Not much time to write, but if the news is correct that the Nationals have inked Davey Johnson to manage the Nationals, not just as an interim basis but through 2013, then Mike Rizzo has just turned a sow's ear into a silk purse.
Makes you think maybe this was in the works all along--that Davey was on board to run the team once they had accumulated enough talent to compete. He probably had his eye on Opening Day 2012, but why not start now?
Davey Johnson would be at or near the top of any GM's wishlist, and Nationals fans can stop fretting about ol' what's his name right now.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Riggleman Goes Postal
Here's the one thing we can say with confidence after a few hours to digest the news that Jim Riggleman has quit as Nationals manager: Riggleman has thrown away any chance he'll probably ever have at managing again in MLB. Frankly, he'll probably never even be a bench coach or minor league manager.
When the Nationals came calling, Riggleman had been rotting on the vine for for a decade after getting fired as manager of the Chicago Cubs in 1999. He has a .445 career winning percentage. And just as he was proving some worth by getting the Nationals over .500 (just the 3rd time in 12 seasons he had a team win more than half their games), he decided it was time to burn down the building.
Jim seems to believe that he was terribly mistreated because it's June 12, and he didn't have a contract for next season. But here's the list of MLB managers who do not have a guaranteed contract for next year: Brad Mills, Tony LaRussa, Bruce Bochy, Terry Francona, and Jim Leyland. Add to that list interim hires Jack McKeon and Bob Melvin, and that's more than one out of every four managers in baseball.
Riggleman complained today that he didn't have the freedom to think outside the box, but what's that based on? He's been making a bunch of outside the box decisions lately, and to his credit a bunch of them were based on good process and have paid dividends, like leading off Jayson Werth or his early season eschewing of a traditional closer.
Now, it's true that it's pretty unusual for a manager to get consecutive one-year contracts like Jim did in 2010 and 2011. But he didn't have to agree to be the Nationals manager this year. No one put a gun to his head. No one ever said, "if you sign this deal and have the team over .500 at the end of June, we'll definitely pick up your option." To sign the contract and then quit on his team in mid-season is just completely beyond the pale.
We might never know the whole story. Maybe Mike Rizzo really said some things he should have, or implied assurances and didn't follow through. More likely, it appears that Riggleman just massively overplayed his hand, thought he had sufficient leverage after getting the team over .500 to give his boss an ultimatum. In fact, he had no real leverage. Riggleman wasn't being discussed as a manager of the year. He was never on anyone's list of top managers in the game. And only a fool would change that assessment based on one hot week of baseball.
So the Riggleman era is over. We can stop debating small ball vs. smart ball. The pitchers I'm sure can go back to hitting ninth. The team will probably start losing again, but not because of the manager--it'll be because the team doesn't actually have .500 talent.
And now we get to wait and see if Mike Rizzo has enough guts or imagination not to hire another pointless retread in his second chance. In the meantime, we can just sit back and enjoy the ripping Riggleman is getting on Twitter. Here are a few of my favorites:
When the Nationals came calling, Riggleman had been rotting on the vine for for a decade after getting fired as manager of the Chicago Cubs in 1999. He has a .445 career winning percentage. And just as he was proving some worth by getting the Nationals over .500 (just the 3rd time in 12 seasons he had a team win more than half their games), he decided it was time to burn down the building.
Jim seems to believe that he was terribly mistreated because it's June 12, and he didn't have a contract for next season. But here's the list of MLB managers who do not have a guaranteed contract for next year: Brad Mills, Tony LaRussa, Bruce Bochy, Terry Francona, and Jim Leyland. Add to that list interim hires Jack McKeon and Bob Melvin, and that's more than one out of every four managers in baseball.
Riggleman complained today that he didn't have the freedom to think outside the box, but what's that based on? He's been making a bunch of outside the box decisions lately, and to his credit a bunch of them were based on good process and have paid dividends, like leading off Jayson Werth or his early season eschewing of a traditional closer.
Now, it's true that it's pretty unusual for a manager to get consecutive one-year contracts like Jim did in 2010 and 2011. But he didn't have to agree to be the Nationals manager this year. No one put a gun to his head. No one ever said, "if you sign this deal and have the team over .500 at the end of June, we'll definitely pick up your option." To sign the contract and then quit on his team in mid-season is just completely beyond the pale.
We might never know the whole story. Maybe Mike Rizzo really said some things he should have, or implied assurances and didn't follow through. More likely, it appears that Riggleman just massively overplayed his hand, thought he had sufficient leverage after getting the team over .500 to give his boss an ultimatum. In fact, he had no real leverage. Riggleman wasn't being discussed as a manager of the year. He was never on anyone's list of top managers in the game. And only a fool would change that assessment based on one hot week of baseball.
