Houston's Clear Thinkers

August 22, 2009

Stros 2009 Season Review, Part Three

Given the inexplicable popularity of NFL football practice in these parts, who cares about Major League Baseball anymore, anyway?

As expected, the Stros (59-62) faded into obscurity during the third quarter of the 2009 season, going 19-21 during that stretch. Although the mainstream media reported mainly that the Stros fell apart during the third quarter, the truth is that they did not play all that much different from the first two quarters of the season (18-22; 23-19). The 2009 Stros simply is not -- and never has been -- a good baseball team.

Reviewing basic productivity statistics reflects what happened to the Stros during the third quarter of the season. As regular readers of this blog know, the RCAA ("runs created against average") and RSAA ("runs saved against average") statistics, developed by Lee Sinins for his Sabermetric Baseball Encyclopedia, provide a simple but revealing benchmark of how an MLB player or MLB team is performing during the long MLB season.

RCAA reflects how many more (or fewer) runs that a player generates relative to a league-average player (an exactly league-average player's RCAA is zero).

Similarly, RSAA measures how many more (or fewer) runs that a pitcher saves relative to a league-average pitcher (an exactly league-average pitcher RSAA is zero).

Thus, a club's positive RCAA number reflects how many more runs a club's hitters are generating relative to what a league-average club would generate using the same number of outs. Likewise, a club's positive RSAA number reflects how many more runs the club's pitching staff is saving relative to what a league-average pitching staff would prevent in the same number of innings. Negative RCAA and RSAA numbers are just the opposite. A negative RCAA reflects how many fewer runs a club's hitters are generating relative to a league-average club and a negative RSAA indicates how many more runs a pitching staff is giving up in comparison to a league-average staff.

As a result, good teams generally have a positive net RCAA/RSAA figure, while bad teams tend to have a negative net RCAA/RSAA statistic. Occasionally, a good team will have a high RSAA statistic and a negative RCAA figure (i.e., the Stros' 2005 World Series team), but it's almost never the case that a good team will have a high RCAA and a substantially negative RSAA. In other words, you can win with really good pitching and poor hitting, but it's hard to win consistently with really good hitting if your pitching is poor.

The following charts shows the NL Central clubs' net RCAA/RSAA figure at the All-Star break and after the third quarter of the 2009 season, along with their current percentage chance of making the playoffs, as calculated by Coolstandings.com:

Through 2nd Quarter

 

 Through 3rd Quarter

Team	RCAA	RSAA	Net	Record	% Playoffs
Cards	43	33	76	70-53	87.0
Cubs	-33	57	24	61-58	16.5
Brewers	52	-89	-37	58-62	0.9
Stros	2	-60	-58	59-62	0.3
Reds	-78	-21	-99	51-69	<0.1
Pirates	-39	-43	-82	49-70	<0.1

As you can see, the Stros were muddling around with a .500 record based on slightly above-average hitting and slightly below-average pitching as of All-Star break. However, the Stros pitching fell apart during third quarter, saving an astounding 43 fewer runs during that 40-game stretch than a National League-average pitching staff would have saved over those games. Combine that with a downturn in hitting resulting from a DL stint by slugger 1B Lance Berkman and slumps from regular players such as SS Miguel Tejada and RF Hunter Pence, along with the Cardinals' upsurge in hitting primarily from the acquisition of Matt Holliday, and it's not surprising that the Stros are 10 games out of first place in the NL Central.

As noted in the preview of the 2009 Stros back in April, this performance level was easily predictable given what Baseball Prospectus has dubbed the "stars-and-scrubs" Stros roster. Frankly, the Stros are an organization playing out a weak hand while attempting to deal with the long-overdue rebuilding program that has became necessary -- but was generally ignored -- during the final years of the Biggio-Bagwell era. GM Ed Wade has just completed his second straight strong draft in terms of numbers (36 out of 51 drafted players signed), so the rebuilding program is in full swing. But it's going to take another 2-3 years before any appreciable amount of that investment begins to payoff at the MLB level.

So, hang in there, Stros followers. In the meantime, please pray that the Stros don't do anything idiotic in the free agent market, similar to what they did in regard to the Carlos Lee deal. Tejada and closer Jose Valverde will become free agents after this season and neither of them is good enough at this stage of their career to command an expensive contract. The Stros would be much better off giving younger, cheaper and likely just as productive players the playing time that fading and overrated veterans such as Tejada and Valverde would otherwise take up.

By the way, the Stros' trade of C Ivan Rodriguez this past week to the Rangers for a couple of marginal prospects did not indicate, as some mainstream media commentators suggested, that the Stros were "giving up on the season." A club does not "give up on a season" by trading the dead weight of one of the least productive regular players in the National League. Rather, the deal would be better characterized as getting "something for nothing."

The 2009 season statistics for the Stros through the first 80 games are below, 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' active roster is here with links to each individual player's statistics:

Posted by Tom at 12:01 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

July 14, 2009

Checking in on MLB and the NL Central at the All-Star Break

The Major League Baseball All-Star break is this week, so it's a good time to step back and review the key statistics to identify the most productive players and teams over the first half of the season.

Following on my latest periodic post on the Stros, regular readers of this blog know that RCAA ("runs created against average") and RSAA ("runs saved against average") statistics, developed by Lee Sinins for his Sabermetric Baseball Encyclopedia, provide a simple but revealing benchmark of how an MLB player or MLB team is performing during the long MLB season.

RCAA reflects how many more (or fewer) runs that player generate relative to a league-average player (an exactly league-average player's RCAA is zero).

Similarly, RSAA measures how many more (or fewer) runs that a pitcher saves relative to a league-average pitcher (an exactly league-average pitcher RSAA is zero).

Thus, a club's positive RCAA number reflects how many more runs a club's hitters are generating relative to what a league-average club would generate using the same number of outs. Likewise, a club's positive RSAA number reflects how many more runs the club's pitching staff is saving relative to what a league-average pitching staff would prevent in the same number of innings. Negative RCAA and RSAA numbers are just the opposite. A negative RCAA reflects how many fewer runs a club's hitters are generating relative to a league-average club and a negative RSAA indicates how many more runs a pitching staff is giving up in comparison to a league-average staff.

Accordingly, focusing on those two basic statistics, let's review the top players and the top teams from the first half of the 2009 season:

The top 20 hitters in RCAA in the National League:

The top 20 hitters in RCAA from the American League:

Yes, that no. 2 in AL RCAA is the same Ben Zobrist who was a throw-in by the Stros in the Dan Wheeler-for-Aubrey Huff trade with the Rays a couple of years ago. And former Stros OF Luke Scott (T 7th) would be more productive, a whole lot cheaper and much better defensively than the Stros LF, Carlos Lee. Ouch!

The top 10 pitchers in RSAA from the National League:

And the top 10 pitchers in RSAA from the American League:

The following is how the National League teams stack up in terms of RCAA:

And here is the National League teams' rankings in terms of RSAA:

Note that the Dodgers are the only NL club with a well above-average RCAA and RSAA number. Every other club is mediocre or poor in either RCAA or RSAA, or both.

Here is how the American League teams rank in RCAA:

And the American League teams' RSAA rankings:

The AL East has three of MLB's strongest teams in the Yankees, Red Sox and Rays. And the Blue Jays are pretty decent, too!

Here are the Stros hitters' individual RCAA ranking:

And the Stros pitchers' RSAA:

The following chart shows the NL Central clubs' net RCAA/RSAA figure, along with the current percentage chance of making the playoffs, as calculated by Coolstandings.com.

National League Central

And finally, the following chart shows the Stros' net RCAA/RSAA figures and corresponding won/loss record for each season since the 2000 season. Note that the Stros' only losing seasons were in seasons in which the pitching staff fell apart (large negative RSAA in 2000 and 2007) and the club's most successful season was when the pitching staff was dominant (2005). Also, note how the club's deterioration since 2006 coincides with a substantial decline in the Stros' generally productive pitching staffs from earlier in the decade:

The bottom line -- although a considerably better hitting club than last season's poor-hitting outfit, and despite the fact that the Stros have been arguably the luckiest team in MLB so far this season, the club's combination of barely above-average hitting and below-average pitching will struggle to equal last season's record. A break even mark or somewhat below break even is more likely.

Posted by Tom at 12:01 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)

July 7, 2009

Stros 2009 Season Review, Part Two

The Stros (41-41) reached the halfway point of the 2009 season in an incongruous position.

Although they are performing only slightly better than predicted before the season and are in fifth place in the six team National League Central Division, the Stros are only two losses behind the first-place Cardinals (45-39). 

How could that be? Are the Stros better than expected? Do they really have a good chance of contending for a playoff spot? What is going on here?

The answers: (1) Baseball remains a funny game; (2) Only slightly; (3) Not much of a chance; and (4) Mediocre teams playing mostly other mediocre teams will generally split about even over the long haul of a season.

In coming to these answers, it's helpful to review the aggregate RCAA and RSAA numbers of each club because that statistic provides a simple but revealing benchmark of how a team is performing during the long MLB season. Baseball remains a deceptively simple game. If your team's hitters generate more runs than the opposition, and your team's pitchers allow fewer runs from being scored than the opposition's pitchers, then your team is going to be a winner.

A club's RCAA reflects how many more (or fewer) runs that a club's hitters generate than a National League-average club and RSAA measures how many more (or fewer) runs that a club's pitching staff saves than a National League-average club (an exactly National League-average club's score is zero). Accordingly, a club's combined RCAA/RSAA number shows how many more (or fewer) runs the club's hitters have generated and the club's pitchers have saved (or given up) in comparison to a National League-average club.

A negative RCAA number reflects that a club's hitters have generated fewer runs relative to what an average National League club would have generated using the same number of outs, and a negative RSAA number reflects that a pitching staff has saved its club fewer runs than an average National League pitching staff would have prevented in the same number of innings. Positive numbers in both cases are just the opposite -- hitters are generating more runs than a National League average club and a pitching staff is saving more runs than a National League average staff.

Although the Stros' record during the second quarter of the season was a bit above-average (23-19), the Stros remain a National League-average hitting team (2 RCAA) with a below National League-average pitching staff (-19 RSAA) at the halfway point of the season. Not surprisingly, that performance leaves the Stros smack dab in the middle (8th) of the 16 teams National League clubs from a hitting standpoint and the bottom 25% of the league (12th) in regard to pitching.

Interestingly, that aggregate -17 RCAA/RSAA figure is a considerable improvement over the club’s performance at roughly the same time last season [-42 RCAA/RSAA = (-41 RCAA +-1 RSAA], although the 2008 club’s hitting was quite a bit worse while it’s pitching was quite a bit better than this year’s outfit. But is that 25-run improvement in RCAA/RSAA the main reason why the Stros are just 3 games out of first place in the NL Central this season while they were 13 games out at about the same time last season?

No, it's not. The main reason the Stros are in a better competitive position this season is simply that the Stros' competition is decidedly less imposing this season. Last season, both the Brewers and the Cubs were well-balanced clubs with hefty, positive aggregate RCAA/RSAA numbers that had generated records 10 games over .500 for each club by this point in the season.

In comparison, through half of the 2009 season, none of the Stros' NL Central competitors have been particularly well-balanced. The division-leading Cardinals (45-39) have the best-balanced club in the division with a solid 26 RSAA and a decent 13 RCAA, but that latter number pales when the realization hits that 1B Albert Pujols' 57 RCAA covers up the fact that the remainder of the Cards' hitters have generated 44 fewer runs than a National League-average hitters would have created using the same number of outs as those players have used. Given the fall off between Pujols and the other Cardinals' hitters, why do pitchers give Pujols any pitches to hit?

Meanwhile, the Brewers (43-39) still hit well (45 RCAA, although most of that is attributable to IB Prince Fielder's 41 RCAA), but their pitching staff has fallen apart (-30 RSAA). The Cubs' (41-39) pitching remains dominant (35 RSAA), but their hitting has been pathetic (-32 RCAA). Similarly, the Reds (40-40) young pitching staff has bloomed (50 RSAA), but the club’s hitting has been the worst in the NL (-53 RCAA). Finally, the last-place (but not by far) Pirates (37-46) have actually performed a bit better than the Stros [-8 RCAA/RSAA = (-4 RCAA + -4 RSAA)].

In fact, except for the 52-30 Dodgers (55 RCAA/27 RSAA), the National League teams have been either mediocre or downright poor this season. Although that performance level doesn’t generate the best quality of baseball, it certainly does keep games competitive for the most part.

So, do the Stros have a legitimate shot at a playoff spot? On the surface, it would appear so.

Roy Oswalt (2 RSAA/3.81 ERA) has had three straight superlative starts after a generally lackluster first half and 1B Lance Berkman had an excellent second quarter of the season to boost his season statistics toward his more typical output level (21 RCAA/.398 OBA/.526 SLG/.924 OPS). Although LF Carlos Lee (7 RCAA/.346 OBA/.466 SLG/.812 OPS) and 2B Kaz Matsui (-11 RCAA/.284 OBA/.310 SLG/.594 OPS) were mediocre and poor respectively during the first half of the season, it's not unreasonable, based on previous performance, to assume that both will increase their production considerably in the second half of the season.

Thus, if pleasant surprises RF Hunter Pence (14 RCAA/.372 OBA/.495 SLG/.867 OPS), SS Miguel Tejada (8 RCAA/.356 OBA/.472 SLG/.828 OPS) and CF Michael Bourn (8 RCAA/.359 OBA/.395 SLG/.754 OPS) can maintain their first half production levels, it's not unreasonable to project that the Stros could end up a well above National League-average hitting club. And that's the case even though the hitters continue to carry the albatross of over-the-hill starters C Ivan Rodriguez (-13 RCAA/.274 OBA/.395 SLG/.669 OPS) and 3B Geoff Blum (4 RCAA/.333 OBA/.333 SLG/.667 OPS), as well as the brittle Matsui.

However, appearances are deceiving. There is a reason that the Stros are currently projected to have only an 8.7% chance of reaching the NL playoffs.

The reality is that this is simply not a team that is strong enough either in hitting or pitching to string together the type of winning streak that separates a contender from the rest of a the pack in a pennant race. Except for Oswalt and Wandy Rodriguez (9 RSAA/3.21 ERA), every other Stros starter has been below National League-average in terms of saving runs. Moreover, a couple of them -- Brian Moehler (-12 RSAA/5.64 ERA) and Felipe Paulino (-16 RSAA/6.66 ERA) -- have been among the least productive starters in the National League.

That doesn't mean that those below-average starters won't occasionally pitch a good game, as all of them have done at some point in the first half. But what it does mean is that it is extremely unlikely that they will do so consistently. And the reason that these below-average pitchers are pitching is that the Stros do not have anybody better down at AAA. Combine that ineffectiveness with continued reliance on below-replacement level "veterans" such as Darin Erstad (he of the incredibly low .481 OPS!), Matsui, Blum, Brandon Backe and Rodriguez, and it's not hard to understand why the Stros are more likely to descend into the NL Central cellar than rise to the top. The fact that Manager Cecil Cooper often makes dubious decisions (why would Blum ever bat before Pence in the lineup?) doesn't help matters, either.

Consequently, for the remainder of this season, the Stros most likely will continue to mosey along at around a .500 clip or dip below that closer to my pre-season over/under number for wins (74) if injuries begin to take their toll. Just as last season, when the Stros never attained much more than a 10% of making the playoffs even during their hot stretch drive, the odds are decidedly against this club achieving a playoff spot.

Nonetheless, there is reason for optimism about the club. The Stros have completed signing a substantial number of their draft picks for the second straight year, continuing the re-stocking of the club's farm system that is one of the main reasons for the club's demise since its 2005 World Series appearance. Lisa Gray has posted a couple of interesting posts (here and here) in regard to the Stros' drafts, so check them out if you are interested in how a few bad drafts can negatively impact a club such as the Stros. The Stros are still at least two strong drafts away from re-establishing a strong farm system, but after a decade of poor drafts (see also here and Zac Levine's overview of the Stros' minor leaguers for the first half of this season), it's better to get started late rather than never. I'm bullish on the way in which GM Ed Wade and personnel director Bobby Heck have handled the past two drafts.

So, hang in there. The playoffs are not in the cards for the next few seasons, but the Stros ship appears headed in the right direction. Given the seemingly unending downward spiral since 2005, that's progress in my book.

The 2009 season statistics for the Stros through the first 80 games are below, 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' active roster is here with links to each individual player's statistics:

Posted by Tom at 12:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

May 26, 2009

There is no crying in baseball

With the passing of Memorial Day, it's officially baseball season, even though the dang NBA Playoffs seem endless. Thus, it's time for Tom Hanks as exasperated Manager Jimmy Dugan to remind us of the best baseball tirade in cinematic history. Enjoy.

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May 23, 2009

Stros 2009 Season Review, Part One

While waiting in line to pick up a bottle of water at a Stros game earlier in the week, an old friend of mine and fellow longtime Stros season-ticket holder stopped by to say hello and chat.

Eventually, the conversation turned to the current Stros squad:

"This is a pretty bad baseball team," I observed.

"No," my friend countered. "This is a seriously bad baseball team."

Alas, the 2009 Stros have not done much during the first quarter of the season to contest my friend's evaluation.

The Stros (18-22) are currently in last place in the NL Central, 7 games behind the division-leading Brewers (26-16). Only three of the other 15 National League clubs (Rockies, DBacks, and Nationals) have a worse record than the Stros.

The Stros as a team have created 7 fewer runs than an average National League team would have generated using the same number of outs ("RCAA", explained here), which is 8th among the 16 National League teams. That's about the same rate that the Stros generated runs during the comparable part of both the 2007 and 2008 seasons, but better only than the Reds -27 RCAA among NL Central teams this season.

Meanwhile, the Stros pitching staff has saved 8 fewer runs than an average National League pitching staff would have saved in the same number of innings, which is 12th in the National League ("RSAA", explained here). Again, that's about the same as the pitching staffs of the past two Stros clubs at the same stage of the season. However, every other pitching staff in the NL Central has a better RSAA than the Stros, including the division-leading Brewers' 20 RSAA.

The 2008 Stros club finished fast to finish in second place in the NL Central with an 86-75 record, while the 2007 Stros faded to finish with a 73-89 record, the club's worst record since the late 1980's. So, given that the 2009 Stros have produced about the same statistically as those two prior clubs produced through a comparable part of the season, that raises an interesting question:

Is the 2009 club more likely over the balance of the season to progress similar to the 2008 club or deteriorate similar to the 2007 club?

On one hand, room for optimism exists. CF Michael Bourn (3 RCAA/.365 OBA/.401 SLG/.766 OPS) has finally shown signs of potential, although some of the mainstream media's fawning over him is utterly premature because of the small sample size. RF Hunter Pence (13 RCAA/.414 OBA/.527 SLG/.941 OPS) has picked up from his hot finish to last season, and SS Miguel Tejada (3 RCAA/.353 OBA/.485 SLG/.837 OPS) -- who finished last season as one of the poorest-producing regular players in MLB -- is off to a good start to this season. Even archaic C Ivan Rodriguez (-5 RCAA/.316 OBA/.468 SLG/.784 OPS) has been an improvement on Brad Ausmus.

Add to the foregoing that P Wandy Rodriguez is having an All-Star-type season (17 RSAA/1.83 ERA), and that dependable stars P Roy Oswalt (0 RSAA/4.47 ERA), 1B Lance Berkman (4 RCAA/.380 OBA/.478 SLG/.857), LF Carlos Lee (8 RCAA/.373 OBA/.549 SLG/.922 OPS and injured closer Jose Valverde (-1 RSAA/5.63 ERA) really have not hit their stride yet this season, one can make the case that the Stros are primed for improvement over the balance of the season.

Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, my sense is that this club's trajectory will be more along the lines of the 2007 club than last season's.

The primary reason for my pessimism is that this Stros pitching staff is not performing as well as last season's, which was the main reason for that club's strong finish. Only four pitchers on the staff have a positive RSAA through the first quarter of the season --Rodriguez, Chris Sampson, LaTroy Hawkins and Tim Byrdak. The balance of the staff has already allowed 38 more runs than an average National League staff would have given up through the first quarter of the season.

Moreover, starters Mike Hampton (-4 RSAA/5.23 ERA), Russ Ortiz (-4 RSAA/5.81 ERA), Brian Moehler (-8 RSAA/7.71 ERA) and Felipe Paulino (-7 RSAA/6.93 ERA) have been awful so far and there is very little reason to believe that any of those other than Paulino could improve much. Inasmuch as 60% of the starting rotation is getting bashed regularly, that is putting too much pressure on the bullpen, which is already depleted due to injuries to Valverde, Doug Brocail and Geoff Geary, who were the three best relief pitchers on the 2008 club.

Add in the fact that Tejada and Rodriguez will probably fade as the season wears on, that team management inexplicably continues to trot out 3B Geoff Blum (-6 RCAA/.336 OBA/.308 SLG/.642 OPS) regularly, and that oft-injured 2B Kaz Matsui is having a terrible season (-9 RCAA/.291 OBA/.314 SLG/.605 OPS), there simply is not much of a chance that the Stros will be equal to or above National League-average in either creating runs or saving runs for the remainder of this season.

Finally, that apparently no one much likes overmatched Manager Cecil Cooper doesn't help things, either.

So, what should Stros management do for the rest of the season?

Well, the first thing is to keep this club's mediocrity in perspective. This is only Year Two of the rebuilding of the Stros farm system that owner Drayton McLane started after cleaning house toward the end of the 2007 season. GM Ed Wade and his scouting staff did what appears to be a good job during the 2008 draft (evaluations of baseball drafts are iffy for the first few years after a particular draft) and the most important thing for the club is that management continues strong drafting for at least the next four seasons or so. That's generally the minimum amount of time necessary to rebuild an MLB farm system.

Meanwhile, Stros management should be allowing what little talent the club has in its farm system develop at the MLB level to determine whether a couple of diamonds in the rough might emerge. For example, it makes no sense to have slick-fielding Tommy Manzella at AAA Round Rock instead of playing in Houston when moving the immobile Tejada to 3B and dispensing with the unproductive Blum would strengthen the major league club. It's not as if the light-hitting Manzella is likely to be any less productive at the plate than Blum. And the Stros pitchers would certainly be much more appreciative of Manzella's fielding at short than Tejada's.

Similarly, Rodriguez is not the answer at catcher, so the Stros should be preparing to bring J.R. Towles back up from AAA to get a fairer shot than he had last season at playing every day at the MLB level. Towles was effectively jumped from AA to MLB last season and he struggled as most prospects do who are forced to bypass AAA ball. However, Towles has excelled at AAA both at the end of last season and so far this season. Thus, it makes sense to develop that talent at the MLB level this season rather than wasting innings on the over-the-hill Rodriguez and his lackluster backup, Humberto Quintero.

