July 15, 2008
Stros 2008 Season Review, Part Three
Inasmuch as Major League Baseball is taking a break for the All-Star break, I decided to post the third part of five periodic reviews of the Stros' 2008 season a game or so early (previous parts for the 2008 season are here). Although they were able to keep it together a bit longer than the 2007 club, the 2008 Stros (44-51) fell apart during the third 20% segment of the 2008 season.
The Stros went 12-19 during the third segment and spiced that effort by being trounced 10-0 on this past Friday evening by the team with the worst record in MLB, the Washington Nationals (36-50). That's a far worse record than the club had during either the first fifth or second fifth of the season, but consistent with my pre-season forecast that this Stros club looked like a 75-win outfit. The Stros are in in last place in the National League Central, 13 games behind the Cubs (57-38) and 8.5 games out of the National League Wildcard Playoff berth. Given that the Cubs net RCAA/RSAA total is 113 (43 RCAA/70 RSAA) and the Stros is -42 (-41 RCAA/-1 RSAA), it's surprising that the Stros aren't even further behind.
Nevertheless, the first 60% of the season has been an instructive lesson in how risky it is to make conclusions about baseball based on small sample sizes. The Stros stumbled out of the gate with 12 losses in their first 18 games and looked completely lost. Then, stellar 1B Lance Berkman (52 RCAA/.443 OBA/.653 SLG/ 1.097 OPS) warmed up and the club bounced back with a 23-10 stretch that put them seven games above .500 at 30-23 and just one game behind the Cubs on May 27, prompting the mostly clueless Chronicle sports reporters (Zac Levine excepted) to babble about a possible playoff berth. However, since then, the Stros have lost 29 of 43 games to drop into the NL Central cellar and decisively expunge any theoretical playoff aspirations. The Stros now have to win 31 of their final 67 games just to equal my 75 win pre-season prediction. That is by no means a sure thing.
The Stros' main problem continues to be absolutely atrocious hitting outside of Berkman, LF Carlos Lee (16 RCAA/.351 OPS/.547 SLG/.898 OPS) and 3B Ty Wigginton (4 RCAA/.368 OBA/.470 SLG/.839 OPS). Inasmuch as Berkman, Lee and Wigginton have together generated 72 more runs (mostly due to Berkman) than three National League-average hitters would have produced using the same number of outs, the rest of the Stros hitters have generated an astounding 116 fewer runs than the same number of merely National League-average hitters would have produced using the same number of outs.
The Stros resulting -44 RCAA ranks 13th among the 16 National League clubs and is better than only the truly pathetic Giants, Diamondbacks and Nationals. But for Berkman having one of the best seasons of any hitter in Stros history (he has a legitimate chance of breaking into Jeff Bagwell's top four Stros all-time seasons -- 1994, 96, 97 & 99), this Stros club would be competing for the distinction of the worst hitting team in the club's history. As it is, the 2008 club will likely end up being one of the five worst hitting teams in franchise history.
Meanwhile, the pitching that had been overachieving through the first 40% of the season came back down to earth during the third segment of the season. The Stros staff remains a barely above National League-average staff, saving 7 more runs through 95 games than a National League-average staff would have given up in the same number of innings. That is 7th among the 16 National League clubs.
Although staff ace Roy Oswalt started to rebound (1 RSAA/ 4.56 ERA), he strained a hip muscle a couple of weeks ago and appears headed to the disabled list after lasting only one inning in the aforementioned 10-0 debacle against the Nationals. Also, staff ace-to-date Wandy Rodriguez is trending back to his career numbers (9 RSAA/3.23 ERA), while primary relievers Jose Valverde (4 RSAA/3.89 ERA) and Doug Brocail (4 RSAA/3.86 ERA) are merely slightly above National League-average in their performance. Thus, unlike the 2005 Stros pitching staff, this staff simply does not have the talent to string together a run of high-quality pitching that is necessary to put together a long winning streak that could vault the Stros back into playoff contention.
Nevetheless, this club's main problem is not the pitching staff, which is far improved over the 2007 club and does not have a member whose RSAA is anywhere near the horrid RCAA's posted by "hitters" such as CF Michael Bourn (-24 -- worst in the NL among regular players), RF Hunter Pence (-14), C J.R. Towles (-15) and the always-awful Brad Ausmus (-14). With the exception of Berkman, Lee, Wigginton and possibly Pence, I'd bet that P Brandon Backe (1 RCAA/.406 OBA/.517/.918 OPS) would hit better over a course of a full season than any of the other Stros hitters. That's a sad reflection of the deterioration in hitting that has bedeviled the Stros throughout the latter stages of the Biggio-Bagwell era.
In part two, I reviewed what the Stros should do for the rest of this season to salvage it, so I won't repeat that here. However, what is more distressing than the club's performance this season is the apparent cluelessness of the club's management on what to do about it. Both owner Drayton McLane and General Manager Ed Wade have been quoted in the mainstream media in recent days saying that the club "has not given up" and that they believe that the team "has what it takes" to make a playoff drive in the final 67 games.
Now, such statements are regularly made in MLB for public relations purposes and shouldn't be taken seriously. Neither McLane nor Wade really thinks that this team has any meaningful chance to contend for a playoff spot. However, the management of the team is still odd. Apart from the questionable handling of the Chacon affair, CF Bourn ought to be playing either on the big league club or in AAA learning how to hit line drives and hard grounders. Sitting him on the Stros bench makes absolutely no sense while allowing a washed up Darin Erstad to take valuable playing time away from a younger and potentially better player. Similarly, why on earth are the Stros wasting innings on the hopeless Ausmus while Towles wastes away on the bench? If the club is not going to play Towles regularly, then send him back to Round Rock where he can develop his skills.
Finally, the club's handling of Oswalt's recent injury reflects desperation. Oswalt has battled the hip muscle injury for several seasons. The reoccurrence of the injury a couple of weeks before the All-Star break clearly called for the club to put its most valuable pitching asset on the shelf through the break to allow him three solid weeks of recovery time. Instead, the club inexplicably pushed Oswalt to pitch last Friday night's meaningless debacle, which resulted in a not surprising aggravation of the injury. Thus, not only did management eviscerate Oswalt's trade value, they also contributed to the risk that Oswalt's injury will become seriously chronic in nature. What on earth was Stros management thinking?
Oh well. At least the club appears to be doing a good job of signing its picks from this year's draft, which is what the Stros need to do to start the long process of restocking its fallow farm system. But at some point, the club's management needs to level with its fan base about it's commitment to development of players in the club's system rather than attempting to patch something together from season to season. It's going to take awhile, but it's a heck of a lot more fulfilling than trying to sell snake oil.
The Stros take on their NL Central opponents after the All-Star break, first the Cubs and Pirates (44-50) at home, then on the road at the Brewers (52-43) and then back home to play the Reds (46-50) to close out the month. That will take the Stros up to the trade deadline, where they should be sellers despite a paucity of attractive offerings. Oswalt is damaged goods right now, while Lee's over-priced contract undermines any trade for him. Berkman is a valuable asset, but the Stros would likely face a public relations disaster if they tried to move him. Still, pitchers Rodriguez, Valverde and Brocail and SS Miguel Tejada each might bring a decent prospect from a contender in trade. But will this seemingly directionless Stros management team be selling?