So the Riggleman era is over. We can stop debating small ball vs. smart ball. The pitchers I'm sure can go back to hitting ninth. The team will probably start losing again, but not because of the manager--it'll be because the team doesn't actually have .500 talent.
And now we get to wait and see if Mike Rizzo has enough guts or imagination not to hire another pointless retread in his second chance. In the meantime, we can just sit back and enjoy the ripping Riggleman is getting on Twitter. Here are a few of my favorites:
- @Buster_ESPN A rival official on Riggleman: "I wouldn't hire him for AA or AAA job. You can't walk away..when you're under contract."
- @ngreenberg If Riggleman believed in the stats, he'd have known his stunt had about a 3% chance of working.
- @crashburnalley Quick Jim Riggleman meme I threw together... http://t.co/sWdYwBh
- @jposnanski Note to Jim Riggleman: When you tell your boss you will step down if your contract isn't fixed, it's usually called a "bluff."
- @JohnMarecek: Wonder what Riggleman would say to a player, bitching about his option not picked up in June?
- @BizballMaury I have determined that only karmatic location that would serve Jim Riggleman is the Marlins. They deserve each other #Riggleman #FAIL
- @keithlaw I would be very impressed by Riggleman's move if he wasn't thoroughly replaceable as a manager.
- @chrisneedham I'm sure Mrs. Riggleman is used to Jim giving up halfway through the job
Monday, June 13, 2011
John Lannan: He Is What He Is, But He Wasn't What He Was
I have a confession. I picked up John Lannan in my fantasy baseball league. Now, this is an unusually deep 20-team league, and I had Brett Anderson, Jake Peavy, and Brandon McCarthy all on the DL, Colby Lewis in the tank, and the best other options available were Jason Marquis, Chris Narveson, and Tom Gorzelanny. Still, I feel I owe an explanation.
You see, as some may recall, in 2009, I confidently predicted with a couple months left in the season that there was no way that John Lannan would finish with 200 innings pitched an an ERA under 4.00.
Obviously, I was wrong, and Lannan's continued success has made my skepticism seem even less well founded. But the fact is that I was right to doubt Lannan back in 2009, because he was succeeding then in a spectacularly unsustainable way.
Check it out. That year, Lannan threw 206.1 innings with a 3.88 ERA and coincidentally also a 3.88 K/9 rate. Here's the list of pitchers who have thrown that many innings with an ERA and K-rate that low since 1993, the unofficial start of the juiced ball era (or whatever you call it), year baseball baseball expanded and runs per game jumped from 4.12 to 4.60: Lannan, Mark Gubicza (1995), and Chien Ming Wang (2006).
That's three pitchers. Obviously none of them ever repeated the feat. But that doesn't really show how unusual this was in this era. Consider that there were a total of 356 seasons from 1993 through last year that a pitcher threw that many innings with an ERA of 3.88 or better--this extremely low strikeout group represents just .08% of these seasons.
Also consider this: there were only 3 other seasons in this period in which a pitcher threw 206 innings with a K/9 rate of 3.88 or lower: Jimmy Anderson in 2001 with an ERA of 5.10, Mike Moore in 1993 with an ERA of 5.22, and Jamey Wright in 1998 with an ERA of 5.67.
There's a word statisticians use for an event that occurs this infrequently: it's an outlier. It's also known as an aberration, a fluke. Unless John Lannan had discovered some heretofore completely unknown skill, there was no way he would be able to sustain the favorable outcomes he was getting with the skill set he was demonstrating at the time.
Here's the good news: Lannan's skills have gotten better. Back in 2006, he whiffed just 10.2% of batters faced--an unbelievably low number. The NL average that year was 18.4%. This year he's striking out 12.6%. That's still very low, and may not seem like a big difference, but it's meaningful.
(Pause for a statistical public annoyance announcement. I'm delighted to see how strikeout and walk rates are becoming more prominently noticed by average fans and mainstream baseball media. However, why oh why has the standard rate stat become K/9? I used it here only because Baseball Reference's Play Index only offers K/9 as a search function, and I'm still too lazy to install the raw SQL database on my own computer. When looking at strikeout rate, we want to know how often a pitcher misses bats. That's the skill we're trying to measure. Strikeouts per inning essentially tells us what percentage of a pitcher's outs are strikeouts, but totally ignores all the other outcomes a pitcher gets. Hits, walks, HBPs... these are all tossed out because those events aren't counted as parts of an inning. Only outs count towards the accumulation of innings. In effect, by using K/9, we diminish the difference between the best pitchers and the worst pitchers, making it harder for analysts and observers to notice the gap. So memo to Fangraphs, Play Index, etc. etc.: kill K/9. Just give us SO/TBF.)