Finally, Stros management should stay on their toes for potentially beneficial trade possibilities. Traditionally, trades are not the way in which to build a good MLB team -- you tend to come out on the losing end of trades more often than the winning side. But the Stros do have some attractive assets for contending teams, particularly Oswalt and Berkman. Both are elite-level players, so the Stros should require multiple top prospects in return for trading either of them. That's not likely to to be offered, but once the playoff races start heating up, you never know.

The bottom line is that the Stros are going to require patience from their fan base for the foreseeable future. Rebuilding in Major League Baseball simply does not happen quickly. So long as the Stros do a better job of drafting and signing prospects than they did in the decade from 1998-2007, and so long as Stros management looks for trades of valuable assets that could help re-stock the farm system, the club's long track record of success during the Biggio-Bagwell era (only two seasons below .500 winning percentage in the past 17) justifies giving management a reasonable amount of time to right the ship.

By the way, Lisa Gray's Stros blog remains a reliable source of day-to-day information on the Stros, as is the Chronicle's Zac Levine's blog and the Crawfish Boxes blog. However, a new Stros blog -- Astros County -- also does an excellent job of providing daily information on the Stros. Check it out.

The 2009 season statistics through for the Stros through the first 40 games are below, 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)

April 23, 2009

Checking in on J.R. Richard

According to this interesting Bugs and Cranks interview of former Stros fireballer J.R. Richard, the 6' 8" righthander is still holding some grudges against the local ballclub:

Five Astros pitchers have had their numbers retired, including two, Nolan Ryan and Don Wilson, who won fewer games with Houston than you did. Why isn’t your number 50 retired at Minute Maid Park?

That question I cannot answer. I do not have anything to do with that. Really, the same question has often been offered at me — why? But I cannot ask myself too many questions about that, I don’t try to seek the answers, because at this time, I really don’t know. And I have a lot of people, everywhere I go asking me the same question — why? And I have no answer.

Richard's career was tragically cut short by the stroke he suffered at the age of 30, and it is well-chronicled that the Stros management at the time did a poor job of arranging for a proper diagnosis of Richard's condition that might have prevented the stroke. That led Richard to undertake some questionable treatment on his own, including a trip to a chiropractor on the day he suffered the stroke.

However, as good as Richard was from the age of 26 to 30, he was not as good as current Stros ace, Roy Oswalt. In those five seasons, Richard saved a total of 73 more runs than an average National League pitcher would have saved pitching the same number of runs as Richard pitched (Runs Saved Against Average -- "RSAA"). In his seasons from age 26-30, Roy O's RSAA was almost 137, almost twice that of Richard's.

Interestingly, Nolan Ryan, who was Richard's teammate at the time of Richard's stroke, had an RSAA for the same period in his career of 77, just slightly better than Richard's.

The career statistics or Richard, Oswalt and Ryan are below, courtesy of Lee Sinins' sabermetric Complete Baseball Encyclopedia. The abbreviations for the pitching stats are here:

J.R. Richard Stats

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April 20, 2009

Clear Thinking to begin the week

Former Cardinals and Pirates outfielder Andy Van Slyke from this recent interview ($) in Baseball Prospectus:

"Well, [former Astros pitcher] Mike Scott, to me, is the best pitcher to ever pitch in the big leagues. I went 1-for-38 against him.  .  .  . Mike Scott, when he was at the apex of his career, was actually cheating very well. When he threw that forkball, and he scuffed it all up... he threw 97-98 mph, and then he'd throw a forkball that was in the 90s and I just couldn't hit him."

Q: Were there a lot of guys "cheating very well" in your era?

"I think there was more of it going on back then than there is today. You don't really see guys scuffing balls—you don't see guys with sandpaper—but it was very prevalent when I came to the big leagues. The guys... everybody knew who was doing it. It was just hard to catch them."

Arnold Kling on an upcoming debate that he will be having with Robert Kuttner regarding health care finance:

The debate should be about how the cost-benefit trade-offs and rationing will take place. I will argue that most health care spending should be paid for out of pocket, with insurance reimbursement only for very large expenses over a multi-year period. With consumers paying out of pocket, they will take price into account in making their choices, and they will self-ration. The alternative is to have government officials make the choices about what treatments people are to obtain. I do not think that this is a one-sided debate, in which one position is clearly better than the other. But I hope that Kuttner and I can have this debate, rather than go off into red herrings like drug company profits.

The Financial Times' Clive Cook chimes in on America's intractable but nonsensical drug prohibition policy ($) (other posts on drug prohibition are here):

How much misery can a policy cause before it is acknowledged as a failure and reversed?

The US “war on drugs” suggests there is no upper limit. The country’s implacable blend of prohibition and punitive criminal justice is wrong-headed in every way: immoral in principle, since it prosecutes victimless crimes, and in practice a disaster of remarkable proportions. Yet for a US politician to suggest wholesale reform of this brainless regime is still seen as an act of reckless self-harm. [.  .  .]

Strict enforcement,  .   .   .  has reduced drug use only modestly – supposing for the moment that this is even a legitimate objective. The collateral damage is of a different order altogether. Violence related to drug crimes has surged in Mexico and in US cities close to the border, giving rise to renewed interest in the topic.  .  .  . [.  .  .]

Few policies manage to fail so comprehensively, and what makes it all the odder is that the US has seen it all before. Everybody understands that alcohol prohibition in the 1920s suffered from many of the same pathologies – albeit on a smaller scale – and was eventually abandoned. [.  .  .]

Is an outbreak of common sense on this subject likely? Unfortunately, no. Only the most daring politicians seem willing to think about it seriously.  .  .   . [.  .  .]

Somebody in the White House should take a look. This national calamity is no laughing matter.

And finally, Mark Steyn notes the insidious nature of encroaching government regulation over citizens:

The proper response of free men to the trivial but degrading impositions of the state is to answer as [gun owner] Pierre Lemieux did. But it requires a kind of 24/7 tenacity few can muster - and the machinery of bureaucracy barely pauses to scoff: In an age of mass communication and computer records, the screen blips for the merest nano-second, and your gun rights disappear. The remorseless, incremental annexation of "individual existence" by technologically all-pervasive micro-regulation is a profound threat to free peoples. But do we have the will to resist it?

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April 6, 2009

Batter up! Stros 2009 Season Preview

Today is Opening Day for the Major League Baseball season and Houston, so it's time for HCT's annual preview of the Stros' upcoming season (previous annual previews since 2004 are here). The Stros opening day roster is here over at Astros.com.

Despite an unlikely 42-24 run in the second half of last season that allowed the Stros to finish second with a 86-75 record behind the Cubs in the National League Central, there is really not much to be excited about in regard to the Stros this season. Last season's club failed to make the playoffs for the third straight season since the Stros 2005 World Series appearance. This season's club is substantially weaker than last season's club and is even less likely to contend for a playoff spot.

As noted in previous previews, 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. Owner Drayton McLane cleaned house toward the end of the disastrous 2007 season and the club is now firmly in the process of rebuilding its farm system, which had deteriorated into one of MLB's worst over the latter stages of the Biggio-Bagwell era.  Even though Stros management continues to promote the delusion that the Stros can contend for a National League playoff spot, this season's club has virtually no chance of doing so absent highly unlikely circumstances.

The Stros' problems are really fairly simple to explain. Due to the decline in the farm system, and the failure of farm prospects Chris Burke, Morgan Ensberg and Jason Lane to pan out into at least average National League players, the Stros are deficient in a core of good young players who are capable of sustaining successful seasons. The Stros essentially have two very good players -- 1B Lance Berkman and SP Roy Oswalt -- one above-National League average hitter -- LF Carlos Lee -- a decent, but not great, closer -- RP Jose Valverde -- and a player in his prime who has the potential to develop into an above-National League player -- RF Hunter Pence. The rest of the club is an amalgamation of below-National League position players and a pitching staff taht will struggle to be National League-average overall this season. That's not much of a prescription for a successful season.

Last season's club was a poor hitting club that generated 46 fewer runs than an average National League club would have using the same number of outs ("RCAA"), which was 12th among the 16 National League teams. This season's club is unlikely to hit as well as last season's club and the way in which Stros management dealt with the situation reveals why.

In a cost-cutting move during these lean economic times (partly a consequence of over-paying for players during good times), Stros management allowed 3B Ty Wigginton to leave as a free agent after the best season of his career. Inasmuch as the club lacks any ready prospect at the position, the Stros will run a platoon of Geoff Blum and newly-acquired Reds castoff Jeff Keppinger out there every day.

A Blum platoon with over-the-hill Aaron Boone was the original plan, but Boone will miss the season after being diagnosed with a heart ailment and undergoing surgery. Beginning with the 2003 season in which former Stros manager Jimy Williams probably cost the Stros the National League Central title by insisting on platooning Blum with the clearly superior Ensberg, Blum has deteriorated to a point where he is not even close to being an adequate reserve, much less a starter. He has had under a .300 on-base average in five of the past six seasons, has batted .247 BA/.300 OBA/.371 SLG in about 2,000 plate appearances during that stretch, and has generated 100 fewer runs than a National League-average hitter during that period. Thus, the suggestion that Blum is likely to be even close to a National League-average 3B borders on the absurd.

In fact, the Stros would probably be better off moving over-the-hill SS Miguel Tejeda over to 3B and starting slick-fielding minor league SS Tommy Manzella at shortstop, which at least would provide a defensive upgrade. Good defense is going to be particularly important this season given that the Stros' old and low-strikeout starting rotation. On the other hand, it will take a minor miracle for starters Mike Hampton and Russ Ortiz -- who have pitched a total of about 150 innings between them over the past three seasons -- to pitch a total of 150 innings between them this season. One shudders to think who will make up the difference.

Thus, this is likely to be a brutal season for the Stros. The most likely result is a return to the 73 win-level of the 2007 season and there is a real chance that the improving Pirates may finally move ahead of the Stros and relegate the local club to the National League Central basement. The Cubs again are the class of the NL Central and my sense is that the Reds are the most likely club to make a jump up the standings this season. The good news for the Stros is that neither the Brewers nor the Cardinals have improved, either, so at least there is likely to be a muddle of mediocrity underneath the Cubs in the division. However, there is virtually no chance that the NL Wild-Card playoff team will come out of the NL Central.

As with prior seasons, I will continue my periodic reviews of the Stros during the season ("Stros 2009 Season Review, Part __"). This season I will post them after each quarter of the season, which works out to be after each 40 game segment of the season. So, look for my first season review this season after around mid-May, give or take a few days in the event of postponed games. The best sources for keeping up with the Stros on a day-to-day basis are Lisa Gray's insightful Stros blog, the reliable Crawfish Boxes blog, and the Chronicle's Zac Levine's blog. Zac will also provide reports via Twitter this season.

Posted by Tom at 12:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

February 17, 2009

It's tough following sports in Houston

As noted earlier here, given all of the incredible disappointments over the years, there must be a special place in Heaven for folks who continue to follow Houston sports teams.

The latest example The Stros haven't even held their first full team workout in Spring Training yet, but the news is already .  .  . well, .  . not so good.

First, Baseball Prospectus lists precisely one Stros farmhand -- catcher Jason Castro -- in its Top 100 baseball prospects, and Castro is no. 76 on that list. I guess that new "build from within" program is going to take some time.

Or course, this comes on the heels of an extremely quiet winter for the Stros, who didn't make any major moves in a depressed free agent market. They aren't admitting it, but Stros management apparently realizes that this club's window for competing for a playoff spot is closed.

Although an improbable 36-18 second-half record allowed last season's Stros to win 86 games and at least con some naive fans into thinking that they actually had a chance for the NL wild-card spot, Baseball Prospectus' PECOTA prediction system projects this season's Stros to contend for the league's worst team. PECOTA has the Stros topping the woeful Pirates by only one win, 65 to 64.

In view of that, it probably makes sense that the Stros spent most of the off-season cutting costs. In one of their key moves, the Stros withdrew a $27 million three-year offer to reasonably effective pitcher Randy Wolf in favor of a relatively cheap, one-year, $2 million deal with 36 year-old lefty Mike Hampton, who has pitched a total of 147 innings over the past four seasons.

Granted, that's not much production over that stretch. But that means chances are he'll break out and be more productive this season, right?

Well, so much for that theory.

Finally, to put a punctuation mark on another dismal day of following Houston sports teams, I flicked on the car radio to a local sports talk show Monday afternoon while driving between meetings.

The two hosts and a caller were addressing Michael Lewis' NY Sunday Times Magazine article about Rockets forward Shane Battier.

In the article, Lewis provides an in-depth analysis of how the Rockets are on the cutting-edge of modifying traditional statistical analysis to find undervalued players such as Battier. It is clearly one of the most interesting, erudite, well-researched and important articles written about sports so far this year.

Despite that, Here is how the conversation went between the two sports talk radio hosts and their caller:

Caller: "Have you guys read the Michael Lewis article in the New York Times about Shane Battier and the Rockets?"

Host One: "I've heard about it, but I haven't gotten around to reading it yet."

Host Two: "Oh yeah, I also heard about it, but I haven't read it yet, either. What's it all about?"

Caller: "Well, I haven't read the article, either. I was hoping you guys had read it and could tell me about it."

Mercifully, I turned off the radio.

Chalk it up to just another episode in the continuing sordid story of following Houston sports teams.

Posted by Tom at 12:01 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

February 10, 2009

The real A-Rod tragedy

As predicted here last year, the names of the MLB players who tested positive for steroids or other performance-enhancing drug use in MLB's 2003 survey test of 240 players are finally being leaked to the media (previous posts on PED use in sports are here).

That survey test was done under a deal between MLB and the MLB Players' Association for the purpose of encouraging voluntary and confidential disclosure of PED use by players so that MLB and the Players' Association could develop a productive program for helping the players get off the juice and monitor future use.

With the leaking of A-Rod's name and the ensuing public outcry, so much for the notion of encouraging players to get help by assuring confidentiality.

Predictably, the mainstream media and much of the public are castigating Rodriguez, who is an easy target.

Of course, much of that same mainstream media and public contribute to the pathologically competitive MLB culture by regularly reveling in players who risk career-threatening disability by taking painkilling drugs so that they can play through injuries.

But players who used PED's in in an effort to strengthen their bodies to avoid or minimize the inevitable injuries of the physically-brutal MLB season are pariahs. Go figure.

Meanwhile, the fact that MLB players have been using PED's for at least the past two generations to enhance their performance is not even mentioned in the mind-numbingly superficial analysis of the PED issue that is being trotted out by most media outlets. Sure, Barry Bonds hit quite a few home runs during a time in which he was apparently using PED's. But should Pete Rose be denied the record for breaking Ty Cobb's total base hits standard simply because he used performance-enhancing amphetamines throughout his MLB career?

As noted here last year in connection with release of the Mitchell Commission report, witch hunts, investigations, criminal indictments, morality plays and public shaming episodes are not advancing a dispassionate debate regarding the complex issues that are at the heart of the use of PED's in baseball and other sports. On a very basic level, it is not even clear that the controlled use of PED's to enhance athletic performance is as dangerous to health as many of the sports in which the users compete.

A truly civilized society would find a better way to address these issues.

Posted by Tom at 12:01 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

October 29, 2008

What's worse?

Although not many people care much, the 2008 World Series has turned into a first rate mess.

Game Five is currently suspended while the Phillies and Rays players sit around Philadelphia waiting for the inclement weather to end. This after they nearly injured themselves while inexplicably being forced to play 5.5 innings during a driving rainstorm on Monday night. The remainder of the Game Five might be played tonight.

Moreover, Game Four began at 10 p.m. EDT because of rain most of the day on Saturday. That game finished sometime after 2 a.m. Sunday on the east coast. Not exactly the way to keep the young fans interested in the game.

Meanwhile, the umpiring in the series has been atrocious, with multiple of MLB's supposedly best umpires blowing easy calls and routinely calling strikes on pitches that are clearly out of the strike zone.

And just to make matters utterly unbearable, Fox Sports imposes senseless announcers Joe Buck and Tim McCarver on the few folks watching on television. These two babble on endlessly describing the utterly obvious without ever saying anything remotely insightful. Often, they say things that are simply flat wrong.

But as bad as the World Series has been, it's nothing compared to legendary Baylor and Chicago Bears linebacker Mike Singletary's first game this past Sunday as interim coach of the San Francisco 49'ers. Coach Singletary's post-game performance has already become an overnight YouTube sensation and is being touted as one of the all-time great coach tirades.

AP sportswriter Greg Beacham summed up Coach Singletary's bad first day at the office well:

Mike Singletary ended his head coaching debut by apologizing to 49ers fans above the locker room tunnel. Tight end Vernon Davis got sent to the showers like a petulant teenager, QB J.T. O’Sullivan was benched after his 11th fumble of the season, and the San Francisco defense let a 242-pound fullback catch two long touchdown passes.

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October 22, 2008

The Rays' Houston connection

In 2005, Forbes named the Tampa Bay Rays as the "most horrific" sports franchise of the modern era and the "worst-managed organization" in Major League Baseball.

A little over three years later, the Rays are in the World Series, which begins tonight in Tampa. This Tim Marchman article explains how the Rays did it, including how several Houstonians made key contributions to turning the club into a winner.

Rays General Manager Andrew Friedman, who orchestrated the turnaround over the past several seasons, is a native Houstonian and the son of long-time Houston attorney Kent Friedman. Rays' P Scott Kazmir and LF Carl Crawford played their high school baseball in Houston, while P Dan Wheeler was a stalwart reliever on the Stros playoff teams in 2004-05. Finally, a couple of years ago, Friedman had the good sense to hire as an assistant GM Gerry Hunsicker, who remains the best general manager that the Stros have ever had.

Interestingly, it was the Rays' years of futility that actually fueled their success this season. All those last-place finishes provided the Rays with numerous high draft choices and the club eventually started selecting good prospects.

Inasmuch as most of their key players are young and homegrown, the Rays are playing with Major League Baseball's second lowest payroll and have given long-term contracts given to their core of talented young players. The deals will allow the team to keep its top players for several more seasons so that the Rays are quite likely to become a dominant force in the American League for years to come.

Finally, what is most remarkable about all this is that the Rays have been able to achieve all this while operating under the worst financial circumstances in MLB.

So, what are the Rays' chances in the World Series against the Phillies?

Well, the Rays' pitching staff had a salty runs-saved-against-average ("RSAA") of 89 for the 2008 season, which was 3rd in the American League, but behind the Red Sox RSAA of 92. Similarly, the Rays' decent runs-created-against-average ("RCAA") of 37 for the season paled in comparison to the Red Sox 103 RCAA. How on earth did the Rays beat the Red Sox in the American League Championship Series?

Answer: A red hot pitching staff. Remember, in a relatively small series of games, good pitching is often enough for a club to win a series over an opponent that likely would be superior over a larger segment of games. Thus, don't be surprised if the Rays ride that hot pitching staff to what would be the most improbable World Series championship of this generation.

Posted by Tom at 12:01 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

October 7, 2008

Stros 2008 Season Review, Part Five: Season Recap and Report Card

The Stros 2008 season has been over for over a week now, so it's time for my final review of the 2008 season (prior 2008 season reviews are here) and my grading of the Stros players for the 2008 seaons (my grading of the Stros from the 2007 season is here and from the 2006 season is here).

Although the Stros (86-75) played surprisingly well over the final 40% of the season (42-24, including a stellar 22-11 mark over the final 20% of the seaons), the club failed to qualify for the playoffs for the third straight season since their only World Series appearance in 2005. However, the Stros did handily beat my pre-season over/under prediction of 75 wins, so there is little question that the club out-performed most expectations for the season.

The Stros started out the final fifth of the season with a 16-3 run that pulled the club to within 2.5 games on September 13th of tying the Brewers for the lead in the National League Wild-Card playoff spot.

However, we in Houston recall all too vividly what happened during the morning of Saturday, September 13th --  Hurricane Ike roared through the Houston metro area, leaving in its wake multi-billions of dollars in damages and millions of people without power.

The Stros were supposed to be playing a series against the Cubs at Minute Maid Park over that weekend, but the games simply were not playable in Houston under the circumstances. Frankly, the entire Cubs series should have been postponed and the Stros should have been told to prepare for their next series starting the following Tuesday against the Marlins in Miami.

However, despite the catastrophic damage to the Houston area from Hurricane Ike, MLB Commissioner Bud Selig insisted that as many of the Stros-Cub games be played as soon as possible.

That was a bad decision, but it was made even worse when Selig inexplicably rejected the use of perfectly acceptable baseball stadiums in close-by Round Rock, Corpus Christi and Arlington to play the games.

To compound that poor judgment, Selig then yanked the Stros players and coaches out of Houston on the afternoon of Sunday, September 14th -- at a time when virtually all of their families were adjusting to living without power -- to play the first of two of those games in that postponed Cubs series that night in Milwaukee, of all places.

Not surprisingly, the exhausted Stros were no-hit that night and could muster just one hit in the following night's game.

With their concentration shattered by understandable concern for their families back in Houston, the Stros proceeded to get swept by the Marlins in the following series, which pretty well ended any chance that the Stros had to make a final push for the Wild-Card playoff spot.

And that raises a point that much of the local mainstream media misinterpreted throughout the latter part of the Stros' 2008 season -- despite their good play over the final 40% of the season, the Stros never really had much of a shot at making the playoffs.

Even on that fateful September 13th, when they pulled within 2.5 games of a tie for the lead in the race for the Wild-Card spot, the Stros had only a 12% chance of making the playoffs and that was the best odds for making the playoffs that they attained over the final 40% of the season.

The reason that the Stros' odds were so low was because of the number of teams with whom they were competing.

The Brewers, the Mets and the Phillies all had better records than the Stros at that point, so the chances were always relatively remote that both the Brewers and either the Mets or Phillies (whichever of them did not win the NL East) would crater enough down the stretch to allow the Stros to eke into the Wild Card spot.

Nevertheless, how did the Stros win so many games during the final 40% of the season after basically stinking it up through the first 60% (44-51)?

As noted earlier, 1B Lance Berkman (58 RCAA/.420 OBA/.567 SLG/.986) carried the club from a hitting standpoint throughout the first 50% of the season, then LF Carlos Lee (30 RCAA/.368 OBA/.569 SLG/.937 OPS) had the best run of his career just before and after the All-Star break until his season-ending injury at the 115 game mark.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, 3B Ty Wigginton (10 RCAA/.350 OBA/.526 SLG/.876 OPS) picked up the slack after Lee's injury and had the best hitting streak of his career until he too went on the shelf with a leg injury during the first part of the final month of the season.

At that point, under-performing RF Hunter Pence (-7  RCAA/.318  OBA/.466 SLG/.783 OPS) finally got untracked and had his best run of the season (10 RCAA in the final 33 games of the season), which allowed his season-ending numbers to improve from among the worst in the league for regular players through 80% of the season.