The 2008 season statistics for the Stros are below (through 93 games; I'll update through 95 games later), courtesy of Lee Sinins' sabermetric Complete Baseball Encyclopedia. The abbreviations for the hitting stats are defined here and the same for the pitching stats are here. The Stros' 40 man roster is here with links to each individual player's statistics:
Posted by Tom at 12:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
June 27, 2008
The stress of selling snake oil
In my annual preview of the Stros' season, I made the following observation about the then newly-acquired Stros pitcher, Shawn Chacon:
"Chacon was an inconsistent starter for six seasons before washing out with the Yankees and Pirates in 2006 (-24 RSAA -- ouch!). He revived his career last season with the Pirates as a setup man, so what do the Stros do? Insert him back into the starting rotation. This is unlikely to turn out well."
Boys will be boys. Chacon was not a happy camper after being banished fromthe starting rotation to the Stros' bullpen last week, so his outburst is not all that surprising. It's not as if Chacon (-3 RSAA; 5.04 ERA) has pitched appreciably worse over the course of the season than Brandon Backe (-1 RSAA/4.82 ERA), who inexplicably enjoys a secure spot in the rotation with nary a hint of a demotion. Indeed, Backe and Chacon's career numbers are not much different -- they are both below National League-average pitchers. Backe has pitched a tad better lately, but beware of small sample sizes. Sure, the Stros demoted Chris Sampson from the rotation earlier in the season, so there was precedent for demoting Chacon. But Sampson had pitched appreciably worse as a starter than Chacon, and without any demonstrably better starters on the pitching staff or in the farm system, I can understand how Chacon thought that his demotion was at least premature under the circumstances.
It's not particularly surprising that first-year Stros GM Ed Wade flew off the handle, either. His attempt to retool the Stros into a playoff contender on the fly is looking more like an unmitigated disaster by the day. Wade made four major off-season acquisitions and none of them have panned out. CF Michael Bourn (18 RCAA/.305 OBA/.331 SLG/.636 OPS) has been one of the worst hitters in the National League among regular players this season. Expensive 2B Kaz Matsui (-6 RCAA/.336 OBA/.342 SLG/.678 OPS) is continuing his legacy of never playing more than 114 games in any one of his five seasons in Major League Baseball, while SS Miguel Tejada (-4 RCAA/.329 OBA/.459 SLG/.789 OPS) has continued the decline in production that began three seasons ago in Baltimore. Even the barely above-average performance of closer Jose Valverde (2 RSAA/4.34 ERA) has paled in comparison to that of the closer that Wade ran off, Brad Lidge (12 RSAA/0.87 ERA). Add in the fact that the Stros' hitters -- other than slugger Lance Berkman -- have generated an astounding 93 fewer runs this season than an average National League team would have created using the same number of outs as the Stros' hitters have used and it's easy to understand how Wade is feeling the heat these days.
Ironically, acquiring Chacon was not one of Wade's particularly bad deals from this past off-season. Inasmuch as Chacon accepted a below-average MLB salary ($2 million) for a shot at earning a spot in the Stros' rotation and performed at just below National League-average for the season to date, Wade certainly didn't overpay for that performance.
But the reality is that Wade and the Stros have been selling snake oil this season, and the suckers are starting to thin out. This Stros club is a seriously bad baseball team and it doesn't have the Craig Biggio Farewell Tour to distract the paying public from the club's glaring inadequacies. As noted in this most recent season review, it's well past time for Stros management to quit attempting to patch together a winner from year-to-year. Now is the time to focus on development of a rebuilding plan that has a better chance of re-creating the sustained success that the club enjoyed during the Biggio-Bagwell era.
Rebuilding is not as snazzy as selling snake oil, but it's honest and much less likely to provoke the frustrations that boiled over in the Stros clubhouse on Wednesday.
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June 10, 2008
Stros 2008 Season Review, Part Two
Through 40% of the season, the Stros' record is precisely what you would expect from a club that struggles to maintain National League average performance -- 32-32, including 15-16 in the second fifth of the season. That's about the same as the first fifth of the season and a bit better than my pre-season forecast. The Stros are in 4th place in the National League Central, 8 games behind the Cubs (40-24) and only 1.5 games out of last place in the division. Any early-season hope that this club could contend for a playoff spot is now a pipe dream.
Frankly, there is little reason to be optimistic about the Stros' prospects for the remainder of the season. While the pitching staff has performed better than expected and is a dramatic improvement over last season's staff at a comparable stage of the season, the club's overall hitting -- outside of Lance Berkman's Bonds-like performance (47 RCAA/.458 OBA/.723 SLG/1.181 OPS) -- has been abysmal. The Stros' hitters rank 12th out of the 16 National League clubs in runs created against average (-23 RCAA) and only one hitter other than Berkman is creating more runs than an average National League-hitter would produce using the same number of outs. Moreover, two regular Stros players -- CF Michael Bourn (-16 RCAA/.281 OBA/.309 SLG/.590 OPS) and recently-demoted C JR Towles (-13 RCAA/.270 OBA/.282 SLG/.552 OPS) -- are among the least productive hitters in the National League. LF Carlos Lee (-5 RCAA/.301 OBA/.469 SLG/.770 OPS) is showing why he is one of the most overpaid players in Major League Baseball, while the declining SS Miguel Tejada (-1 RCAA/.335 OBA/.466 SLG/.801 OPS) has cooled considerably after a hot start. As noted in the first season review, Bourn, Towles and Hunter Pence (-2 RCAA/.339 OBA/.478 SLG/.817 OPS) have all showed signs of their lack of Triple-A seasoning, while neither 3B Ty Wigginton (2 RCAA/.368 OBA/.448 SLG/.817 OPS) nor 2B Kaz Matsui (-3 RCAA/.353 OBA/.352 SLG/.705 OPS) are difference makers. Where would this bunch be without Berkman?
It's too bad that the hitters other than Berkman have tanked because the pitching has actually been pretty good. The staff's RSAA is +13, which is 5th among the 16 National League clubs, and Brian Moehler (4 RSAA/3.76), Wandy Rodriguez (12 RSAA/1.99 ERA), Doug Brocail (8 RSAA/2.53 ERA), Geoff Geary (6 RSAA/1.77 ERA), and Tim Byrdak (8 RSAA/0.52 ERA) have all been pleasant surprises. Furthermore, there is decent chance that the staff's overall RSAA will not decline dramatically as some of the staff members regress to career-average performance because staff ace Roy Oswalt (-7 RSAA/5.38 ERA) is likely to increase his performance-level as he gets back on track after a shaky season to date. Had the Stros' hitters performed on merely a National League-average level so far this season, the pitching has been good enough that the Stros would be challenging the Cardinals (38-27) for second-place in the division. However, neither the Cards nor the Stros have enough horsepower to compete with the Cubs (+30 RCAA/+56 RSAA) for the division lead.
Meanwhile, Stros manager Cecil Cooper appears to be oblivious about the nature of his club's mediocrity. Here is a quote from Cooper from this article in today's Chronicle:
"I'm not really worried about hitting," Cooper said. "We have to play better — pitch better and play defense better. We haven't done it consistently like we should be doing. That's not to say we're not going to get there, but so far we haven't."
Oh well, at least Cooper's not as clueless as Jimy Williams.