Translating back to K/9 so we can search the Baseball Reference Pitcher Season Finder, we find that here were 23 pitchers from 1993 to 2010 who went 206 innings with an ERA of 3.88 and 4.86 K/9, Lannan's rate this year. That's still just 6.5% of these seasons, but we're getting into a range that's at least has some precedent for being repeatable. Carlos Perez did it twice. Tom Glavine did it four times.
And the other key skills these pitchers all possess are low walk rates and high groundball rates, and Lannan's 52.7% groundball rate is 11th among qualified NL starters.
If there's an area to be concerned about, it's Lannan's walks. His rate this season has risen from a good, not great 7.6% to a potentially troublesome 9.4%. Only 87 innings into the season, I think it's reasonably likely that he shaves that walk rate back down to where he's been the last two seasons and can maintain the groundball and strikeout rates where they are.
If that's the case, then he's a guy you can reasonably project for 200 innings with an ERA usually in the 4s, and once in a while, when luck and defense are on his side, an ERA in the 3s.
You see, as some may recall, in 2009, I confidently predicted with a couple months left in the season that there was no way that John Lannan would finish with 200 innings pitched an an ERA under 4.00.
Obviously, I was wrong, and Lannan's continued success has made my skepticism seem even less well founded. But the fact is that I was right to doubt Lannan back in 2009, because he was succeeding then in a spectacularly unsustainable way.
Check it out. That year, Lannan threw 206.1 innings with a 3.88 ERA and coincidentally also a 3.88 K/9 rate. Here's the list of pitchers who have thrown that many innings with an ERA and K-rate that low since 1993, the unofficial start of the juiced ball era (or whatever you call it), year baseball baseball expanded and runs per game jumped from 4.12 to 4.60: Lannan, Mark Gubicza (1995), and Chien Ming Wang (2006).
That's three pitchers. Obviously none of them ever repeated the feat. But that doesn't really show how unusual this was in this era. Consider that there were a total of 356 seasons from 1993 through last year that a pitcher threw that many innings with an ERA of 3.88 or better--this extremely low strikeout group represents just .08% of these seasons.
Also consider this: there were only 3 other seasons in this period in which a pitcher threw 206 innings with a K/9 rate of 3.88 or lower: Jimmy Anderson in 2001 with an ERA of 5.10, Mike Moore in 1993 with an ERA of 5.22, and Jamey Wright in 1998 with an ERA of 5.67.
There's a word statisticians use for an event that occurs this infrequently: it's an outlier. It's also known as an aberration, a fluke. Unless John Lannan had discovered some heretofore completely unknown skill, there was no way he would be able to sustain the favorable outcomes he was getting with the skill set he was demonstrating at the time.
Here's the good news: Lannan's skills have gotten better. Back in 2006, he whiffed just 10.2% of batters faced--an unbelievably low number. The NL average that year was 18.4%. This year he's striking out 12.6%. That's still very low, and may not seem like a big difference, but it's meaningful.
(Pause for a statistical public annoyance announcement. I'm delighted to see how strikeout and walk rates are becoming more prominently noticed by average fans and mainstream baseball media. However, why oh why has the standard rate stat become K/9? I used it here only because Baseball Reference's Play Index only offers K/9 as a search function, and I'm still too lazy to install the raw SQL database on my own computer. When looking at strikeout rate, we want to know how often a pitcher misses bats. That's the skill we're trying to measure. Strikeouts per inning essentially tells us what percentage of a pitcher's outs are strikeouts, but totally ignores all the other outcomes a pitcher gets. Hits, walks, HBPs... these are all tossed out because those events aren't counted as parts of an inning. Only outs count towards the accumulation of innings. In effect, by using K/9, we diminish the difference between the best pitchers and the worst pitchers, making it harder for analysts and observers to notice the gap. So memo to Fangraphs, Play Index, etc. etc.: kill K/9. Just give us SO/TBF.)
Translating back to K/9 so we can search the Baseball Reference Pitcher Season Finder, we find that here were 23 pitchers from 1993 to 2010 who went 206 innings with an ERA of 3.88 and 4.86 K/9, Lannan's rate this year. That's still just 6.5% of these seasons, but we're getting into a range that's at least has some precedent for being repeatable. Carlos Perez did it twice. Tom Glavine did it four times.