Moreover, oft-injured 2B Kaz Matsui (6 RCAA/.354 OBA/.427 SLG/.781 OPS) was generally productive when when not on the disabled list and Berkman remained solid down the stretch, although he never caught the same fire during the final 40% of the season that he displayed through the first 60% of the season.

Put these performances together and they were enough to push a poor-hitting Stros club overall (-46 RCAA, 12th among the 16 National League teams) to generate enough offense to win almost two-thirds of their final 66 games played.

But as was the case all season, the real story of this Stros' 2008 season was the performance of the pitching staff.

Viewed before the season as one of the weakest pitching staffs in Stros history, the Stros staff this season ended up being precisely National League average (0 RSAA), which was 7th among the 16 National League teams. Although Brandon Backe (-31 RSAA/6.05 ERA) was arguably the worst starting pitcher in the National League this season, no other Stros pitcher who remained on the staff at the end of the season was worse than slightly below National League-average.

Moreover, staff ace Roy Oswalt (20 RSAA/-- who struggled at a merely National League-average performance level through the first 40% of the season, came back to pitch as well as any National League pitcher over the final 60% of the season (27 RSAA from June 10th forward).

Add in a career-best performance by Wandy Rodriguez (13 RSAA/3.54 ERA) and excellent performances by pick-ups Randy Wolf ( ) and LaTroy Hawkins ( ) over the final 40% of the season, as well as a consistently solid bullpen performance throughout the season, and the Stros staff improved dramatically over the 2007 staff's abysmal performance (-79 RSAA) and provided the foundation of the Stros' better-than-expected record this season.

In retrospect, apart from the losing streak after Hurricane Ike, the Stros really blew their chance for a playoff spot this season during the period from May 27th through June 22nd when the club sandwiched disastrous 9 and 6-game road trips around a poor 9-game homestand, going 6-18 over that period. Other than that stretch, this Stros club was a pretty darn consistent club. The following chart breaks down the Stros season by homestands and road trips:

Despite that consistency, the Stros' better-than-expected record masked the fact that the Stros were the weakest of the teams in the National League that finished with more wins than losses.

As I've noted many times in my review on the Stros, aggregate RCAA and RSAA numbers of each club provide a simple but revealing reflection of whether a team is likely to be able to contend for a playoff spot over the course of the long MLB season.

A club's RCAA reflects how many more (or fewer) runs that a club's hitters generate than a National League-average club and RSAA measures how many more (or fewer) runs that a club's pitching staff saves than a National League-average club (an exactly National League-average club's score is zero). Accordingly, a club's combined RCAA/RSAA number shows how many more (or fewer) runs the club's hitters have generated and the club's pitchers have saved in comparison to a National League-average club.

The following are the aggregate RCAA/RSAA of the National League clubs that won more games than they lost during the 2008 season:

Team       W    L   RCAA  RSAA  RCAA/RSAA

Cubs         97   64    81       98         179

Phillies     92    70    46       87         133

Brewers    90   72     33       57           90

Mets         89   73     79       41          120

Stros         86   75    -46        0           -46

Cardinals   86   76    113       -4          109

Marlins      84   77      62       -45          17

Dodgers    84   78      46         41          87

Dbacks      82   80     -71        95           24

Thus, the Stros were the only team in the National League that won more games than they lost in 2008 that had a negative RCAA/RSAA. Indeed, several teams with losing records -- including the 72-90 Braves -- had an RCAA/RSAA (-16) that was considerably better than the Stros.

Now, as the above chart reflects, RCAA/RSAA is not a dispositive indicator of how a club will finish in the standings or even how many wins and losses that a club will have. But it's unusual for a club with a negative RCAA/RSAA to win more games than it loses, and it's even more unusual when such a club wins 11 more games than it loses. That indicates that more than a bit of good luck was involved in the Stros' record this season. And good luck is not the main element around which good MLB teams are built.

One of the main problems with the Stros are that they are getting old. The Stros have only two players under 30 in their regular lineup— Pence in right field, and the platoon of Michael Bourn and Reggie Abercrombie in center. By the team-age calculations of Baseball-Reference, the Stros' hitters are a collective 31.1 years old, which is almost a full year older than any other National League club. That is not particularly comforting when you consider that the Stros' RCAA of -46 ranked 12th among the 16 National League teams.

Likewise, the Stros are not much younger on the pitching side. The pitchers average 30.7 years, which is tied with the Phillies for the NL's oldest staff. Inasmuch as the Stros are currently rebuilding one of the worst farm systems in the National League, a 2009 team built essentially on an aging 2008 roster is not likely to generate more wins than the 2008 unit.

Thus, it would be a mistake to think that the Stros performance this season means that they are legitimate playoff contenders for the 2009 season. The club has huge holes at three positions (catcher, shortstop and centerfield), a question mark at another (second base) and a pitching staff that is still only National League-average despite its better-than-expected performance this past season.

So, Stros management has a lot of work to do this off-season to put the club in a position to contend in 2009 and it's not at all clear at this point that management is inclined to make the moves necessary to accomplish that goal. If the Stros make only minor moves this off-season, I do not think it's likely that they will be able to improve on this season's performance and contend for a playoff spot in 2009.

The following is my report card for each of the Stros this season. Full season statistics follow the report card and the Stros’ 40-man roster is here with a hyperlink to each player’s statistics and other information:

The A's

Lance Berkman -- A+ (58 RCAA/.420 OBA/.567 SLG/.986): Berkman's 2008 season was one of the best in Stros history.

Berkman's 58 RCAA was the 3rd highest in the National League this season and tenth best in Stros history:

Berkman now has four of the top ten RCAA seasons in Stros history, second only to Jeff Bagwell's five:

Berkman trails only Bagwell in career RCAA among Stros players and no one else is even close to those two:

In fact, Berkman is now 7th in career RCAA among active National League players and is a good bet to move up to 3rd within a season or two:

In addition, Berkman was rated the 4th best defensive first baseman in Major League Baseball according to John Dewan’s The Fielding Bible. And he stole 18 bases in 22 tries, to boot.

With another five or so solid seasons, Berkman will join Bagwell and Craig Biggio, and Roy Oswalt as one of only four homegrown Stros players who have a legitimate shot at being voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Berkman is the best current Stros field position player by far.

Carlos Lee -- A  30 RCAA/.368 OBA/.569 SLG/.937 OPS): Lee was on his way to the best season of his career when an errant pitch broke a bone in his hand during the 115th game of the season and ended his season prematurely. He started slowly, but really caught fire after the All-Star break and was carrying the club offensively when he was injured. Moreover, Dewan's Fielding Bible scored Lee's usually poor defense as the best of his career (16th best in MLB, just a tad below MLB-average). If only Lee could learn how to take a walk, he would have the potential to put together a 50+ RCAA season. Unfortunately, it's not likely that he will develop that ability this late in his career.

Geoff Geary -- A (13 RSAA/2.53 ERA): Originally thought to be a throw-in in regard to the Brad Lidge for Michael Bourn trade, Geary ended up preventing that trade from being a disaster.

Geary battled through a series of nagging injuries to be the Stros most consistent pitcher this season. Geary's stat line for the season (13 RSAA/2.53 ERA/64 IP/45 H/28 BB/45 K/3 HR's) is not far off Lidge's (19 RSAA/1.95 ERA/69.1 IP/50 H/35 BB/92 K/2 HR's), who is the NL's Comeback Player of the Year.

The Phillies are committed to pay Lidge $37.5 million over the next three seasons with a $12.5 million club option in 2012. The Stros paid Geary $1.125 million in 2008 and will only have to offer him arbitration in order to keep him around for 2009. Remember that when you hear the mainstream media pundits describing the Lidge-for-Bourn deal as a disaster for the Stros.

Roy Oswalt -- A- (20 RSAA/3/54 ERA):  It says much about Roy O's excellence that this was his worst MLB season and he still generated an A- for the season.

As mentioned above, he struggled with nagging injuries through the first 40% of the season, but then kicked it into gear in the final 60% to be one of the most effective pitchers in the National League. He finished with over 200 innings for the fifth straight season and for the sixth time in his eight-year MLB career.

As with Berkman, Roy O's excellence is often taken for granted. Even in this worst season of his masterful career, Roy O tied for 11th in RSAA in the National League:

Roy O is now 6th in career RSAA among active NL players:

Moreover, Oswalt is tied for 6th in the history of Major League Baseball in career RSAA generated in the NL by the age of 30:

Not bad company, eh? Finally, Roy O has saved more runs than any pitcher in the history of the Stros franchise:

As with Berkman, with another five or so solid seasons, Roy O is a legitimate homegrown Hall of Fame candidate. He is one the few Stros who is truly special to watch compete.

The B's

Ty Wigginton -- B+ (10 RCAA/.350 OBA/.526 SLG/.876 OPS):  The 30-year old Wigginton had the best season of his career and might have scored an "A" if injuries hadn't caused him to miss about 45 games (on the other hand, I guess he could have a "C" or a "D", too). Inasmuch as Wig is not stellar in the field (Dewar rates him 23rd in fielding among MLB third basemen), the question is whether his performance this season is indicative that his next few seasons will produce more than his career numbers (0 RCAA/.330 OBA/.460 SLG/.790 OBP)? If not, then Wig should be considered prime trade bait.

Wandy Rodriguez -- B+ (13 RSAA/3.54 ERA): Rodriguez keeps improving with age as this is his second straight season of notable improvement over his first two seasons in which he was one of the worst starters in the National League. However, Rodriguez will be 30 years old next season, only pitched 137 innings because of injuries this season and still has never pitched over 184 innings during a season in his career. He probably will never be better than a back-end rotation guy, although he may develop into a decent third option in a rotation. That would appear to be his ceiling, though.

LaTroy Hawkins -- B+ (9 RSAA/0.43 ERA): After looking washed-up with the Yankees during the first two-thirds of the season, the Stros picked up Hawkins off the scrap heap and he proceeded to allow just 1 earned run in 24 innings while striking out 25 and walking only 5. He will be offered a contract for 2009, but he will be 36, so it will become harder for him to maintain the lightning the Stros found in his bottle during the last third of 2008.

Randy Wolf -- B+ (7 RSAA/3.57  ERA): Another of Stros GM Ed Wade's salvage projects, Wolf pitched well above National League-average in the 70 innings that he gave the Stros after coming over from the Padres, where he basically stunk up the joint (-11 RSAA/4.74 ERA in 120 innings). As with Hawkins, Wolf's performance means that the Stros will pursue a contract with him in the off-season, but is a barely above National League-average starter worth the $15 million or so over three seasons that will likely be required to sign him? I have my doubts.

Mark  Loretta -- B (-4 RCAA/.350 OBA/.383 SLG/.733): Loretta improved from a D last season primarily because the Stros used him better -- i.e., as a true utilityman rather than as a replacement starter. As a result, in 250 AB's, Loretta had just 10 fewer extra-base hits this season than he had in over 460 AB's last season. Loretta played well defensively at all of the infield positions, scoring at least MLB-average at each position except for 2B, where he was slightly below-average.

Jose Valverde -- B (8 RSAA/3.38 ERA): Interestingly, Valverde's season stats were almost the same as Brad Lidge's for the 2007 season with the Stros that got Lidge run out of town. Valverde is currently a lot cheaper than Lidge, but probably not for long. Beware of overpaying for closers.

Brian Moehler -- B (-3 RSAA/4.56 ERA): The 36 year-old journeyman was little short of remarkable for the Stros in 2008, swallowing 150 innings at just a tad below National League-average performance level. A consummate pro, he will compete for a back-end rotation or long relief job next season. Just don't be surprised if he is nowhere near as effective as he was this season.

Chris Sampson -- B (6 RSAA/4.12 ERA): Sampson had an interesting season. Through 56 innings of being starter, he was pretty bad (-6 RCAA/5.56 ERA). Then, he pitched 61 innings out of the bullpen and was quite good (12 RSAA). Alas, he had elbow surgery after the season and is iffy to be ready by spring training.

Tim Byrdak -- B (3 RSAA/3.90 ERA): Another of the pleasant surprises in the Stros 2008 bullpen, the 34-year old veteran pitched just above National League-average over 55 innings this season. Brydak has effectively replaced Trevor Miller as the prime LOOGY on the Stros staff ("LOOGY" means Lefty One Out GuY - a left handed reliever specializing in getting one out, often in game critical situations).

Doug Brocail -- B (4 RSAA/3.93 ERA): Brocail, who is the quintessential battler, pitched reasonably well until Manager Cecil Cooper inexplicably overworked the 41 year-old, at which point he developed shoulder problems that limited his effectiveness. The Stros declined an option on Brocail for the 2009 season because of injury concerns, but are talking with him about coming back next season, anyway.

The C's

Kaz Matsui -- C (6 RCAA/.354 OBA/.427 SLG/.781): Matsui was the Stros best leadoff man when he was playing. The problem was that he wasn't playing enough (only 96 games due to assorted injuries). Also, Dewar's Fielding Bible rated his defense as dramatically worse than the previous season at Colorado (from 6th best in MLB to 28th). He is signed for two more seasons at $5 mi per season, so he isn't going anywhere. Perhaps Stros management should invest in a better masseuse?

Wesley Wright -- C (-4 RSAA/5.01 ERA): A Rule 5 pickup from the Dodgers, the 23 year-old Wright acquitted himself reasonably well as sort of a backup LOOGY (55 IP). Wright needs more seasoning and it will be interesting to see how the Stros go about getting it for him. It's not as if the club has an over-abundance of pitchers of this age with Major League potential.

Hunter Pence -- C- (-7 RCAA/.318 OBA/.466 SLG/.783 OPS): Pence was on course for a D or even an F through 80% of the season when his season-to-date stats were among the worst of any regular National League players (-17 RCAA/.300 OBA/.435 SLG/.735).

But Pence redeemed himself somewhat during the final 20% of the season when he carried the club for about 20 games after Wigginton's injury and improved his season statistics to just below National League-average.

Pence's defense in RF was only average -- The Fielding Bible rates him 16th in MLB, primarily because of his good arm. However, Pence's defense in centerfield during 2007 was not rated materially worse than his defense in right field this season. Moreover, Pence's defensive rating in both seasons were about the same as CF Michael Bourn's fielding rating this season.

So, why again are the Stros enduring Bourn in centerfield?

The D's

Geoff Blum -- D (-13 RCAA/.287 OBA/.418 SLG/.705 OPS): Blum was useful in spots (14 HR's), but it's hard to be an average utilityman with an on-base average of .287 (National League-average is .340). He generally did a good job defensively -- The Fielding Bible rated his defense at 3B to be 11th best in MLB.

Darin Erstad -- D (-12 RCAA/.309 OBA/.363 SLG/.672 OPS): As with Blum, it's hard to be an average utilityman with a .672 OPS (National League-average is .771). Erstad performed at a slightly above MLB-average level defensively at the outfield positions and first base.

The F's

Brad Ausmus -- F (-14 /RCAA/.303 OBA/.296 SLG/.600 OPS): Mercifully for everyone except for his adoring female fans, the Brad Ausmus era is over in Houston.

Ausmus and his masterful agent have pulled one of the greatest con jobs in MLB history in persuading MLB teams to pay him to play baseball for 15 seasons. His career stat line (-277 RCAA/.325 OBA/.344 SLG/.669 OPS) reflects that he was not close to being an average National League hitter (0 RCAA/.342 OBA/432 SLG/.774 OPS).

Moreover, although he has always blocked pitches well, his ability to throw out baserunners at an effective rate was essentially gone by the 2004 season. The Stros inexplicably paid him to hang around for another four seasons anyway.

RCAA is an excellent measure of the awfulness of Ausmus. His career -250 RCAA -- which means that Ausmus generated 250 fewer runs than a merely average National League hitter would have created using the same number of outs over 15 seasons as Ausmus -- is second worst among active National League players:

Moreover, Ausmus holds the Stros record for the worst RCAA in any one season and has four of the worst ten such seasons in Stros history:

Not surprisingly, Ausmus has a firm hold on the worst career RCAA of any Stros player:

Given the subjective blather that the mainstream media served up around the time that Ausmus played his last game for the Stros, it's questionable whether the utter ineffectiveness of Ausmus' long tenure with the club will ever be properly analyzed in those annals. But part of his legacy in Houston is certainly that Stros fans do not have the expectation of even an average player at the catcher position. I guess that makes management's job a bit easier.

J.R. Towles -- F (-12 RCAA/.250 OBA/.253 SLG/.503 OPS): That's a tough grade for Towles, who should not have been jumped from AA to MLB after a small sample size of success in MLB at the end of the 2007 season. He actually played reasonably well in AAA, where he should have been at the start of the season. But when Ausmus is your alternative at catcher, the Stros were dreaming that Towles might work out. Dreams rarely become reality in MLB.

Humberto Quintero -- F (-14 RCAA/.271 OBA/.304 SLG/.575 OPS): Quintero, Ausmus and Towles caught all of the Stros games this season. If you aggregate their negative RCAA (-14 + -14 + -12 = -40), the Stros catching position generated the worst RCAA of any regular position in the National League this season. In fact, the Stros have four of the top 10 worst RCAA's for the 2008 season (the catching position, Tejada, Bourn and Jose Castillo, although Castillo generated most of his negative RCAA with the Giants before coming to the Stros late in the season):

Miguel Tejeda -- F (-26 RCAA/.314 OBA/.415 SLG/.729 OBA). Tejada was one of the worst hitting National League regular players during the 2008 season. I don't think that's what Drayton McLane and GM Wade had in mind when they agreed to pay Tejada $26 million over the final two years of his contract, the final of which is next season. Tejada did improve his defense markedly, going from the 23rd-ranked MLB shortstop in 2007 to 9th-ranked in 2008.

Michael Bourn -- F (-29/.299 OBA/.313 SLG/.613 OPS): Bourn was terrible this season, arguably the worst-hitting regular player in the National League (only the Stros' decision to platoon Abercrombie with Bourn in CF saved Bourn from being the outright leader in worst RCAA). Moreover, Bourn's defense -- which was supposedly his strength -- turned out to be rather pedestrian (15th ranking among MLB centerfielders). Thus, as noted above, there is a real question as to whether the Stros shouldn't just can the Bourn experiment, put Pence back in CF and go out an get a true run producer to play right-field. It looks as if Bourn is Willy Taveras-lite, which is a scary thought.

Brandon Backe -- F (-31 RSAA/6.05 ERA): Backe had the worst RSAA of any starting pitcher in the National League in 2008:

In my 2007 preview of the Stros season, I wrote the following about Backe:

A fiery personality and a couple of good playoff performances three years ago misleads some addled observers to believe that Backe is a legitimate number two starter. However, he has made just 13 starts over the past two seasons while recovering from Tommy John surgery. In those 13 starts, he struck out 30 and walked 29. Backe's career -15 RSAA is not the stuff of a frontline National League starting pitcher.

Backe may get one more chance with the Stros solely because this was his first season back from Tommy John surgery. However, after 166 innings of ineffectual pitching this season, it's becoming increasingly clear that Backe is not a good enough pitcher to start regularly in MLB. He may still find a Chris Sampson-type relief role somewhere, but it won't be as a starter.

The 2008 season statistics for the Stros are below, 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 (4) | TrackBack (0)

September 17, 2008

A day in a life after Ike

Just jotting down a few observations throughout the day of living in an area that just experienced a major natural disaster.

FEMA, take note

Although The Woodlands did not suffer as much damage as many other parts of the Houston metropolitan area, it's interesting in my travels around town over the past several days that I have seen no evidence whatsoever of any federal relief.

For example, it seems to me that there are a couple of basic things that the federal government could do to facilitate recovery efforts. First, move as many portable generators to selected service stations throughout the region so that citizens can become somewhat mobile again. The primary problem at this point is not lack of gasoline. Rather, it's lack of power to operate the pumps to get the available gas into cars.

Even though large swaths of Houston remain without power, many areas are getting power back by the hour. Folks in areas without power can be much more productive if they can travel to areas that have it and work. Unfortunately, as it stands, there is no gas to get to those areas and then return home.

Another irritation is that no one in an official capacity attempts to do anything to facilitate communications for the citizens directly affected by a natural disaster such as Ike. Ever since the storm, cell phone usage has been spotty in most residential areas, and serviceable in only a few commercial areas. Perhaps damage to the cell network equipment is the cause of the poor service, but I haven't heard anyone contend that such is the case.

Galveston

Just as the deadly hurricane of 1900 changed the nature of Galveston, my sense is that Hurricane Ike has done the same thing in 2008.

Prior to the 1900 hurricane, Galveston was Texas' largest city, port and commercial center. The devastation from that storm put into the motion the changes in Texas' development that resulted in Houston becoming the major port and cities such as Houston and Dallas-Ft. Worth becoming the major commercial centers. As Houston grew into this region's major center of commerce, Galveston evolved into a tourist center and a weekend beach getaway for folks in Houston.

Despite that tourism development, the City of Galveston has been slowly dying for years. Jobs and commercial activity largely revolve around the tourism industry (even the port is now owned by the Port of Houston Authority). Most young people now move away from the city after high school, so older folks constitute an unusually high percentage of the "town folk."

My sense is that Galveston will come back as a weekender community and a modest tourist vista, but that commerce not related to the tourism industry will continue to decline at an accelerated rate. My sense is that what we might see in 20 years is a community comprised of a few high-rise condos and resorts along the seawall, the ubiquitous weekender homes on the West Beach and not much else.

It will certainly be easier to evacuate such a community.

Radio anchor people

As a general rule, I do not listen to much radio. Maybe an occasional traffic report or Charlie Pallilo's sports talk show in the rare event that I am driving somewhere during it.

But I've been shocked at how bad the radio anchor reporters have been on KTRH, the main station providing disaster information to the public. Although a number of the KTRH field reporters are OK, the anchors often sound as if they are blithering idiots. It seems as if they aren't asking inane and non-challenging questions to "experts" or public officials, they laughing and making bad jokes at inappropriate times or in regard to serious issues.

Walter Cronkite, where are you when we need you?

Houston sports teams

I noted in this earlier post in the run-up to Hurricane Ike that the high number of variables that become involved in reacting to hurricanes often generates some abysmal decisions in reaction to the storm. That observation was certainly validated by a couple of decisions that were made with regard to Houston sports teams.

From University of Houston Athletic Director Dave Maggard's absurd decision to have the University's football team play in Dallas while the storm was still hammering Houston (!) to Major League Commissioner Bud Selig's equally preposterous decision to haul the Houston Astros players and coaches away from their families (to Milwaukee of all places) the day after a terrible natural disaster left the players and coaches' families without power in a devastated city, it's hard to imagine the fractured thought process that went into either of those boneheaded decisions.

Sports competition at the major-college and professional level requires a high level of concentration. Given the circumstances under which these games were played, it is not surprising in the least that the Houston teams lost each one of them. How could the players and coaches be concentrating on a damn game?