Interestingly, the Stros' reshuffling of their bullpen over the past off-season is not the reason for the pitching staff's improved performance. In fact, if you back out new arrivals Geary and Jose Valverde (4 RSAA/3.88 ERA) and add back in Chad Qualls (6 RSAA/2.79 ERA at Arizona) and Brad Lidge (10 RSAA/0.96 ERA at Philly), the pitching staff's performance would be even stronger than it has been been. Add in other pitchers who the Stros have traded over the past couple of seasons -- Dan Wheeler (5 RSAA/2.22 ERA at Tampa Bay), Taylor Buchholz (9 RSAA/1.67 ERA at Colorado) and Matt Albers (8 RSAA/2.74 ERA at Baltimore) -- and the Stros would have one of the most formidable bullpens in Major League Baseball. This just goes to show that a club rarely receives in return equal or better pitching performance than the proven performance of veterans or the reasonably-expected performance of top prospects that the club trades. The reality is that even above-average pitchers have a bad season from time to time.
In contrast, former Stros' hitters who have been traded away recently have generally continued their Stros' legacy of poor hitting. OF Luke Scott has been solid (7 RCAA/.354 OBA/.492 SLG/.846 OPS) at Baltimore, but CF Willy Taveras continues to struggle against MLB pitching at Colorado (-10 RCAA/.292 OBA/.275 SLG/.566 OPS), 3B Mike Lamb is having one of his periodic bad seasons at Minnesota (-9 RCAA/.267 OBA/.310 SLG/.577 OPS), 2B Chris Burke is flailing away in Arizona (-9 RCAA/.298 OBA/.218 SLG/.516 OPS) and 3B Morgan Ensberg was DFA'ed after posting an awful line (-8 RCAA/.263 OBA/.243 SLG/.506 OPS) with the Yankees. Meanwhile, SS Adam Everett has been mostly injured since leaving the Stros and LF Jason Lane is fulfilling his AAAA legacy in the Yankees farm system.
Thus, the Stros didn't lose much by giving up any of those players, and the addition of league-average hitters Tejada, Matsui and Wigginton has at least made the Stros a less-bad hitting team than they otherwise would have been. However, it's far from clear that the Stros' personnel moves over the past year have done much of anything in terms of improving the overall performance of the club from what it would have been had the club stood pat. That's why it's usually far more productive to invest in scouting and development of players over the long term than to attempt to cobble together a contender from year-to-year by overhauling the roster through trades and free-agent acquisitions.
So, what should the Stros do for the rest of the season? First, the club should dispense with any pretension that it is a playoff contender. That ruse distracts the club from making the type of personnel decisions that are more likely to propel the club back into playoff contention. Development of young players such as Bourn and Towles, as well as several relatively untested pitchers, should be the highest priority. Bourn and Towles have both shown flashes of MLB-level ability, but both are going to need sustained playing time at the MLB-level before it can be determined whether they are have the skills necessary to be regular MLB players. Similarly, pitchers such as Fernando Nieve, Wesley Wright and AA-pitchers Brad James, Chance Douglass and Polin Trinidad should be allowed to pitch some MLB-innings during the remainder of the season to give Stros management a feel for their ceiling. As most recently noted here and in numerous other posts over the past several years, the Stros' steady decline since their improbable 2005 World Series run is the result of a decade of poor drafting and development of young players in the Stros' minor league system. Given that the Stros' decline is unlikely to change unless the organization does a better job of developing young players, it makes absolutely no sense in a lost season from a playoff-contention standpoint to take developmental at-bats away from players such as Bourn and Towles and give them to older and clearly below National League-average players such as Darrin Erstad (-2 RCAA/.322 OBA/.452 SLG/.774 OPS), Reggie Abercrombie and Brad Ausmus (-11 RCAA/.327 OBA/.300 SLG/.537 OPS).
The remainder of June is going to be tough sledding for the Stros as they face the Brewers (33-30) and the Yankees (30-32) at home before going on the road against the Orioles (31-31) and the Rays (37-26), and then return home to face the Rangers (32-33), the Red Sox (40-26) and the Dodgers (30-32) to close out the month. It's doubtful that the Stros will be able to maintain their .500 pace against that competition, so I'm expecting the Stros' record to be several games under .500 by the time of the next season review installment after completion of 60% of the season in mid-July. At this point, my pre-season over/under prediction of 75 wins still looks to be a pretty solid estimate of this club's probable number of wins for the season.
The 2008 season statistics for the Stros are below (through 64 games), courtesy of Lee Sinins' sabermetric Complete Baseball Encyclopedia. The abbreviations for the hitting stats are defined here and the same for the pitching stats are here. The Stros' 40 man roster is here with links to each individual player's statistics:
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May 20, 2008
And you thought the Mitchell Report was ugly?
So, the controversy over the Mitchell Commission Report has pretty much died down, right? Well, it looks as if another potential public relations nightmare is brewing for Major League Baseball:
Tucked away inside the United States attorney’s office in the Northern District of California are documents that link more than 100 major league baseball players to positive tests for steroids conducted in 2003.
The test results were meant to be anonymous, and a battle over access to them has wound its way through the federal court system. The players union has tried to protect its members by arguing that the government illegally obtained the information.
But now, more than four years after federal agents seized the test results as part of the investigation into the drug-distribution activities of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative, the government appears close to prevailing in the legal battle, which could set off another round of federal drug investigations.
According to a lawyer who spoke on condition of anonymity because the government’s plans are supposed to remain confidential, federal authorities will seek to question each of the 104 players about where and how they obtained the substance detected in their urine samples.
The authorities then intend to distribute the information they receive to federal prosecutors around the country.
Distributors, not users, have been the focus of the government’s investigations into performance-enhancing drugs ever since the authorities began seriously looking into the issue in 2002. But the 104 players would be asked to provide testimony — to federal agents or before grand juries — to lead investigators to the distributors. The players’ identities could become public if their testimony is used in government documents to obtain search warrants or to charge individuals. The players could also be called as witnesses at trials.
Regardless of how many of the 104 names eventually become public, the notion of simultaneous drug investigations being conducted by various federal attorney’s offices around the country would be a significant setback to Major League Baseball, which has struggled to get control of the issues related to performance-enhancing drugs. [. . .]
Read the entire article. The MLB Players Association has to be kicking itself for not insisting on the destruction of the "anonymous" drug tests, which were conducted during the 2003 season. Under public pressure to agree to some regulation of performance-enhancing drugs, the Players Association had agreed to the 2003 testing as a "survey" under which all players would be tested one time and 240 players would be randomly tested a second time with neither group being under any threat of punishment. Subsequently, discovery in connection with the investigation into the Balco case in Northern California transcended the deal between Major League Baseball and the Players Association, so now it appears that there is a good chance that a master list of all players who tested positive during the 2003 testing may well become public information. The list won't be released tomorrow or even next week, so most of the mainstream media will continue to focus on such sideshows as the Mindy McCready affair. But you can bet that Major League Baseball and the Players Association can hear the clock ticking on this one.
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May 7, 2008
Stros 2008 Season Review, Part One
Despite a weekend sweep of the division-rival Brewers (16-16) and another stirring comeback victory over the Nationals (14-19), the Stros' record (17-16) reflects their performance through the first fifth of the 2008 season -- an average National League ballclub.
Collectively, the Stros are generating one less run through 33 games than a National League-average club would have generated in the same number of games (RCAA -- that's 9th among the 16 National League clubs) and the Stros' pitching staff has collectively given up nine more runs than a National League-average pitching staff would have given up (RSAA -- that's 10th in the National League). Thus, the 2008 Stros have essentially the same record and collective statistics as the disastrous 2007 club had at roughly the same stage of the season.