And the other key skills these pitchers all possess are low walk rates and high groundball rates, and Lannan's 52.7% groundball rate is 11th among qualified NL starters.
If there's an area to be concerned about, it's Lannan's walks. His rate this season has risen from a good, not great 7.6% to a potentially troublesome 9.4%. Only 87 innings into the season, I think it's reasonably likely that he shaves that walk rate back down to where he's been the last two seasons and can maintain the groundball and strikeout rates where they are.
If that's the case, then he's a guy you can reasonably project for 200 innings with an ERA usually in the 4s, and once in a while, when luck and defense are on his side, an ERA in the 3s.
His current 3.52 ERA still strikes me as better than his skills justify, but it's possible that we've entered a new, post juicing era where this is what guys like Lannan can do. After all, from the start of the expansion era in 1961 to 1992, 118 pitchers went 206 IP with ERAs and K/9s of 3.88 or under. The game was different in many ways back then, but with scoring down two years running, we may be in a new era where guys like John Lannan survive and even thrive.
My battered fantasy team at least is hoping that's the case.
My battered fantasy team at least is hoping that's the case.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Chalk One Up for Riggleman's Super-Saber Lineup
I've usually insisted that batting order is an overrated strategic decision by the manager, so I don't want to go overboard on this topic. But today's win over San Diego was a pretty clear example of why it's smarter to put your best hitters in the 1-2 hole rather than the 3-4-5 spots in the order.
In the top of the ninth, the score was tied 0-0. The 7-8-9 hitters were due up--Jerry Hairston, the pitcher in the 8 hole, and Brian Bixler Alex Cora, the position player unconventionally hitting ninth.
Hairston popped out, and then pinch-hitter Matt Stairs and Bixler Cora got base hits. If the Nationals were using their most common line-up, it would have been Roger Bernadina (.308 OBP) and Ian Desmond (.271 OBP) due up. The Nationals best hitters--Jayson Werth, Danny Espinosa, Laynce Nix, Mike Morse (oy, is that an ugly list of "best hitters, but I digress)--probably would not have gotten a chance to hit in the inning at all.
But since Werth was hitting first, he came up and drew a key walk, loading the bases and advancing the lead runner to third. Espinosa, hitting second, drove in the go-ahead and eventual winning run with a sac fly, and Nix, hitting third, drove in another run with a base-hit. Drew Storen was able to close it out in the ninth, and the Nationals went home winners.
Sure, it's possible that the Nationals still would have scored in the ninth with a traditional lineup--putting a fast guy who isn't among your top 3 hitters in the lead-off spot, followed by maybe the 5th or 6th best hitter in the 2nd spot. But it's less likely. And it's possible that they still might have scored in the tenth inning, but then that would have forced the relievers to get three more outs.
The point is that by putting your best hitters at the top, they get more chances to hit, and you increase your odds of scoring and winning (by an infinitesimal margin in any given game, but still). Pretty much every softball team playing on the National Mall gets it, and it's nice for once to see a major league manager get it too--and get rewarded.
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Riggleman's Sabermetric Lineup
Jim Riggleman's lineup card today is sure to get a lot of attention and criticism, with Jayson Werth batting lead-off, John Lannan hitting eighth, and Roger Bernadina ninth.
It's unconventional, but sabermetrically sound. First, we know that the additional at bats you get by hitting lead-off are worth more than the additional RBI opportunities you get hitting clean-up. And the most important skill for a lead-off hitter is on-base percentage.
And by hitting Bernadina 9th, Riggleman reduces the extent to which Werth will lose RBI chances hitting lead-off. He'll come up with the bases empty in the first inning, but he won't have an automatic out hitting immediately before him.
Now, Riggleman messes it up a little by hitting Ian Desmond and his .271 OBP in the #2 hole, which is actually the most important spot in the line-up. If he put Mike Morse or Danny Espinosa in the #2 hole and the other in the #4 hole, with maybe Wilson Ramos in the #3 hole, that would be pretty close to perfect.
It's unconventional, but sabermetrically sound. First, we know that the additional at bats you get by hitting lead-off are worth more than the additional RBI opportunities you get hitting clean-up. And the most important skill for a lead-off hitter is on-base percentage.
And by hitting Bernadina 9th, Riggleman reduces the extent to which Werth will lose RBI chances hitting lead-off. He'll come up with the bases empty in the first inning, but he won't have an automatic out hitting immediately before him.
Now, Riggleman messes it up a little by hitting Ian Desmond and his .271 OBP in the #2 hole, which is actually the most important spot in the line-up. If he put Mike Morse or Danny Espinosa in the #2 hole and the other in the #4 hole, with maybe Wilson Ramos in the #3 hole, that would be pretty close to perfect.
