats milestones likely to be passed this year:

  • Ken Griffey Jr. is 4 home runs away from 600, which would make him the 6th player to reach that milestone. (ARod probably won’t hit that mark for a year or two.)
  • Manny Ramirez hit his 494 and 495th home runs last night and should reach 500 in the next month or so. He’s currently 24th on the list, but should crack the top 20 this year.
  • Gary Sheffield is at 481, and has a shot at 500 if he can stay healthy.
  • If anyone signs him, Barry Bonds (2935) has a shot at 3000 hits. No other active player is close, and I think Derek Jeter (2369, age 34) is the most likely active player to get there.
  • Greg Maddux goes for his 350th career win tonight. He’s already 9th in career wins, and seems likely to pass the recently-retired Roger Clemens (354). If he can stay healthy, I think it’s not ridiculous to think that he could claim the 3rd spot all time (currently shared by Pete Alexander and Christy Mathewson with 373). Walter Johnson (417) and Cy Young (511) are likely out of reach, though.
  • Maddux is also likely to be the 13th person to pass the 5000 innings pitched mark.
  • Randy Johnson (284) could reach 300 wins this year.
  • Johnson (4623) could also pass Clemens (4672) for #2 on the career strikeouts list this year, though his back has been so balky that nothing is really certain with him. In any event, Nolan Ryan‘s record (5714) looks safe.
  • John Smoltz should reach 3000 strikeouts in his next start or two.

Of all the milestones on this list, I think Maddux’s are the most impressive. He’s not thought of as a strikeout artist since he’s not a classic power pitcher, but he’s 11th on the all-time list. He is, however, 52nd on the list for walk rate (and 2nd among active pitchers), which means he’s been both effective and efficient, which is why he’s been pitching for so long.

Maddux’s last great season was 2002, but he was 36 in that year, and he’s been a consistent league-average pitcher since then. Anyone who can be an average player in their 40s at the highest level of professional baseball is clearly doing something right. He still only walks about 1 guy every 8 (!!) innings, which is just amazing, so I could see him doing this for several more years. He doesn’t get a lot of fanfare since he left the Braves, but he’s still one of the all-time greats.

On the hitting side, Griffey and Ramirez are busy polishing their admission tickets to Cooperstown (or whatever bad metaphor you’d care to apply), but ARod is clearly going to blast through all sorts of records over the next 8 years, so we’d better save up some superlatives for him. Like Barry Bonds, he’s not a widely-loved player, but being likable is rarely a requirement for playing Major League baseball.

2008 Baseball Picks

I finished my picks for the 2008 baseball season, so I thought I’d share. 🙂 First up are my Predictatron picks at Baseball Prospectus, picking how the whole season will turn out:

AL East
Boston 95 – 67
New York 90 – 72
Toronto 81 – 81
Tampa Bay 80 – 82
Baltimore 65 – 97 (mortal lock)
AL Central
Cleveland 93 – 69
Detroit 90 – 72
Chicago 76 – 86
Kansas City 72 – 90
Minnesota 69 – 93
AL West
Anaheim 88 – 74
Texas 81 – 81
Seattle 80 – 82
Oakland 75 – 87
NL East
New York 90 – 72
Atlanta 88 – 74
Philadelphia 88 – 74
Washington 75 – 87
Florida 67 – 95
NL Central
Milwaukee 88 – 74
Chicago 87 – 75
Cincinnati 85 – 77
St. Louis 73 – 89
Houston 70 – 92
Pittsburgh 70 – 92 (mortal lock)
NL West
Arizona 90 – 72
Los Angeles 88 – 74
San Diego 86 – 76
Colorado 82 – 80
San Francisco 68 – 94

I approached this by trying to figure out who I thought would be the “surprises” in baseball this year (either doing better than expected, or worse than expected), and I had an awfully hard time coming up with some. It seems like there’s a lot of parity in the Majors these days, with few truly great or truly abysmal teams. A few observations:

  • The two really bad teams in the Majors are Baltimore and San Francisco, both of which lost their best player in the off-season after a bad year last year. Both will struggle to win 70 games.
  • The young teams on their way up are already here: Arizona won their division last year – partly through luck – but should be better this year. Cleveland and Milwaukee are already contenders. Detroit is not exactly young anymore but is a contender.
  • I think the Tigers will overcome their slow start, but lose by a nose to Cleveland.
  • I expect both Texas and Cincinnati to be modest surprises this year. Texas I think had off years from a bunch of guys in 2007 and will be better this year. Cincinnati is a young club, but not yet a good club.
  • Like some sabermetric analysts, and in opposition to some mainstream analysts, I expect Seattle to be a mediocre team this year. Their offense is bordering on the moribund, with three infield hitters who could all be abjectly bad. Their pitching is Erik Bedard, Felix Hernandez, and a bunch of uninspiring guys in both the rotation and the bullpen.
  • The NL East is especially hard to pick since it’s full of teams who have some good points and some bad points and a lot of risk. I could see the top three teams finishing in any order.

Here’s how I picked the playoffs:

American League Division Series:

  • Cleveland over New York in 4 games
  • Boston over Anaheim in 3 games

National League Division Series:

  • New York over Milwaukee in 4 games
  • Arizona over Atlanta in 4 games

American League Championship Series:

  • Boston over Cleveland in 6 games

National League Championship Series:

  • Arizona over New York in 6 games

World Series:

  • Red Sox over Arizona in 6 games

I decided to give in to my Red Sox bias this year, in part because last year I did my picks and came down to picking the Sox and thought, “I pick the Sox every year! I’d better pick someone else.” And we saw how that turned out.

I do think the Sox have the best team in the Majors; it’s not a perfect team, but I think it’s better than any other team. But of course that only gives them a slight edge and they could certainly get knocked off in a short postseason series. But this is the way I decided to bet.

I also picked my HACKING MASS team, which is basically a set of players who I expect will provide the biggest aggregate drags on their teams during the season:

C Ramon Hernandez BAL
1B Rich Aurilia SF
2B Jose Lopez SEA
3B Pedro Feliz PHI
SS Yuniesky Betancourt SEA
LF Juan Pierre LA
CF Willy Taveras COL
RF Brian Giles SD
P Matt Morris PIT
P Barry Zito SF

You can see how I thought Seattle’s infield would suck. (1B Richie Sexson is the third infielder they have who I think won’t hit this year.)

I also wonder whether Barry Zito’s giant (or Giant) contract might be the worst contract any team has ever signed a pitcher to. On top of his 8 year/$126M pay schedule, he has a 2014 option which vests if he pitches enough in 2011-2013, and a full no-trade clause. Which means the Giants are likely stuck with him for the next 6 years, unless the team is so abjectly terrible that he waives his no-trade clause to get out, and they’re willing to take on enough of his salary that they can unload him. (I’m skeptical he’d ever waive his no-trade clause, though, since I have the impression that he loves living in San Francisco.)

It’s going to be a grim year for the local baseball teams here in the Bay Area (the A’s are rebuilding, the Giants don’t seem to have an idea how to start rebuilding), but it should be a good year for us Red Sox fans! 🙂

Real, Live Baseball

So a month or so ago I bought some tickets to some baseball games, including to today’s Red Sox vs. A’s game, which was supposed to start at 7:35. But, uh, a few weeks later I received a phone call and a postcard informing me that the game had been moved to a 12:35 start time. You’ll notice that today is a Wednesday. Gah. To be fair, the time was moved so the Sox could fly back to the east coast before midnight. Fair enough. Fortunately, both Debbi and I were able to take the day off to go to the game. Whew! I only went to one ballgame all last year, and I want to make a better showing this year.

Debbi pointed out that we might have better luck parking at the Millbrae BART station with its huge parking garage than in the east bay, plus afterwards we could go to the excellent Brother’s Deli for dinner. Sold! So we drove up and caught BART to the Coliseum. Along the way we met a fellow who was in from Boston and was going to catch the game himself. Nice guy, we chatted about the Sox and gave him some advice on getting a ticket (which mostly consisted of “where the good seats are” and “where the ticket office is”).