Nevertheless, there is a reasonable basis for thinking that the 2008 club will turn out somewhat better over the course of the season than the 2007 edition (73-89). SS Miguel Tejada (12 RCAA/.379 OBA/.565 SLG/.944 OPS) appears to be revived by his new surroundings and has been much better than predicted, both offensively and defensively. Although still below National League-average, the Stros' pitching staff can look forward to ace Roy Oswalt (-7 RSAA/5.57 ERA) improving steadily over the balance of the season after an uncharacteristically bad start (after going 0-3 with a 9.00 ERA in his first three starts, Oswalt is 3-0 with a 3.46 ERA in his last four starts), that second-best starter Wandy Rodriguez (5 RSAA/2.31 ERA) will eventually return from a stint on the disabled list, and that the relief corps will continue its recent improvement after a horrid start that was primarily responsible for the club's atrocious 6-14 record after the first 20 games of the season. Likewise, an increase in offensive productivity is likely as RF Hunter Pence (-5/.288/.432/.720) and LF Carlos Lee (5/.333/.541/.874) rebound from slow starts and regular 3B Ty Wigginton (-2/.275/.333/.608) returns after missing 22 games with a broken thumb. Finally, the Stros' prospects this season are buoyed by 1B Lance Berkman's (22/.428/.731/1.159) strong rebound from a so-so 2007 season (at least by his standards) as he returns to his customary status as one of the top sluggers in the National League. Berkman went nuts at the plate again on Tuesday night against the Nationals, going 5 for 5 for the first time in his career and stealing two more bases, making him 6 for 7 on steal attempts this season.
However, that's not to suggest that there aren't warning signs that could lead this club to swoon in the same manner as the 2007 club did (26 losses in 40 games) during the second quarter of last season. Contrary to the mainstream media's suggestion that the Stros are a good hitting team, no Stros hitters are producing above National League-average except for Berkman, Tejeda and Lee, and Lee is not producing anywhere near the rate he needs to in order to make up for all the runs he gives away with his laggard defensive play. Meanwhile, young players Pence, CF Michael Bourn (-5/.275/.315/.590) and C J.R. Towles (-3/.318/.386/.703) are all showing signs of their lack of AAA seasoning. Bourn has yet to learn that his future as a Major Leaguer is in being a line drive/ground ball hitter, while Pence is having to deal for the first time with the reality that he will get few meaty fastballs from NL pitchers unless or until he learns to lay off breaking pitches thrown outside the strike zone. On the pitching side, the starting rotation is seemingly on the brink of disaster most of the time (Chris Sampson has a -11 RSAA/7.96 ERA so far this season!), which has led to Manager Cecil Cooper's quick hook and the resulting overuse of the relievers. Although they have been better over the past 20 or so games, those relievers are at high risk of reverting to their early season mediocrity as the innings pile up.
Consequently, through a fifth of the 2008 season, there still is not much evidence that the Stros can contend for a NL playoff spot. So long as they can avoid injuries to key players, the club might be able to achieve a .500 record, which would be 7 games better than my pre-season over/under prediction of 75 wins. However, the club's pitching is simply too inconsistent to generate a sustained period of generating more wins than losses, which is necessary at some point in any season to propel a club into playoff contention. Look for the Cubs (19-14; 31 RCAA/24 RSAA) to take control of the NL Central as the season wears on, although the Cardinals (22-12; 28 RCAA/13 RSAA) have been the surprise of the division so far. I just don't think the Cards will keep it up.
By the way, the 2008 season has brought us another solid source of information on the Stros. Zachary Levine -- who takes a refreshingly objective approach to baseball analysis -- has quickly become the most insightful Houston Chronicle reporter on the Stros. Along with Lisa Gray's insightful Stros blog and Alyson Footer's articles at Astros.com, Levine's reports on the Stros provide solid sources for keeping up with the Stros on daily basis.
After finishing up against the Nats this week, the Stros make a West Coast swing against the Dodgers (18-14) and the Giants (14-19) before returning to Texas to play the Rangers (13-20) in the first inter-league games of the season. Then, it's back home later this month to play the Cubs and Phillies (19-14) before going back on the road to finish May against the Cardinals and Brewers.
The 2008 season statistics for the Stros are below (through 33 games), courtesy of Lee Sinins' sabermetric Complete Baseball Encyclopedia. The abbreviations for the hitting stats are defined here and the same for the pitching stats are here. The Stros 40 man roster is here with links to each individual player's statistics:
Posted by Tom at 12:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
April 19, 2008
Valuing the Stros
The Stros are not worth squat on the playing field this season, but the club continues to be among the dozen most valuable franchises in Major League Baseball.
Forbes' annual valuation of MLB franchises is out and the Stros come in at a respectable 12th among the 30 MLB franchises, down one slot from last year. Forbes thinks that the Stros ($463 million valuation) are doing about as well financially as they can do in this market. A list of the values and operating income for all 30 franchises is here.
Interestingly, although the Yankees have by far the most valuable franchise in MLB, they were dead last among the 30 MLB franchises in operating income at a negative $47 million. The World Champion Boston Red Sox were 29th in operating income at a negative $19 million, although the club's valuation of $816 million is behind only the Yankees ($1.306 billion) and the Mets ($824 million).
This post from last fall noted Forbes' most recent valuation of the National League Football franchise, which continue to be much more valuable than the MLB franchises. The least valuable of the 32 NFL franchises (the Vikings at $782 million) would be the fourth most valuable MLB club.
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April 3, 2008
Catching up with Bill James
The beginning of the Major League Baseball season is a good time to check in with Clear Thinkers favorite, Bill James, the father of sabermetric analysis of baseball. Steve Dubner over at the Freakonomics blog recently provided James with this question-and-answer forum and, as usual, James' observations on baseball are insightful and entertaining. For example:
Q: Using various statistics over a player’s lifetime, and comparing them to “league norms,” is it possible to determine which players may have used steroids?
A: Absolutely not, no. The problem is that many different causes can have the same effects. If a player used steroids, this could cause his home run total to explode at an advanced age — but so could weight training, Lasix surgery, better bats, playing in a different park, a great hitting coach, or a good divorce. It is almost always impossible to infer specific causes from general effects.
Q: Can you tell us about a time when you thought numbers were misleading and why?
A: I would say generally that baseball statistics are always trying to mislead you, and that it is a constant battle not to be misled by them. If you want something specific — pitchers’ won-lost records. And if you want a specific pitcher, Storm Davis, 1989.
For the record, Davis posted a 19-7 record with the Oakland A's in 1989 while posting a pedestrian 4.36 ERA and giving up 8 more runs that season than a National League-average pitcher would have given up pitching in the same number of innings. Needless to say, a National League-average pitcher in 1989 did not have a 19-7 record. Here's another of James' interesting observations:
Q: Generally, who should have a larger role in evaluating college and minor league players: scouts or stat guys?
A: Ninety-five percent scouts, five percent stats. The thing is that — with the exception of a very few players like Ryan Braun — college players are so far away from the major leagues that even the best of them will have to improve tremendously in order to survive as major league players — thus, the knowledge of who will improve is vastly more important than the knowledge of who is good. Stats can tell you who is good, but they’re almost 100 percent useless when it comes to who will improve.
Read the entire post.