Friday, June 10, 2011
Jordan Zimmermann: Total Control
They say that after Tommy John surgery, the velocity comes back first, and then the command. If that's true, then it's safe to say that Jordan Zimmermann is all the way back--and better than ever.
Zimmermann has always had good control. In his 2009 rookie season, he walked just 7.4%. Prior to his call-up that year, his career minor league walk rate was 8.4%. Anything under 8% is very good, and given Zimmermann's raw stuff, it was even more impressive.
But this year he's been truly elite, facing 302 batters so far and unintentionally walking just 15 of them--a minuscule rate of 4.97%.
How good is that? Put it this way: Remember what a hacker Cristian Guzman was? His career walk rate is 4.6%. (BTW--it's weird how Guzman has vanished from the face of the Earth this year. His agent says he's sitting out the season with "family issues." I'm glad I don't have to worry about it as a Nationals fan, but I am kinda curious.)
His strikeouts are also a bit down, from 23.5% to 16.9%, likely the result of an intentional shift in approach to try to throw more strikes and get quicker outs. But that's still a very good rate of missing bats. His velocity is steady, and his breaking balls, especially his slider, are getting better results than ever. Hitters are batting .237 against him this year, compared to .265 in 2009. There's no indication that he's sacrificing anything in terms of stuff.
You're going to prevent runs about as effectively on a per-inning basis with his 2011 rates as he did in 2009. The reason it's a favorable trade-off is that you're also going to be able to pitch deeper in games. He's gone from 5.7 innings per start in his rookie year to 6.2 innings per start this year. And at the same time, his pitches per game started has actually declined from 98 to 93.
These are pretty obvious, ho-hum observations--you walk and strike out fewer batters, you're going to be more efficient and go deeper into games.
But from a developmental perspective, something really exciting is happening. We're seeing a guy who was already pretty damn good develop an even more elite skill set that we didn't know was there. The ability to get hitters out while pounding the strike zone like this is something only a very few pitchers can do consistently. Guys either lack the command or don't have the stuff to throw this many strikes and not get killed.
In the end, Zimmermann's ideal approach might be somewhere in between--a few more walks and a few more Ks. But if he has the ability maintain this degree of extreme command, that means the ceiling for Jordan Zimmermann, already very high, just went even higher.
When the Nationals Outsmarted Everyone
Over the years, the Nationals have made some good decisions, more bad decisions, and they are on the upswing as a franchise because they've managed not to mess up the no-brainers in three straight drafts.
But the Nationals' handling of Adam Dunn--both acquiring him and deciding to let him go--is probably the savviest sequence of personnel moves the Nationals have made since 2005.
When Jim Bowden signed him in February 2009, Dunn had been sitting on the free agent market longer than anyone (especially him) ever expected. That was a weird off-season when, following the financial meltdown, the economy went into decline and MLB teams really retreated in their free agent spending.
Dunn seemed a great fit for an AL team looking for left-handed power, but the market for him just never developed, and with spring training around the corner, the Nationals were waiting with a 2-year, $20 million contract that ended up being a perfectly reasonable price to pay.
Even factoring Dunn's awful glove (and UZR hated his glove, especially as an outfielder 2009), he gave the Nationals almost 5 wins above replacement because of his .378 OBP and .533 SLG over his two seasons in DC. That didn't make him an all-star, but he was a major upgrade over the collection of yuck the team would have played in LF and 1B without him.
But wait? Am I really gushing over a Jim Bowden move? Yeah, I am. Jim did some things well, and one of his strengths was evaluating hitters. (And recruiting former Cincinnati Reds.)
And here's the best part. Because he was fired (yes he was) shortly after signing Dunn, he never had the chance to extend him, which we know he would have wanted to do. If finding undervalued bats was one of Jim's best strengths, one of his greatest weaknesses was falling in love with his own brilliant discoveries and overpaying to keep them (see: Young, Dmitri).
When Dunn's contract came up after last season, Mike Rizzo was all too happy to take the draft picks he would get in free agent compensation and let someone else overpay.
And looking at Dunn now, it looks like the Nationals let him walk just in time. I wrote a post last year about this time speculating that Dunn could be close to a Richie Sexson-like rapid decline.
The insight was nothing radically new. Dunn is a classic example of a guy with "old player skills"--i.e., a relatively narrow set of skills, usually power and patience, not speed or defense. When guys like this start lose just a bit of bat speed, they often fall apart fast.