We got there in plenty of time and found our seats in the second deck basically right behind home plate. In fact, we had a view like this:

Hazy Morning
It was a light and cloudy morning…

I do enjoy my ballpark food, but along with rising ticket prices, park food is getting more expensive, too. The Coliseum features Round Table Pizza, which I enjoy pretty well for chain pizza, but their pizzas seem to be getting smaller even as they get more expensive. So I may be switching to sausages soon.

The A’s are in a rebuilding period now, having traded Dan Haren and Nick Swisher in the off-season, so they’re not going to be very good (although not as bad as the Giants). Consequently, the stadium attendance resembled 1999, when I first moved here, when Red Sox fans seemed to outnumber A’s fans. Here’s a sample. Keep in mind that the Sox’ colors are red and dark blue, while the A’s colors are green and gold:

The colors of baseball fandom
Sox fans are red, Sox fans are blue…

The game got under way just a couple of minutes late, and it was a pretty exciting game! Jon Lester – cancer survivor and World Series hero – pitched for the Sox, while the great but oft-injured Rich Harden pitched for the A’s. The Sox kept collecting baserunners, but just couldn’t bring them across the plate, and at the end of the 6th inning the game was still scoreless. (The ump’s strike zone seemed to be ridiculously wide, which had something to do with it.)

But Harden had been pulled at the start of the 6th, and the top of the 7th began with Kevin Youkilis rapping out a double (quite a heads-up play as he was running all the way and just barely beat the throw), and David Ortiz followed with a home run to right field. The Sox added 2 more in the 8th off 5 consecutive singles (4 to shallow left field), and Jason Varitek capped the scoring with a home run in the 9th. Meanwhile Lester cruised through 6-2/3 innings, and two relievers closed out the game, as the Red Sox held the A’s to 4 hits and shut them out 5-0.

The forecast was for rain today, but we never got more than a light drizzle – hardly even noticeable – and it was cool and pleasant. It also turned out to be “foul ball day” as dozens of the things peppered the infield stands, including this one which came right back at us as I was taking this photo, landing a few rows in front of us:

Low bridge!
Low bridge!

We were also amused that whenever the A’s brought in a reliever, the infielders and outfielders would each gather and stand around chatting. I guess they were just killing some dead time like anyone does, but I rarely see it happen so regularly.

Pitching critics
“Do you think that curveball makes his butt look big?”

That photo’s also great because of the Sox baserunner in the background working out a problem with his laces during the dead time.

All-in-all a great day at the park, and the Sox are now 3-1 on the season. We headed out to BART and took the train back to our car, looking forward to our dinner plans… only to find that Brother’s Deli closed sometime late last year! What a bummer! They’d moved from Burlingame a few years ago and although their new digs were nicer, they seemed to have a lot of trouble attracting customers, and I guess it caught up to them. Parking around downtown Millbrae could be a challenge sometimes, too. Alas, I’ll need to find somewhere new to order meat blintzes. I’m going to miss them.

Hard to believe that our bonus day off is over already! Back to work tomorrow. Fortunately it’s only for a 2-day week…!

Opening Day

Yesterday was opening day of baseball season. Yeah yeah, there was a game on Sunday, and the Red Sox and A’s played a two game series in Japan last week, but most teams opened the season yesterday. And thanks to that Japanese series, the Sox and A’s play the other two games of their season-opening “series” in Oakland this week.

The first of the two games was tonight, and I certainly was coming home to watch it; even with the Red Sox being the defending world champions, I don’t get to watch enough Red Sox baseball out here.

I came home around 6:40 and threw the TV onto the baseball channel just for the heck of it while I prepared dinner. After a minute I realized all I was hearing was crowd noise, so I went out to look at the TV, and realized that they were showing the entire pre-game ceremony without commentary or commercials! So they introduced the Red Sox, and introduced the A’s, and held a moment of silence for Joe Kennedy, who passed away due to heart disease last November, followed by the national anthem. I was impressed, it was almost like being there for opening night.

The game itself was excellent, with Sox pitching holding the A’s to only 3 hits, and A’s defense holding the Sox to only 2 runs despite 9 hits, and the Sox prevailed 2-1. There was even a botched call at the plate (giving the Sox a run) and a botched home run call (taking one away from the Sox).

The long dark time is over – baseball’s back!

