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 Rockiesí 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.

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?

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.

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:

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:

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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 donít 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).

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.

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):

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.

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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? ;^)