At the time, he didn't seem to be showing signs of hitting the wall. But the statistical signs I warned about were an increase in strikeout and/or flyball rate, pitchers attacking him with more fastballs and a decline in his success off the fastball, and a drop in batting average.
This year, that's exactly what we're seeing. Dunn's K rate has spiked from 32.4% in 2009 to 35.7% last year to a horrid 42.6% this year. His career rate is 33.2%.
Pitchers are attacking him with fastballs 65% of the time, up from 59% in his career, which may seem like a small difference, but isn't. And the linear weights over on Fangraphs finds that Dunn is -0.91 runs below average per 100 fastballs seen this year, compared to 2.10 last year and 1.63 for his career. Again, those may seem like small, esoteric numbers, but the upshot is that pitchers are blowing him away with heat.
All that has added up to the tell-tale cratering of Dunn's batting average, which sits at .176 on Thursday.
Of course, everyone sees Dunn falling apart now. The hard part is knowing when it would happen. Maybe Mike Rizzo lucked out, or the White Sox just outbid him, but it's possible Rizzo and the team's scouts saw the decline in bat speed. Whatever, Rizzo stayed away, while the White Sox are in the first year of what looks like a miserable 4-year commitment to the second coming of Mo Vaughn.
And perhaps the biggest payoff of all came in this week's draft, when the Nationals were able to grab two high-upside, value picks in Alex Meyer and Brian Goodwin with the Dunn compensation picks.
And because they had these extra picks, it made it a lot easier for them to take a high-risk shot in the third round on Matt Purke, a pitcher considered a potential top-5 pick not long ago, before a shoulder injury derailed him. Purke isn't likely to work out, but his ceiling is that of an ace, and you gotta love the aggressiveness.
The Nationals organization hasn't done a lot of things well over the past few years, but when it came to Adam Dunn, they truly made all the right moves.
Thursday, June 9, 2011
The Kiss Heard Round the World
Bryce Harper is an asshole. He's a big, fat, awesomely talented, ass-kicking, sonofabitch asshole. And we got him. The Phillies don't. The Yankees don't. The Nationals do. And that's why I love him.
OK, so backing up a bit. We've been hearing for over a year that Harper has "makeup issues." People say he's cocky and too often shows up opponents.
But there are makeup issues, and then there are makeup issues. And sometimes, as Elijah Dukes once said, "makeup is the stuff they make up about you."
The question in Harper's case isn't whether he's cocky or not. Obviously he is. But so were Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, Bob Gibson, Babe Ruth... heck, how can you perform at the level these guys perform if you aren't supremely confident in a way that most of us would consider kind of off-putting if we had them over for dinner?
The question is whether his arrogance translates to laziness and/or an inability to deal with adversity. Ryan Leaf was arrogant--and as a result, he didn't work and he couldn't deal with failure.
OK, so backing up a bit. We've been hearing for over a year that Harper has "makeup issues." People say he's cocky and too often shows up opponents.
But there are makeup issues, and then there are makeup issues. And sometimes, as Elijah Dukes once said, "makeup is the stuff they make up about you."
The question in Harper's case isn't whether he's cocky or not. Obviously he is. But so were Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, Bob Gibson, Babe Ruth... heck, how can you perform at the level these guys perform if you aren't supremely confident in a way that most of us would consider kind of off-putting if we had them over for dinner?
The question is whether his arrogance translates to laziness and/or an inability to deal with adversity. Ryan Leaf was arrogant--and as a result, he didn't work and he couldn't deal with failure.
We don't really know yet whether Harper will be able to handle failure. But we do know that he's far from lazy. Every indication is that he not only believes he's the best--he's also driven to do what it takes to prove it. That's the kind of asshole you win championships with.
Now, as for the blown kiss. We don't know the real story here. The camera shots we've seen have only shown Harper rounding the bases Wilson Ramos-speed and blowing the smooch. We don't know whether the pitcher was talking shit or how much went down before that moment. @bharpsis4534 says there were two sides of the story, and I suspect that's probably true.
But here's what I liked about it. First, the kiss felt to me like it was Harper first and foremost having fun. He loves the game, loves to compete, and loves to win. Was it polite? Ideal sportsmanship? No. But it also didn't seem mean-spirited. It seemed playful, not angry or petulant. I kinda thought it was charming.
Second, I like that he talked shit after he hit a home run. Muhammed Ali said, "it ain't braggin' if it's true." Yes, I know, Ali was a boxer, not a baseball player, but I think MLB would be better off if it had more Alis and a fewer milquetoast, corporate-packaged Derek Jeter types.