Fantasy Baseball 2008

Ah, another year of fantasy baseball. Last year was extremely frustrating, since I came out of last year’s draft with what I thought was one of the best teams I’d drafted in this (very competitive) league, and then my pitching imploded and various other things went wrong. Mid-way through the season I decided that if I didn’t finish in the money that I’d drop out of the league. I ended up finishing 7th (out of 16 teams) which was the last spot in the money, so here I am, back again!

As always, the draft was held at Chris’ house down the street. I got there at 11 am to set up the wireless, which ended up going flawlessly – it worked the first time! Internet connectivity was actually great, and the draft went very smoothly. We were doing each round in about 25 minutes for the first 10 or so rounds, and it speeded up after that. It took us a little less than 9 hours to do the whole draft, which is about average. A long day, but it’s a lot of fun – which is why I do it!

Pos Player Team Round/
Pick		 Age Comments
C Gerald Laird TEX 14/218 28 My catching really stinks.
C Dioner Navarro TBA 15/234 24
1B Albert Pujols SLN Kept 28
2B Kelly Johnson ATL 2/26 26
2B Ron Belliard WAS 19/296 33
2B/SS Erick Aybar LAN 18/281 24
3B Miguel Cabrera FLO Kept 25
3B Melvin Mora BAL 20/310 36
SS/1B Carlos Guillen DET 1/10 32
SS Jhonny Peralta CLE 6/90 25
OF Corey Hart MIL Kept 26
OF Chris Young ARI Kept 24
OF Josh Hamilton CIN Kept 26
OF Jacoby Ellsbury BOS Kept 24
OF Jason Kubel MIN 16/250 26
OF Carlos Gomez MIN Kept 22
OF Melky Cabrera NYA 22/345 23
SP James Shields TBA Kept 25
SP Joe Blanton OAK Kept 26
SP Jeff Francis COL 3/42 27
SP Hiroki Kuroda LAN 4/58 33 A new Japanese import, reportedly an extreme groundball pitcher.
SP Zack Greinke KCA 5/74 24
SP David Bush MIL 7/106 28
SP Kevin Millwood TEX 9/138 33
SP Edinson Volquez CIN 10/154 24
SP Paul Maholm PIT 23/356 26
SP Zach Duke PIT 23/364 25
RP Rafael Soriano ATL 11/170 28 I have the all-Rafael bullpen!
RP Rafael Betancourt CLE 12/186 33
RP Rafael Perez CLE 13/202 26
IN Carlos Gonzalez OAK 8/122 22 The key prospect in Oakland’s trade of Dan Haren to Arizona.
IN Gio Gonzalez OAK 17/266 22 One of the prospects in Oakland’s trade of Nick Swisher to the Chicago White Sox.
IN Brent Lillibridge ATL 21/323 24
IN Matt Antonelli SDN 21/334 23 Heir apparent to second base in San Diego.
IN Justin Masterson BOS 23/368 23 Well-regarded sinkerball pitching prospect.

My biggest regret of the draft was not taking Kurt Suzuki when I had a chance, as that left me with the true dregs for my catching slot, without even much upside. I also regret just missing out on prospect Brandon Wood. But those are fairly small regrets; overall I was pretty happy with how it turned out. I expect I’ll have a middle-of-the-road pitching staff with some upside, and a potent offense. My team is generally young (which is typical of my teams in recent years) so it could be better than I project.

It takes a fair amount of luck to win this league, not to mention a better pitching staff than I usually have. But I still have a fun time putting the team together. Hopefully the dice will roll more in my favor than they did last year.

Baseball’s Goddamned Sideshow

Today saw the public release of Major League Baseball’s Mitchell Report, which everyone was looking forward to because it named names of players who have allegedly used performance enhancing drugs.

Until and unless some of these players are convicted of violating the law, I think this is all a big sideshow. I simply don’t believe that ownership and management in baseball didn’t know or at least strongly suspect what was going on, and I think their inability to enact drug testing until 2002 indicates that they didn’t really care. Consequently, I don’t think they have a moral leg to stand on, and so I see the Mitchell Report as nothing more than a witch-hunt, with no practical benefit to the well-being of the game.

Commissioner Bud Selig said that the Report “is a call to action, and I will act.”