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March 31, 2008
Batter up! Stros 2008 Season Preview
The Stros are on the road for the first week of the 2008 Major League Baseball season, but that's not a bad thing considering that the optimism usually associated with Opening Day during the Biggio-Bagwell era of the Stros is largely absent around Houston baseball circles these days (previous Opening Day posts since 2004 are here).
As noted in the concluding post on the Stros' disastrous 2007 campaign, the Stros have been a team in decline for a long time even though generally superior pitching during the 2002-2006 seasons masked that downturn. Unfortunately, after cleaning house toward the end of the 2007 season, not much of what owner Drayton McLane did over the off-season indicates that he understands what the club needs to do to turnaround the downward spiral of the past two seasons. Inasmuch as McLane apparently remains under the delusion that the Stros can contend for a National League playoff spot, the club continues in a syndrome where it tends to take two steps back even after making an occasional good move. For example:
The Good: The Stros finally acquired Orioles star Miguel Tejada for Luke Scott, an injured Troy Patton and a couple of other minor leaguers.
The Bad: The Stros largely blew the benefit of deal by releasing their excellent defensive shortstop, Adam Everett, and placing Tejada at SS rather than 3B where he would be a better fit defensively and offensively. As a result, rather than having a very good defense with Tejada at 3B and Everett at SS, and an improved offense with Tejada's bat, the Stros will field a terrible left-side of the infield defense and only a marginally-better offense than last season's National League-average unit.
The Bad: By getting rid of Everett, the Stros appear locked in with 3B Ty Wigginton, who is not likely to be as good either offensively or defensively as former Stros 3B, Morgan Ensberg. Moreover, the Stros reacquired the Ausmusian Geoff Blum, who -- along with Jimy Williams -- probably cost the Stros a spot in the 2003 National League playoffs.
The Good: The Stros traded basket-case closer Brad Lidge for promising CF Michael Bourn, who will improve the Stros outfield defense, and signed 2B Kaz Matsui, who is a much better defensive 2B at this stage of his career than Craig Biggio was last season.
The Bad: The Stros traded 2B Chris Burke, who was never given a fair chance at his natural position, and paid an absurd $16.5 million over three years for Matsui, who has never played more than 114 games in any one of his four MLB seasons. To underscore this point, Matsui is beginning this season on the disabled list. Matsui's career hitting stats are .325 OBA/.387 SLG/.712 OPS compared to Burke's .304/.357/.662. Burke would have cost the Stros a fraction of the salary that they have committed to Matsui over the next three seasons and probably would have produced about the same once he was given an opportunity to settle into the 2B position. Go figure.
The Bad: The Stros traded solid MLB players Lidge, Chad Qualls and Luke Scott without receiving in return any above-average prospects to re-stock their farm system, which is rated by experts to be among the worst in MLB.
The Good: The Stros finally gave up on Woody Williams, who was a dubious acquisition from the start. Without both Williams and Jason Jennings, this season's pitching staff should be better than last season's, which gave up 79 more runs than a National League-average pitching staff would have given up in an equivalent number of innings (RSAA).
The Bad: After one of the best starting pitchers in MLB, Roy Oswalt, the following is the Stros' rotation to begin the 2008 season:
The bottom line on all of this is that the Stros' addition of Tejada's bat probably will not be what the club's promoters are cranking it up to be in the pre-season (Baseball Prospectus' PECOTA prediction model projects Tejada's 2008 statistics at a rather pedestrian .340 OBA/.428 SLG/.768 OPS with 14 dingers). The subtraction of Biggio, Everett and Brad Ausmus from the everyday starting lineup will probably result in a marginally better hitting club over the National League-average 2007 unit, but the defense and the pitching will likely remain decidedly below-National League average. Accordingly, it is unlikely that the Stros will improve much, if at all, on their 73 wins from last season. I'm putting the over/under on Stros wins this season at 75 and, absent career seasons from about half-a-dozen players, competing for a playoff spot is a pipe dream.
Over the past couple of seasons, I have reviewed the Stros during the season after each 10th (2006) and each 8th of the season (2007). Consistent with my lighter blogging schedule this season, I'm going to review the Stros this season after each 5th of the season, which works out to be after each 32 game segment of the season (I will do 33 game segments for the first and last segments). So look for my first season review this season after the first week in May, give or take a few days in the event of postponed games. Given the vacuum of baseball analysis at the Chronicle, check out Lisa Gray's insightful Stros blog and Alyson Footer's articles at Astros.com for daily reports on the Stros throughout the season.
Posted by Tom at 12:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
February 28, 2008
Baseball Prospectus 2008 is here
Baseball Prospectus 2008 is now shipping, so it's time to order your copy in plenty of time for the beginning of the MLB season. In terms of improving your understanding of baseball, it's the best $14 you can spend.
Given the direction of the Stros over the past two seasons, I was prepared for the BP experts to trash the local club's chances for this season. But it's really not all that bad. BP even kind of likes new Stros General Manager Ed Wade's "win-now strategy," which they characterize as "so crazy that it just might work" in the chronically mediocre National League Central Division.
But even though BP doesn't trash the Stros too badly, the same can't be said BP's treatment of Stros owner, Drayton McLane. Most of BP's overview of the Stros is critical of McLane, such as the following on McLane's revolving door policy with regard to General Managers and Managers:
This front-office turnover has contributed to a fundamental disconnect between the aspiration to contend and what appears to be the preferred means of doing so. Rather than focus on how to contend through improving the personnel in the lineup, the Astros have instead operated for years on the assumption that certain players were building blocks because they liked them, not because of what they actually contributed on the field. When the players in question are Biggio and Jeff Bagwell in their primes, that's fine; when they are Ausmus, Everett, or a completely cooked Biggio, the term "building block" is robbed of its meaning.
Given this mentality, it was really no surprise that the Astros turned 2007 into a supersized Viking funeral for legitimate franchise great Biggio, complete with a team-level self-immolation, and with little but the ashes left to show for it at the end. . .
I really can't recommend Baseball Prospectus 2008 too highly. For serious students of baseball, it's 600 pages of pure reading pleasure.
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February 23, 2008
Thoughts on Rusty and Pettitte
This earlier post was one of the first to express reservations regarding Rusty Hardin's handling of Roger Clemens' defense to the allegations contained in the Mitchell Commission Report (previous posts here) and aftermath, but my reservations are nothing compared to those of Minneapolis attorney Ron Rosenbaum:
No one can really explain the strategy followed here," says Ron Rosenbaum, a local attorney and former talk-radio host on KSTP-AM, a station that still features him all too occasionally. "It strikes me as insane." [. . .]
"There's a difference of opinion in this town, but from the very beginning I thought this was a textbook case of how to not handle a legal situation like this," Rosenbaum says of his fellow lawyer, adding with incredulity that Hardin would allow Clemens to submit himself to a lie detector test, which the pitcher has said he would take. "At the end of the day, all you can do is recommend advice as an attorney. You can't tell your client directly what to do."
Rosenbaum is even harder on Clemens, who he characterizes as an ego-driven "buffoon."
I know Hardin, who is a first-rate trial attorney. Thus, unlike Rosenbaum, I'm certain that Hardin has fully advised Clemens in writing of the considerable risks of the strategy that Clemens has undertaken in attempting to defend himself against alleged PED use. Nevertheless, the disastrous Clemens defense strategy to date reminds me of the best advice I used to pass along to young attorneys who I trained: "One of the most difficult, yet important, responsibilities of a good lawyer is to tell a potentially lucrative client 'No'."