Finally, I like that he plays for my team. And if he's going to kick as many butts in his career as it seems like he will, doggone I kinda hope we get to rub some noses in it. For all the Phillies fan takeovers of Nationals Park and all the losing, we're due to enjoy our wins a little more openly than Miss Manners might approve of.
Now, as for the blown kiss. We don't know the real story here. The camera shots we've seen have only shown Harper rounding the bases Wilson Ramos-speed and blowing the smooch. We don't know whether the pitcher was talking shit or how much went down before that moment. @bharpsis4534 says there were two sides of the story, and I suspect that's probably true.
But here's what I liked about it. First, the kiss felt to me like it was Harper first and foremost having fun. He loves the game, loves to compete, and loves to win. Was it polite? Ideal sportsmanship? No. But it also didn't seem mean-spirited. It seemed playful, not angry or petulant. I kinda thought it was charming.
Second, I like that he talked shit after he hit a home run. Muhammed Ali said, "it ain't braggin' if it's true." Yes, I know, Ali was a boxer, not a baseball player, but I think MLB would be better off if it had more Alis and a fewer milquetoast, corporate-packaged Derek Jeter types.
Finally, I like that he plays for my team. And if he's going to kick as many butts in his career as it seems like he will, doggone I kinda hope we get to rub some noses in it. For all the Phillies fan takeovers of Nationals Park and all the losing, we're due to enjoy our wins a little more openly than Miss Manners might approve of.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Right Track/Wrong Track Results... And a New Poll!
May's right track / wrong track poll held steady at 69%. Voting is open on this month's poll on the right hand side of this page. Will the glow of the draft overcome the team's play on the field?
Monday, June 6, 2011
Nationals Charmed Life in the Draft
In 2008, the Nationals were the worst team in baseball, and their reward was Stephen Strasburg, probably the best college pitching prospect ever. In 2009, the Nationals repeated as the worst team in the league, and wound up with Bryce Harper, considered by many to be the best power-hitting prospect ever.
In both drafts, the Nationals got to pick a consensus #1 overall pick--both can't-miss, once-in-a-generation type talents.
This year, the Nationals drafted #6 overall, and wouldn't you know it, there really wasn't any consensus #1 pick. There was a group of exactly six picks clustered at the top, and any one of them could have easily been the top pick.
As you know by now, the Nationals ended up getting Anthony Rendon, the third baseman from Rice who just a few short weeks ago was considered the top overall prospect in the draft. He's a big-time hitter and excellent fielder, drawing comparisons to David Wright, Evan Longoria, and, yes, Ryan Zimmerman. Even as of today, few predicted Rendon would slip all the way to the Nationals.
Now, there are some things we don't know about Rendon's health. He suffered a shoulder injury and has had a disappointing college season. But on the other hand, college bats tend to be the safest of all possible bets in the draft, and Rendon is closer to helping the Nationals than anyone else in the whole draft.
Some are wondering about where Rendon fits. Can he play second with Zimmerman at third? A cynic would say that Rendon is probably Zimmerman's replacement after he leaves in free agency in a couple years. If not, maybe he can play second base or first base or becomes trade bait.
In both drafts, the Nationals got to pick a consensus #1 overall pick--both can't-miss, once-in-a-generation type talents.
This year, the Nationals drafted #6 overall, and wouldn't you know it, there really wasn't any consensus #1 pick. There was a group of exactly six picks clustered at the top, and any one of them could have easily been the top pick.
As you know by now, the Nationals ended up getting Anthony Rendon, the third baseman from Rice who just a few short weeks ago was considered the top overall prospect in the draft. He's a big-time hitter and excellent fielder, drawing comparisons to David Wright, Evan Longoria, and, yes, Ryan Zimmerman. Even as of today, few predicted Rendon would slip all the way to the Nationals.
Now, there are some things we don't know about Rendon's health. He suffered a shoulder injury and has had a disappointing college season. But on the other hand, college bats tend to be the safest of all possible bets in the draft, and Rendon is closer to helping the Nationals than anyone else in the whole draft.
Some are wondering about where Rendon fits. Can he play second with Zimmerman at third? A cynic would say that Rendon is probably Zimmerman's replacement after he leaves in free agency in a couple years. If not, maybe he can play second base or first base or becomes trade bait.
At this point it doesn't matter. The important point is that for the third year in a row, the Nationals got absolute max value with their top pick. It's a historic streak that may, finally, help make the Nationals a winning team.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Is Jim Riggleman a Small Ball Manager?
I get credit for resisting the temptation to write "Jim Riggleman's Small Balls," don't I? Oops, I guess I don't.