It's only God's grace to both Maggard and Selig that no family member of either a UH or Stros player or coach was hurt or killed in the aftermath of the storm. Why do either of these fellows still have their respective jobs?

Posted by Tom at 12:01 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0)

August 23, 2008

Stros 2008 Season Review, Part Four

After falling apart during the third fifth of the 2008 season, the Stros (64-64) made an unexpected rebound during the fourth fifth of the season, going 20-13 over that stretch.

Although the Stros' recent play was more fulfilling to watch than if the club had mailed it for the rest of the season, the risk is that the good result from a small sample size of games deludes Stros management into thinking that the Stros are close to regaining true contender status in the National League. They are not and here's is a simple reason whey they aren't.

Despite their relatively good play of late, the Stros remain 14 games behind the NL Central-leading Cubs (77-49) and 9.5 games behind the NL Wildcard-leading Brewers (73-55). Inasmuch as that is even further behind than the Stros stood after their worst stretch of play of the season during the third fifth of the season, the Stros actually lost ground in the race for a playoff spot while playing their best stretch of baseball of the season.

Aggregate RCAA and RSAA numbers provide a simple but revealing reflection of why the Stros cannot contend with the likes of the Cubs and Brewers over the course of a long season. Remember, a club's RCAA reflects how many more (or fewer) runs that a club's hitters generate than a National League-average club. Similarly, RSAA measures how many more (or fewer) runs that a club's pitching staff saves than a National League-average club. Accordingly, a club's combined RCAA/RSAA number shows how many more (or fewer) runs the club's hitters have generated and the club's pitchers have saved in comparison to a National League-average club.

Even with their uptick during the fourth fifth of the season, the Stros aggregate RCAA/RSAA score remains -45 (-24 RCAA/-21 RSAA, which is 12th and 10th respectively among the 16 National League clubs), meaning that the Stros have generated and saved 45 fewer runs this season than a National League-average club. That's not much worse than where the Stros stood after 60% of the season (-42 = -41 RCAA/-1 RSAA), but the fact remains that the decidedly below-average performance means that the Stros have actually been quite lucky to generate a record of as many wins as losses over the season to date.

On the other hand, the Cubs have a stout RCAA/RSAA of 176 (71 RCAA/105 RSAA) and the Brewers a respectable 77 (33 RCAA/44 RSAA), which means that the Cubs have created and saved a startling 221 more runs (and the Brewers 122 more runs) this season than the Stros. Although the Stros are lucky to be near a .500 record for the season, there is no amount of luck that would allow them to contend against the likes of the Cubs and Brewers given that RCAA/RSAA differential.

The theme of this season -- as with most Stros' seasons since 2003 -- has been well below-average hitting. That trend continued during the most recent fifth of the season with a couple of notable exceptions, which is the primary reason that the Stros rebounded a bit.

Although the Stros best hitter, 1B Lance Berkman, cooled off during the fourth fifth of the season (56 RCAA/.431 OBA/.597 SLG/1.028 OPS, but only 3 RCAA in the 34 games), but LF Carlos Lee (30 RCAA/.368 OBA/.569 SLG/.937 OPS and 16 RCAA in 22 games before his injury) and then 3B Ty Wigginton (16 RCAA/.373 OBA/.541 SLG/.914 OPS, including 13 RCAA in 33 games) really picked up the slack. 2B Kaz Matsui (4 RCAA/.348 OBA/.415 SLG/.763 OPS, including 7 RCAA in 26 games) also showed signs of life, but then he went back on the disabled list, where he spends way too much time to be a dependable MLB regular player.

Unfortunately, two Stros hitters upon whom club management was heavily relying -- SS Miguel Tejada (-17 RCAA/.319/.420/.739) and RF Hunter Pence (-17 RCAA/.300 OBA/.435 SLG/.735) -- continued to have nightmarish seasons and are two of the worst-performing regular players in the National League this season.

Moreover, if you combine the players who have manned the Stros' centerfield (Michael Bourn -24 RCAA and Darren Erstad -6 RCAA) and catcher (J.R. Towles -15 RCAA, Brad Ausmus -12 RCAA, and Humberto Quintero -10 RCAA), four of the Stros' eight positions are among the worst-performing positions in the Natonal League this season. That's a sure-fire prescription for a bad team.

Meanwhile, most of the Stros' pitchers in the most recent fifth of the season continued their season-long performance of around National League-average except for starters Brandon Backe and Wandy Rodriguez.

Backe (-19 RSAA/5.62 ERA) was one of the worst pitchers in the National League over his past 7 starts (-13 RSAA), which prompted Chronicle sports columnist Richard Justice to recommend that Backe be made a pillar of next season's Stros staff (again, why is Justice allowed to write about sports?).

Rodriguez (4 RCAA/4.11 ERA, but -6 RSAA over his last 8 starts) has not been as bad as Backe, but his declining performance as the season wears on confirms that he is, at best, a back-end rotation starter. Geoff Geary, considered a throw-in in the Brad Lidge-for-Bourn trade, has been the most effective Stros hurler through 80% of the season (13 RSAA/2.41 ERA).

By the way, Geary's performance this season has been quite comparable to that of Lidge (13 RSAA/2.06 ERA). Inasmuch as the Stros have not committed to Geary anywhere near the $37 million-plus that the Phillies recently committed to Lidge, it's not at all clear that the Lidge-for-Bourn deal was a bad one for the Stros despite Bourn's ineptitude this season.

As for Stros management, it's still too early to say whether they have charted a course for returning the Stros to a playoff contender. Management did a good job in signing the Stros' top draft picks this season, which is a good start in restocking a farm system that has been seriously depleted over the past decade. Also, management has continued to make patchwork moves, such as bringing in veteran pitchers Randy Wolf (-2 RSAA/5.13 ERA) and LaTroy Hawkins (3 RSAA/0.00 ERA), that at least show that the club wants to make the best of it despite the team's non-contender status.

On the other hand, why on earth does Stros management pick up the contract of Giants castoff, IF Jose Castillo (-24 RCAA/.290 OBA/.381 SLG/.671)?  Castillo is one of few National League infielders who actually makes Tejada look productive by comparison. It's moves such as these that make me scratch my head and wonder whether GM Ed Wade really has a plan for rebuilding the Stros or is simply casting about aimlessly?

Oh well. After finishing the series with the Mets (71-57) this weekend in New York, the Stros return home for three-game sets against the Reds (56-72) and then the Cardinals (71-58) before going back on the road to begin the final month of the season against the Cubs and the Rockies (59-70). Teams can expand their rosters in early September after completion of the minor league season, so here's hoping that Stros management allows the meager young talent on the club and in its farm system to get a taste of the Show over the final month rather than wasting that valuable playing time on veterans who will never pan out.

The 2008 season statistics for the Stros are below (through 127 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 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

July 22, 2008

Checking in on the battle for last place

I'm not making this up. During the early stages of the last night's first game of the series between the Stros (46-53) and the Pirates (45-54) to determine last place in the National League Central, the following advertisement appeared on one of the Minute Maid Park screens:

Mini-Season Ticket Packages Still Available!

Playoff Ticket Option Included!

Uh, I think that playoff ticket option is of dubious value.

As the Pirates were putting up a 7-spot on the Stros in the top of the 9th on their way to a 9-3 win, I noticed something that pretty well sums up the sorry state of the Stros these days. Although they do not have a hitter the caliber of the Stros Lance Berkman (51 RCAA/.438 OBA/.638 SLG/1.075 OPS), the Pirates -- who are heading toward their 16th straight losing season -- have four hitters who are at least as productive this season as the Stros' second-best hitter, Carlos Lee (18 RCAA/.353 OBA/.550 SLG/.903 OPS).

The four Pirates are Jason Bay (29 RCAA/.379 OBA/.514 SLG/.893 OPS); Nate McClouth (24 RCAA/.350 OBA/.527 SLG/.878 OPS); Xavier Nady (22 RCAA/.377 OBA/.526 SLG/.903 OPS); and Ryan Doumit (20 RCAA/.380 OBA/.560 SLG/.939 OPS). As a result, the Pirates overall (+38 RCAA) are vastly superior to the Stros (-44 RCAA) in hitting. Only their abysmal pitching (-138 RSAA!) keeps the Pirates in the fight for the cellar with the Stros.

At any rate, guess the total amount the Pirates are paying all four of those hitters?: $10,187,000, or more than $2 million less than the $12.5 million that the Stros are paying this season to Lee alone. And Lee's salary goes up to $18.5 million for each of the 2009-2012 seasons.

As I suspected when the Stros signed Lee to that contract, that is the kind of contract that can turn a contender into an also-ran very quickly. Unfortunately, the value of the contract relative to Lee's above-average (but not spectacular) productivity, combined with a no-trade clause, makes it virtually certain that the Stros will not be able to unload it.

By the way, did anyone else notice who has climbed into second place today?

Posted by Tom at 12:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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:

 

 

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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."

You can say that again.

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:

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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:

• Wandy Rodriguez: Rodriguez went from being one of the worst starting pitchers in MLB in 2005-06 to being merely a below-average starter (-7 RCAA/4.58 ERA/182⅔ IP) in 2007. It’s conceivable that he could continue to improve and be a reasonable 4th or 5th starter. Of course, it’s just as likely that he could regress to what he was in 2005-06. That’s the hit-or-miss nature of pitching at the non-elite levels of MLB.
• Brandon Backe: A fiery personality and a couple of good playoff performances three years ago misleads some addled observers to believe that Backe is a legitimate number two starter. However, he has made just 13 starts over the past two seasons while recovering from Tommy John surgery. In those 13 starts, he struck out 30 and walked 29. Backe's career -15 RSAA is not the stuff of a frontline National League starting 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.
• Chris Sampson: Given Sampson's story (revived his career as a pitcher after washing out as a minor league shortstop and coaching for several years at a Dallas community college), everyone is pulling for him. But his story is better than his stats. He is a control specialist who doesn't strike many batters out playing with a left-side infield defense that will struggle to field ground balls. Sampson was going downhill at the time of his injury last season (6.86 ERA over his last seven starts), so don't expect miracles this 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 post my "Stros 2008 Season Review, Part __" 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.

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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 steroids or other 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 steroids and other 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: None

Four-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.

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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 steroids and other 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?

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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 steroids and other 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.

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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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December 15, 2007

$20 million for that?

I've already shared my views many times on performance-enhancing drugs in Major League Baseball, so I didn't want to comment on the Mitchell Commission Report until I had an opportunity to read it. Now that I have, here's my bottom-line conclusion:

$20 million for that?

What is initially most striking about the Mitchell Report is its sloppiness (couldn't they even fix the line spacing and pagination before publishing the damn thing?). The only hard evidence in the 400 plus page report is exhibit D, which contains copies of checks and money orders that players and trainers allegedly used to buy performance-enhancing drugs from Kirk Radomski. Thus, in almost two years of "work," the only hard evidence that the Mitchell Commission could generate is that which was given to them by federal prosecutors who investigated and prosecuted Radomski, and then leaned on him to talk with the commission. There is a discussion dealing with the BALCO and Signature pharmacy investigations, but the product of the rest of the commission's work is statements attributed to anonymous and a relatively few named individuals who contend that they know about certain players who used performance-enhancing drugs.

Meanwhile, the report's lack of perspective is stunning. One section is actually devoted to sportswriter comments on baseball and steroids! What is that doing in a supposedly serious report? There is no mention of the scientific uncertainty regarding the impact that steroids and other PEDs have on performance in baseball. Similarly, there is no statistical analysis to support the report's suggestion that PED use was even a meaningful factor in the elevated hitting levels of the late 1990's. As anyone who follows baseball knows, there were numerous variables besides performance-enhancing drugs that impacted the surge in hitting during the late 1990's.

And that's not all. The report fails to place its findings in the context of the fact that MLB had no enforceable policy or regulation banning steroids until September 2002, did not have a testing program until 2004 and did not ban human growth hormone until 2005. As a number of commentators have already noted, why on earth are Mark McGwire and other ballplayers being condemned for taking androstenedione (a supplement that produces testosterone) when it could be purchased over-the-counter and didn't even violate MLB rules at the time?

But what is arguably most galling about the Mitchell Commission Report is its utter lack of historical perspective regarding the use of PEDs within the highly-competitive environment of professional baseball. Performance-enhancing drugs have been a mainstay of professional baseball for at least the past two generations. Before the steroid era, the PED of choice in MLB was amphetamines, which -- as with steroids over the past decade -- were used liberally and with the tacit consent of the MLB clubs. Amidst the catcalls from some corners that players who used steroids should be denied entry into the Hall of Fame, it should be noted that no serious consideration has even been given to denying a place in the Hall to star players who used amphetamines during their careers.

As with steroids, amphetamine use was the direct result of the physically-draining nature of the MLB season and the pathologically competitive environment that the MLB owners promote and MLB fans love. The players who took steroids and other PED's over the past decade were attempting to improve their bodies' capacity to endure that punishing workload (regardless of whether their protocols were really effective), just as the players who used amphetamines in earlier eras were attempting to improve their attention span and reaction time.

Isn't it ironic that the Mitchell Commission and much of the mainstream media vilifies professional ballplayers who used PEDs in an attempt to prevent their bodies from breaking down, while MLB management and the same mainstream media for decades have lauded "tough" injured players who "played with pain" through their ailments, even as MLB clubs pressured medication on the players, often at serious risk to the players' health and careers?

The Mitchell Commission didn't have access to most of the players because of the Players Union's decision not to cooperate, but the commission did have complete access to employees of the MLB clubs and the Baseball Commissioner's office. Despite that broad access, the report is almost completely silent on the role of MLB management in establishing the culture in which PEDs became an integral part of competing for and maintaining a precious MLB roster spot. Likewise, the report provides precious little information on how the Commissioner’s Office and the MLB clubs addressed the growing problem of PEDs in MLB. The Mitchell Commission's failure to include this readily available information in the report had to be intentional and reflects a concerted effort by the commission to keep the focus of the report on the players.

And Mitchell got $20 mil for his law firm's work? Good work if you can get it, I guess. But not work of which he should be proud.

Update: J.C. Bradbury proposes a creative way to deter PED use in baseball.

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December 14, 2007

The Tejada deal

Well, one thing's clear -- new Stros General Manager Ed Wade is not risk averse!

The six player deal that is bringing star shortstop Miguel Tejada to the Stros has already been thoroughly analyzed around the blogosphere, so there really is not much to add. From what I've seen, most folks think the Stros gave up too much for Tejada. I'm not sure about that, but I'm not sure that this trade helps the Stros all that much, either.

As regular readers of this blog know, the Stros' decline over the past two seasons since their World Series team of 2005 has been for different reasons. The 2006 Stros fell short in the mediocre National League Central because their strong pitching finally could not overcome the club's chronically anemic hitting. Then, after Stros management took steps to improve the club's hitting for the 2007 season, the Stros pitching staff fell apart as the club's subpar defense contributed to the staff's struggles.

Thus, new GM Wade has been trying to shore up the Stros pitching staff and defense, and his initial deals have addressed those areas. However, frontline Major League-quality pitching is hard to come by on either the trade or free agent markets these days, so Wade has not been able to swing a deal to bolster the Stros starting pitching rotation, which was one of the worst in Major League Baseball last season.

The Tejada deal does nothing to address the Stros pitching and defensive problems and may well make them worse. On a threshold basis, my sense is that the Stros win the trade because they got one of the best shortstops in MLB in return for five players, none of whom is a top prospect. Troy Patton is a promising pitcher, but his peak will probably be a mid-rotation starter. The Stros uncharacteristically pushed him through their system quickly as he made his MLB debut last season before he turned 22. However, his strikeout and ground ball rates decreased dramatically as he moved up the minor league chain. Moreover, Patton came up with a sore shoulder last season after throwing around 150 innings, so given his relatively small physical stature, the Stros probably figure that the injury risk with him is high.

The rest of what the Stros gave up is not top shelf. Luke Scott has been an above-average MLB hitter for the past two seasons, but he is likely best-suited for a fourth outfielder/platoon-type role. Back-end starter-type Matt Albers and Dennis Sarfate (who might turn into a reliever) and minor-leaguer Michael Costanzo do not figure to be even Major League-average players unless there is a substantial uptick in their performance levels. Thus, beyond saving some money and adding depth, the Orioles didn't extract much from the Stros in return for one of their most valuable trading chips.

However, I don't see how the deal improves the Stros all that much in the long run, either. When I heard about the deal, I figured the Stros would put Tejada at third base in place of the eminently mediore Ty Wigginton and simply endure Adam Everett’s poor hitting in return for his stellar fielding at short. But then I learned that the Stros had non-tendered Everett, which means that they are going with the poor-fielding Wigginton at third and Tejada, who at shortstop is a rather substantial defensive downgrade from Everett. Add in the immobile Carlos Lee in leftfield and you have one of the worst left-side-of-the-field defenses in all of MLB. That's not what you want behind an already well below-average starting pitching rotation.

Now, maybe Stros management figures that Everett's broken leg from last year is going to diminish his defensive range. And even before his injury last season, Everett did not play as well in the field as he had in the three previous seasons. So, maybe that reasoning justifies the Stros' decision. But when he is at his best, Everett would save a team probably 25-30 more runs than Tejada with his defense.

Thus, by choosing Wigginton over Everett, my sense is that the Stros did not maximize this trade. With Tejada at 3B and Everett at SS, they could have had an excellent left side of the infield to go along with their improved outfield defense and an above-average offense. Now, it looks as if they will have another bad defensive team with a slightly better offense. Frankly, that doesn't do much to help the Stros' overwhelmed pitching staff, which is where Stros management better concentrate between now and Spring Training if the Stros are going to have any meaningful chance of returning to contention in the NL Central.

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December 7, 2007

The Hall of Shame

Skip Sauer reminds us that Major League Baseball owners have very long memories. Phil Miller also chimes in.

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November 18, 2007

Thinking about the Bonds case

Two topics on this blog are legal matters and baseball, so Barry Bonds has been a frequent subject of posts here over the past four years. Inasmuch as this post from over two years ago speculated that Bonds would be indicted, regular readers of this blog weren't surprised when the shoe finally dropped on Bonds this past week.

The Bonds indictment was met with typical self-righteous vindication by much of the mainstream media, but the blogs have thankfully provided a much more measured analysis of the charges. For example:

Peter Henning provides this excellent analysis (see also here) of the indictment and the probable course of the prosecution. Also, JC Bradbury compiles some thoughts from other legal commentators about the Bonds case, and Keith Scherer provides this extensive analysis of the Bonds case;

Norm Pattis provides this interesting post that analyzes the probable prison sentence that Bonds is facing, which is far less than those typically reported in the mainstream media. Thankfully, Bonds does not appear to face a draconian trial penalty if he chooses to defend himself at trial;

Reason's Hit & Run blog provides this balanced compendium of blog posts and articles from over the years that remind us that witch hunts are common when a controversial person such as Bonds is prosecuted for covering up an alleged crime when the investigation was actually into the alleged crime, not the cover up; and

Along those same lines, Scott Henson questions the prosecution's motives and judgment in pursuing Bonds.

And as Bonds is being singled out while more popular ballplayers have had a pass on being investigated for alleged illegal use of steroids, I'm trying to figure out why the Apple Rule is not available to protect Bonds? Could it be for the same reason that it was not available to former heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson during an earlier era?

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November 15, 2007

The Philly reaction to the Lidge deal

Tuck depicts the quintessential Philadelphia reaction to the Lidge deal.

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November 9, 2007

The Lidge deal

New Stros General Manager Ed Wade's first major move was to end Brad Lidge's career with the Stros. Wade traded Lidge and utilityman Eric Bruntlett to the Phillies for CF Michael Bourn (a Houston native and former University of Houston player), reliever Geoff Geary and AA 3B Michael Costanzo.

I'm a firm believer that you evaluate trades primarily on the front end. A Major League ballclub wants its general manager to take reasonable risks in an attempt to improve the club. Because of the nature of risk, a reasonable trade can turn out bad. The Jason Jennings trade is a good recent example. It was a decent trade on the front end, but injury risk undermined the Stros' purpose for the trade. Sure, many local pundits condemned the trade after the Stros risk was realized, but that's an unfair way to evaluate a trade. If a GM is going to be ridiculed after the fact for taking risks to help the club, then that's going to deter the GM from taking those risks. That's a poor policy for developing and maintaining a successful ballclub.

Thus, evaluating this trade on the front end, it looks like a pretty good deal for the Stros, despite having to give up Lidge. One of the favorite pastimes of Stros fans over the past couple of seasons has been to psychoanalyze Lidge, who has taken it all in good-natured stride. His story is a compelling one. During the 2004 season, Lidge burst on the scene in essentially his second season of Major Leage Baseball and was, at least for a part of that season, the best relief pitcher in MLB and one of the primary reasons why the Stros won 36 out of their final 46 regular season games to make the playoffs and eventually come within a game of the 2004 World Series. In 94.2 innings that season, Lidge had a microscopic 1.90 ERA and saved 26 more runs than an average National League pitcher would have saved in the same number of innings (RSAA, explained here).

Lidge was very good again during the 2005 season (2.29 ERA/14 RSAA in 70.2 innings), but the first cracks in his armor began to show late that season. With the Stros one out away from the 2005 World Series and Lidge dominating the Cardinals, Albert Pujols hammered a game-winning Game 5 NLCS shot that still has not come back down to Earth. Lidge's confidence seemed to evaporate in the wake of Pujols' massive tater.

By the end of the following season (2006), Lidge had performed worse over the course of the season than virtually any other regular member of the Stros' pitching staff (5.28 ERA/-6 RSAA in 75 innings). It was not really difficult to understand why -- Lidge lost the ability to throw his devastating slider for strikes consistently. As a result, hitters laid off Lidge's slider and laid into his fastball, which Lidge does not locate particularly well. Moreover, Lidge has a long history of arm and specifically elbow problems owing to his violent mechanics -- as a starter in the low minors, he appeared in just 19 games from 1999 to 2001. His struggles with his control over the past couple of seasons just might indicate that the future injury risk for Lidge is quite high.

Lidge did make a nice comeback in 2007 (6 RSAA/3.36 ERA in 67 IP) from his horrifying 2006 season, but he still struggled with his control frequently. Curiously, the Stros delayed his knee surgery to remove loose cartilage until after the season, so it's clear now that they were showcasing him for a possible trade. Lidge is talented and an asset for any pitching staff, but his one dominant season (2004) does not mean that he will regain his stature as a dominant closer. My sense is that Chad Qualls may well end up being a better fit for that role.

Inasmuch as the Stros need to re-stock the young talent on their big league club and in their minor league system, trading veteran talent such as Lidge in his last year before free agency makes sense. Bourn is a potential leadoff man with on-base skills that Willy Taveras never mastered, and he runs and plays CF well. The downside risk on Bourn is that he will be an inexpensive OBP and defensive tool for a couple of years. Finally, picking up Bourn allows the Stros to move Hunter Pence to right field and dangle Luke Scott as trade bait for more pitching.