Meanwhile, Clemens' former teammate and friend, Andy Pettitte, was widely praised across most of the mainstream media (the Chronicle's Jerome Solomon was a notable exception) for his "honesty" in admitting during a press-conference earlier in the week to use of human growth hormone at several times in the past. Now, I'm not much of one for simplistic morality plays being applied to complex issues such as PED use in professional sports and society. Moreover, I certainly don't approve of the way ballplayers such as Pettitte and Clemens have been filleted publicly while Major League Baseball owners have largely received a pass on their culpability for promoting an almost pathologically competitive MLB culture that promotes use of PED's and other drugs. Nevertheless, as this C.J. Mahaney post points out, Pettitte's supposed adherence to his avowed Christian faith during his "confession" leaves much to be desired. Sometimes those simple morality plays aren't quite as applicable as they first appear.
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February 18, 2008
BP's PECOTA projection for the 2008 Stros
The sabermetricians over at Baseball Prospectus have developed a statistical system for projecting baseball player performance called PECOTA, which is short for "Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm." PECOTA player performance based on comparison with thousands of historical player-seasons and analyzes similarities with past player-seasons based not only on rate statistics, but also height, weight, age, and many other factors. It is a remarkably accurate predictor of player performance.
BP annually prepares PECOTA projections on each Major League and minor league ballplayer, so it is a simple process to aggregate those individual numbers and project how each MLB team will do. BP's projection for each MLB Division in the 2008 season is here ($), although you will have to subscribe to BP to review the entire PECOTA projections.
Not surprisingly, BP projects the Stros to finish 74-88 (or one game better than last season), good for fourth in the NL Central behind the Cubs, Brewers and Reds. PECOTA projects the Stros' hitting to continue to be league-average with no meaningful improvement in the abysmal pitching that the club endured last season.
Well, at least we'll have the Craig Biggio number retirement ceremony to look forward to. ;^)
By the way, Baseball Prospectus 2008, BP's annual book that is the best source of knowledge about baseball, is scheduled to be published in the next week or so. If you enjoy following baseball, then I highly recommend it.
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February 14, 2008
The aftermath of the Clemens hearing
Many folks have been asking me about my thoughts on the Roger Clemens saga, but I am so disappointed with the abysmal level of discourse regarding the Mitchell Commission Report and the issues involved with the use of PED's in society that I find it hard to drum up much enthusiasm for addressing it. Compare the discussion of the issues from this earlier post with this live blog analysis of the questions and answers from Clemens hearing and you will see what I mean. Sort of makes you want to whipsaw the committee in the same manner as this Colman McCarthy/Washington Post op-ed, doesn't it? Art DeVany expresses similar sentiments.
Although I expressed reservations early on about the unconventional way in which Clemens' legal team has been defending the matter, I don't think the hearing measurably increased Clemens' risk of being charged criminally. In fact, in an odd way, the hearing may have actually mitigated that risk somewhat.
McNamee came across as such a manipulator that my sense is that it's doubtful that prosecutors would base a criminal case against Clemens primarily on McNamee's testimony. Thus, unless investigators come up with a conduit of the PED's who is willing to testify that the PED's were delivered to Clemens and McNamee, Clemens may avoid criminal charges. He is certainly not out of the woods yet, but the Congressional hearing probably hurt him more in the court of public opinion than it did with regard to a potential criminal case (Update: Peter Henning agrees with me).
Nevertheless, I'm not yet ready to bet on that prediction. At least without long odds in my favor.
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January 29, 2008
The worst in Major League Baseball?
Sabermetrics Godfather Bill James coined the "Law of Competitive Balance" to explain the trend that teams that win in professional sports tend to slack off in the following year because team management doesn't work as hard, resists taking risks to make the team better, and generally thinks defensively.
For example, Stros management reacted to the club's playoff appearances in 2004-05 by rationalizing that "if we won with Ausmus and Everett in those seasons, then surely we can do it again next season." As a result, the Stros made minor changes to their roster over the past two seasons through free agency and continued a decade-long trend of failing to develop MLB-level players through their farm system. The Stros' decline over the last two seasons of the Biggio-Bagwell era (from 89-73 in 2005 to 73-89 in 2007) is powerful evidence of the validity of the Law of Competitive Balance.
Well, the chickens are really coming home to roost now as Baseball Prospectus has now deemed the Stros' farm system to be the worst in Major League Baseball ($):
The worst farm system in baseball has no top-tier talent, but plenty of older prospects.[On the top players in the Stros system under the age of 25]: The fact that Pence is the only other player [other than minor leaguers] to qualify for this list, and that he does so by a mere few days, speaks volumes about just how sad the state of affairs is in Houston. The team's recent drafts have been downright laughable, and its once-fruitful Venezuelan pipeline has dried up, as other organizations had passed the Astros in Latin America in terms of committing resources. This is the worst organization in baseball, made even more dreadful by some early moves in the Ed Wade administration that merely upgrade the big-league squad from dreadful to bad. The future is very grim in Space City.
Here is how BP rates the Stros prospects:
Five-Star Prospects: NoneFour-Star Prospects: 1. J.R. Towles, C
Three-Star Prospects: 2. Felipe Paulino, RHP; 3. Bud Norris, RHP
Two-Star Prospects: 4. Brad James, RHP; 5. Josh Flores, OF; 6. Chad Reineke, RHP; 7. Mitch Einertson, OF; 8. Eli Iorg, OF; 9. Jordan Parraz, OF; 10. Sergio Perez, RHP; 11. Collin DeLome, OF
What's particularly odd about all this is that the Stros built a consistent winner in the late 1990's and early part of this decade through their farm system, by developing the Venezuelan pipeline of young players, and picking up productive college players. But as noted earlier here, the Stros have drafted poorly this decade, which required the club to invest heavily in free agents to remain competitive. Not only is that approach expensive financially, it has had the additional impact of negatively affecting the Stros' drafts of young talent.
In three of the last five drafts, the Stros have lost their first-round pick as free-agent compensation. Inasmuch as the Stros have generally not offered arbitration to their own free agents, the Stros only once during that period have received bonus choices of their own. Meanwhile, the Stros have been unwilling to pay much over MLB's "slot" recommendations for draft picks. Accordingly, the combination of few bonus choices, lack of first-round picks and financial conservatism culminated in a particularly awful 2007 draft.
As a result of the Carlos Lee and Woody Williams free agent signings, the Stros didn't have a pick in the first two rounds of the 2007 draft. Then, by electing not to offer arbitration to three of their own Type A free agents (Aubrey Huff, Andy Pettitte and Russ Springer), the Stros lost the opportunity to collect three first-round picks and three supplemental first-rounders as compensation. The Stros thought they could sign their first two choices -- third baseman Derek Dietrich (3rd round) and righthander Brett Eibner of The Woodands (4th round) -- but the prospects ended up asking for more than "slot" money and wound up opting for college ball. Consequently, the Stros spent just a tad under $1.6 million on the 2007 draft, which was $3.6 million below the average of the other 29 MLB teams.
Meanwhile, the Stros Venezuelan pipeline largely dried up after former general manager Tim Purpura fired Andres Reiner, the former director of the Stros' Venezuelan scouting and development, who was instrumental in the Stros signing of Venequelan stars Bobby Abreu, Carlos Guillen, Richard Hidalgo and Johan Santana. New Stros General Manager Ed Wade has reorganized the club's scouting department and brought in former Brewers scout Bobby Heck to run it, but it's far too early at this point to assess whether those moves will stem the downturn in the Stros' farm system.