Give it a rest, Bud. Every time you make a public appearance it seems like you suck a little more of the joy out of baseball. The time to commission this report was 1995 – or at the latest, before 1998, the year of McGwire and Sosa – and it’s far too late for this to look like anything else than an attempt at media spin.

Do I care whether players were using steroids over the last 12 years? Yeah, a little bit. I’d rather they hadn’t, but it’s clear that few people – if anyone – cared for most of that time, and that not many in baseball cared. That’s just the way the game was for many years (maybe many more years than we think). It’s not a perfect world. That didn’t make it less of a fun game.

Act to keep people from using these substances in the future, and punish them if they do, but this looking-backwards crap is just bullshit. It doesn’t make anything better, and it doesn’t help anyone.

Least of all the fans.

The Red Sox’ Coming Out Party

The really fun thing about the World Series for me was watching the Red Sox’ young players have their own “coming out party”. While the veterans on the club (Manny Ramirez, David Ortiz, Curt Schilling, Josh Beckett, and World Series MVP Mike Lowell) all had fine series, the younger players were equally impressive:

  • Jacoby Ellsbury (CF, rookie, age 23) went from playing in AA to hitting 438/500/688 in the World Series, with 4 doubles and a stolen base. It would be a stretch to say that he won Game 3 all by himself, but he was certainly the highlight of the game.
  • Dustin Pedroia (2B, rookie, age 23) hit 278/350/500 with a double and a home run. The potential 2007 Rookie of the Year was even better in the ALCS.
  • Kevin Youkilis (1B, age 28) actually was a rookie back in 2004, but didn’t play in the 2004 World Series. He only batted 222/417/444 in the World Series and missed out on most of the games in Colorado because of the lack of a DH, but he was a total monster in the ALCS, batting 500/576/929 (!) with 3 (!!!) home runs. He also went the whole 2007 regular season without committing an error (and then committed 3 in the playoffs). He’ll probably never be a star, but he’s put to rest speculation that the “Greek God of Walks” wouldn’t be very valuable because of a lack of power. He might have a better career than John Kruk did, even if he is already 28.
  • Jon Lester (SP, age 23) came all the way back from chemotherapy for cancer to pitch 5.2 shutout innings and become the winning pitcher in the series clincher. He’ll likely be the Red Sox’ 4th or 5th starter next year, assuming either or both of Curt Schilling and Tim Wakefield head elsewhere.
  • Jonathan Papelbon (RP, age 26) didn’t allow a run in the Series and saved 3 games.
  • Daisuke Matsuzaka (SP, rookie, age 26) isn’t a true rookie, as he was a big free agent pickup from Japan last off-season, but he was nearly the Sox’ “forgotten star” as he faded down the stretch, possibly because he threw more innings in 2007 than he ever had in Japan and just got tired. But he picked up his game in the ALCS and World Series, throwing two good games and getting a key base hit in Game 3 of the World Series. Japanese players often seem to do better in their second year in the Majors, so I fully expect Matsuzaka will be better next year than he was this year. Other than fatigue, I think there’s nothing to worry about here.

I love seeing young players do well, and it’s additionally encouraging that the Sox have a solid core of young players to build around for the next 2-3 years (if not longer). This doesn’t even count other “under-30-somethings” on the roster, like Beckett, Clay Buchholz, and Manny Delcarmen.

The Red Sox’ future is already here, and it just won a World Series.

Champions Again!

Amazing – the Red Sox have won the World Series again!

It seems like only yesterday that they won for the first time in my lifetime. They went into a rebuilding phase after that, so I didn’t imagine they’d win it all again so soon, yet here they are on top of the heap once more!

Wow.

Heading into the playoffs I thought either the Red Sox or Indians would go to the World Series, and probably steamroller the NL champion, and I was right as the Sox swept the Rockies, winning two blowouts and two one-run games. Mike Lowell won the MVP award, although there was plenty of credit to go around: Nearly every Sox hitter had a great Series, and some were simply insanely great.

Truth to tell, it was a pretty boring postseason: Only 5 of 7 series were sweeps, and only 1 went the distance, as the Sox overcame a 3-1 deficit to beat the Indians in the ALCS in what was a pretty good series, but the Indians’ pitching collapsed in the last three games.