The prospect in the deal -- Costanzo -- is not a top notch prospect at third, but he projects as an average MLB 3B by his 270 AVG./.368 OBA/.490 SLG in his age-23 season in AA ball. Inasmuch as it is doubtful that Ty Wigginton is the long range answer for the Stros at 3B, it is conceivable that Constanzo could make Wigginton available as trade bait before the end of next season. That's the kind of flexibility that the Stros have lacked over the past several seasons as their minor league system became depleted.

Geary can be a serviceable reliever for the Stros, but I'm not going to get too excited about him until I see how he adjusts to the short porch in Minute Maid Park's left field. He pitched very well for the Phillies during their playoff stretch drive this past season, but ge is not a flamethrower. Right-handed offspeed pitchers (starting with the forgettable 2000 performance of Jose Lima) don't generally do all that well at Minute Maid. especially pitchers such as Geary who do not generate an overabundance of ground balls.

Nevertheless, I like this trade. Bourn has the potential to be what Taveras probably will never be, Geary can contribute right away and Costanzo is a solid prospect. All in all, a good day's work for the Stros new GM.

Update: Jeff Albert provides this optimistic analysis of the Lidge deal from the Phillies' perspective.

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November 6, 2007

Winning by losing

Dr. Michael Lewis penned this NY Times op-ed last weekend in which he asserts that Major League Baseball's present revenue-sharing formula does little to affect the quality of the various teams on average, even though small market teams do well now and then:

The Colorado Rockies’ appearance in the World Series last month may have looked like evidence of success for revenue-sharing. Like the Oakland Athletics, the Minnesota Twins, the Detroit Tigers and the San Diego Padres last year, a small-market team proved competitive enough to reach the playoffs. But revenue sharing, as it is now structured, actually makes lasting success less likely for all five of these teams. [. . .]

Since 1998, millions of dollars have been transferred from richer teams to poorer ones in an attempt to let all teams share in the economic advantages associated with playing in big markets — a large fan base, lots of press coverage and lucrative local cable television contracts. Last year, more than $300 million was transferred.

Yet since revenue sharing began, at least one team from each of the big four markets — New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Boston — has appeared in every World Series except 2006. In the 10 years before 1998, in contrast, only two Series included one of those big-market teams.

The problem is that the teams receiving payments have come to use them as a primary source of income — rather than to build winning teams. . .

As John Palmer sums up:

Revenue sharing has little impact on the expected marginal revenue and marginal costs of ticket sales, and it especially has little impact on the expected marginal revenue product and marginal factor costs of hiring more talent for the team. As a result, many teams like, say, Tampa Bay, respond to what is essentially a lump-sum transfer by pocketing the extra cash. [. . .]

So revenue-sharing also reduces the marginal revenue of an expected win, and not just for the big-market teams that are taxed to support the programme; it also reduces the incentive for small market teams, the recipients of revenue-sharing, to win too.

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October 29, 2007

A special Houstonian

I criticized Craig Biggio for the way in which he ended his playing career with the Stros, but I have never questioned that he and Jeff Bagwell are the best players ever to have played for the Stros.

Bidg is also a wonderful ambassador for Houston, his adopted hometown. Over the weekend, Chevrolet named Bidg the 2007 recipient of the prestigious Roberto Clemente Award for his tireless work on behalf of the Sunshine Kids.

It is a well-deserved honor for a very special Houstonian. Congratulations on a job well done.

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October 23, 2007

Sizing up the 2007 World Series

That northern breeze you felt in Houston yesterday was actually a huge sigh of relief heaved by Major League Baseball and network television executives on Sunday night as the Boston Red Sox beat the Indians in Game 7 of the American League Championship Series to advance to the 2007 World Series against the National League champion Colorado Rockies. Nothing against Cleveland, but the TV ratings of a Cleveland-Colorado World Series would have been about the same as a non-major PGA Tour event.

A few tidbits about this year's series:

The opening day payroll for 25-man roster of Colorado Rockies was $54,424,000, while the opening day payroll for the Red Sox was $143,026,214. The highest paid Red Sox player is LF Manny Ramirez at $18 million per year, while the Rockies' highest paid player is 1B Todd Helton at $16.6 million annually.

The Rockies have played only two series at Fenway, one in 2002 and one this past June during interleague play. Colorado outscored Boston 20-5 in winning two of three during during that latter series.

The Rockies have won 10 straight games and have won 21 of 22, but the eight days they have had off in-between postseason games is the longest such break in the history of Major League Baseball. The Rockies’ 10-game winning streak entering the World Series is also impressive, but not the longest streak coming into a World Series. The 1960 Yankees had a 15-game streak and the 1970 Baltimore Orioles had a 14-game streak. The Rockies are the ninth different team to represent the National League in the World Series over the past 10 seasons, and the seventh wild-card pennant winner over all in the past six years.

Red Sox hitters scored 61 more runs than an average American League club would have using the same number of outs (RCAA, explained here) and Red Sox pitchers saved 163 more runs than an average American League pitching staff would have saved in the same number of innings (RSAA, explained here). In comparison, Rockies hitters generated a solid 41 RCAA and the club's pitchers produced a respectable 78 RSAA. Thus, based on regular season statistics, the Red Sox are the clearly superior club, but Colorado has the advantage of being hot when it counts, although one has to wonder how much of the Rockies' winning edge wore off during that eight day layoff. A pdf of the player statistics for the two clubs is here.

Finally, for disappointed Indians fans, this insightful Russell Roberts post reminds us that failure -- even in baseball markets -- is often a necessary precursor of success.

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October 17, 2007

The Chronicle's vacuum of baseball analysis

It may be football season, but that doesn't stop Chronicle sports columnists from continuing to bludgeon us with their seemingly insatiable capacity to analyze the Stros and matters relating to Major League Baseball badly.

First, there is this blog post from the inimitable Jose de Jesus Ortiz, who already has quite a legacy of poor analysis of the sport that he covers for the Chroicle:

Willy Taveras, who holds the Astros franchise record for consecutive games with a hit, has been a difference maker for the Colorado Rockies heading into the third game of the National League Championship Series.

The Rockies obviously valued his speed and defense, which is why he was added to the NLCS roster even though he hadn't played in three weeks because of an injury.

In Game 2, he was the player of the game after making an awesome game-saving catch in the seventh inning and then driving in the game-winning run with an RBI walk. Oh, he also had doubled and scored a run in a game that was 2-2 heading into extra innings. [. . .]

General manager Tim Purpura and Phil Garner weren't fired until August, but they hurt the franchise tremendously by never understanding the true value of Willy Taveras. They valued Chris Burke out of position over Taveras at his natural position. Because of this mistake, the Astros' pitching staff suffered.

It's pathetic to see Taveras starring elsewhere when he should have been playing here. Cecil Cooper and Jose Cruz saw something special in Taveras and kept working with him in 2006. Unfortunately, Cooper wasn't the manager then.

Do you miss Taveras?

In this prior post, I explained why Ortiz is simply wrong about Taveras' value as a Major League player. But in his latest blog post, how can Ortiz overlook that Taveras had a pathetic .250 on-base average and an even worse .222 slugging percentage during the National League Championship Series? Or that the Rockies won 17 out of their last 18 games to get into the NLCS without any contribution from Taveras, who sat out those games with a hamstring injury?

What Ortiz simply does not understand is that anecdotal flashy plays do not prove that a player is a good Major Leaguer. It only proves that the player is capable of making a good play every once in awhile. To be a good Major Leaguer, a player has to be able to generate more runs consistently for his team than what the team's alternatives would likely generate using the same number of outs as the player. Not only is it far from clear that Taveras did that this season for the Rockies (and the Rockies' late season streak without him suggests that he did not), the fact of the matter is that the Stros' CF-RF combination of Hunter Pence and Luke Scott was far more productive this past season than a Taveras-Pence tandem would have been.

Meanwhile, the equally foggy Chronicle columnist Richard Justice chimes in with this recent column in which he bemoans the Stros' poor evaluation and development of minor league players (for a far more insightful analysis of how the Rockies developed their World Series team, see this Alan Schwarz NY Times article). This revelation comes from the same columnist who contends that the Stros blew this season because the club elected not to re-sign aged free agent pitchers Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte, and who continues to beat the drum that Stros owner Drayton McLane made a terrible mistake in allowing former Stros General Manager Gerry Hunsicker to resign after the 2004 season. Of course, Hunsicker's tenure as Stros GM coincided with most of the period from 1997 to date during which the Stros' minor league system has been in decline. Apparently, in Justice's odd world, the man in charge of the Stros' player drafts during those years had nothing to do with the failure of those drafts to produce enough good Major League-quality players for the Stros.

My purpose is not to be overly critical of either Taveras or Hunsicker. Taveras is still a young player who, although a below-average National League player so far in his career, could develop into an above-average player. Similarly, despite his deficiencies in overseeing the Stros' drafts during the period from 1997 to 2004, Hunsicker is still the best GM that the Stros have ever had. My point is simply this: Why do Ortiz and Justice refuse to provide a balanced analysis of them?

It's not all that important in the big scheme of things, but are Ortiz and Justice really the best the Chronicle can do for baseball analysis?

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October 16, 2007

First it was the moldy roof, now this!

At this rate, Drayton McLane is going to make a full-time living out of suing subcontractors who were involved in the construction of Minute Maid Park.

McLane's latest lawsuit, reported in this Houston Business Journal ($) article, seeks to recover the cost of repairing improper insulation of the pipe system that pumps chilled water for the air conditioning system at Minute Maid Park. Minute Maid Park is cooled by a chilled water system that pumps water through miles of conduits to create chilled air. Insulation is needed to prevent moisture buildup, corrosion, leaking and possible failure of the complex system.

However, as a result of the improper insulation, condensation has developed at various points in the system which, if left unrepaired, would eventually lead to even bigger problems. Inasmuch as retrofitting the pipe system with new insulation could require major infrastructure construction work at Minute Maid, the cost of the repair job could run as much as $70 million.

From the nature of the lawsuit, it appears reasonably clear that the Stros will not be left holding the bag for the repair bill and that it's just a matter of the responsible parties figuring out how to allocate the cost of repair equitably among them. The four defendants are Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum Inc (HOK), M-E Engineers Inc., Way Engineering Co. Ltd., and Performance Contracting Inc. Inasmuch as the repair work needs to be done now, the Stros are proceeding with the repairs and will recover the financing costs related to the repair cost as additional damages in the lawsuit.

Longtime Houston plaintiffs' lawyer Wayne Fisher, who is a lifelong friend of McLane, is representing the Stros in the litigation, just as he did in the litigation with Connecticut General over the disability policy on former Stros star, Jeff Bagwell. That lawsuit has since been settled.

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October 11, 2007

A clever Kiss Cam

I can easily do without the Kiss Cam, which is one of the ubiquitous fan participation entertainment segments that most Major League Baseball ballparks run between innings these days. Former President and Mrs. Bush good-naturedly participate whenever they attend Stros games, which always raises a cheer from the crowd. But as much as I generally dislike the Kiss Cam, the one below that ran in Phoenix during the recent Diamondbacks-Cubs National League Divisional Series is a clever reminder of a couple of the mythical reasons for the Cubs' failure to win the World Series since 1908:

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October 8, 2007

Stros 2007 Review, Part Ten: Season Recap and Report Card

It’s been a week now since the Craig Biggio Farewell Tour drew to a close during the final eighth of the Stros’ disappointing 2007 season. With the end of the season, the tremendously successful Biggio-Bagwell era in the history of the Stros has officially ended. Accordingly, it’s a good time to step back and assess where the Stros are and where they are going.

The final eighth of the season reflected the modest improvement in the play of the club over the final third or so of the season. The Stros (73-89) had an 11-10 record over their final 21 games to finish with only their second losing season during the Biggio-Bagwell era and since Drayton McLane acquired the club in 1993. They continued their season trend of being a National League-average hitting team with a far below National League-average pitching staff. The Stros hitters finished the season generating a precisely National League-average number of runs, (RCAA, explained here), which was tied for 8th among the 16 National League teams. On the other hand, the pitching staff gave up an atrocious 79 more runs than an average National League pitching staff would have given up in the same number of innings (RSAA, explained here), which was 15th and better only than the Pirates’ sorry staff among National League teams.

The club’s record during each of this season’s eight segments are below with a brief description of the segment (the first and final segments each covered 21 games due to the MLB 162-game schedule):

Season Preview — A downturn looks likely.
1st: 9-12 — Stros lose 5 of first 6, win 8 of next 9, then lose next 6.
2nd: 11-9 — Rookie sensation Hunter Pence bursts on the scene.
3rd: 6-14 — Oh my. Stros lose 10 straight while being outscored 72-20.
4th: 8-12 — Poor pitching becomes the norm as Bidg gets his 3,000th.
5th: 10-10 — It’s time to preserve and develop assets for the future.
6th: 10-10 — Treading water.
7th: 8-12 — The future doesn’t look as bad as this season.
8th: 11-10 — As the Biggio-Bagwell era ends, the club prepares for the future.

The downturn in the Stros’ pitching this season was a bitter disappointment for McLane, who ended up cleaning house as a result of that downturn and the gradual deterioration of the Stros farm system over the past 10 years. As the chart below reflects, a club can generally compete with above-average pitching and below-average hitting, but the opposite is generally not the case:

Despite the bottoming out of the Stros this season, I have been surprised of the widespread criticism of McLane’s stewardship of the club. He has been the best owner that the Stros have ever had and the club has been one of the most consistently above-average teams in Major League Baseball during his 14 year ownership tenure. Although he bears a part of the responsibility for the deterioration of the farm system over the past 10 years, McLane wasn’t the one selecting the players. After logically promoting from within at the end of the successful tenure of former general manager Gerry Hunsicker, McLane quite reasonably decided to clean house and bring in a new GM from outside the organization when it became clear during this season that the club had bottomed out, the Jason Jennings trade had been mishandled, and the 2007 draft was pretty much an unmitigated disaster.

As for McLane’s hiring of former Phillies GM Ed Wade as the new Stros GM, my sense is that it was a reasonable move. Wade is about the same age as Hunsicker and has basically the same experience in management of an MLB club as the former Stros GM. Wade’s track record with the Phillies was that he drafted reasonably well, but didn’t trade as well as he drafted young players. He developed a solid nucleus at Philadelphia that has become the best offensive team in the National League this past season (139 RCAA!), but he generally struggled to add the necessary supporting pieces — particularly on the pitching staff — to put the Phillies over the hump in the NL East against both the Braves and the Mets. Ironically, one of Wade’s first tasks with the Stros (in addition to overhauling the scouting system) will be to do what he struggled to accomplish with the Phillies — patch up the Stros’ broken-down pitching staff.

As noted earlier here, the Stros are not as far away from returning to contention in the NL Central as their record this season indicates. As I recommended at mid-season, Stros management used the second half of the season to preserve and develop the club’s assets. A nucleus of above-average hitters finally exists that has the potential next season to generate the first above National League-average hitting club since the 2004 team. The club appears to have a reasonably solid group of veteran and young pitchers to compete for the no. 3 through 5 spots in the rotation behind the club’s ace, Roy Oswalt. As was the case before the 2007 season, the Stros primary need for the 2008 season is to come up with at least one and preferably two veterans to compete for the no. 2 spot in the pitching rotation. Inasmuch as the Cubs won the NL Central with a pitching-dominant 60 net RCAA/RSAA score (118 RSAA/-58 RCAA), the fastest way for the Stros (-79 net RCAA/RSSA score) can begin making up that 139 run deficit is to shore up the club’s pitching staff.

The following is my report card for each of the Stros this season, which you may want to compare with the report card from last season. Full season statistics follow the report card and the Stros’ 40-man roster is here with a hyperlink to each player’s statistics and other information:

The A’s

Hunter Pence: A. The irrepressible outfielder was the most pleasant surprise of the season. His hitting statistics were among the best of any rookie (108 games/24 RCAA/.360 OBA/.899 OPS/17 HR’s/11-16 SB’s) in Stros history and are quite comparable to Lance Berkman’s rookie season (114/21/.388/.561/.949/21 HR’s). Pence’s OPS was the best on the club and he played reasonably well defensively in both CF and RF. I’d like to see him be more patient at the plate (only 26 walks in 484 plate appearances), but Pence nevertheless has the potential to be a fixture in the Stros outfield for the next decade.

Roy Oswalt: A-. Roy O had a below-average season for him (24 RSAA/3.18 ERA), but his RSAA was still 7th best in the National League. Once again, he pitched over 200 innings, the fifth time he has done that in his seven seasons with the Stros. He remains the best pitcher in the history of the club:

The B’s

Lance Berkman: B+. Over the past six seasons, the Big Puma has alternated between dominant hitting seasons and merely well above-average seasons. After having one of the best hitting seasons in Stros history in 2006, Berkman was merely very good this season (35 RCAA/.386 OBA/.510 SLG/.896 OPS/34 HR). He struggled for most of the first half of the season with a chronic bruise on his left palm that he has battled the past several seasons, but Berkman came back during the second half of the season to generate an RCAA score that was 13th best in the National League for the season. He remains the only Stros player who has a realistic chance to challenge Jeff Bagwell’s career RCAA record for the club:

Chad Qualls. B+. In four big league seasons, Qualls has had progressively better RSAA scores each season and has never been below-average. His 11 RSAA/3.05 ERA/ in 82 ⅔ IP was the best on the staff after Roy O. He should be a candidate for the closer’s job next season.

Carlos Lee: B. Lee performed about as expected. An above-average and durable, but not great, hitter (19 RCAA/.354 OBA/.528 SLG/.882 OPS/32 HR/119 RBI), a solid run producer and a liability defensively in LF. I’m still not convinced that he’s a good fit for the Stros because his best positions are clearly 1B and DH. As a result, don’t be surprised if the Stros consider putting Lee at 1B and Berkman in LF next season. Inasmuch as Lee in his first season with the club almost broke Brad Ausmus’ Stros single-season record (30) for grounding into double plays (Lee had 28), he looks like a sure bet to beat that record eventually:

Luke Scott: B. After battling injuries and Phil Garner’s inexplicable reluctance to play him for much of the season, Scott came back for the second straight season after the All-Star break to post solid hitting numbers (14 RCAA/.351 OBA/.504 SLG/.855 OPS/18 HR). Come next season, new Stros manager Cecil Cooper would be smart to pencil Scott in each day in right field and fifth in the batting order and leave him there.

Brad Lidge: B. Lidge made a nice comeback (6 RSAA/3.36 ERA/67 IP) from his horrifying 2006 season, but he still struggled with his control frequently. Curiously, the Stros delayed his knee surgery to remove loose cartilage until after the season, which was a mistake unless they were showcasing him for a possible trade. Lidge is talented and an asset for any pitching staff, but his one dominant season (2004) does not mean that he is a dominant closer. My sense is that Qualls may end up being a better fit for that role.

Mike Lamb: B. Lamb had his second straight solid season as a backup 3B and 1B and the club’s best lefthanded hitter off the bench (10 RCAA/.366 OBA/.453 SLG/.820 OPS/11 HR). But he doesn’t hit with enough power to play 1B regularly and is not really good enough defensively to play 3B full-time. Nonetheless, Lamb is expected to look for a starting position with another team this off-season, so the Stros are not expecting him to return. Both parties would be better off if Lamb returned in his current reserve role.

The C’s

Wandy Rodriguez: C. Rodriguez went from being one of the worst starting pitchers in MLB over the past two seasons to merely being a below-average starter (-7 RCAA/4.58 ERA/182⅔ IP). At least that’s progress. It’s conceivable that he could continue to improve and be a reasonable 4th or 5th starter. Of course, it’s just as conceivable that he could regress to what he was over the past couple of seasons. That’s the hit-or-miss nature of pitching at the non-elite levels of MLB.

Chris Sampson: C. Sampson was the Stros’ second most effective starter through the early part of the season, but then broke down. His season numbers (-5 RSAA/4.59 ERA/121⅔ IP) weren’t all that great. However, what on earth was the Stros’ management smoking when they thought that a converted infielder who had never thrown more than 150 innings in a professional season could possibly hold up under the physical demands of being a starter for an entire MLB season? Sampson is another reasonable candidate for the 4th or 5th starter slot next season, although long relief may ultimately be his best role.

Dave Borkowski,Brian Moehler, Trevor Miller: C. Borkowski (-7 RSAA/5.15 ERA/71⅔ IP) and Moehler (1 RSAA/4.07 ERA/59⅔ IP) were workmanlike in the thankless task of mop-up duty and, goodness knows, they had plenty of that type of duty during a season such as this one. Miller had his second straight comeback season (-3 RSAA/4.86 ERA/46⅓ IP) as a reasonably effective LOOGY (“Lefty One-Out Guy”). Any of these guys could easily lose what little they have left tomorrow and not even make the team next spring.

Ty Wigginton: C. Let’s see here. In 604 plate appearances with Tampa Bay and then the Stros last season, 3B Wigginton hit 2 RCAA/.333 OBA/.459 SLG/.792 OPS/22 HR’s. In 353 plate appearances, Mike Lamb hit 10 RCAA/.366 OBA/.453 SLG/.820 OPS/11 HR’s and in 324 PA’s between Houston and San Diego, Morgan Ensberg hit -6 RCAA/.320 OBA/.404 SLG/.724 OPS/12 HR’s. Lamb’s career numbers are about the same as Wigginton’s and Ensberg’s are considerably better than either of them. What is the purpose of letting Ensberg and Lamb go in favor of Wigginton?

The D’s

Morgan Ensberg: D. See Ty Wigginton above and here.

Brad Ausmus: D. How is -16 RCAA/.318 OBA/.324 SLG/.642 OPS not an F? Because it is better than the -38 RCAA/.308 OBA/.285 SLG/.593 OPS that Ausmus laid on the Stros last season. The mainstream media and Stros management always touts Ausmus’ “intangibles” with the pitching staff as one of the reasons why he is important to have around. Well, those intangibles certainly didn’t help much the pitching staff this past season. One of Wade’s first moves as GM was to announce that he had offered Ausmus a one year deal to return in 2008 at the league average for catchers, assuring that Ausmus will fleece the Stros for at least one more season. Meanwhile, Ausmus retains his stranglehold on the top spot as the worst hitter in Stros history:

Mark Loretta: D-. The cluelessness of some of the mainstream media that cover the Stros was exemplified again by their suggestion that the Stros should re-sign Loretta to take over for Biggio at 2B next season. After a reasonably strong first couple of months of the season, the ruse of small sample sizes wore off and Loretta’s declining hitting skills were exposed (-9 RCAA/.352 OBA/.372 SLG/.724 OPS/4 HR). To put how bad he was for most of the season in perspective, he had only 7 more extra base hits than Ausmus in 114 more plate appearances. To make matters worse, he had only mildly better range defensively than Biggio. The double play combo of Loretta at SS and Biggio at 2B was not as good as several 50-year and up slow-pitch softball combos that I’ve seen.