Frankly, absent a concerted effort to collect draft picks and do a better job of drafting players who are likely to opt for pro ball, I have my doubts that the Stros have done enough to turn around the decline in their farm system. Given how bad it is currently, that's a frightening thought for the future of the ballclub.
Posted by Tom at 12:10 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
January 24, 2008
Have I got a deal for you
Bowie Bonds hit baseball. Or is this a case of a player having an IPO on himself? (H/T Alex Tabarrok)!
You have to give markets credit -- they have created a way for prospects to buy a form of insurance on their careers.
And, as usual, Larry Ribstein asks the essential legal question.
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January 20, 2008
The improving conversation about PED's in baseball
As noted earlier here, the Mitchell Commission Report is a sloppy hatchet job. However, the report has had the beneficial impact of prompting more reasoned voices to emerge regarding the use of performance enhancing drugs in professional baseball to offset the mainstream's media's typical demonization of the players. Here are a few examples:
Eric Walker's new website Steroids and Baseball is worth a look. Walker provides an interesting analysis of power hitting performance over the modern eras using a time series of power factor statistics. Based on putting the time series together at critical points where there is a change in the baseball or an interruption in personnel from a war, Walker shows that you get a series that does not show any meaningful increase in power hitting as measured by the power factor. Indeed, the power factor in the so-called steroid era is no higher than in other eras after subtracting the cumulative effects of changes in the baseball in preceding eras from the time series. In addition, Walker surveys research on the benefits and costs of steroids on athletic performance and health, and again concludes that the results are not all that clear. H/T Art DeVany.
Meanwhile, Radley Balko links to an article by sportswriter Dan Le Batard noting a point that I've frequently made in my prior posts on PED use in baseball -- the motivation behind the use was to improve the capacity of the user's body to hold up under the physically brutal and pathologically competitive nature of MLB. Balko concludes with the following wise advice:
At some point, athletes, rules makers, fans, and ethicists are going to have to drop the hysterics, and begin a serious conversation about all of this. Shaming, prison, and witch hunts aren’t going to make these issues go away.
Following up on Balko's thoughts, this Shawn Macomber/American Spectator article reports on a recent panel discussion over PED use in which Balko participated. Another participant in that panel discussion was Norman Fost, professor of pediatric medicine and director of the Program in Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin, who is the subject of this Chicago Tribune profile. Fost believes that steroids should be available, under a doctor's supervision, to any pro or amateur adult athlete who wants them:
In all the health and morality questions about steroids, Fost said: "It's as though the drug hysteria serves as a distraction from more serious issues. You'd be hard-pressed to find a single death associated with steroid use, yet the TV cameras keep showing [Red Sox manager] Terry Francona drooling disgusting spit from something [chewing tobacco] that has a very high cancer rate associated with it."You have 400,000 deaths a year due to tobacco and tens of thousands of alcohol-related deaths, a substance heavily promoted by Major League Baseball, yet the president and Congress and the press have virtually nothing to say about tobacco and alcohol in athletics, but lots to say about steroids. A football player spending more than three years in the NFL has an 80 to 90 percent chance, according to one study, of some permanent disability, but the NFL produces films focusing on the most vicious hits. The dangers to health in sports today come not from enhancement but the sport itself."
Similarly, Malcolm Gladwell builds on his earlier posts on the issue of PED's in baseball with two more posts (here and here) in which he notes the following:
It is perfectly legal for an athlete to undergo "performance enhancing" eye surgery, that moves him from, say, the 50th to the 95th percentile in sight. It is not legal for that same athlete to take "performance enhancing" hormones that move his testosterone from the 50th to the 95th percentile--even thought the additional advantage of the eye surgery may be greater than the additional advantage conferred by the exogenous testosterone. Now, there may be a perfectly valid distinction between those two interventions. But what is it? Shouldn't it be spelled out before we drum Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds out of the Hall of Fame?Similarly, it is perfectly legal for an athlete to get painkillers after an injury, so he can continue playing (and, I would point out, risk further injury.) It is not legal for that athlete to take Human Growth Hormone, in order to speed his recovery from that same injury. Again, why? What is the distinction? Why is it okay to play hurt but not okay to try and not play hurt? There may be a perfectly valid reason here as well. But don't we need to spell out what it is?
I realize that the people running major league baseball and the NFL are not philosophers. But the intellectual sloppiness with which this current crusade has been conducted is appalling.
Indeed, last week's Congressional hearing over the Mitchell Report included an exchange toward the end that highlighted MLB's long tradition of indulging use of another type of PED -- amphetamines.
Moving on to the legal front, this Maury Brown blog post notes that Rusty Hardin -- whose strategy of defending Roger Clemens has been a head-scratcher from the beginning -- probably ought to quit giving interviews:
T.J. Quinn: Well, when someone sat and looked at just the numbers for Roger’s career, what conclusions do you think they drew?Rusty Hardin: Oh, I think, I think they drew incredibly stupid inclusions—uh, conclusions, if they concluded that somehow you can look at his performance and it fits in. For instance, everybody talks about his, uh, doing it in order to extend his career. Think about it, T.J. The guy is supposed to have taken steroids in ‘98. In ‘97 he won the Cy Young. ‘98 he won the Cy Young.
T.J. Quinn: Brain McNamee’s—you know, his story was that Roger had already been taking steroids when he approached him in 1998, which would suggest…
Rusty Hardin: I didn’t remember that. You may—if you’re right about that, I didn’t know that.
T.J. Quinn: That’s what he said. That was in the Mitchell report and I think his lawyers addressed that as well, that Brian McNamee said, “I never suggested that Roger take them. He was taking them.” So that would—wouldn’t that explain…
Rusty Hardin: [OVERLAPPING] I never read that. Are you real sure of that?
T.J. Quinn: Quite.
And while many commentators are suggesting that Clemens' alleged PED use is unprovable beyond a reasonable doubt because it boils down to a swearing match between Clemens and his chief accuser, that is not a prudent bet to make. My experience is that lawsuits and investigations have a funny way of discovering people who have knowledge about swearing matches.
Finally, does anyone else get the impression that Houstonian Chuck Knoblauch may need the same type of mental block that he had while throwing a baseball from second to first base in regard to his upcoming Congressional testimony?
Posted by Tom at 12:05 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
January 3, 2008
The most influential person in sports that no one has heard of
The 30 Major League Baseball clubs invested $80 million in a fledgling media company. That initial investment has been repaid and the media company generated $450 million in revenues this past year, producing a $3 million dividend for each MLB club. Several investment banks recently estimated that the value of the clubs' original $80 million investment is now worth $2.5 billion.
Who managed this windfall for MLB? The most influential person in the sports business that no one has ever heard of -- Bob Bowman, the President and Chief Executive Officer of MLB Advanced Media (MLBAM). Maury Brown interviews Brown.
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January 2, 2008
What's Rusty Hardin thinking?
As noted earlier here, I believe the Mitchell Commission Report is deeply flawed and fails to confront squarely Major League Baseball's long tradition of at least tolerating -- if not outright promoting -- the use of performance-enhancing drugs.
Moreover, Roger Clemens' attorney, Rusty Hardin, is unquestionably one of Houston's most talented trial lawyers.