Anyway, Jim Riggleman vented on Charlie Slowes today about how unfair it is that anyone would ever call him a "small ball manager." Nevermind the MASN commercials that prompted Joe Posnanski to tear into Riggles as if he's the patron saint of small ball. Those ads are just PR, I'm sure Riggleman didn't write the script, and regardless he should be judged on what he does, not what he says in an ad.
So does Riggleman attempt sac bunts and/or stolen bases more than the average manager? Let's look at last year to try to get a bigger sample.
First, we can't just look at the raw number of sac bunts and steals. The Nationals had a .318 OBP, 13th in the NL. This year they are second to worst. That means more outs, fewer base runners and fewer opportunities to steal and sac bunt.
Here are all the teams in the NL sorted by the percentage of time they attempted a stolen base (SBA) in stolen base opportunities (SBO)--situations when there was a runner on first or second base with the next base open (I'm told these tables are not displaying right on Internet Explorer. You can try with another browser or click here.):
Tm SBO SBA SBA% NYM 2219 174 7.84% SDP 2227 174 7.81% WSN 2205 151 6.85% HOU 2166 136 6.28% LAD 2283 142 6.22% COL 2290 141 6.16% CIN 2344 136 5.80% PIT 2138 123 5.75% LgAvg 2272 128 5.63% PHI 2311 129 5.58% ARI 2314 127 5.49% FLA 2278 118 5.18% STL 2328 120 5.15% MIL 2396 107 4.47% SFG 2211 87 3.93% CHC 2246 86 3.83% ATL 2403 92 3.83%
So Jim ran quite a bit more than average. But he can still make the argument that he ran more because he had players who ran well. That's fair to an extent. Here's the success rate of those same NL teams in 2010:
Tm SB% PHI 84% FLA 78% MIL 76% NYM 75% HOU 74% WSN 73% SDP 71% PIT 71% LgAvg 71% COL 70% CIN 68% ARI 68% ATL 68% STL 66% LAD 65% CHC 64% SFG 63%
The Nationals were in fact a bit better than average, and considering they ran so much, that's reasonable evidence that Jim was in fact playing to his team's strengths.
My quibble would be that so many of the steal attempts were Nyjer Morgan batting lead-off and attempting to steal with power hitters like Adam Dunn, Ryan Zimmerman, and Josh Willingham due up. First base is scoring position if Dunn hits it in the upper deck, and yet Morgan led the league with 17 caught stealings. That's the opposite of playing to a team's strength.
What about sac bunts? Again, looking at the raw number of sacs doesn't tell us much. We need to look at how often Riggleman bunted given the situations. Unfortunately, I don't have the raw data to run my own SQL queries, and I don't know of anywhere to get that info publicly, so I'm going to do a little workaround to try to get close by simply taking the stolen base opportunities referenced above (from Baseball Reference) and assume that 2/3 of these opportunities occurred with fewer than two outs. That's obviously introducing a margin of error, but so be it.
Running those numbers, here's what we get:
Tm Sac Opps Sacs Sac Att % WSN 1470 118 8.03% LAD 1522 122 8.02% SDP 1485 111 7.48% NYM 1479 109 7.37% SFG 1474 106 7.19% HOU 1444 101 7.00% CIN 1563 100 6.40% PIT 1425 91 6.39% LgAvg 1515 93 6.14% STL 1552 95 6.12% ATL 1602 98 6.12% CHC 1497 87 5.81% COL 1527 83 5.44% FLA 1519 75 4.94% PHI 1541 70 4.54% MIL 1597 62 3.88% ARI 1543 53 3.44%
Lo and behold, no manager in the NL jumped on sac bunt opportunities more often than Riggleman. What about the "playing to my players' strengths" argument? Is it possible that Jim was simply asking his players to do something they were particularly good at? Here's the sac bunt success rate of each NL team last year:
Tm Success % ARI 77% HOU 74% SFG 72% SDP 71% LAD 70% ATL 70% STL 69% CHC 69% NYM 68% LgAvg 68% FLA 68% COL 67% CIN 66% PIT 64% PHI 63% WSN 60% MIL 56%
Ruh-roh. That's not good, though in fairness if his guys couldn't bunt they probably couldn't hit away either, so we probably shouldn't make too much of this number.
Playing small ball doesn't make you a bad manager. The sacrifice isn't always a bad play, and we'd have to dig a lot deeper into the numbers to decide whether Riggleman is using the tactic well or not. The stolen base is a good play if you are successful about 72% of the time or more, and the Nationals were (barely). But the evidence shows that at least in 2010, Jim Riggleman was absolutely a small ball manager, and to argue otherwise is kinda silly.
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