Adam Everett: D-. Before suffering what amounted to a season-ending broken leg in an ugly collision with Carlos Lee, Everett was having one of the worst seasons of his career. His hitting was worse than even his usual abysmal standards (-12 RCAA/.281 OBA/.318 SLG/.599 OPS). In just 66 games, he uncharacteristically committed 8 errors; he had 7 in 149 games during the entire 2006 season. If his range is limited next season by his injury, then Everett's marginal value to the Stros is lost. Everett is one of those nice guys who you desperately want to succeed, but it’s past time now for the Stros to upgrade at this position.

Eric Bruntlett: D-. Bruntless was screwed around by Stros management when they hired Loretta during the off-season after Bruntlett had played quite well in the reserve middle infielder role last season. However, Bruntlett simply did not play well in 2007 (-6 RCAA/.346 OBA/.283 SLG/.629 OPS/0 HR). His stellar defense even suffered so that Managers Garner and Cooper became reluctant to play him at SS. I'd still take him over another season of Loretta, though.

Eric Munson: D-. Munson had an opportunity to show the Stros that he is their catcher of the future, but blew it by his less-than-stellar defense and lousy hitting (-7 RCAA/.313 OBA/.356 SLG/.669 OPS/4 HR). Let's hope that Towles proves to be ready for MLB next spring. I shudder at the thought of having Munson and Ausmus providing the catching for the 2008 season.

Humberto Quintero: D-. Quintero is the modern version of Luis Pujols (-4 RCAA/.281 OBA/.264 SLG/.545 OPS), which grizzled veterans of Stros history know is no compliment. Throws a mean ball to 2B from his knees, though.

The F’s

Craig Biggio: F. Bidg’s career with the Stros gets an A, but his exit from the Stros gets an F. Biggio should have retired after the 2005 World Series trip when he would have ended his career as an above-National League average player and a certain Hall of Famer. Two seasons later, he is still a certain Hall of Famer, but he has sullied his career with two far below National League-average seasons (-19 RCAA/.285 OBA/.381 SLG/.666 OPS/10 HR in 2007). Meanwhile, he hurt his team with his subpar defense, by batting leadoff when his production did not justify it, and by blocking development of such younger players as 2B Chris Burke and OF Jason Lane, each of whom lost valuable MLB development time at their best position earlier in their career because of the Stros’ indulgence of Biggio’s quest for 3,000 hits. Biggio is a Stros icon, but it is no coincidence that the Stros’ dramatic decline over the past two seasons on the field has mirrored that of Biggio.

Chris Burke: F. Will Burke even get a chance to revive his career as a first year, full-time 28 year old 2B in 2008? He had a horrible season (-15 RCAA/.304 OBA/.357 SLG/.662 OPS/6 HR), perhaps best reflected by the fact that he had only 5 more extra base hits than Ausmus in roughly the same number of plate appearances. Burke has been the player most hurt by the Stros allowing Biggio to play at least two seasons longer than he should have. That may end up contributing to Burke never being able to handle a full-time MLB job at 2B.

Jason Lane: F. In 1363 career plate appearances, Lane has hit -12 RCAA/.314 RCAA/.457 SLG/.771 OPS/61 HR. Many mainstream media pundits that cover the Stros consider him an abject failure. In 1632 career plate appearances, former Stros CF Willy Taveras has hit -30 RCAA/.338 OBA/.350 SLG/.688 OPS/6 HR. Many of the same mainstream media pundits consider Taveras a great prize that former GM Tim Purpura gave away in a terrible trade. Go figure.

Orlando Palmeiro: F. Why is an aged singles hitting, career pinch-hitter taking up a roster spot on a club than needs to be developing younger players who can contribute regularly? Palmeiro had a bad season (-5/.342 OBA/.262 SLG/.604 OPS/0 HR) and would serve no useful purpose for the club next season.

Matt Albers: F. One of the troika of Stros starters who were among the worst in the National League this season, Albers deserves the most slack of the three because he should have been pitching at AAA Round Rock this season and then trying to make the club in 2008. Thrown to the wolves a season early, the 24 year-old mostly struggled (-20 RSAA/5.86 ERA/18 HR in 118⅔ IP). Despite the rough start, he occasionally flashed sufficient talent that he will probably compete for the 4th or 5th starter role next spring.

Woody Williams. F-. I had doubts about the Williams deal when it was struck, but even I didn’t think it would turn out this bad (-22 RSAA/5.27 ERA/35 HR in 188 IP). He is signed for another season and might compete for a backend starter’s role next season, but he is better suited for mop-up duty and bullpen advice at this stage of his career. Beware of giving fly-ball pitchers in their early 40's an opportunity to pitch a substantial number of innings at Minute Maid Park.

Jason Jennings: F-. The poster boy for everything that went wrong for the Stros in 2007. The Stros traded their best young starting pitcher for Jennings and then failed to discover during due diligence on the deal the extent of Jennings’ tendonitis that ended his season prematurely and resulted in surgery. That failure was likely the straw that broke the camel’s back in prompting McLane to fire former GM Tim Purpura. If Jennings can recover from the surgery in time for the 2007 season, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to take a flyer on him for the 2008 seasons for the right price — heck, he was a workhorse at Colorado before coming to the Stros. But there may be too much water under the bridge between Jennings and the Stros to make that work.

The Incompletes

Brandon Backe: I. Backe came back from Tommy John surgery on his elbow and pitched reasonably well in 28⅔ IP (1 RSAA/3.77 ERA). If the Stros are going to contend next season, Backe turning into a solid no. 3 starter would be a big factor in propelling them to that goal.

Troy Patton: I. Patton is a case study in the fragile nature of young pitchers. Although he has just turned 22, Patton has been among the Stros top pitching prospects since being signed out of Tomball High School in 2004. Due to the Stros’ poor pitching this season, Patton was jet-streamed though AA and AAA and on to the big league club in August (1 RSAA/3.55 ERA/ 12⅔ IP). However, that whirlwind resulted in him pitching 163 IP this season, which was much more than he had ever pitched before. Moreover, over a third of those innings were at the higher stress levels of AAA and MLB. As a result, he was shut down with a case of bicep tendonitis in September. Patton is probably in the mix for the 4th or 5th starter role next season, but in developing him, here’s hoping that the Stros take note of the sad legacy of such overworked young starters as Mark Pryor and Kerry Wood.

J.R. Towles: I. Towles emerged this season as the Stros’ first top catching prospect in years. The 23 year old Crosby naive began the season in high A ball and ended up having a nice stretch of 14 games with the big league club in September (4 RCAA/.432 OBA/.575 SLG/1.007 OPS). Although he will be given a shot at a big league roster spot during spring training, don’t be surprised if needs more seasoning at AAA before he comes a regular at the MLB level.

Juan Gutierrez and Felipe Paulino: I. Two pitchers who are graduates of the Stros’ Venezuelan academy, Guiterrez and Paulino (whose full last name is actually “Paulino del Guidice”) both figure to be in the mix next spring for a roster spot. Gutierrez is a 23 year old who was the workhorse of the AAA Round Rock staff this season. He looked a bit overmatched in his cup of coffee this season with the Stros (-4 RSAA/ 5.91 ERA in 21⅓ IP), but he held up under the stress of pitching over 175 IP this season. He looks as if he could develop into a decent mid-rotation starter. The 23 year old Paulino has a nice heater, but he looks better suited to be a reliever than a starter to me. The 131 IP that he pitched at AA Corpus and with the Stros this season (-6 RSAA/ 7.11 ERA in 19 IP) were the most that he has ever pitched in his career.

Dennis Sarfate: I. A late-season waiver wire pickup from the Brewers (they had to let him go because they were out of minor league options on him), Sarfate is 26 year old, one-pitch fireball reliever who has struggled with control (sound familar?) throughout his career. He pitched well in a small sample size with the Stros (3 RSAA/1.08 ERA in 8⅓ IP) , but it is far from certain that he can be a consistent contributor in the bullpen.

Josh Anderson and Cody Ransom: I. Beware of small sample sizes. Anderson is a 24 year old CF and Willy Taveras clone. His small sample size with the Stros (4 RCAA/.413 OBA/.403 SLG/.816 OPS in 21 games) was far better than he generated in full seasons at either AA or AAA. He is not considered a top prospect and it would not be prudent to play him in CF and Pence in RF regularly rather than Pence in CF and Luke Scott in RF. Ransom is a 31 year old, career minor leaguer (or a AAAA prospect, so they say) who fielded better than Loretta and Bruntlett during his stint with the big league club in September. It is not a good sign if he is a prospect to make the club’s roster next season.

The 2007 season statistics for the Stros are below, 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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September 28, 2007

Serious choking

Remember at the end of the 2006 MLB regular season when the St. Louis Cardinals clubhouse was the most uncomfortable place in the U.S.?

This season, the same thing is true for the New York Mets clubhouse.

The Mets recently led by 7 games with 17 to go, but they have lost four straight and 11 of their last 14 while the second-place Phillies have caught fire. After losing to the Cardinals on Thursday night, the Mets fell into a tie for first place with the Phillies in the NL East at 87-72 with three games to play. To make matters worse, the Mets may have also played their way out of the NL wildcard playoff spot if they don't win their division -- San Diego leads by a game in the wildcard race going into the final weekend of the regular season. No team has ever failed to reach the postseason after being so far ahead this close to the end of the regular season. If the Mets don’t make it, this will be go down as an epic collapse, particularly by New York's rather demanding standards.

Aggies, some other fans are sharing your pain.

By the way, this will be a fun weekend of baseball. The races in the NL East, NL West and the NL wildcard race are so close and uncertain that the Diamondbacks, the team that entered yesterday with the NL's best record, still could miss the playoffs entirely. Meanwhile, the Cubs (83-76) are two up on the Brewers in the NL Central with three games to go and have the decidedly easier games (against the Reds) over the weekend (the Brewers host the NL West leading Padres).

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September 18, 2007

Another reminder of Stros mismanagement

As noted earlier here, I am not as sure as most that Tim Purpura deserved to be canned as the Stros general manager. But there were definitely reasons that justified the move, one of which we are reminded of in this excellent Dan Rosenhack/NY Times article on why New York Yankees star Alex Rodiguez will not be worth the money that some team will pay him this off-season after he opts out of his contract with the Yankees:

Few free agents actually produce enough revenue to justify their contracts, and $30 million annually for Rodriguez would not be as outlandish as, say, the $17 million a season that the Astros gave to Carlos Lee last off-season.

At the time the Stros acquired Lee, I expressed the same sentiments. Lee's stat line for the season to date is a decent 14 RCAA/.350 OBA/.521 SLG/.871 OPS/29 HR's/111 RBI's. But that's not close to the production that one would reasonably expect from a $17 million per year player.

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September 17, 2007

A great ambassador for baseball?

We already know that Chronicle baseball reporter Jose de Jesus Ortiz does not bother to engage in even elementary levels of research before writing his articles. However, the following blurb in a recent column reflects atrocious research by even Ortiz's dubious standards:

Hall of Fame manager Tommy Lasorda, truly one of the greatest ambassadors for baseball during his lifetime, will celebrate his 80th birthday Saturday.

He shares that birthday with former Astros pitcher/broadcaster/manager Larry Dierker, one of the best ambassadors for Houston baseball for the last 43 years. Dierker turns 61 on Saturday.

Lasorda was honored with a pregame ceremony Friday night at Dodger Stadium with a video tribute on Dodgervision. Fans also received a bobblehead of the former manager.

"I am so very grateful the Dodgers are honoring my birthday with such a special bobblehead," he said.

That Lasorda is a wonderful "ambassador" for baseball is one of those myths that just won't go away. In reality, he was a marginal manager of Dodger teams with generally good personnel who has about as abrasive a personality as one can imagine. It is a travesty that Dierker -- who really is a classy man -- has his name linked with Lasorda. For a dose of Lasorda's true character, check out the following video of Lasorda's tirades from over the years (warning for even the not easily offended: Very foul language):

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September 8, 2007

Stros 2007 Season Review, Part Seven

Gosh, it's amazing how fast 20 games go by for the Stros (62-79) when the club's General Manager and manager are fired in the interim (previous periodic reviews are here). The reactions to the firing were varied (see here and here), and they prompted some dire warnings about the direction of the club. However, as the club started to wind down the 2007 season over the past 20 games, I saw enough to like that I'm cautiously optimistic about the direction of the club.

The past 20 games was really no different from the way the club has played all season. The Stros went 8-12 in this seventh 20-game segment of the season, including ugly 14-2 and 11-3 losses to the Brewers and the Mets over the past two games. The hitting continues to be slightly below-National League average (-9 RCAA), although Lance Berkman (31 RCAA;/.388 OBA/.506 SLG/.894), Hunter Pence (25/.368/.558./926), Carlos Lee (15/.354/.522/.876) and Luke Scott (14/.358/.510/.869) are providing a nice nucleus of solid hitters to build around. The Stros overall hitting places them ninth among the 16 National League clubs.

Nevertheless, the Stros overall pitching has remained atrocious. To put this in perspective, Stros pitchers saved 78 more runs last season than an average National League staff would have saved in the same number of innings (RSAA), which was the best performance by a pitching staff in the National League last season. This season, the Stros pitchers have already given up 83 more runs than an average National League staff would have given up in the same number of innings, which is dead last in the National League.

Thus, with 21 more games to go in the season, the Stros pitching staff is an incredible 161 runs worse than the club's pitching staff from last season. Frankly, with that size of decline in the club's pitching performance, it's amazing that the club's won-loss record is only 7 or so games worse than the club's record was last season at this point in the season. If the Stros win half of their remaining 21 games, the club will end up finishing (72-90) a full 10 games worse than last season's club (82-80).

Despite that somewhat bleak landscape, the reason for my optimism is that Stros' management has embraced many of my earlier recommendations regarding preserving the club's assets during the remainder of this lost season. The Stros are not overpitching their best pitching assets (Oswalt, Qualls, Lidge, the rehabbing Backe and Sampson) or there most promising younger pitchers (Patton, Guitierrez, Paulino, etc). They went ahead and had Jennings get his elbow surgery over with so that he might be a viable option for the 2008 season. They are giving younger players such as catcher J.R. Towles some playing time to measure when they might be able to contribute at the MLB level. Although Drayton McLane is interviewing several of the typical hacks who always seem to get their foot in the door on MLB general manager interviews, he is also interviewing some of the younger GM prospects who understand the importance of statistical analysis in evaluating players and who know that re-energizing the Stros' floundering farm system is the key to turning around the club's fortunes in the long run.

Meanwhile, with a few solidying moves, next season's roster could look pretty competitive. Can Towles take over as the full-time catcher in 2008 despite just a cup of coffee at in Triple A and a month in MLB? He is sound defensively and hit very well at Double A this year, and he looks quite agile for a catcher. He's probably a year away, but the Stros might just take a flyer on him next season and back him with one of the "catch and throw" veteran catchers that the club seems to covet. Let's just hope that it's not Ausmus (-15/.317/.322/.639) again.

The club will improve by subtracting Craig Biggio (-14/.285/.392/.677), but Chris Burke (-12/.315/.358/.673) has had a bad season as he again has been deprived of playing his natural position during the prime of his career. I would be inclined to give Burke a chance at second base next season simply because of how badly he has been jacked around over the years, but I also wouldn't object if the Stros went out into the market and brought in a solid-hitting veteran such as Tadahito Iguchi, who filled in nicely this season in Philadelphia during Chase Utley's injury.

Shortstop remains a problem and the free agent market for shortstops is horrible this upcoming off-season, so expect Everett to be re-signed assuming that he fully recovers from the broken leg that he suffered earlier this season. Everett has to field at his National League best even to come close to justifying his sub-.600 OPS. Given how bad the the Stros defense has been this season, a healthy Everett is a nice luxury to have at shortstop. But if his range is limited as a result of his injury, it might be time to go try and sign a better hitter such as Edgar Rentaria to play the position for a couple of seasons while developing younger talent at that position. Ty Wigginton (3/.378/.441/.819) has not been much better than Morgan Ensberg (-1/.269/.458/.728 since moving over to the Padres) at third base, so the new GM is going to have to consider filling that hole, too.

But as noted above, Berkman at first base and the outfield of Lee, Pence and Scott is pretty salty. Stros management has mishandled Mike Lamb, so he will probably opt to leave after this season, but he would be a solid utilityman to keep, if possible. And amazingly, a case can be made that the Stros' traditional pitching depth is likely to turn around this season's abysmal pitching performance as soon as next season. Oswalt remains one of the best in MLB, and Wandy Rodriguez, Woody Williams, Backe, Sampson, Matt Albers, Patton and Guiterrez are all reasonable prospects to fill out the no. 3-5 spots in next season's pitching rotation. That leaves the Stros with the same question that they had in this past off-season -- who is going to man the no. 2 pitching spot in the rotation behind Oswalt? The free agent market for starting pitching this coming off-season stinks, so it's not likely that the Stros will find their answer there. There may be too much water under the bridge to bring Jennings back on a "make-good" deal, but the surgery that he is having is not likely to be career-ending. He could bounce back to become the workhorse that he was in Colorado. It is an option worth considering.

Thus, despite this poor season, the Stros do not appear incapable of bouncing back next season if the new GM can pull off a couple of moves to upgrade the roster. On the other hand, if McLane ends up hiring a hack to become the new GM, a couple of moves in the other direction could put the Stros franchise into a downward spiral that will take years to turn around. Although that's possible (McLane hired Jimy Williams, after all), my sense is that McLane will hire a knowledgeable and innovative GM. McLane is a sharp cookie and he realizes that his window of opportunity to return to the post-season with Oswalt, Berkman, Lee and Pence will close fast if he doesn't take decisive action in the GM post.

After two more games against the Mets over this weekend, the Stros return home to face the NL Central-contending Cubs (71-68) in what should be a fun series, the Pirates (61-79) in a battle to avoid the NL Central cellar, and then the Brewers (71-68) in a series that will likely have playoff implications. After a final road trip to play the Cards (69-68) and Reds (63-77), the Stros close the season at home in the final weekend of September against the Braves (71-69), who also are not going to make the playoffs this season.

So, it looks as if we can all look forward to watching Biggio play catcher one last time in that final series. In a season such as this one, you have to take your entertainment whereever you can find it.

The season statistics for the Stros to date are below, 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 active roster is here with links to each individual player's statistics:

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September 6, 2007

This should make Stros fans feel a bit better

It's been a bad season for the Stros, so fans of the local ballclub have to look for solace anywhere they can get it.

A couple of weeks ago, the Cubs inked ace starting pitcher Carlos Zambrano to a 5 year $91.5 million deal ($18.3/year) to keep him off the free agent market this coming off-season. The deal makes Zambrano the highest-paid pitcher in Major League Baseball.

As if on cue, over his last six starts, Zambrano's record is 0-5 with an 8.29 ERA. On Monday night, he was the starter for the Cubs in an 11-3 loss to the Dodgers, prompting desperate Cubs fans to boo Zambrano as he left the field for the day. For the season, he has saved only seven more runs than an average National League pitcher would have saved in pitching the same number of innings (RSAA, defined here). Zambrano's ERA is a rather pedestrian -- at least for a $91 million pitcher -- 4.35.

Zambrano is only 26 years old and has already thrown almost 1200 big league innings. The Cubs have a legacy of overworking young pitchers (think Kerry Wood and Mark Prior), so Zambrano's downturn this season is a definite warning sign that something may not be right physically with him. Even if he is not battling an injury, Zambrano is a high injury risk given his workload over the past five seasons. If he is sidelined for any significant period during the term of his contract, then the Cubs investment in him will make the Stros' recent bad deals seem tepid in comparison.

See, feel better? ;^)

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September 1, 2007

The state of the Stros

As I've noted many times, the Chronicle's coverage of the Stros is pretty pathetic overall. But markets are wonderful things, so the blogosphere has quickly developed into a far superior source of analysis about the Stros than the mainstream media. Although several blogs provide good information about the Stros (see the link list on the right), I have particularly enjoyed reading Lisa Gray's analysis of the Stros over at The Astros Dugout, where Lisa blogs a post on every Stros game. Her insight is excellent and she writes in an engaging and clever manner.

Lisa is now branching out a bit and she recently posted this Hardball Times article on the state of the Stros. Despite the fact that I disagree with her on a few things (I think she is a bit harsh on Drayton McLane, who is the best owner that the Stros have ever had), Lisa's article is the best I've seen on the mistakes that have been made in the Stros organization since the club's 2005 World Series appearance. Check it out.

Bill James coined the "Law of Competitive Balance" to explain the trend that teams that win tend to slack off in the following year because team management doesn't work as hard, don't take risks to make the team better and think defensively. For example, Stros management reacted to the playoff appearances in 2004-05 by rationalizing that "if we won with Ausmus and Everett in those seasons, then why can't we do it again this year." Such complacency almost always is reflected in a poorer won-loss record, and the Stros gradual decline over the latter stages of the Biggio-Bagwell era is powerful evidence of the truth of the Law of Competitive Balance.

Posted by Tom at 12:31 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

August 29, 2007

The Great Embarrassment of the 2007 season?

I am not as sure as most that Drayton McLane made the right move in firing General Manager Tim Purpura the other day. However, there is no doubt that Baseball Prospectus' Joe Sheehan thinks that McLane screwed the pooch in canning Purpura. In this article ($) entitled "Tim Purpura Gets Screwed," Sheehan lays into McLane's management of the Stros:

Firing Purpura, as McLane did yesterday, is an act of incompetence. Not only was it Purpura’s work—he ran the Astros’ player-development operations for seven years prior to becoming GM—that built the pennant winner, but with the expensive problems he inherited and the meddling of McLane, it was impossible for him to move the Astros in the direction they needed to go. He was essentially a caretaker, needing to preside over a rebuilding process and never being allowed to do so, and he’s now out of a job largely because his employer has returned to being completely irrational about what his team is.

Purpura’s performance as a GM was a mixed bag. He made his share of missteps, such as the [Jason Jennings] trade and the Woody Williams contract. However, he showed a terrific ability for making the smaller moves that add value at very little cost. In three seasons, Purpura made something-for-nothing pickups such as Mike Lamb, Aubrey Huff, and Mark Loretta. The player-development program he built continues to generate contributors such as Luke Scott, Wandy Rodriguez (check out his peripherals this year), Chad Qualls, and Troy Patton. If left to his own devices, I have no doubt that Purpura would have limited the Astros’ rebuilding process to a few short seasons, and come out on the other side with a team prepared for a long run of success.