However, I'm starting to wonder whether Hardin is out of his element in dealing with Clemens' professional crisis of being fingered in the Mitchell Report.
The first inkling that matters are not being particularly well thought out in regard to Clemens' problem was the announcement that Hardin had hired private investigators to assist him and attorneys in his firm in conducting "their own investigation into [Brian] McNamee’s allegations" that he had injected Clemens with PED's.
Now, maybe such a private investigation is a good idea to gather information informally that could be used to cast doubt on McNamee. But what purpose is served by announcing it publicly and making the information the target of Congressional subpoenas or discovery in a civil lawsuit, which is becoming increasingly likely? Sure, Hardin can claim that the information is privileged work product, but that's far from clear. Why create the bulls-eye in the first place?
And, as John Royal pointed out, Hardin's comparison of the Mitchell Commission investigation to the Army-McCarthy hearings of the 1950's is a stretch, to say the least.
But what really has me scratching my head regarding Hardin's strategy is this Murray Chass/NY Times interview of Hardin. Get a load of Chass' impression after interviewing Hardin:
But what if Hardin found one or two people who could say they saw Clemens use steroids and H.G.H.? Would he immediately terminate his investigation and announce that the report was correct? I didn’t ask, but based on his answers to other questions, I suspect that he would at least make it obvious that he was conceding.Further, I believe that if he found credible evidence that Clemens used illegal substances, Hardin would convince Clemens that he had to be forthcoming and admit his use.
H'mm, that's certainly an interesting impression to leave about one's client. Chass goes on to make the following observation:
Finally, if Clemens did not use performance-enhancing drugs, then why didn’t he accept the invitation to meet with Mitchell so that he could tell him his information was wrong? That was the time to challenge the information, not when it has already been published.“I don’t think it would have changed anything,” Hardin said. “They haven’t retracted anything. That’s probably proof that if he had talked to them, it wouldn’t have done any good.”
As Chass points out, what is there for the Mitchell Commission to retract? Clemens has done nothing but deny the allegations. Is Hardin suggesting that the Mitchell Commission would not have acknowledged Clemens' denials of McNamee's accusations had Clemens met with the Commission? Even as flawed as the Mitchell Report is, it's highly unlikely that the authors would not have reported that Clemens denied McNamee's allegations.
This is increasingly looking to me as a circumstance where Clemens has a first rate trial attorney working for him when what he really needs is a public relations crisis pro.
Update: At least the conversation about PED's is improving.
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December 29, 2007
More on the Mitchell Report
Following on my posts earlier this month on the Mitchell Commission Report, I have been meaning to pass along several additional items:
Malcolm Gladwell follows his earlier post on the Mitchell Report with another one in which he makes the following observations:
An aging pitcher is suffering from a variety of persistent injuries. They are healing slowly. He is depressed and lethargic, and anxious about his career. He goes to see his doctor. The doctor finds that the patient's testosterone count is low. He prescribes the pitcher a small dose of testosterone, as part of his rehab. The patient is desperate, and the doctor agrees to experiment with testosterone, and see if it speeds recovery.Questions:
1. Has the pitcher violated MLB's drug policy? As far as I can tell, yes. Testosterone is on baseball's list of banned substances.
2. Has the patient violated the law? Of course not. Testosterone is an FDA approved medication.
Next, John Brattain over at the Hardball Times examines the actions of both MLB management and the MLB Players Association management in regard to performance enhancing drugs, and his conclusions are not pretty for either group:
Management didn’t care; player turnover is a fact of life in baseball. Somebody is always available to take the spot of somebody not performing should someone become injured due to steroid usage. They found an indirect ally in the MLBPA; higher profits translated into higher salaries and the interests of the salary bar were being served. Citing privacy issues, [MLBPA President Donald] Fehr and [key Fehr aide Gene] Orza long resisted drug testing. This suited ownership just fine and it finally took government action to get both to deal with the issue in a substantive way.Who was protecting the players now? Both sides were allowing them to take risks with their health to play in the major leagues.
Finally, Jonathan Cole and Stephen Stigler review the anecdotal evidence and reach the following conclusion after comparing the "before" and "after" performance of the alleged PED-taking ballplayers cited in the Mitchell Commission Report:
But the results here are intriguing, and could send a simple message to America’s youth who aspire to fame and fortune as professional baseball players: Don’t use these drugs — not only can they increase the risk of serious illness, they also don’t enhance your performance on the diamond.
Posted by Tom at 12:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
December 20, 2007
Mitchell Report redux
Following on my post on the Mitchell Report, the following are a few interesting observations from the past several days:
Art DeVany agrees with me that MLB didn't get it's money's worth and provides a rather interesting and simple test to evaluate whether a player was likely to have used steroids;Malcolm Gladwell asks "So what, exactly, is wrong with an athlete--someone who makes a living with their body--taking medication to speed their recovery from injury?"
The New York Times Murray Chass picks up on one of the observations from my post -- that is, there is not much original work product in the Mitchell Report.
Former Florida Marlins and Cincinnati Reds trainer Larry Starr, who was a trainer in the big leagues for 30 years, describes how MLB management and the MLB Players' Association soft-pedaled the PED problem even after being advised in 1988 that use of PED's was becoming commonplace among players.
Finally, Richard Landau and Louis H. Philipson, who are both Professors of Medicine at the University of Chicago Medical School, wrote the following letter to the Wall Street Journal explaining why the risks of taking human growth hormone in an effort to improve athletic performance and endurance, or recover from a non-live threatening injury, is a quintessential example of taking a flyer with too much downside risk:
While some stories noted the many negative effects of androgenic steroids, we have not seen any explanation as to why taking "natural" human growth hormone is also a really bad idea. While growth hormone is necessary for children in particular, athletes are tempted to take growth hormone without a demonstrated positive result on performance. They should note what happens in the disease called acromegaly, a condition of too much growth hormone. In this disease, excess growth hormone causes growth of hands, lips, tongue, feet, nose, chin, forehead and liver. In short, most tissues and organs in the body will enlarge, including the heart, sometimes to the point of heart failure. Diabetes, decreased interest and ability in sex, fatigue, excessive sweating, and disordered sleep are also part of this syndrome.The only important FDA-approved indications for giving growth hormone are failure to grow due to lack of growth hormone and the HIV-associated wasting syndrome. Despite the relative rarity of these problems, there are nine formulations of growth hormone on the market today, and all list diabetes, leukemia, muscle aches and pain, headache, weakness, stiffness and swelling of male breasts as potential side effects, as well as insomnia, nausea, hypothyroidism and increased blood fats. Also mentioned are pancreatitis and fatigue. Every manufacturer recommends periodic safety monitoring of blood sugar, thyroid blood tests, skin and heart exams. We could easily name quite a few drugs that have been withdrawn from the market with less potential for harm than growth hormone.
Not a single clinical trial has effectively demonstrated that the metabolic effects of growth hormone, even including a temporary increase in lean body mass, have resulted in improved performance. The view of some athletes that a few injections of the hormone might have beneficial effects on sore arms has never been rigorously tested, but is very unlikely to be effective. The risks clearly outweigh the benefits. Our young athletes need to be warned that large muscles are not good muscles, and that these problems are not rare "side effects" but the natural consequence of excess growth hormone, a hormone that affects almost every tissue, not just muscles -- and usually not for the better. Taking any form of growth hormone in the hope of improved athletic performance is misinformed at best, and any mention of this practice should explain why.
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