What really made the Sox’ team click this month? Well, I think the Sox managed to rest their tired and injured players in September and fielded a healthy team which was hitting on all cylinders in the playoffs: David Ortiz’ bad knee didn’t hinder him, Daisuke Matsuzaka and Hideki Okajima got some rest and were good enough to help (Okajima faded in the Series, though), and even Jon Lester pitched a great game tonight in the clincher. With a strong pitching staff and an overpowering offense, only Cleveland really had a team which could stand up to them.

So I guess the Sox are now the new Evil Empire, having won more championships in this century than any other team (a mark they also held in the 20th century until 1937 when the Yankees passed them). And despite Curt Schilling and Mike Lowell heading to free agency, they still seem well-positioned to contend for several more years, with plenty of young talent on the roster. And they have the financial resources to take big risks on big free agents without compromising the core of the team – a luxury few other teams can afford.

So it’s a nifty end to a nifty season. It feels a little anticlimactic because the Sox have been a leading contender since April, and only the Yankees’ late-season run at the division title and the ALCS really added much drama. Still, it’s nice to come out and win as favorites rather than as long-suffering underdogs. It made this a championship to enjoy rather than claw our eyes out in anticipation (as 2004 was at times).

Looking forward to next year!

It’s Rox vs. Sox!

Tonight the Red Sox completed their improbable comeback to win the ALCS, beating the Cleveland Indians 4 games to 3, after being down 3-1 a few days ago. I didn’t think they could do it, so color me amazed.

Now they’ll face the equally-improbable Colorado Rockies, who are going to their first World Series in team history, and who made it through an amazing winning streak to close the season before dumping the Phillies and Diamondbacks in two sweeps.

Go Sox!

(P.S.: If the Sox win the Series, they’ll have the most championships of any team in this century. That’s a distinction they held early in the last century, too, winning 5 of the first 15 World Series. The Yankees passed them when they won their sixth World Series in 1937.)

Stress Puppy

Insanely busy lately.

I have a little list of things to do for my house. One of these – refinancing my mortgage – should be pretty easy and is already underway. Other things are going to take more effort and thought: Putting in new windows, replacing the kitchen dispose-all, figuring out what’s up with one of the lights in the master bathroom… that sort of thing.

Meanwhile work is hopping lately. Lots of meetings and design and planning for a bunch of different projects, and meanwhile I’m ripping code apart and putting it back together. It’s a pretty lively time, but it’s keeping me plenty busy.

I was having trouble sleeping earlier this week, which I almost never do. I’m a heavy sleeper, and usually find it very easy to fall asleep, but the latter point was failing me Sunday and Monday night. I got over it on Tuesday, but it left me pretty tired for the rest of the week. I still managed to get up early for my morning bike ride on Tuesday and Thursday, though.

And to top it off, Debbi had a rough day today, and I was feeling stressed on her behalf. She always tells me not to be stressed like this, because it doesn’t do any good. But I do worry about things. If you know me, you probably think of me as a pretty laid-back person, but sometimes I get really wound up when I’m juggling too many tasks, or things I feel not-well-suited to deal with.

It’s not all work and stress, though: The new Magic expansion, Lorwyn, is nearly out, and the card list has been posted. Also, TCGPlayer has Lorwyn set up in their practice booster draft engine.

Better yet, the baseball playoffs have started. My Red Sox dominated their first game (the first round is all best-of-five series), and the Indians beat the Yankees. I’ll root for one of these two to win the World Series – the Sox are my team, and the Tribe are my grandfather’s team. I’m more indifferent to the National League, where the Rockies won the first 2 games against the Phillies (making one of my cow-orkers happy, and another not so much), and the Diamondbacks won the first 2 against the Cubs (sorry RJ). I think all of the American League teams are better than any of the National League teams (well, maybe not the Angels), and generally more interesting teams to boot. I kind of like the Diamondbacks, though, since they’ve reinvented themselves the last few years as a team of exciting young players, and I think they’re doing a lot of things right.

Anyway.

Admittedly my seasonal affective disorder might have something to do with my feelings of stress. I’ll get through it.

Especially if the Red Sox keep winning. Or, failing that, the Yankees keep losing.