Instead, he’s out of a job. Tim Purpura isn’t to blame for the Astros’ disappointing 2007 season, and that he’s being fired for it is ridiculous. Drayton McLane set these events in motion by abandoning what had worked for close to a decade—staying out of the baseball staff’s way—and instead making his own bad decisions about what the Astros needed. McLane wanted a year-long coronation of Craig Biggio, and he got it. He couldn’t have that and a contending baseball team, however, and his refusal to see that—and his subsequent dismissal of Purpura and Phil Garner as scapegoats for his own mistakes—ranks as one of the game’s great embarrassments of 2007.

Tim Purpura was one of the game’s top GM candidates when he landed the Astros’ job, and standing on the unemployment line today, he regains that description. If he’s out of work for longer than a couple of days, the industry is making a terrible mistake. Purpura is a better GM than a dozen guys who hold that title at the moment, and I sincerely hope he gets an opportunity to do the job correctly, an opportunity that was denied him in Houston.

Here's a counter-perspective.

Posted by Tom at 12:16 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

August 28, 2007

Drayton cleans house

Stros owner Drayton McLane finally pulled the plug and fired General Manager Tim Purpura and Manager Phil Garner on Monday as the Stros continue their spiral downward into last place in the National League Central. Although the timing of the firings was somewhat surprising, the fact that McLane let Purpura and Garner go was not.

The decision to fire Garner was actually the easier decision. As noted several times earlier, Garner is not a particularly good manager, although he is far from the worst that the Stros have had (for example, Jimy Williams). Inasmuch as a new general manager will likely want to hire his own manager and Garner is nothing special in that role, letting him go at the same time as firing the GM is a logical move.

Curiously, the tougher decision was on whether to let Purpura go. Although the Stros are enduring their worst season since 2000, this is only the second season over the past 16 in which the club will finish with a losing record. In fact, Purpura has been a key part of a management team for the past 14 years that helped construct the most successful era in the club's history. He was a part of the player development division of Stros management that produced such star players as Lance Berkman, Richard Hidalgo, Carlos Guillen and Freddy Garcia, and developed a starting pitching staff early this decade that looked at the time as the best young staff in MLB (Roy Oswalt, Carlos Hernandez, Wade Miller and Tim Redding). It certainly wasn't Purpura's fault that that potentially fine staff was undermined by injury (Hernandez and Miller) and stunted progress (Redding).

Moreover, Purpura's GM tenure certainly started out with a bang. In his first season after replacing Gerry Hunsicker, the Stros improbably won their first National League pennant and went to their first World Series. But that World Series season masked a gradual decline in the Stros' performance level that had been taking place since 2001, and the results of that decline started to appear the following season -- the Stros had to finish fast just to eke out a winning record (82-80). Similarly, the 2007 club has deteriorated further as it has struggled all season behind one of the worst performances by a pitching staff in Stros history.

Thus, to a certain extent, Purpura is bearing the fallout from a trend that began long before he replaced Hunsicker as GM. Along those same lines, Purpura probably had nothing to do with the club's decision to indulge Craig Biggio's quest for 3,000 hits, an indulgence that has negatively affected the development of younger players such as Chris Burke and Jason Lane (see here and here).

But that's not to suggest McLane didn't have any reasons to cut Purpura loose. It appears that Purpura bungled the due diligence on the Jason Jennings trade, and the Woody Williams deal has turned out badly. After giving up the club's top two picks in this season's draft in the Williams and Carlos Lee deals, Purpura failed to sign the Stros two top choices (third and fourth round draft choices), further depleting a farm system that has been in decline since 1997. Finally, with this season's club going nowhere, Purpura was unable to swing a meaningful trade before this season's trading deadline, which further cemented the perception locally that he was in over his head in the GM's post.

Despite all this, Purpura leaves the Stros in decent, if not pristine, shape. Yes, the farm system is a mess as far as position players go, but there still are a decent number of pitching prospects who have the potential to contribute to the major league club. Moreover, Purpura locked up stars Oswalt, Berkman and Lee to long-term contracts that, with the possible exception of Lee's, are well-under current market conditions. Purpura also resisted the temptation to dedicate enormous resources to re-sign fading superstars Andy Pettitte and Roger Clemens, so the club's payroll is positioned for a new GM to bid for a couple of free agent pitchers this winter to shore up the pitching staff. The free agent pitchers available after this season are not particularly talented, but at least Purpura leaves the Stros with the financial flexibility to get involved in the market if they so choose.

So, who will McLane hire as the new GM? I don't have a clue, but my sense is that it will be someone with a strong background in player evaluation and development. McLane realizes by now that the Stros' current decline is the inevitable result of poor draft choices during the period from 1997-2002. Moreover, the lack of class "A" prospects in the current farm system does not bode well for the selections made in the 2003-2006 drafts, although it is still a big early to evaluate those drafts completely. The Stros franchise has increased in value considerably during the Biggio-Bagwell era and its GM job is now among the more attractive in MLB, but the club is unlikely ever to be the type of franchise that will be able to compete year in and year out with the big-market clubs for free agent talent.

Thus, the lifeblood of the Stros is their farm system, and my bet is that McLane will hire a baseball executive who has the background and expertise to turnaround the erosion in player evaluation and development that has led to this year's bad season. With a nucleus of Berkman, Oswalt, Lee and Pence, the good news is that it's not going to take a major overhaul to make the Stros competitive again for the National League Central title.

Posted by Tom at 12:15 AM | Comments (9) | TrackBack (0)

August 17, 2007

Stros 2007 Season Review, Part Six

As the Stros (54-67) close in on the three-quarters pole of the season, I can't decide whether it's more of a reflection of the sad state of baseball analysis in local mainstream media outlets, or simply the remarkably mediocre nature of the other National League Central Division teams, that some media pundits believe that the Stros are still in the race for a playoff spot after posting a 10-10 record over their sixth 20 game segment of the season (prior periodic reports are here).

The reality is that the Stros' playoff goose was cooked for this season long ago when club management decided to indulge Craig Biggio's (-11 RCAA) quest for 3,000 hits and to continue playing as regulars such unproductive players as Brad Ausmus (-14 RCAA), Adam Everett (-12 RCAA) and recently Mark Loretta (-7 RCAA). Although it's fun to try and make it more complicated than it is, baseball is a simple game in which successful teams have hitters who create more runs than opposing hitters and pitchers who save more runs than the opposition's pitchers. Thus, by adding a club's runs created against average ("RCAA") and runs saved against average ("RSAA"), you can quite quickly determine which team is most likely to prevail in a pennant race.

Taking the NL Central as an example, the top four teams all have major deficiencies. The Brewers (62-59) hit well (61 RCAA), but their pitching has fallen off badly (-31 RSAA), so their net 30 RCAA/RSAA score has allowed the other teams in the division to stay close despite playing even worse than the Brew Crew (a precisely average National League team would have an RCAA/RSAA score of 0). The Cubs (61-59) cannot hit a lick (-39 RCAA), but have one of the better pitching staffs in the National League (64 RSAA) for a 25 RCAA/RSAA. The third place Cardinals (58-60) and the fourth place Stros (54-67) are almost precisely the same, average hitting teams (Stros: -3 RCAA; Cards: 5 RCAA) and simply dreadful pitching overall (Stros: -73 RSAA; Cards -76 RSAA) for RCAA/RSAA scores of -76 and -71. That the Cards have won a few more games than the Stros is attributable mainly to luck and the generally poor game management skills of Stros skipper, Phil Garner.

So, what does this all mean? At this point, the Brewers and the Cubs continue to be the favorites to win the NL Central, with the Cubs having the edge because of their superior pitching. Unless the Cardinals' pitching improves dramatically, their hot streak of late will probably cool off quickly, while the Stros have shown no dramatic improvement in either hitting or pitching performance that would indicate that they are capable of vaulting into contention for the NL Central lead. If Soriano can come back off his injury and nudge the Cubs hitting back toward NL average and the Cubs' pitching remains strong, my sense is that they will win the playoff spot from the NL Central. If the Cubs don't win it, the Brewers blend of hard hitting and below-average pitching almost certainly will.

Alas, what the foregoing analysis shows with regard to the Stros is that they have become a far below-average National League club overall. With a minor league system almost devoid of position player prospects at the upper levels, and for a club that is not doing a particularly good job of drafting and signing minor league prospects, the Stros are going to have to look to the free agent market to attempt to salvage another few title runs out of the Berkman-Oswalt-Carlos Lee era. And attempting to rebuild through free agent acquisitions is an expensive and highly risky proposition.

Will Drayton McLane let General Manager Tim Purpura open the pocketbook over this coming offseason and buy the free agent pitching talent that the Stros need to compete for a playoff spot next season? No one but McLane knows the answer to that question. Thankfully, the Stros are no longer burdened with huge financial obligations to Bagwell, Clemens and Pettitte, so McLane is in a financial position to make some moves. But whether he has the confidence to do so is another question entirely. And if he does not, the Stros are going to waste another season or more of Berkman, Oswalt and Lee's most productive years without having any meaningful shot at playing in the post-season.

As an aside, in the "do you have confidence in Purpura's transactions" category, former Stros 3B Morgan Ensberg (3 RCAA/.314 OBA/.636 SLG/.951 OPS) and new Stros 3B Ty Wigginton (3 RCAA/.407 OBA/.489 SLG/.896 OPS) have produced at almost precisely the same level since the Stros made the trade for Wigginton and cut Ensberg loose to the Padres? What was the reason for that trade again?

After a weekend in San Diego (64-55), the Stros return home for a ten game homestand against the Nationals (55-66), the Pirates (50-69) and the Cardinals (58-60). With school beginning next week and the football season beginning shortly thereafter, Stros management is about ready to see the smallest crowds of the season as the Stros play out the string. There are simply not enough retirement ceremonies on the horizon to maintain the public's interest in this edition of the Stros.

The season statistics for the Stros to date are below, 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 active roster is here with links to each individual player's statistics:

Posted by Tom at 6:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

August 14, 2007

The Futures at Minute Maid

Drayton McLane may have allowed the Stros franchise to decline steadily on the field over the past couple of seasons, but he rarely misses an opportunity to make a buck with his baseball franchise. That's why I'm a bit surprised that he has not picked up on this idea. Looks like a natural, particularly given the proximity of the Corpus Christi and Round Rock minor league clubs.

Posted by Tom at 12:00 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

August 10, 2007

More DeVany on Bonds

As noted here earlier this week, Art DeVany has written extensively on the specious basis of the conventional wisdom that Barry Bonds' steroid use allowed him to break the Major League Baseball home run records. DeVany responds again here:

[The conventional wisdom that Bonds' steroid use allowed him to break the MLB home run records] does not fit into any standard model or argument that has been offered as an explanation for his "departure" from the norm. There is no norm, which [the conventional wisdom] and most others advances.

Genius does not follow a process that can be normed. My argument is simple and is in the paper. Basically, most people are using an implicit normal distribution model of HRs and they claim that his performance cannot come from the model. Hence, he must have taken something. This is wrong. His performance is within the natural variation of HR hitting, but the model is not a normal distribution. Why should it be? A normal distribution applies when most people are close to the average. This has nothing to do with HRs. If you role snake eyes three times in a row, do you think there has to be an explanation? No, it is in the variation. Just chance. The dice are not on steroids.

What is worse is that people who claim "he did it and it worked" don't know much about the physiology of steroids. They weaken connective tissue and interfere with concentration when they are taken in large doses. They primarily increase protein synthesis is ST muscle fibers, which are no good for hitting HRs. Lastly, most people who formulate the argument do not have a falsifiable hypothesis, and this is not science. They take his performance, which no one else has ever done, and claim that you cannot prove that it was not due to steroids. "He took steroids and therefore hit 73 HRs" cannot be falsified. Because the conclusion is true, the statement is vacuous. It is true no matter what the premise.

Read the entire post.

Update: Professor DeVany compares Bonds and Hank Aaron's home run-hitting prowess to that of an average MLB player here, and provides additional comments regarding Bonds here. Professor DeVany's paper on home-run hitting is here (pdf).

Posted by Tom at 12:15 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0)

August 8, 2007

Bonds does it

Barry Bonds finally broke Hank Aaron's all-time home run record last night, dooming all of us to several days of inane and simplistic arguments on talk radio shows as to whether Bonds' record should include an asterisk because of his use of steroids during the latter stages of his career.

For a more balanced view regarding Bonds and his steroid use, take a look at previous posts here, here, here, here, here and here over the past several years. In the end, Bonds is a product of his environment.

Update: Kuff agrees with me, and sabermetrician JC Bradbury provides a reasoned view on Bonds. Lee Sinins provides this statistical analysis (pdf) of Bonds' career. And here is the video on no. 756:

Posted by Tom at 7:55 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

July 31, 2007

Does Jose de Jesus Ortiz research anything?

Is shooting from the hip a Houston Chronicle requirement for covering the Stros?

As noted in earlier posts here, here, here, here, here and here, the Chronicle's Stros beat writer -- Jose de Jesus Ortiz -- incongruously struggles with analyzing baseball. But on the heels of watching Stros sore-armed starting pitcher Jason Jennings get torched for 11 runs in 2/3rd's of an inning on Sunday, Ortiz displays his utter ignorance of the history of the club he covers on a daily basis:

Seeing Jason Jennings give up 11 runs while only securing two outs on Sunday afternoon, opposing scouts surely had to tell their bosses not to give up top prospects for the veteran righthander.

Because the Astros made the Jennings trade out of desperation after pushing Andy Pettitte out of town and then failing to acquire Jon Garland, the Jennings trade seemed to be the best the Astros could do at the time.

As it turns out, they could hardly have done worse, especially considering that a little digging in Colorado would have uncovered that Jennings hadn't thrown bullpen sessions between starts in the second half of the season because of a tender right elbow.

As Tim Purpura heads into Tuesday's non-waiver trade deadline, let's look back and see where this trade fits among the worst in franchise history?

What are the worst three trades in franchise history?

Here are my list in order of the worst:

• Getting rid of Joe Morgan.

• Getting rid of Billy Wagner for three prospects who didn't produce.

• Getting rid of Willy Taveras, Jason Hirsh and Taylor Buchholz for Jennings.

Had Ortiz merely bothered to run a Google Blog Search before publishing the foregoing, he would have discovered that two of the three trades that he lists are not even in the top seven of all-time bad Stros trades.

Then, on one hand, Ortiz contends that the Stros traded Billy Wagner for "three prospects who didn't produce," which is not really correct, either. The Phillies sent an established Major League pitcher who was not very good -- Brandon Duckworth -- along with pitching prospects Taylor Buchholz and Ezequiel Astacio to the Stros for Wagner.

However, undaunted, Ortiz then in the following sentence lists Buchholz -- one of the prospects "who didn't produce" from the Wagner trade -- as one of the reasons why the Jennings trade is supposedly the third worst in Stros history.

Is this really the best that the Chronicle can do in covering the Stros?

Posted by Tom at 12:03 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

July 30, 2007

The Wigginton deal

So, the Stros trade Dan Wheeler, the club's best relief pitcher over the past two seasons who is having a bad season this year, for Tampa Bay utilityman Ty Wigginton, who is the right-hand equivalent of the Stros' Mike Lamb. The Stros then prepare to release 3B Morgan Ensberg, who has been mired in a slump for over year, but who has far better career hitting statistics (55 RCAA/.367 OBA/.475 SLG/.843 OPS) than either Wigginton (-11/.326/.448/.774) or Lamb (-15/.339/.428/.768) and is a far better third baseman defensively than either of them. By the way, even during his prolonged slump, Ensberg's hitting (-8 RCAA) has been substantially more productive for the Stros than the hitting of other Stros' starters Craig Biggio (-31 RCAA), Adam Everett (-32 RCAA) and Brad Ausmus (-53 RCAA) over the same period of time.

Thus, absent a further trade of either Lamb or Mark Loretta for a potentially productive prospect or two, this deal is akin to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Why is a team whose main problem is bad pitching trading one of its better pitchers for a below-average National League hitter? Wheeler, Wigginton, Lamb and Ensberg's career statistics are below the hyperlinked break. The abbreviations for the hitting stats are defined here and the same for the pitching stats are here.

Update: Baseball Prospectus' Joe Sheehan agrees with my analysis ($) on the Wheeler for Wigginton deal and the give-up on Ensberg:

You got me. Rumors persist that Ensberg will be traded before his DFA period ends, but even if he is, the return won’t be much. So for Wheeler and Ensberg, the Astros get a 29-year-old infielder who runs a below-average OBP with good power and so-so defense. Mildly impressive at second base, Wigginton is just a guy at third base, and this is the first season since 2004 in which he’s outhitting Ensberg. At that, the difference this year is just 17 points of EqA. This looks more like a tantrum by the Astros than a baseball decision, their frustration with Ensberg’s injury woes and power outage getting the better of them.

Posted by Tom at 12:17 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

July 26, 2007

Stros 2007 Season Review, Part Five

At the quarter pole of this season, I observed the following:

Stros management, for all their declarations of trying to field a playoff contender, is really biding its time this season as Biggio trudges toward his 3,000th hit. There is simply no way that this club will be much better than a .500 ballclub with its current starting pitching staff and Biggio, Everett, Ausmus and the pitcher burdening the hitting lineup on most nights. The Stros should be honest and concede that the club is attempting to compete as well as possible while supporting Biggio's climb toward 3,000 hits and dispense with the ruse that this club, as presently configured, has any meaningful shot at the playoffs.

Well, as the Stros (44-57) have now completed 62.5% of the season (prior periodic reviews are here), Stros management has apparently embraced my suggestion. Rather than promoting the club's competitiveness, Stros management has decided to make the remainder of the season the Craig Biggio Good-Bye Tour, beginning with Bidg's well-orchestrated retirement announcement and game-winning, grand slam homer earlier in the week. Ah, the memories!

Unfortunately, when Biggio is retired and gone after this season, Stros management will have to figure out what to do next. As I have been pointing out for several years now, the ballclub has been in decline since 2001, although extraordinary pitching staff performances in 2004 and 2005 masked the decline during those two playoff seasons. But this season, the decline of the club has hit the club's traditional strength -- that is, pitching -- and the result is that the Stros may finish this season with the worst record in the National League.

Interestingly, this club's 44-57 record through 62.5% of the season is about the same as the club's record last season during the middle 60% of the season (42-55). Only good performances during the first and final 20% segments of the 2006 season allowed that club to finish two games over .500 (82-80). Now, in the first five eighth segments of this season, the Stros' record has been been consistently mediocre or worse -- 9-12, 11-9, 6-14, 8-12, and 10-10 in the most recent 20 game segment. So, the accelerating downward trend that started during the middle of last season has continued this season.

Although some folks continue to be confused about what ails the Stros, a dramatic and pervasive downturn in pitching remains the big problem. The Stros' staff -- which has been among the best in the National League over the past three seasons -- has given up 55 more runs than an average National League pitching staff would have allowed in the same number of innings (RSAA, explained here). That places the Stros staff 15th among the 16 National League teams with only the Cardinals' staff being worse, and only three Stros pitchers -- Roy Oswalt (5 RSAA/3.80 ERA), Chad Qualls (1 RSAA/3.83 ERA) and Brad Lidge (10 RSAA/1.94 ERA) -- have saved more runs this season than an average National League pitcher would have saved in the same number of innings.

Meanwhile, the Stros' hitters continue to be about National League-average (5 runs created against average, explained here), which is right in the middle (8th) of the 16 National League teams. Although National League-average in hitting is far better than the past two Stros squads achieved, it is not close to being good enough to make up for the Stros' abysmal pitching. As a result, the Stros' combined RCAA/RSAA score of -50 so far this season reflects that they continue to be a far below-average National League team.

The season statistics for the Stros to date are below, 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 active roster is here with links to each individual player's statistics:

In my most recent periodic review, I provided some background on how the Stros got to this point. Now that Stros management has conceded that this season's club is playing out the string, here's an outline for what management should do for the remainder of the season:

Preserve pitching assets. Oswalt has carried as heavy a load as any National League starter over the past six seasons. The chest muscle strain that he is currently dealing with is a clear overuse injury, and the Stros should make sure that Oswalt does not pitch that injury into a chronic condition. There is simply no good reason for the Stros not to moderate Oswalt's innings over the remainder of the season to lessen the toll on his body. Similarly, Chris Sampson (-2 RSAA/4.29 ERA) had never pitched the number of innings in a season that he has pitched to date this season, so he is a high risk of breaking down. As with Oswalt, the Stros would be smart to limit his starts over the remainder of the season, just as they should not hurry Brandon Backe back to the MLB this season in his recovery from Tommy John surgery. Finally, Lidge needs arthoscopic knee surgery to remove loose cartilage and -- absent a trade that makes sense -- the Stros should shut him down and allow him to have the surgery now so that his rehab can be completed well before next season. Lidge has never had the best pitching mechanics, so even a minor injury can cause a pitcher to adjust their mechanics, which often results in another injury that is more severe than the initial one. Pitching assets in Major League Baseball are extremely valuable and nothing would be gained by the Stros from risking damage to these assets over the the remainder of this lost season.

Develop pitching assets, but carefully. Dovetailing with the first recommendation, the Stros should undertake a concerted program during the remainder of the season to provide their young pitching talent some MLB experience. For example, Matt Albers (-6 RSAA/5.19 ERA) should be given every opportunity to establish whether he is capable of being a starting pitcher on the MLB level or whether he is destined for a Qualls-like existence in the bullpen. Similarly, farmhands such as Troy Patton, Juan Gutierrez, Chance Douglass, Felipe Paulino and Brad James should be given a taste of big league hitters to gauge their progress. None of these young pitchers are ready for extended exposure to MLB hitters, but getting their feet wet will provide important information regarding whether these are prospects who may be able to contribute in the next year or so. Trotting a washed up Woody Williams (-13 RSAA/5.03 ERA) out to the mound every fourth day for the remainder of the season doesn't reveal anything of comparable value.

Play Morgan Ensberg, Chris Burke, Jason Lane and Luke Scott every day. Each of these players has been a productive player for the Stros at one point in their careers, but each of them has also been mishanded during their time with the Stros. Ensberg's situation is explained here, while Burke and Lane have been blocked (see also here) by the Stros' indulgence of Biggio. Similarly, Scott has been yo-yoed in right field this season while fighting nagging injuries despite the fact he remains one of the half-dozen hitters on the club who has generated a positive RCAA this season. The only way that to tell what a big league player is likely to produce in the future is to give an extended period of day-to-day playing time (and, in Burke's case, at the position he is best suited to play). These three players deserve that opportunity. With nothing to lose and Hunter Pence's injury keeping him out for the next six weeks or so, let's see what these players can do in an extended, undisturbed period of play.

Trade judiciously. As noted here, the Stros overall legacy of trades is not exactly encouraging. Moreover, it's far easier to add to that legacy than to pull off one of those one-sided Larry Anderson-for-Jeff Bagwell deals. Nevertheless, the Stros do have a number of players who could be useful for a contending team down the stretch. Right now, this season's trading market appears to be a buyer's market with contending teams being relunctant to part with young MLB prospects for proven talent that can help down the stretch of a playoff drive. The Stros don't need any more average-to-below average big league players, so I'd prefer that Stros management hold out and take a flyer on some young prospects with a problem or two who nonetheless have the potential to bloom as Pence did while shooting through the minors.

It wasn't that long ago that Stros management was building around a what appeared to be a solid core group of young players developed within the Stros organization consisting of starting pitchers Oswalt, Carlos Hernandez, Wade Miller and Tim Redding, and emerging hitters Lance Berkman and Richard Hidalgo. Unfortunately, only Oswalt and Berkman were able to make it through the rigors of Major League competition to emerge as bonafide stars and, as noted here earlier, the Stros did not do a good job of choosing and developing talent during the five year period of 1998-2002 to replace the players who did not blossom into consistent above-average players. With this season's club bottoming out with one of the worst records in MLB, it's high time for the club's management to begin the hard work of developing a new core of young players to take the baton from the Biggio-Bagwell era, the most successful period in the history of the ballclub. A fan base now accustomed to a long period of overall success expects nothing less.

After hosting the Padres (54-46) in a four game set over this weekend, the Stros go on the road to play the Braves (54-47) and the Marlins (48-53) to start August before returning home to meet the NL Central leaders, the Cubs (53-46) and Brewers (56-45) in the second week of next month. Look for the next periodic review in mid-August or so.

Posted by Tom at 7:54 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)

July 21, 2007

The Stros' legacy of bad trades

This earlier post explored the possibility that Stros management got snookered in the trade for pitcher Jason Jennings because of possible undisclosed arm problems. After serving a stint on the disabled list with elbow inflammation earlier this season, Jennings has come back to pitch sport a 4.76 ERA in 70 innings, which means that Jennings has given up 5 more runs than an average National League pitcher would have given up in the same number of innings (RSAA, explained here). To top off this uninspiring season-long performance, Jennings gave up 7 earned runs in 5 innings in his last outing against the hapless Nationals (40-55). That prompted the following observation from Baseball Prospectus ($) injury expert, Will Carroll:

"He's done," the source told me after watching Jason Jennings pitch [against the Nationals]. A very knowledgeable man that I trust on pitching, he thinks that Jennings' shoulder is "catching," reducing his velocity and changing his mechanics enough to reduce movement. He also doesn't believe that Jennings made any improvement after a DL stint, implying that there's more going on inside the arm. Jennings' results back up this assertion, and point to perhaps another period on the DL in the near future. With Jennings' impending free agency, it will be curious how the Astros handle this. Will they acknowledge their trade for Jennings didn't work, or will they try to get whatever they can from him in a season that's lost?

Thus, the trade for Jennings -- which was a reasonable risk at the time -- is not turning out well. At least the Stros can take solace in the fact that they didn't give up much in the trade -- all three of the players that the Stros gave up (pitchers Jason Hirsh and Taylor Buchholz, and centerfielder Willy Taveras) have been below-average so far during their Major League careers and none of them is above-average this season.

Nevertheless, many Stros fans -- apparently confused by the club's poor play this sesaon -- think the Jennings deal was a horrible trade. Earlier this week, I even heard a host of one of the ubiquitous sports talk shows on Houston's radio landscape -- a barren wasteland of insightful thought with the exception of Charlie Pallilo and a couple of others -- predict that "the Jennings trade will go down as one of the worst trades in Stros history."

Come on. The radio host apparently did not take the time to review the Stros' extraordinary legacy of bad trades:

1971: The Stros traded secondbaseman Joe Morgan in the prime of his career, pitcher Jack Billingham, shortstop Denis Menke, and outfielders Cesar Geronimo and Ed Armbrister to Cincinnati for firstbaseman Lee May, secondbaseman Tommy Helms and utility infielder Jimmy Stewart. Morgan cemented his Hall of Fame career with the Reds, while Billingham and Geronimo were also solid contributors in the Reds' World Series teams of the 1970's. For many years, this trade set the standard by which bad trades in Major League Baseball were compared.

1969: The Stros traded slugging outfielder Rusty Staub in the prime of his career to Montreal for Jesus Alou and Donn Clendenon. When Clendenon refused to report, Houston agreed to take pitchers Jack Billingham and Skip Guinn instead. The Stros did not have another hitter the caliber of Staub for over 20 years until Jeff Bagwell joined the club in 1991. Clendenon went on to help the Mets win the 1969 World Series.

1992: The Stros traded 24-year old pitcher Curt Schilling to Philadelphia for pitcher Jason Grimsley. Schilling went on to become one of the best starting pitchers of the following 15 year era and saved his teams 345 more runs over that period than an average National League pitcher would have saved during that time pitching the same number of innings.

1991: The Stros traded 24-year old centerfielder Kenny Lofton and infielder Dave Rohde to Cleveland for catcher Eddie Taubensee and pitcher Willie Blair. Over the past 16 seasons, Lofton has generated 234 more runs than an average National League player would have created over that span using the same number of outs as Lofton. Just to rub it in, the now 40-year old Lofton had his best series of the season several weeks ago against the Stros while playing with the Rangers.

1994: The Stros traded thirdbaseman Ken Caminiti, centerfielder Steve Finley, shortstop Andujar Cedeno, firstbaseman Roberto Petagine and pitchers Brian Williams and Sean Fesh to San Diego for outfielder Derek Bell, pitcher Doug Brocail, shortstop Ricky Gutierrez, pitcher Pedro Martinez (no, not that Pedro Martinez) outfielder Phil Plantier and infiedler Craig Shipley. Caminiti proceeded to become one of the best sluggers in the National League over the next four seasons with the Padres, while Finley has been a well above-average centerfielder for the past 13 seasons. On the other hand, Bell in 1999 had one of the worst seasons by an outfielder in Stros history by generating 32 fewer runs than an average National League player would have created using the same number of outs as Bell used.

1968: The Stros traded starting pitcher Mike Cuellar to Baltimore for Curt Blefary and John Mason. Cuellar went on to have a career season for the Orioles in 1969 (41 RSAA) and was a dominant starter for the O's for the following five seasons. Blefary played one average season for the Stros before they traded him to the Yankees.

1971: The Stros traded 23 year old slugging firstbaseman John Mayberry and Dave Grangaard to Kansas City for pitchers Lance Clemons and Jim York. Over the next four seasons, Mayberry had the most productive stretch of his career as he generated 175 more runs during those seasons than an average National League player would have created using the same number of outs as Mayberry.

1998: The Stros traded SS Carlos Guillen and pitchers Freddy Garcia and John Halama to the Mariners for Randy Johnson. Johnson gave the Stros what they wanted -- an ERA of 1.28 in 11 stretch-drive starts and a 1.93 ERA in two NLDS starts. But the Stros lost in the NLDS and Johnson signed with the Dbacks the next season. Guillen went on to become a three-time All-Star, Garcia, who won 117 games over the following nine seasons and Halama was a National League-league pitcher over the next eight seasons. This marked the beginning of the decline in the Stros' farm system that now ranks as one of the worst in MLB.

If Hirsh, Buchholz or Taveras turns into a star player, then maybe the Jennings deal will be included among these truly horrid Stros trades. But until then, the Jennings trade will remain simply a reasonable risk that did not work out.

Posted by Tom at 12:18 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)

July 18, 2007

Dissecting the Stros' woes

The Stros (40-54) won last night for the first time in five games since the All-Star Break, which has put the club in contention for the worst record in Major League Baseball this season. That performance prompted Baseball Prospectus to provide this "what's busted" capsule summary ($) of the Stros' woes:

What's Busted? Organizational decision-making. Whether it's putting Craig Biggio's goal ahead of the ballclub's fortunes, or Phil Garner's fickle relationship with Lidge, or unquestioning Brad Ausmus cultism, or spending big money on Woody Williams and being surprised by the result, it's fair to say that the Astros have consistently made the wrong choices when they have to freedom to make them, and only have happy results from those—like Hunter Pence—who force choices upon them.

Add to those bad decisions a string of bad drafts from 1998-2002 and the Stros have a real mess on their hands. In those five drafts, the Stros generated only a handful of productive players -- Brad Lidge and Morgan Ensberg (1998); Jason Lane and Chris Sampson (1999); Chad Qualls and Eric Bruntlett (2000); Chris Burke and Matt Albers (2001); and nothing so far out of the 2002 draft, which is shaping up to be one of the worst drafts in Stros franchise history. The foregoing is not much of a return on investment in the Stros' minor league development program.

Despite the clarity of the foregoing mistakes, Chronicle sports columnist Richard Justice continues to manage to to get it wrong in analyzing the Stros:

Tim Purpura's biggest blunder was swapping Andy Pettitte and Roger Clemens for Woody Williams and Jason Jennings. It really begins with Pettitte. The Astros had such a dislike of his agent, Randy Hendricks, that they allowed it to influence their evaluation of the player. Bad mistake. Childish, too.

We'll never know if they could have signed Pettitte. I suspect his heart was set on returning to New York. Close friends in the home clubhouse tell me he agonized over the decision and would have returned if the Astros had tried a little harder. Instead, they treated him like he was an optional part.

Neither he nor Roger Clemens have been great this season, but they've been far better than Woody Williams and Jason Jennings, who are a combined 5-16 with 14 quality starts and a 4.94 ERA. Pettitte and Clemens are 7-10 with 15 quality starts and a 4.25 ERA. To adjust the ERAs by league, Pettitte and Clemens are .18 of a run under their league average while Williams and Jennings are .65 of a run above.

Purpura's biggest blunder? In point of fact, trading Pettitte and Clemens for Williams and Jennings hasn't had much of an effect on the Stros' season at all, while not signing them has had a huge positive impact on the Stros' payroll. Had Pettitte and Clemens been pitching for the Stros this season, they would have saved the club about 27 more runs than Williams and Jennings to this point in the season. That translates to about 4-5 more wins, which would make the Stros record at best 45-49 and still far behind in the NL Central. Meanwhile, if the Stros had signed Pettitte and Clemens, then the club's payroll would be bleeding by an additional $25 million or so over and above the aggregate $10.5 million or so that they are paying Williams and Jennings. Had that occurred, Justice would probably be criticizing the Stros for wasting a substantial chunck of the club's payroll on a couple of high-injury risk veterans on the downside of their respective careers.

The bottom line on this season is that the Stros pitching staff has underperformed so badly that having both Pettitte and Clemens would not have improved that overall performance enough to matter. Stros General Manager Tim Purpura has made some mistakes, such as signing Williams in the first place. But electing to pass on overpaying Pettitte and Clemens was not among them.

Posted by Tom at 12:15 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

July 13, 2007

It's the season for youth baseball conflicts

Holland & Knight's Tampa office has started an interesting area of specialization:

The signs at the New Tampa Little League field are clear: Please practice good sportsmanship at all times.

League officials say one parent has missed the message, and they've asked him to leave the park more than once.

But that parent also happens to be a lawyer for one of the largest law firms in Florida. Now he's alleging that the New Tampa Little League defamed his character in front of parents, friends and clients, and he has hinted strongly at legal action.

Fred Grady, 47, a construction lawyer for Holland & Knight in Tampa, sent league president Monica Wooden a letter on Holland & Knight stationery. The letter, dated June 11, says the league officers' actions and accusations damaged him. Pursuant to state law, the letter gives Wooden 30 days to send him a copy of the league's insurance policies and coverage.

That letter capped off a series of e-mail exchanges between Grady and Wooden in which Grady repeatedly asked for a letter of apology from Linda Harrell, a league director who ordered him off the field on April 28. Grady wanted the letter sent to all parents, players and coaches on his son's team, and he wanted it in time for the end-of-the-season party so he could read it aloud, Wooden said.

"I'm all about principle," Wooden said. "But I'm not going to patronize some guy who needs something for his self-gratification."

When Grady didn't get the letter, he sent Wooden the e-mails.

"If NTLL decides or has decided the Director acted outside of her scope of authority then so be it but that issue will NOT be determined by me, but rather by a judge or jury if this matter proceeds," said one e-mail bearing Grady's name.

Another read: "If the NTLL is not prepared to resolve the matter along these lines then I will have no other choice but to take legal action against NTLL and Ms. Harrell individually."

Grady requested the name of the league's lawyer: "I assume NTLL does not have LOCAL counsel? Perhaps NTLL should consider retaining a local attorney."

Read the entire piece. But that rhubarb is nothing compared to this bit of youth baseball sociopathy:

A judge refused to reduce the sentence of a former youth baseball coach convicted of offering a player money to bean a 9-year-old autistic teammate.

Mark Downs Jr., 29, had argued in his appeal that his former attorney wasn't effective. But Fayette County Judge Ralph Warman ruled Monday that Downs' arguments were without merit. He let stand Downs' one- to six-year prison sentence imposed last year.

Downs was convicted of corruption of minors and simple assault for offering $25 to an 8-year-old boy to hit his mildly autistic teammate with a ball while warming up before a June 2005 playoff game. The younger boy testified at trial that, on Downs' instructions, he purposely threw a ball that hit his teammate in the groin, then threw another that hit him in the ear.

Prosecutors said Downs didn't want the autistic boy in the game because he didn't play as well as his teammates. League rules require each player to play at least three innings.

Wow.

Posted by Tom at 12:04 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

July 3, 2007

Now, that's a home office

The concept of the home office has been elevated to an entirely new level.

Posted by Tom at 4:12 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

July 1, 2007

Stros 2007 Season Review, Part Four

So, now that the Stros are done with that, where does the club go from here?

As the Stros (34-47) reached the halfway point of the 2007 season, that's the question confronting the owner Drayton McLane and General Manager Tim Purpura. The club went 8-12 during the fourth 1/8th segment of the season after going 9-12, 11-9 and 6-14 during the first three (prior periodic season reviews here). That geneally abysmal performance removed any fleeting doubt that the Stros could compete for the National League Central division title. The Stros finished the first half of the season 13.5 games behind the division-leading Brewers (47-33), good for only fifth place in a mediocre six team division.

How has this happened to a club that is only a season and a half removed from a World Series appearance? As noted here earlier this season, some folks who cover the club on a regular basis don't even know the answer to that question. However, it's clear that the 2007 Stros have taken a major step backward because of an overall decline in pitching. Through 81 games, the Stros' pitching staff has given up 65 more runs than a merely average National League club would have given up in the same number of innings (runs saved against average or RSAA, explained here) and an astounding 139 more runs than the best National League pitching staff (the Padres). The aggregate RSAA of the Stros' staff is currently dead last in the 16 team National League, a startling development for a pitching staff that has been among the best in MLB over the past three seasons. The pitching staff's performance is by far the worst by a Stros staff since the 2000 season, when a similar meltdown during the club's initial season in Minute Maid Park resulted in a -69 RSAA and a disastrous 72-90 record, the only losing record for the Stros in the past 15 seasons until this season.

Meanwhile, the Stros' hitting has actually taken an upswing recently after meandering below National League-average for the first 3/8ths of the season. Improved hitting from slugger Lance Berkman (12 RCAA/.386 OBP/.434 SLG/.820 OPS), continued excellent production from Hunter Pence (16/.358/.562/.920), and solid contributions from Mark Loretta (10/.410/.441/.851), Carlos Lee (6/.346/.514/.860), Mike Lamb (8/.365/.475/.840) and Luke Scott (4/.335/.465/.800) resulted in the Stros generating, through 81 games of the season, 18 more runs than an average National League club would have created using the same number of outs (runs created against average or RCAA, defined here) through the halfway point of the season. That's good for 6th place in the National League, the best performance for Stros hitters since the 2004 club's late season surge allowed the Stros to finish 7th in RCAA among the 16 National League teams.

Unfortunately, the Stros' improved hitting does not come close to compensating for the Stros' overall atrocious pitching. By adding a club's overall RCAA and RSAA numbers, the sum provides a good measure for evaluating a club's overall performance relative to an average National League club, which would have a combined RCAA/RSAA score of precisely zero. The Stros' RCAA/RSAA deficit of -47 this season is a clear indication that the Stros are currently a far below-average National League team.

The season statistics for the Stros to date are below, 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 active roster is here with links to each individual player's statistics:

Getting back to the "how has this happened?" question, it's helpful to look back at how the Stros' organization has developed over the years to figure out the answer to that question and to chart what club management needs to do to right the ship.

Despite never having won a World Series, the Stros have been a reasonably successful franchise over their 45 year existence, particularly over the past 15 years. Given the club's initial expansive environment in the Astrodome, Stros management chose a model that emphasized development of good pitching and defense, which has allowed the club to be more consistently competitive over the years than many other clubs, such as the Stros in-state rival, the Rangers. Although the Stros developed some good hitters such as Rusty Staub, Joe Morgan, Jimmy Wynn and Cesar Cedeno, the organization has always been known more for development of its pitching than hitting. For years, Major League scouts joked that, whenever they would scout the Stros' minor league teams, they would always bring their radar guns along because the Stros always seemed to have a bunch of fireballing prospects coming up through the ranks.

With the commencement of the Biggio-Bagwell era in the early 1990's, the Stros model changed somewhat as the club became more balanced between pitching and hitting. Beginning in 1992, the Stros put together a string of seasons from 1992-2004 in which the club overall was above National League-average in terms of creating runs, topped by the 1998 juggernaut that generated a remarkable 154 more runs over the course of the season than an average National League club. With the exception of the 1992, 1995, 1996 and aformentioned 2000 seasons, the Stros' pitching also remained above-average during those years, resulting in the club's three straight playoff appearances in the late 1990's, two more in 2001 and 2004, and topped by the 1998 club's 116 RSAA (how did the Stros not win it all that season?).

Beginning in 2000 with the move to the more hitter-friendly Minute Maid Park, the Stros' overall hitting began to decline again. Part of that downturn was attributable to the inevitable erosion of Biggio and Bagwell's productivity as they grew older, but it also resulted from Richard Hidalgo's surprising failure to develop into a consistent above-average National League hitter and the organization's failure to develop any above National League-average hitters in their minor league system after 2000 other than Berkman, Pence, and Morgan Ensberg.

Nevertheless, this decline in hitting was somewhat offset with increased productivity in the Stros' pitching staffs. Interestingly, the Stros' increased emphasis on pitching since the 2000 season paid big dividends, as the chart below reflects:

Thus, the only two seasons since 2000 that the Stros have played sub-.500 ball have been the 2000 season and this season, the two seasons in which the Stros fielded below-average pitching staffs. On the other hand, when the Stros had their best pitching performance since 2000 in 2005, the Stros went to their first World Series despite a well-below average hitting performance.

So, what was McLane and Purpura's mistake this season? Contrary to conventional wisdom that one regularly hears on sports talk radio shows and reads in the Chronicle, none of the trades or non-tenders that they have made over the past two seasons has really hurt the club. Jason Jennings (2 RSAA/4.69 ERA) has pitched better than either Jason Hirsh (-4 RSAA/4.90 ERA or Taylor Buchholz (-1 RSAA/4.66 ERA), and Willy Taveras (-1/.335/.346/.681) is not as productive a hitter as either Lee, Pence or Scott, the Stros' three top outfielders. The same goes for Purpura dealing away Ben Zobrist and Mitch Talbot for Aubrey Huff last season -- neither of those players has shown anything to suggest that they will ever be even National League-average players. Similarly, given the expense relative to the injury risk, not re-signing Clemens and Pettitte was absolutely the right move for a club that has no business locking up $40 million in payroll in two old, fading pitchers.

Thus, it has not been bad trades or ill-advised non-tenders that has caused the current dismal state of affairs with the Stros. Rather, McLane and Purpura's mistake this season was in moving away from the club's "development of pitching first" philosophy and thinking that improving the club's hitting could compensate for a decidedly lackluster pitching staff and allow the Stros to compete for the NL Central title.

Consequently, rather than trading away productive players (those are the only ones that other clubs want), the Stros need to renew dedication to their long-term model of developing above-average pitching talent and depth throughout the organization. If the Stros can become comfortable that Jennings is not damaged goods, then the club should make every effort to re-sign him before he hits the free agent market after the season. But the key to turning around the ballclub's decline is in restocking the pitching staff and that is done primarily by developing pitchers in the minor league system. So long as the club's downturn in pitching performance is a temporary blip on the radar screen -- which has usually been the case with the Stros over their history -- the resurgence of the club's hitting this season bodes well for development of a balanced club that has the potential to be above National League-average hitting and pitching over the next several seasons. That should be good enough to return quickly to contention in the NL Central.

After finishing their four game series with the Rockies today, the Stros face the Phillies (41-40) and the Mets (46-33) in the next seven games at Minute Maid Park leading up to the All-Star break and then go on the road after the break for nine games in Chicago (39-40), Washington (32-48) and Pittsburgh (35-45) before returning home on July 23rd for three game sets against the Dodgers (45-35) and the Padres (45-33). Look for the next periodic update around July 28th or so, by which time the Stros hopefully will be evaluating a few of the club's good pitching prospects on the Major League level.

Posted by Tom at 6:56 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

June 29, 2007

Biggio reaches 3,000 hit plateau

Good for Bidg that he collects his 3,000th hit on a night where he goes 5 for 6 and helped set up Carlos Lee's walk-off bottom of the 11th grand slam to pull out an 8-5 win over the Rockies. That's the Craig Biggio that Houstonians who have admired his magnificent 20 year career want to remember.

There are many tributes today around the web and in the Chronicle today, but John Lopez's and the Plunk Biggio tributes are the best that I've read. Here are
a few of my blog posts on Bidg over the years:

A good man's worthy cause (August 25, 2004);

Bidg sets the MLB hit by pitch record (June 29, 2005);

One of the downsides of the pursuit of 3,000 (August 26, 2005);

The remarkable Mr. Biggio (October 4, 2005); and

Where Bidg stands among the Stros' best hitters of all-time (February 26, 2007).

Bidg's career statistics through last night's game are below, the best reflection of his certain Hall of Fame career.

Posted by Tom at 7:29 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

June 27, 2007

Reaching a milestone the wrong way

I've noted in several previous posts (here and here) how Stros management has hurt the club and thumbed its nose at the integrity of baseball by indulging Craig Biggio's quest for 3,000 hits, but Baseball Prospectus' Joe Sheehan really lays the wood to Biggio and Stros management in this BP column ($):

Last night, the Astros started Chris Burke at second base, batting him sixth and using Mark Loretta as their leadoff man in their 6-1 loss to the Brewers. . . . [Stros manager] Phil Garner hasn’t had a sudden change of heart about the best alignment of his available talent; no, he’s sitting Craig Biggio in two of these three games to prevent Biggio from notching his 3,000th career hit on the road.

Set aside for the moment the issue of whether the Astros are better with Burke at second base and Loretta batting leadoff, which is certainly the case. That was also the case on Opening Day, but Garner has pencilled Biggio’s name into the lineup 62 times, including 59 times in the leadoff spot. He decided at the beginning of the season that Biggio wa